Authorities say 104 people have been killed in country's worst mining disaster for two years
Grieving relatives scuffled with police today as the death toll from China's worst mining disaster for almost two years rose to 104.
Authorities said they feared another four workers who were trapped underground after a huge gas explosion at the mine on Saturday were already dead.
Hundreds of rescue workers have been at the pit in Heilongjiang province, close to the Russian border, but no survivors have been found since the blast.
Chinese state media reported today that safety staff knew gas had reached dangerous levels and were evacuating miners when the explosion – so powerful that it was felt 10km away – happened 500 metres underground.
More than 500 miners were below ground at the time, but most escaped. Twenty-nine people who were injured remain in hospital, the Xinhua news agency reported.
Around a dozen women who had gathered at the entrance of the mine in Hegang to complain about the lack of information argued with police and security guards. Some were taken inside the compound, while others were driven away in a van.
Men who declined to identify themselves tried to stop reporters from speaking to the women, putting their hands in front of cameras.
The Xinxing mine produces more than 1m tonnes of coal each year and is run by the state-owned Heilongjiang Longmei mining holding group.
A major safety drive has cut the number of mining deaths in China since 2004, primarily through the closure or forced acquisition of small, private and often illegal mines.
In the first half of this year, 1,175 people died in pits across China, a fall of 18.4% compared with the same period last year, the state administration of coal mine safety said.
But China Labour Bulletin, a Hong Kong-based organisation supporting workers' rights, said the Xinxing deaths showed that nationalising mines was not enough.
The organisation said more effective safety measures were needed, including giving a voice to workers, whose safety concerns are often overruled by their bosses.
It said investigations into previous disasters had shown that managers refused to clear pits, even when gas monitors indicated problems or evacuation alarms sounded, because of the losses caused by shutting down production.
"As an enterprise responsible for profits and losses, state-owned coal mines are just as concerned with profit maximisation as privately-owned coal mines," Han Dongfang, the director of the group, wrote recently.
"And their managers' disregard for miners' lives in the push for profit or the drive to exceed production quotas is just as appalling as in privately-owned mines.
"According to official figures, thousands of miners have died in major accidents at state-owned mines over the last decade."
The deadly nature of China's mining industry was underlined by a separate blast in Hunan province yesterday, in which another 11 miners were killed and three are missing, Xinhua reported.
Mining offers relatively high wages compared with other low-skilled manual jobs and, in some areas, there is little other work available.
China's work safety chief is heading a team investigating the cause of the Xinxing explosion, and central government prosecutors are looking for any abuses of power or official misconduct that may have contributed to the disaster, state media said.
According to a spokesperson for the mining holding group, the mine's monitoring room had received alerts of a sudden, dramatic rise in underground gas levels 53 minutes before the blast.
A mine official said managers immediately cut off underground power and notified all personnel to evacuate, but it remains unclear why it took so long to clear the pit.
A blast at a state-run mine in Shanxi province in February killed 77 people. In that disaster, no alarms sounded and no action was taken even when gas indicators registered dangerous levels, state media reported.
In a commentary, the English-language state newspaper China Daily wrote: "China's over-reliance on fossil fuel and the low efficiency of its industry means there will be no substantial cut in the number of miners – seven million.
"But do they have to die to keep us warm and the factories up and running? Is there a way to keep casualties to the minimum?"
State media reported that the families of each victim were expected to receive at least 250,000 yuan (£22,000), 25% more than the standard compensation for fatalities in incidents caused by negligence.
Officers from the North West Counter Terrorism Unit detained the men last week
Four men have been charged with terrorism offences after a 15-month investigation into alleged terrorist activity overseas, police have said.
Officers from the north-west counter terrorism unit detained the men last week after raids in north-west England.
Israr Malik, 21, from Fallowfield, Greater Manchester, was charged with intending to commit acts of terrorism between June 2008 and 17 November this year. Matthew Newton, 27, Munir Farooqi, 52, and Haris Farooqi, 26, also from Greater Manchester, were accused of intending to assist others to commit acts of terrorism during the same period.
All four men are due to appear at City of Westminster magistrates court in London today.
Munir Farooqi, the father of Haris Farooqi, is also charged with three counts of soliciting or encouraging another to murder on 6 July, 15 October and 16 October this year.
A fifth man arrested in the raids, Shaykh Asif Hussain Farooqui, 62, from Bolton, was released without charge.
• Canoeist dies and woman is swept away by river
• Checks on 1,800 Cumbria bridges after six collapse
Torrential downpours claimed a second victim yesterday in Devon as emergency medical supplies and food parcels were sent to communities marooned by floods in Cumbria, and rescue teams searched the swollen river Usk in Wales for a missing woman.
Hundreds of police, soldiers and volunteers were in action along Britain's western seaboard, as a second slow-moving weather front unloaded hours' more rain from Dartmoor to the Scottish border, with even more expected this week.
Engineers are examining 1,800 bridges in Cumbria, where six have collapsed after the floods on the rivers Cocker and Derwent, which meet at Cockermouth. The county council estimates that at least £75m of damage was done to property and infrastructure, with detailed surveys likely to take weeks to reach a final bill. The eventual insurance bill for Cumbria could reach £100m.
The port of Workington, already inundated by Thursday's record downpour, was cut in half when a crack in the central arch of Calva bridge widened to six inches and the road slumped by a foot. Hundreds of people have been left stranded on the Northside housing estate, where the area's Labour MP, John Cunningham, appealed for food and medical supplies.
A canoeist died after being trapped under a fallen tree in the river Dart. Chris Wheeler's body was recovered after a mountain rescue team had trekked for two hours through storms.
Two inshore rescue craft were launched on the Usk near Brecon after witnesses saw a woman being swept away by floodwater. A Sea King helicopter and dog teams joined the search, while other RAF helicopters remained on alert near Workington and Cockermouth, whose main street finally emerged from 2.5 metre (8ft) floods, littered with smashed trees, abandoned cars and ruined goods from local shops.
Military Bailey bridges are likely to be installed temporarily to relieve Northside, where Cunningham said the police station was out of action and the medical centre was down to its last nappies and other supplies. He said: "Until we can get bridges, people are having to take a 90-mile round trip to reach their former neighbours."
Canon Bryan Rowe, of St Michael's Church in Workington, said: "We are isolated. We are a long way from a motorway now. We can't even go to the other side of the river. It's going to take months to put right. But you won't hear any twining [Cumbrian dialect for moaning]. Nobody is going, 'Woe is us', everybody is just trying to help somebody else."
Police taped off the whole centre of Cockermouth yesterday, as 13 buildings were declared in imminent danger of collapse and engineers struggled to restore street lighting in pouring rain. About 60 people remain at emergency centres in the town and Workington, but more than 250 are staying with friends, relatives or at hotels and B&Bs, most of them unlikely to return home before Christmas.
The speed and strength of the flood tore down a 3 metre wall round the front garden of Wordsworth's birthplace in Cockermouth, and although the handsome Georgian townhouse is intact, no one is being allowed access because of possible structural problems. The town's statue of the sixth Earl of Mayo, which surveys the centre of Main Street, survived on its pedestal, as did the Christmas tree.
"We are determined to pick ourselves up as much as we can in time for Christmas," said local town and county councillor Eric Nicholson. Hospital manager Chris Holland, helping police direct traffic as a Churches Together in Cumbria volunteer, said: "We want to get the band to play in the centre, sort out the Christmas tree and lay something on as soon as it's practicable."Debris was being cleared from the town and Workington yesterday afternoon, and a lone pheasant stalking Cockermouth's Main Street had to look hard for remains of groceries swept from a local deli.
The Association of British Insurers estimated the insurance bill in Cumbria at £100m. More than 500 claims have already been received and processing will take place urgently, the organisation said. The government has promised an extra £1m emergency reconstruction aid, matching a pledge from the North West regional development association.
Proposals are gathering pace to rename the replacement for Workington's vanished Northside bridge after PC Bill Barker, the father of four who was swept into the Derwent while directing traffic away.
The Environment Agency said four severe flood warnings had been issued for Cumbria, though this was later reduced to one. A spokesman said dredging the river at Cockermouth would have made "no difference whatsoever" and that, contrary to some reports, there were no outstanding upgrades due. In the rest of the UK rain and strong winds are set to continue throughout the early part of the week, according to the Met Office. Today the showers will be heaviest in the west.
Reinvention of the piano allows players to alter the tuning during a performance
• England's team manager gets RFU chairman's backing
• Spotlight of scrutiny turns on director of elite rugby
Martin Johnson will this week conduct a performance review of England's autumn internationals with his employers at Twickenham but the team manager's position is not under threat and the future of his under-fire coaches will be his alone to decide.
The Rugby Football Union has in the past reacted twitchily when the national side has come under media and public criticism. When Johnson was appointed last year he became the fourth person to take charge of England in as many years as the side slid down the world rankings having been No1 at the end of 2003. There is an appreciation within the governing body now that, given England's sustained decline, the structure feeding into the national side needs close examination, which places Johnson's immediate superior, the Union's director of elite rugby, Rob Andrew, under greater scrutiny than the team manager.
England lost to Australia and New Zealand this month and their only try in four hours of rugby came in the 16-9 victory over Argentina in a display so insipid and uninspired that two of Johnson's World Cup winning colleagues, Josh Lewsey and Will Greenwood, called for changes to be made to the coaching set-up.
"Martin is the right man for the job," said Martyn Thomas, the chairman of the RFU's management board. "He has come under enormous pressure this month and it is easy to have a go at the coaches but we are looking at the overall picture: the management has had to contend with a lengthy injury list and the game throughout the world is going through a phase when everyone is looking at ways of making it more attractive. "Martin is an outstanding man and I have every confidence in him. He will lead England to the 2011 World Cup; there is no question about that. He is not someone who walks away from things and we saw in Saturday's display against New Zealand just how effective he is as a man-manager. He is a winner and he has made it clear that he is happy with his coaching team. We don't go around firing coaches: we tend to sit back and look at what's happening."
Johnson said he had absolute faith in his coaching team, John Wells, Brian Smith, Mike Ford and Graham Rowntree, although Ford was yesterday linked with the England rugby league team's vacant head coach's position. "Do we expect to be in the job by Christmas?" asked Johnson. "Yes. I have an outstanding group of coaches who have come under intense pressure. A lot of the criticism has been over the top and unnecessary.”
Twickenham is concerned at the general quality of play in the Guinness Premiership, where tries have been at a premium this season, and while Johnson reports this week to Andrew, The RFU will be asking its elite director why so few emerging players broke through this month despite England's chronic injury-list: six of the eight forwards who started last Saturday were in their 30s compared to New Zealand's two. Is the elite system helping, or hindering, England?
The England captain, Steve Borthwick, said the coaches had the full backing
of the players. “Martin has always been supportive of the squad and me personally,” he went on. “He gave a magnificent talk before the New Zealand game, passionate and determined, and I think we all rose to it. I do not give criticism of the group any mind or credit: I am disappointed that ex-players have crossed the line and it amounts to a reflection of their character. ”
"
It is not only former players who have had a go. The Northampton full-back, Ben Foden, was in the squad this month but was sent home four days before each of the three Tests. "I am pretty livid," he told BBC Radio Northampton. "I saw these matches as a massive opportunity for me with Delon Armitage injured but there has been little feedback from England. It is a tough decision for them at the top and sadly it did not go my way. I like to take people on and run from my own line and, if England do not agree with that style of rugby, I am not their man." England may not be playing well, but their two home matches in next year's Six Nations are already sell-outs and all the hospitality boxes for the first game, against Wales in February, have been taken. Australia and New Zealand are not so fortunate commercially and they will express their concerns about the stagnancy of the game on the field at this weekend's gathering of the International Rugby Board's general assembly in Dublin, followed by a meeting of the council. Both hemispheres agree that something needs to be done before spectators desert the game, but they remain divided about the most effective solution.
Internet retailers are preparing for a deluge of online orders on their busiest day of the year in the lead-up to Christmas
In a vast warehouse, the size of eight football pitches and around 15 minutes from the centre of Milton Keynes, more than a thousand workers are gearing up for what will likely be Amazon's busiest Christmas yet.
Products from kettles to keyboards, ping pong balls to DVD box sets are stacked densely on four floors of shelves, on a structure known as the "library tower", a large edifice in the middle of the distribution centre. As the business has grown the company has built up toward the eaves of the warehouse. Pickers weave their way through, shoving items in yellow plastic crates and sending them on a conveyor belt for packing, like latter-day elves.
The top floor of the tower offers a view across the docking area where the goods arrive, stacked in cardboard boxes and resembling Rachel Whiteread's show in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern, when the artist cast the insides of 14,000 boxes.
With Christmas approaching, online retailers are readying for what has become known as "cyber Monday", the busiest internet shopping day of the year that commonly falls on the first Monday of December. On cyber Monday last year, 8 December, Amazon claims that 1.4m items were ordered from its UK site, over 16-items per second and the most it has ever received in a single 24-hour period. This year, Amazon is forecasting that sales will be 21% to 36% higher. It has hired several hundred extra workers for the Christmas period.
The firm has contracts with several delivery firms as well as Royal Mail and maintains that it would be unaffected by any potential disputes. "This will without doubt be our busiest Christmas ever," said Allan Lyall, vice president for European operations. "Around this time of year we are looking at two to three times our normal run rate. Last year a delivery truck was leaving the warehouse every five and a half seconds."
Milton Keynes is one of four Amazon distribution centres in Britain – there are two in Scotland and the largest is in Swansea. Milton Keynes appears to be the land of distribution centres. There is an even larger John Lewis warehouse on the way to Amazon, serving the stores and customers of the John Lewis website, and giving the impression that, sensibly enough, not much hangs around in Milton Keynes for very long.
Amazon has set up a fifth temporary centre in Peterborough to help it cope with the Christmas demand.
Like high-street retailers, online shops have not been immune to the recession. But as the high street faces another possible bloodbath, many online retailers are at least still growing, owing to the deepening penetration of broadband, consumers becoming more comfortable buying online and cash-strapped shoppers hunting for bargains.
Figures for the growth of online shopping vary. According to the Office for National Statistics, online sales accounted for 3.5% of total retail sales during December last year, with average weekly sales of £238m. But if the percentage is still relatively small, it is growing. The ONS said online sales during that month were up 19.6% on the previous year.
IMRG, an industry group that represents internet retailers, perhaps not surprisingly reckons the figure is much higher, although it also includes ticketing and travel. It suggests that internet sales now make up between 10% and 15% of total retail sales in Britain.
Amazon has grown steadily since it was launched in 1998 and claims 98m people worldwide have bought something from one of its sites in the past year. The Seattle-based business has broadened its range from books, most recently starting a UK online shoe shop, and moving into office equipment and lighting – although media, including books and DVDs, still account for a little over half of Amazon's global sales. It has worked its way back into investors' affections and last month its share price on Wall Street surpassed its peak during the dotcom boom for the first time.
David Smith, director of operations at IMRG, says the fastest growing categories online are clothing and electricals. Recent results from Asos, the online fashion retailer, would certainly appear to partly support that. The company last week reported operating profits of £4.4m for the six months to the end of September and sales in the UK were running 33% higher than the same period a year earlier.
"The rate of growth has slowed because of current economic conditions, but sales online are still growing," Smith said. IMRG is forecasting growth of online sales of around 15% this year, compared to previous rates of 35% to 50%. "More and more people are doing their research online as well and comparing prices, so the influence of the internet is still growing. We are seeing more women shopping online and an older age group, just as they are using things like Facebook, and they are the people with the disposable income."
The likes of Amazon and Asos are facing increasing competition from the high-street brands, many of which are beginning to take online retailing more seriously. When John Lewis launched its website in 2001, the aim was to eventually generate the sales of a medium-sized store – about £100m. Last year they reached £327m, outstripping its most successful department store and accounting for about 13% of the John Lewis division of the group. Online sales continue to grow at about 30% a year.
Robin Terrell, managing director of John Lewis Direct, says the site has become increasingly important as around half of all shopping visits start with the website, as customers research prices and range. "The website now represents the brand. People are researching more and more online before visiting the shop and we have really been working to join up the customer experience."
Because websites are easily compared, competition comes down to range and prices. John Lewis boasts that its 650,000 square feet centre makes extensive use of technology to lower costs. Amazon makes similar claims. Its site in Milton Keynes is driven by software to improve efficiency. Handheld devices tell the pickers where items are and even work out the most efficient route through the labyrinth of shelving; software works out the dimensions of the products and tells the packers how big the boxes should be and how much stuffing needs to be used for fragile items.
They are also competing on speed and delivery charges. "Logistics used to be the oily bit, but it is now sexy," says Terrell. In London and Birmingham this year, Amazon is guaranteeing delivery ahead of the big day for any orders received before 8.30am on Christmas Eve, for a fee. "There is still a lot of growth out there," says Lyall. "Competition is only a good thing for customers because it encourages us all to innovate."
Speedier delivery times mean that cyber Monday might lose some of its potency in the years ahead, as shoppers worry less about their gifts arriving on time. But there is also another reason. Smith said cyber Monday evolved because shoppers would see things on the high street over the first weekend of December and then use the faster broadband speeds in their offices to place an order. As more homes get broadband, that becomes less relevant. "If you draw a graph of broadband penetration in the home from about 2006, then the growth in online shopping is very similar."
Schools watchdog mauled as critics bite back at 'wasteful' bureaucracy
Ofsted is facing a crisis in public confidence as it comes under a series of attacks on its authority this week, with the watchdog accused of being "flawed, wasteful and failing".
The children's services inspectorate will be criticised today by service heads in every local authority in the country, headteachers' leaders and in a damning forthcoming report by MPs on the government's school accountability system.
Its new inspection regime is accused of forcing social work departments to focus on passing inspections instead of looking after children, giving good schools mediocre ratings on routine technical matters – such as fences not being high enough – and more claims that sub-contracted inspectors are not fit for the job.
Pressure further intensifies on the watchdog as a former chief inspector of Ofsted, Sir Mike Tomlinson, today suggests it is struggling after a major expansion two years ago to include responsibility for inspecting children's services as well as schools and childcare.
The attacks come as Christine Gilbert, the chief inspector at Ofsted, prepares to publish the watchdog's own annual report tomorrow after arguably the most difficult year in its history, during which it has been battered by accusations of failings in the Baby Peter case and struggled with its controversial new inspection regimes.
Tomlinson, a respected government adviser who led Ofsted between 2000 and 2002, today raises new questions about Ofsted's ability to fulfil its role. "The question needs to be asked and answered as to whether Ofsted has the appropriate skills and experience to carry out its agenda," he told the Guardian. "Inspection systems that rely too heavily on data and tick-box systems is not what we need. I worry we are heading that way."
The 2007 expansion of Ofsted made it the biggest regulator in England and since then it has introduced new inspection methods for schools and local authorities.
A document drawn up by the Association of Directors of Children's Services, which represents the head of children's departments in English local authorities, claims that new annual performance profiles being developed by Ofsted are "not fit for purpose". Separately schools have expressed concerns about the new school inspection regime under which they cannot be rated good if their exam results are low – regardless of their social context. They can also be marked down on routine matters of safety.
Lawnswood school in Leeds, a rapidly improving school with a good reputation, was penalised after a survey suggested that 1.3% of parents reported their child did not "feel safe" there. A second school was judged to be inadequate because inspectors said the fence around the playground was low enough for children to be abducted and another failed because inspectors were offered coffee before they were asked for identification.
John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said schools felt they were being "caught out" in inspections. "It's brought in a climate of great anxiety because you don't know whether the inspector will trick you on safeguarding."
A report from a powerful committee of MPs, to be published shortly, also criticises Ofsted for having insufficiently trained inspectors and for relying too much on exam data in their inspection of schools.
Barry Sheerman, chair of the children, schools and families select committee, said schools in challenging areas felt "aggrieved" that even when they were doing well against the odds, they could be failed for low GCSE results.
A spokesman for Ofsted said: "We are disappointed to hear the ADCS criticisms but have to say that their views just don't accord with what we are being told by directors and frontline social workers who have actually experienced our children's services inspections. The feedback we are getting is much more positive."
Developing nations call for UN body to police battle on climate change
A green technology body with powers to direct a worldwide transition away from a high-carbon economy is needed to combat climate change, according to the world's developing nations. While most negotiations ahead of the UN's climate change summit in Copenhagen next month have been concerned with which nations should slash greenhouse gas emissions and by how much, the method in which these cuts will be achieved has received far less attention. Yet the importance of green technology – from wind turbines to electric cars to zero-carbon buildings – is enormous.
Developing nations argue that the costs should be paid by the rich nations, and that a new global body is required, perhaps working as part of the UN, to direct the world's low-carbon transformation in sectors as diverse as power, transport and heavy industry.
"We know that, to limit global temperature rises to below 2C, we'll need a step change in global innovation and technology transfer," said Shane Tomlinson of environment consultants E3G. "In the period to 2020, it's vital we avoid high carbon lock-in. The infrastructure decisions that developing countries are taking today, such as new power stations, are going to determine their emissions pathways for 20-30 years."
In the short term, that means rolling out proven technologies such as onshore and offshore wind power, solar photovoltaics and energy efficiency measures. A recent analysis by the Climate Group found that, to meet the emissions targets already agreed by nations, 9.3bn tonnes of CO2 must be prevented from entering the atmosphere by 2020. But these will not be enough for the deep cuts – 80% or more on 1990 levels – that many rich countries will have to deliver by 2050, if the world is to limit warming to the 2C that scientists agree is the safe limit. By then, according to the International Energy Agency, 17 technologies will have to be developed and rolled out to deliver a reduction of 42bn tonnes of CO2. Most of that technology – ranging from carbon capture and storage, solar power and zero-emission vehicles – will need to be deployed in emerging economies.
At Copenhagen, the first decision on technology will be to decide if a new co-ordinating body should have powers to command the clean tech roll out. "The G77 [group of developing nations] and China have proposed a new central executive, political body," said Tomlinson. It would be part of the existing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which administers the Kyoto protocol.
However, Europe and the US want only an advisory committee – their main concern is that a strong political body may end up channelling funds into state enterprises rather than keeping a level playing field for all businesses. Developing countries say an advisory body would have little power to drive the dramatic changes needed.
The polarised debate has led some to compare the sharing of IP in green technology to arguments over whether pharmaceutical companies should give up patents for expensively developed HIV or malaria drugs in those nations blighted by the illnesses. Alia al-Dalli, deputy resident representative in Morocco for the United Nations Development Programme, said that without local education programmes, the only winners from Copenhagen will be multinational technology companies. "Capacity-development is very important – people need to be educated and aware. You've got to be able to produce technologies by the south for the south, in the south," she said. "It will not merely be technology transfer."
Ambuj Sagar, a professor of policy studies at the Indian Institute of Technology – Delhi, said: "The best step would be if we stopped using the term technology transfer and started using something like innovation co-operation to signify that this is not a simple issue. It is not a hand-off from producers of technology to users of technology. We need co-operation instead of a simple reliance on markets to tackle what is an immense challenge."
Bawdy farce involving Tom Jones's penis becomes a multiplex sensation
The Hollywood blockbusters 2012 and A Christmas Carol are playing to respectable audiences Merthyr Tydfil's Vue multiplex, entertaining fans with their multimillion pound effects.
But in screen eight, the staff are having to drag in extra beanbags in an attempt to accommodate everyone who wants to see a comedy made for just £100,000 and with a marketing budget of a couple of grand.
In these days when megabucks movies dominate, A Bit of Tom Jones?, is providing hope for independent film-makers who may have ideas and talent but no money.
The movie is a bawdy farce with a plot turning an attempt to sell the Welsh superstar singer's severed manhood (better not to go into too many details for taste as well as spoiler reasons). And it is outselling rivals such as Michael Jackson's This is It and the sci-fi drama The Fourth Kind at some cinemas in south Wales.
Unlike other low-budget movies that have found homes in small arthouse cinemas, A Bit of Tom Jones? is doing good business at large screens in multiplexes.
It has already spread from Merthyr, in the Welsh valleys, to Cardiff and Vue is now considering releasing it just across the English border, perhaps in Bristol to start, to see if it can gradually take hold across the rest of the UK, just about the reverse of the normal multiplex model in which films are released with huge hype and quickly vanish.
Writer and director Peter Watkins-Hughes, a former BBC producer, could hardly contain his excitement as he introduced the film, his first feature, in Merthyr this week. "We're killing The Fourth Kind, we're killing Harry Brown and that's got Michael Caine in it," he said. "I think it's just extraordinary." The making of the movie sounds a little like something out of an Ealing comedy. Set mainly in the valleys town of Tredegar, the team begged and borrowed to eke out the budget. Watkins-Hughes had originally imagined setting it in 1960s Los Angeles with Errol Flynn's penis at the centre of the plot. But cost prompted him to bring the setting back to south Wales.
Businesspeople, including a pub landlord and solicitor, clubbed together to raise funds while Welsh actors including Eve Myles, Gwen Cooper in the BBC's Torchwood, and Margaret John, who plays Doris in the BBC sitcom Gavin and Stacey, worked at reduced rates.
A factory loaned a small fleet of dumper trucks for the film's chase scene and the local force provided flashing lights for a police car.
The film was originally intended to be a straight-to-video release. But Watkins-Hughes decided to send it to the Vue in Merthyr. Staff looked at the film, thought it had potential and passed it on to head office who agreed it ought to be shown.
The production team has not been able to afford many 35mm prints and so, on one crazy day, they had to play half the movie at one cinema, take that reel to another so it could start there and then repeat the process for the second half.
Meanwhile, the paucity of the advertising budget meant Watkins-Hughes and his cohorts had to drum up an audience themselves. They bought a little bit of advertising space on local radio in the valleys and then blitzed the area with photocopied posters until the police and local councils warned them to calm down. It also helped that a little controversy was sparked because some Tom Jones fans were upset at the film's premise.
But mainly it has been about word of mouth. At the first screening in Merthyr, Watkins-Hughes told the audience: "I want to make a contract with you. If you enjoy this film, will you do me a favour, will you tell other people: 'Saw this Welsh film, it should have been shit but it was really funny'."
Watkins-Hughes told the audience the film aimed to "capture the valleys' sense of humour." But he said there was a serious side in that the success of the film could prompt others to make movies in and about their own communities.
Craig Matthews, the manager at the Merthyr Vue, said: "It's great that a local product has done so well. They've made it work because of the energy they've put into it." Clive Threadgold, Vue's film buyer for the south west, said he felt other independent film-makers could follow the Tom Jones model – if they matched the effort and verve of Watkins-Hughes and his backers.
Bernie Snowball, the manager of the Market Hall cinema in Brynmawr, said: "I'm not surprised the film is doing well. It's a laugh-out-loud comedy, with the added bonus of being set in Wales." Adding that it comfortably beat the Michael Jackson film at his cinema, he said: "It's a mad thing they've done, but a brilliant one."
Clerks (1994)
Kevin Smith maxed out his credit cards to shoot the $27,000 (£16,000) film which later became a TV show.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
The faux-documentary was shot for just $25,000 and earned $248m.
Paranormal Activity (2009)
Oren Peli shot his haunted house chiller for $15,000. It has grossed more than $100m, making it the most profitable independent movie ever made.rnt
The territories of Francis Bacon's soul have been explored widely; they have been the subject of a film, books and endless speculation. But the senior art historian John Richardson – who, at 85, is working on the last volume of his acclaimed biography of Picasso, and who knew Bacon from his 20s – has now laid down his views and recollections of Bacon, amounting to a reappraisal of his life and work.
Writing in the forthcoming issue of the New York Review of Books, Richardson argues that Bacon's sado-masochistic relationships lay at the heart of his best work, but with terrible consequences for his lover George Dyer, whose fragile mental state Richardson attributes to Bacon's endless "goading".
Having provoked Dyer into "a state of psychic meltdown" he "would exorcise his guilt and rage and remorse in images of Dyer aimed, as he said, at the nervous system". This "goading" resulted in Dyer's suicide, writes Richardson.
An earlier relationship, with Peter Lacy, was violent to the extent that "he hurled Bacon through a plate glass window. His face was so damaged that his right eye had to be sewn back into place".
Bacon's art went rapidly downhill when sado-masochism ceased to be a part of his life, argues Richardson, who describes the "angst-free, soft-porn glow" of his later work.
Richardson, who has hitherto held back from revealing his full memories of Bacon since the artist's death in 1992, also pours scorn on critics, such as the late David Sylvester, who attempted to defend the self-taught Bacon's "inability to draw". He calls the celebrated Screaming Popes series "either magnificent flukes or near-total disasters" and refers to Bacon's failure to convey "subjects that call for graphic skill, subjects, for instance, that include hands". Richardson also refers to Bacon's early adventures as a rent boy; his shoplifting, using his elderly nanny as an accomplice; and the vividly bohemian life around him, including a three-day party in 1950, whose guests "included members of parliament and fellows of All Souls, as well as 'rough trade', slutty debutantes, cross-dressers, and the notoriously evil Kray brothers".
British prosecutors failed to disclose crucial evidence to the courts in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in a case that resulted in an innocent pilot being jailed for five months, previously unseen documents reveal.
Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian living in the UK, was the first person in the world to be arrested after the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington DC. Accused of being the "lead" instructor of the 9/11 hijackers, Raissi, 27, was held in Belmarsh high security prison awaiting extradition to the United States.
In a landmark announcement, Jack Straw, the justice secretary, is shortly expected to reveal whether the UK government will accept responsibility for the miscarriage of justice and pay Raissi compensation.
The Guardian has obtained classified documents produced by the FBI and anti-terrorist officials in the UK after the 9/11 attacks which shed new light on how the courts were misled. They include:
• A report by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) into the way its staff handled the case, revealing prosecutors made unfounded allegations about Raissi's involvement in 9/11 on the basis of an oral briefing from two FBI agents outside court.
• A confidential letter from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch to the CPS two months before Raissi was released, back-tracking on the key allegation that was being used in court to link Raissi to a senior al-Qaida suspect linked to Osama bin Laden.
• Memorandums from the FBI to anti-terrorist officials in the UK, revealing 9/11 investigators never wanted Raissi to be arrested and were informed about the unreliability of the evidence against him months before the courts were told.
Ministers were forced to consider Raissi's claim for damages after a ruling by the court of appeal last year that found there was evidence that Scotland Yard and the CPS had circumvented "the rule of English law" in what judges believed would amount to a serious abuse of process.
Now 35, Raissi still lives in the UK but says he has been unable to rebuild his life. He has been forced to abandon his promising career as a commercial pilot.
The FBI became interested in Raissi days after the attacks because he trained at the same Arizona flight school as Hani Hanjour, the hijacker who piloted the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.
Despite a specific plea from the FBI not to arrest Raissi but to gather information about him discreetly, anti-terrorist officers from the Metropolitan police stormed his house in Berkshire on September 21 on suspicion of the terrorist attacks 10 days earlier.
Rather than release Raissi when it emerged there was insufficient evidence to charge him, law enforcement officials in the UK colluded with the FBI to obtain a warrant for his extradition. There was no evidence to justify a warrant for terrorism, so Raissi was requested on charges relating to an allegation that he failed to disclose his knee surgery in a pilot application.
In court, the CPS said the pilot application allegations were mere "holding charges", and said he was in fact wanted for his alleged role in a conspiracy to commit mass murder during the 9/11 attacks.
However, as their case for keeping Raissi in Belmarsh began to unravel, prosecutors introduced a new piece of evidence. They relied in successive hearings on an address book which they claimed belonged to Abu Doha, an Algerian terror suspect said to have had personal contact with Bin Laden in Afghanistan.
The address book contained a number linked to an apartment used by Raissi in Arizona, and supposedly connected him to a global terrorist conspiracy. However, two months into his incarceration at Belmarsh, anti-terrorist officers informed the CPS that they no longer believed the address book belonged to Doha, and said it was more likely to be the property of a man called Adam Kermani, who lived in Islington, north London.
Kermani, an ex-boxer, was of so little concern to police that he had never been arrested or interviewed. Kermani's name and Home Office number were written on the front of the address book, which was found in a locked briefcase at his house.
Judges were not informed of this development until February 2002, after which Raissi was released.
The FBI however had been fully briefed months earlier, writing to Scotland Yard to confirm the owner of the address book was "not Abu Doha as originally thought".
His lawyer, Jules Carey, said Raissi's ordeal was one of the most significant miscarriages of justice during so-called war on terror.
"The court of appeal pulled no punches in asserting that there was a considerable body of evidence to suggest that the Met and CPS were responsible for serious defaults that resulted in Raissi's detention at Belmarsh," he said.
"These documents demonstrate, unequivocally, that the blame lies with the British authorities. He has waited seven years for an apology and watched four home secretaries come and go without receiving it. He is hopeful that his wait is finally up."
Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers relive the cold winter's day when they went to visit famously prickly writer Maurice Sendak, to talk about filming Where the Wild Things Are
Dave Eggers: So here we are. It's always awkward doing this kind of thing together. If we wrote this the way we wrote the script, fighting over every word, it would probably take a year.
Spike Jonze: We should just have a conversation. Then we can fight over every word when we edit it.
DE: But let's be really eloquent. We can talk, and then after we transcribe the talk, we can make ourselves seem articulate.
SJ: Yes, we shall do that. It brings to mind something the bard once said: "Tis excellent to be spontaneous, tho better to be brilliant."
DE: He didn't say that.
SJ: He did. In one of his lesser-known plays, The Sisters of Hannah.
DE: So let's talk about Maurice Sendak, about the first time we saw him together. It was in the winter of 2003, I think. You and Maurice had known each other for a long time.
SJ: I had known him for about 10 years before we started making the Where the Wild Things Are movie. I had gone to his house in Connecticut many times, because initially we were talking about doing a movie based on Harold and the Purple Crayon, which was another book I loved as a kid. He was the trustee to the estate of its author, and so I needed his approval to do that movie. That movie never happened, but Maurice and I became friends. And, somewhere along the line, he and I started talking about a Wild Things movie.
DE: When you and I finally went up to Connecticut to see him, we were bringing in our general idea of how to do the movie. You and I had only been working on it for a few months, but I hadn't met him, and we wanted to give him a general idea. It was a very cold day in December, and we drove up from New York. I remember being really nervous. I had idolised the man since I was about four or five. He was one of the first authors whose name I knew.
SJ: That was a good sign for the whole process, the fact that you knew his work so well. So I wanted you two to meet, and I wanted you to get a feel for him, and feel the support from him that I felt. I knew you guys would hit it off.
DE: I guess he already had a sense that you were not going to do a typical adaptation.
SJ: I'd spent the previous six months forming the ideas I wanted the movie to be about, taking notes and thinking about who I wanted to write it with, finding you and getting you on board with it. So I had all the basic elements together. But before we actually wrote it, I wanted to present our ideas to Maurice. Do you remember your first impressions of meeting him?
DE: I was struck by how strong he was. He must have been 76 when we met him, but he was razor-sharp and very funny. He's a hilarious guy, incredibly vibrant. We walked in, and he showed us some of his Disney collection.
SJ: He has these insanely rare Mickey Mouse figurines from the 30s – before they corrupted him, as Maurice says.
DE: The rest of the house was very much like a regular person's house, wouldn't you say? I guess I'm always surprised when artists like Maurice have normal houses.
SJ: Yeah, I would say that. It's a very . . . what's that style of architecture? It's like a New England style. Very conservative. Is it a farmhouse?
DE: It looks a little bit like a farmhouse, in a sort of woodsy area. I think it was during that first meeting that he told us about that shed in the backyard. It's sort of like a stable, and kind of falling apart. I guess one of his neighbours complained about it being an eyesore. Maurice lives in one of those neighbourhoods that used to be all country houses, where people kept horses and were actual farmers. And now it's all yuppies who are making this suburb tidy and just so.
SJ: Yeah, they've built all these giant, 10,000 sq ft mansions that Maurice is violently opposed to.
DE: One of the neighbours complained about this "eyesore" farmhouse . . . And said he'd personally help remove it, if Maurice so desired, thinking he was being a big guy to help the old man get rid of the eyesore. And Maurice told him if he ever mentioned it again, he'd turn that stable into a whorehouse.
SJ: That was the last time that neighbour talked to him.
DE: That was when I was sure we would be kindred spirits. It was pretty obvious that we all had kind of the same impatience for that kind of just-so mentality, the sort of person who scrubs clean anything distinct in art or nature or a neighbourhood. So it was pretty obvious that he'd be OK with us making something distinct from the book.
SJ: He had just seen a pretty unfortunate adaptation of a friend's book.
DE: Yeah, it was similar to Where the Wild Things Are, in that it was another classic book that was very original when it came out, and it had been adapted in a very large, Hollywood way. Maurice was very candid about it. He said it was grotesque.
SJ: "Soulless."
DE: Right, "soulless". I think that was the operative word he kept using. What was interesting to me was how candid he was. Sitting around his dining room table, it was immediately clear that here is a very opinionated guy that would support us if we stayed true to the ideas we were talking about, and would only be a thorn in our side if we went a safe route. Did you already know he was like that?
SJ: I'd known it, because he'd been as blunt as possible on the phone. But to actually go to him with ideas that deviated from the book, and then have him say he respected that, is another thing.
DE: So there we were, sitting at that dining room table, giving him the basic gist of what we had in mind. Did we already know that we weren't going to have Max's room actually change, like it does in the book, and instead have Max run away from home, and get on an actual boat to sail to the island?
SJ: Yeah. That was actually the only thing that Maurice and I ever disagreed about in the process of making the movie.
DE: It's funny that he was the first of many people who objected to the room not changing into the jungle.
SJ: But even in that first meeting – when we were a little heated about it – he'd always go back to, "Well, it's your movie, you have to make what you believe in."
DE: He definitely wasn't shy about letting us know the things he really didn't like. He can be an intimidating guy. He's incredibly smart and astoundingly eloquent, but he really understood this being your movie. But he fought us on that bedroom part. I think at some point, it might have been then or later, he even proposed a compromise on that bedroom scene, where the room would still change, but that Max would climb out the window on a vine.
SJ: Yeah! He did suggest that.
DE: But it seemed like the idea of the movie being real and really dangerous would require Max to actually be in a forest and on a real boat. Because if he just goes to his room, we know everything that follows just takes place in his imagination. And then there's not as much at stake for the next hour of the movie. We really wanted it to seem like a small boy actually sailed across the ocean and, when he was on the island, that he was truly in danger of being devoured. That there was real fire, and real dirt, and real snow.
SJ: Maurice was struggling because – as much as he said, "I want you to make it yours" – he had lived with the book as his creation for 40 years.
DE: But I think that at that meeting it was really clear that we were going to take Maurice at his word. He realised the movie was going to be a combination of his childhood and your childhood, and maybe a bit of mine, too. So a lot of the themes were going to be brand new.
SJ: He based the book on themes and feelings from his life. I was picking up the baton. He and I would talk about what the book had meant to me as a kid, or had made me feel like. I would say, "You and I had very different childhoods. There were times when I might have been more sensitive to something than he would have been as a kid." But we didn't want to make Max a . . . a . . .
DE: A wuss like you were, yeah. (Laughter.) Most kids in modern movies are de-fanged. They have no wildness. What you and I and Maurice all figured out pretty quickly was that we all remembered what it was like to be an actual boy. We didn't pretend that boys wore three-piece suits to school, sat with perfect posture, said please and thank you all the time. We wanted to make sure that Max acts like a real boy – breaking things and throwing tantrums, the kind of kid who would play with swords and slingshots. When I was a kid, I was pretty wild and got in trouble like Max. And you had, and Maurice had been that way, too. We also established the movies we thought had represented childhood accurately in the past. We talked about The Black Stallion, My Life As a Dog, a couple of other movies . . .
SJ: The 400 Blows.
DE: Movies that didn't look down at a kid, but got inside him. And actually there are so few. It was kind of exhilarating, in a way, knowing how wide-open that playing field was.
SJ: Were you worried going into it?
DE: Meeting Maurice was an earthquake in my life. Meeting a guy around 80 who's still so full of fire – and if anything, had grown more authentic as he got older. We had yet to write anything for him to critique, so that gives you this great fear, like, "Holy crap, what's he going to think when we write this?" Because here's a guy who won't sugarcoat what he says.
SJ: He never did, for the next four years.
DE: When we left that day, there were big hugs and even kisses on the way out. He's very affectionate. I remember being struck by how full of love he was.
SJ: I think he was also really excited that you were coming on. He'd read your first book and loved it. It was another sign that the movie wasn't going in the typical direction of Hollywood development, where you're bringing on the "ace" screenwriter of the last big children's movie.
DE: He's had a lot of those people thrown at him throughout the years. He would always tell these stories where he would do imitations of the people who came to see him and what they said. "Mr Sendak, let me tell you how movies are made . . ."
SJ: "Mr Sendak, this is how you make a film for children . . . " or "This is what children like, Mr Sendak." When he does one of his imitations, look out.
DE: Oh man. Driving back to New York, it was snowing. It was like some kind of blizzard, windy and snowy. There were people pulled over everywhere, and we were just driving, recounting every minute of the day.
SJ: I remember being excited. It was like a relief, a weight off our shoulders. Driving home, I just felt like we had a wind at our backs. We went into the unknown, and it was Maurice behind us, pushing us with force in that direction. We had no idea where it was going to take us.
This is an edited extract from Heads On and We Shoot: The Making of Where the Wild Things Are, published by It Books. The film is released on 11 December.
• Inquiry to hear how Blair hid true intentions for war
• Military 'ill-prepared' for aftermath of invasion
Military commanders are expected to tell the inquiry into the Iraq war, which opens on Tuesday, that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by Tony Blair's government's attempts to mislead the public.
They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict, the Guardian has been told.
The lengths the Blair government took to conceal the invasion plan and the extent of military commanders' anger at what they call the government's "appalling" failures emerged as Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry's chairman, promised to produce a "full and insightful" account of how Britain was drawn into the conflict.
Fresh evidence has emerged about how Blair misled MPs by claiming in 2002 that the goal was "disarmament, not regime change". Documents show the government wanted to hide its true intentions by informing only "very small numbers" of officials.
The documents, leaked to the Sunday Telegraph, are "post-operational reports" and "lessons learned" papers compiled by the army and its field commanders. They refer to a "rushed" operation that caused "significant risk" to troops and "critical failure" in the postwar period.
One commander said the government "missed a golden opportunity" to win support from Iraqis. Another commented: "It was not unlike 1750s colonialism where the military had to do everything ourselves". One, describing the supply chain, added: "I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert".
Some troops were deployed in civilian flights to countries neighbouring Iraq with their equipment "brought in by hand baggage". Items considered dangerous, including penknives and nail scissors, were confiscated from them.
Interviewed for the postwar report drawn up by the MoD, Brigadier Bill Moore, commander of 19 Brigade, was asked: "Did you receive the correct level of advice for the nation-building you faced?" He replied: "We got absolutely no advice whatsoever. The lack of advice from the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office], the Home Office and DFID [the Department for International Development] was appalling."
The "lessons learned" report stated: "Never again must we send ill-equipped soldiers into battle". However, many of the failures recounted in leaked documents and given in evidence to Commons committees, notably relating to equipment, were repeated in Afghanistan as inquests have shown.
Significantly, the documents support what officials have earlier admitted – that the army was not allowed to prepare properly for the Iraq invasion in 2002 so as not to alert parliament and the UN that Blair was already determined to go to war.
The documents add: "In Whitehall, the internal operational security regime, in which only very small numbers of officers and officials were allowed to become involved [in Iraq invasion preparations] constrained broader planning for combat operations and subsequent phases effectively until Dec 23 2002."
Blair had in effect promised George Bush that he would join the US-led invasion when, as late as July 2002, he was denying to MPs that preparations were being made for military action. The leaked documents reveal that "from March 2002 or May at the latest there was a significant possibility of a large-scale British operation".
Documents leaked in 2005 show that, almost a year before the invasion, Blair was privately preparing to commit Britain to war and topple Saddam Hussein, despite warnings from his closest advisers that it was unjustified. They also show how Blair was planning to justify regime change as an objective, despite warnings from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, that the "desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action.
Chilcot says he and his team would not shrink from making criticisms of individuals or organisations if they were justified. But he stressed the inquiry was not a court of law set up to determine issues of guilt and innocence.
• Seven-minute hat-trick in eight-goal second half
• 'He is an amazing finisher,' says Spurs' manager
Harry Redknapp proclaimed Jermain Defoe as the "best finisher" in the English game after seeing the striker become only the third player, after Alan Shearer and Andy Cole, to score five times in a Premier League game as Tottenham Hotspur inflicted a humiliating 9-1 defeat on Wigan Athletic.
The win was Spurs' best for 32 years – and the worst in the Latics' history as a league club – and hoisted them back into fourth place while significantly closing the gap in goal difference with third-placed Arsenal. Tottenham scored eight times in the second half as Wigan sank without trace and Defoe notched a hat-trick in seven minutes, the second quickest since the inception of the Premier League in 1992.
No other player has scored five goals in a single half in the division. "He's an amazing finisher," said Redknapp. "When you look at England strikers, Wayne Rooney's fantastic – a complete all-round player – but as a finisher, Defoe is the best out there. I'm sure he'll go to the World Cup. Fabio Capello will see the goals he's scored today, the way he's got stronger this season and is using his upper body strength a bit more and holding people off, and he will be impressed. This could be a great season for him.
"He's so sharp around the box. You give him half a chance and he makes a yard and bangs it in the back of the net. He's been doing that since he was 14. We took him to West Ham at 15 and he was already a goalscoring machine then, scoring for fun in youth team games at [the training ground] Chadwell Heath every weekend.
"I offered him on loan to Bournemouth [when he was 18 in 2000] and I remember their manager at the time, Mel Machin, having a few doubts. He said they needed a proper striker, a man not a kid, but I persuaded him to take Jermain for training for a few days. Mel rang me up after the first day and said: 'Can we take him? We had a practice game this morning and he scored seven goals.' He ended up getting 10 in 10."
Defoe might have scored as many in this one appearance. Only the excellent, if badly exposed, Chris Kirkland denied him more than the five he plundered in a breathless second period. The 27-year-old forward admitted to changing his garish boots at the last minute and resorted instead to a slightly more sober silver pair before claiming his booty and making up, in part, for the three-match ban he endured for stamping on Portsmouth's Aaron Mokoena in October.
Spurs had failed to score in either of the two Premier League games he had missed through suspension. "But I had a funny feeling before this game," said Defoe. "My kit sponsors had given me a pair of bright green boots and I'd tried them on before the match, only for [the coach] Clive Allen to say I couldn't wear them. So I changed back to a pair of pinkish silver ones, and go and score five.
"It was like a dream. Brilliant. None of the lads can believe it – scoring nine. But the finishing from all of us was unbelievable. Look at Niko Kranjcar's finish for the ninth, in off the bar. I looked over at the manager at one stage when the goals were flying in and even he looked shocked. We actually felt as if we needed a second at half-time just to kill [Wigan] off. In the end we felt as if we maybe needed a 10th."
Redknapp refused to bask in the majesty of this victory, Tottenham's best since they scored nine against Bristol Rovers in the old Second Division in 1977, and admitted feeling sympathy for his opposite number, Roberto Martínez. The Spurs manager had actually lost his first game in management 9-0 to Lincoln City back in December 1982, with his Bournemouth side overwhelmed at Sincil Bank.
"I know what their manager was going through, so it's difficult because I felt a bit for him," added Redknapp. "I've been on the wrong end of nine – my first game. Almost every game in the country was called off that day and the pitch [at Lincoln] was like an ice rink, rock hard. They were top of the league and had those pimple boots on. We were so poor we didn't even have rubber boots, just those long nylon studs and my players were falling over even in the warm-up. But that was about 1,200 games ago now.
"But this was fantastic. Jermain let himself down that day at Portsmouth, and it's important he learned from that, but he's come back strong. When he concentrates and plays his football, he can be unstoppable. He was like that today."
• Lib Dem leader likely to back most votes, not seats
• Narrowing Tory poll lead hints at hung parliament
The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, suggested today he would be unlikely to prop up Labour should the general election result in a hung parliament, setting back the likelihood of a Lib-Lab alliance if the Tories were to fall short of a majority.
On Sunday an Ipsos-Mori opinion poll slashed the Tory lead over Labour from 11 points to six – which, if it were translated into seats, would see the Tories 38 seats short of forming a government alone but just two seats ahead of Labour. The Lib Dems would be called on to decide which party to help get over the mark.
Asked on the BBC's Andrew Marr programme if he would "feel it was right to offer his support to the party that had done best", Clegg replied: "I think it is an inevitable fact, it is just stating the obvious, the party which has got the strongest mandate from the British people will have the first right to seek to govern.
"I start from a very simple first principle: it is not Gordon Brown or David Cameron or Nick Clegg who are kingmakers in British politics, it's the British people. Whichever party have the strongest mandate from the British people … have the first right to seek to try and govern, either on their own or with others."
Clegg has always shied away from commenting on hung parliament scenarios and is especially cautious of public contemplations of an alliance with the Tories, which many Lib Dem activists would not stomach as the Tories oppose the Lib Dem demand for electoral reform.
But after Labour's convincing win in the Glasgow North East byelection, senior Labour figures had begun talking privately of a hung parliament in 2010, leading to a Lib-Lab coalition, with both parties committed to a referendum on electoral reform, and placing power out of the reach of the Tories.
Clegg's comments show he regards the number of votes won rather than the number of seats to be paramount.
The Tories' lowest opinion poll lead since 2008 also goaded Cameron in to commenting on a hung parliament. Asked whether he agreed with comments by the shadow business secretary, Kenneth Clarke, that the indecision of a hung parliament would be a "bigger danger" than a Labour win, Cameron said he disagreed. He said: "I think frankly anything is better than another five years of this Labour government."
The shrunken poll lead has been attributed in part to the Tories' possibly unpalatable focus on "austerity" and deep cuts in the public finances. Today, confirming reports circulating for months that there would be an "emergency budget" within 50 days of the election, Cameron made a tonal shift to talk about his hopes of "growth" in the UK finances. He said: "We would have an emergency budget. An emergency budget that, yes, would be about getting the deficit under control … but it should also be a budget that goes for growth."
Though Clegg and Cameron let themselves to be drawn on prospects of a hung parliament, the poll was carried out immediately after Labour's Glasgow win – something which usually translates into improved ratings – and does not reflect reaction to last week's Queen's speech.
We may be smug about the EU in the west, but for the troubled Balkans it offers a vision of hope
Where on earth, would 88% of a nation's citizenry want to join us (and Herman Van Rompuy) in the world's least welcoming club? Steam straight past Brussels and head south. We're going to Albania, because it tells us something slightly shaming about ourselves – and our smug insularity.
Albania? Economy up this year (by 2%) while most of the world slumped back. Political system on turbulent hold since a June general election so tight that the Socialist losers are still boycotting parliament, filling the streets of Tirana with protests last weekend. But it finally got formal permission to negotiate EU entry last week. The final reward for years of effort may only be a couple of years away (with that 88% support driving on).
When you hear Albania's president, Bamir Topi, outline his "vision", it lies at the end of the yellow brick road to Brussels. And when you visit Tirana after a few years away, there's a new airport, a new motorway into town, streets lined with shops, cafes on every corner, monster blocks of flats obliterating the skyline. Only the potholes remain the same.
There's an energy and a sense of progress here that catches you by the throat. A small, impoverished country with an improbable Stalinist history is turning its 17 years of freedom into something remarkable. Graft, and assorted deadly sins? Of course. The car parks are stuffed with Mercedes Benz. But that's only part of a saga that includes resilience, kindness and great good humour, too. If this is the 28th or 29th state of the union, then there'll be something to celebrate: the continuing power of an idea that we, immured too deep in tabloid ignorance, have lost the imagination to embrace.
What do the 88% see when they look around? A Greece anxious to get Albania in. A succession of visits and speeches from Foreign Office dignitaries – David Miliband, Glenys Kinnock – that look forward to an expanded union. And trouble, north, south, east and west.
Croatia and Slovenia have endured a damaging spat over coastline rights. Bosnia is back at the top of the Balkan instability league as its bureaucratic balances begins to unravel. Serbia, under a more sentient president, is still threatened by that old, black-hearted nationalism from within – and Kosovo is an ethnic disaster waiting to happen. Chuck in two fractious toddlers – Macedonia, Montenegro – and everyone fears a region sinking back into distrust and retribution.
Talk to witnesses from round the Balkans and the EU is the first answer on their lips. Make us more secure. Give us a settled fabric for trade and aid. Help us to feel something more than an agglomeration of spare parts stuck on the end of a continent. And let us feel that if we make the progress you require, it will be rewarded.
And that's a reason to look across the 1,200 miles from Tirana to London and quake. You'd suppose, from all the dismal dumping on an "unelected" Cathy Ashton, that EU foreign policy is meaningless vacuity. (Whoever elected Henry Kissinger or Condoleezza Rice?) But the foreign policy that matters most to all of us involves stability close to home and relations around our borders.
Can that stop at Calais? A bad joke in a month when the first world war that started in Sarajevo is remembered at a Cenotaph strewn with poppies. An insult to the British troops who help keep fragile peace in Kosovo and Bosnia. An illusion that blanks out the amazing lessons of European life since the Berlin Wall came down. It's a shrug and a snub to a world that wants to draw closer.
A union of 34 countries or more? It's coming, through a veil of sneers. And if you still need a battered vision to cherish, come to Skanderbeg Square, Tirana, and find a little hope among the potholes.
New book by Patrizia D'Addario adds lesbian dimension to alleged escapades at home of Italian prime minister
The call girl who says she spent the night with Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has claimed she became the target of a string of attacks and threats after releasing alleged recordings of their encounters.
In a book about her experiences to be published on Tuesday, Patrizia D'Addario adds a lesbian dimension to the allegations surrounding Italy's billionaire leader.
The 42-year-old said that after she made her allegations, a car tried to ram into hers on a road near her home town of Bari in the south of Italy. She said that she had accelerated and lost control of her car.
"I found myself on the other side of the road, facing the wrong way. It was only by a miracle that I survived," she wrote in an extract from her book published today by a recently launched leftwing daily, Il Fatto Quotidiano.
D'Addario said she had also been the target of an attempted rape and received numerous menacing telephone calls. In one the caller had threatened to abduct and rape her daughter. Her mother had been punched in the face in the street.
In the latest incident, her flat had been broken into. The thieves had taken much of her clothing, her diaries and her computer, but left behind a very expensive television set, she wrote.
The man who accompanied D'Addario to the prime minister's home is under investigation in Bari on suspicion of drug trafficking and aiding and abetting prostitution. Berlusconi is not a suspect in the inquiry and his lawyer has denied that the call-girl's recordings are genuine.
The publication of D'Addario's book will divert public attention back to the affair after a period in which the focus had been on another sex scandal involving the former centre-left governor of the region around Rome. Piero Marrazzo resigned after being filmed taking drugs and having sex with a transsexual.
Last week, a key figure in the affair, a transsexual Brazilian prostitute, was found dead in her flat in the capital. Investigators are treating her death as murder.
D'Addario claims to have visited Berlusconi's private residence in Rome twice last year. On the first occasion, she said, the other guests at the dinner included two lesbians. They "must be at home," D'Addario writes. "They kiss and stroke one another and address the prime minister in a very familiar way."
This has political significance. Many conservative Italians ready to forgive, if not endorse, heterosexual promiscuity will be disconcerted by a claim that their leader's private life extends to lesbianism.
In her book, written with a leading Italian journalist, D'Addario says that the two women were among about 20 at the first party. At one point, they were shown a political documentary including a sequence in which the anthem of the prime minister's party ("Meno male che Silvio c'e", which translates roughly "Thank goodness for Silvio") was played.
"Everyone in the room began to sing and do the [audience] wave. I looked on curiously and my first thought was that I was in a harem … Being an escort, I reckon I have seen a good few things. But I'd missed out on this — 20 women for one man."
Gradisca, Presidente. By Patrizia D'Addario and Maddalena Tulanti. Aliberti Editore.
• Chance to limit warming squandered, says scientist
• World needs to prepare to cope with at least 3-4C rise
Climate change sceptics and fossil fuel companies that have lobbied against action on greenhouse gas emissions have squandered the world's chance to avoid dangerous global warming, a key adviser to the government has said.
Professor Bob Watson, chief scientist at the department for environment and rural affairs, said a decade of inaction on climate change meant it was now virtually impossible to limit global temperature rise to 2C. He said the delay meant the world would now do well to stabilise warming between 3C and 4C.
His comments come ahead of key UN negotiations on a new global climate treaty in Copenhagen next month that the UK government insists should still aim for a 2C goal, despite doubts over whether a meaningful deal can be sealed.
In an interview with the Guardian, Watson said: "Those that have opposed a deal on climate, which would include elements of the fossil fuel industry, have clearly made making a 2C target much, much harder, if not impossible. They've clearly put the world at risk of far more adverse effects of climate change."
The decision of former US president George W Bush to walk away from the Kyoto protocol, the existing global treaty on carbon emissions, sent a message to other countries not to act, he said. "The last decade was a lost opportunity. Elements within the fossil fuel industry clearly had major implications for the Bush administration."
He added: "I think they've clearly been partly to blame, without any question at all. But you have to say it is not just the fossil lobby. Within the US, there is not strong support for the Kyoto protocol in both parties. Even Obama now will have to persuade a still somewhat sceptical Senate that we should be doing this."
The Copenhagen talks are not expected to deliver a legally binding treaty as originally hoped, but could still make progress on issues such as emissions cuts for rich countries and financial assistance for the developing world. A strong agreement rests on how far Obama is willing to push towards strong carbon cuts in the US.
European officials fear the agreement could eventually do no better than return emissions in 2020 to 1990 levels; scientists say they must fall by 25-40% to have a good chance of staying within the 2C limit.
Watson, a former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said: "I think we will do well to stabilise between 3 and 4C. Even that is going to take strong political action to decarbonise the energy system and to require us peaking greenhouse gas emissions in the next 10 or more years," he said. "We have to make sure we understand what it would mean to see 3-4C. How would we adapt our agriculture, our water resources, coastal protection and human health systems."
A Guardian poll this year showed that almost nine out of 10 climate scientists thought the 2C target would be missed.
The British government last month published a map that laid out the stark details of a world warmer by 4C. It showed that the rise would not be evenly spread across the globe, with temperature rises much larger than 4C in high latitudes such as the Arctic. Because the sea warms more slowly, average land temperature will increase by 5.5C, which scientists said would shrink yields for all major cereal crops on all regions of production. A 4C rise would also have a major impact on water availability, with supplies limited to an extra billion people by 2080.
Watson backed controversial calls for research into geoengineering techniques, such as blocking the sun, as a way to head off dangerous temperature rise – one of the most senior figures so far to do so. "We should at least be looking at it. I would see what the theoretical models say, and ask ourselves the question: how can we do medium-sized experiments in the field?"
Such an effort could divert attention and funds from efforts to cut carbon and switch to cleaner technology, he said. "I think it should be a real international effort, so it isn't just the UK funding it."
Is it just me? A friend's stance on petty pilfering has made me question my ethical standards
A friend recently returned, seemingly traumatised, from what he described as "a terrible date". After much prompting, he relayed the reason in a hushed and horrified voice: "She tried to force me to steal money from a car park machine."
I was fascinated. Had the date, mistakenly thinking she had spotted criminal potential in my friend, decided to enlist him – under the cunning guise of sharing a romantic evening – as her accomplice in this most unglamorous act of theft? Had she brought a screwdriver along, or a whole toolkit? And if she had pulled off this relatively small-scale job, did she envisage the pair of them graduating to train station ticket machines, drinks machines in sports centres, or perhaps even bank jobs? It was hugely intriguing.
The truth, sadly, was rather less so. My friend had parked, gone to pay for a ticket – and the machine had given him an extra three pounds in change. "My date insisted that I should steal this money and keep it for myself!"
It was hardly Bonnie and Clyde. "That's not stealing," I lamented. "Anyone would have picked up that cash."
"But it wasn't my money," my friend protested.
"It would have been if you'd taken it!" I pointed out.
He stared at me, confused. "But that would have been dishonest!" he said.
I felt faintly abashed. Was my friend, as I suspected, being painfully moral? Or was I myself sliding down a slippery slope to a life of crime and soap-passing? Was it really just a short park-and-ride from appropriating errant change to stabbing dogs in the street?
I tried another tack. The friend did realise, I hoped, that when he hadn't collected the spare three pounds, the person behind him in the parking meter queue would have scooped it up?
He agreed that this was quite probably the case, but that was their problem.
"Problem?" I echoed, incredulous. The three quid wasn't their problem – it was their ice cold pint, their big juicy cheeseburger, the hot comforting bag of chips that they wouldn't have otherwise been able to buy.
Convinced I was right, I called a friend who happened to have studied criminal law, and recounted the story, certain that he would laugh and deem friend No 1's views ridiculous. Instead he replied earnestly: "He's right – it is stealing. Admittedly, you'd be unlikely to be prosecuted for it, but there have been cases of people taking extra money from broken cash machines and being found guilty of theft." Friend No 2 claimed that he wouldn't have taken the meter money either.
I was perplexed. Surely it was a victimless crime – 300 pence, which would only ever have been earmarked for some dull council activity, expelled by a machine that wouldn't exactly be devastated at its loss? It wasn't as though some old lady had dropped her pension money in the street. The aesthetically displeasing machine would continue its whirring and collecting, oblivious to its moral-conundrum-creating error.
I called friend No 1 and told him he had an ally. He said he wasn't surprised. I then warned him that his skyscraping ethical expectations would prevent him from ever finding a girlfriend. If he went on to sever ties with every date who failed to adhere to his unrealistic moral code, he could consign himself to a life of eternal disappointment. He told me that this was irrelevant, and pretty much what he was expecting to happen with women anyway.
After this, despite my stance that day, I kept thinking about the times that I had picked up stray cash, taken a one-stop train journey without getting a ticket, or rejoiced at a pricing oversight on my Sainsbury's receipt – and I started feeling vaguely embarrassed. I wondered how both friends would feel if they knew about those minor amoral moments, and whether they would still want to be friends with me. Even though I felt that they had overreacted on the parking meter issue, I resolved to be more honest in the future and live up to their expectations, even if no one else did.
However, as I've yet to be challenged on this resolution, I suggest that the Guardian test my virtue by overpaying me vastly for this article – then wait to see if I return the cash.
• Special forces funding fighters in Afghanistan
• Fears strategy could further destabilise country
US special forces are supporting anti-Taliban militias in at least 14 areas of Afghanistan as part of a secretive programme that experts warn could fuel long-term instability in the country.
The Community Defence Initiative (CDI) is enthusiastically backed by Stanley McChrystal, the US general commanding Nato forces in Afghanistan, but details about the programme have been held back from non-US alliance members who are likely to strongly protest.
The attempt to create what one official described as "pockets of tribal resistance" to the Taliban involves US special forces embedding themselves with armed groups and even disgruntled insurgents who are then given training and support.
In return for stabilising their local area the militia helps to win development aid for their local communities, although they will not receive arms, a US official said.
Special forces will be able to access money from a US military fund to pay for the projects. The hope is that the militias supplement the Nato and Afghan forces fighting the Taliban. But the prospect of re-empowering militias after billions of international dollars were spent after the US-led invasion in 2001 to disarm illegally armed groups alarms many experts.
Senior generals in the Afghan ministries of interior and defence are also worried about what they see as a return to the failed strategies of the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan.
Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said the US risked losing control over groups which have in the past turned to looting shops and setting up illegal road checkpoints when they lose foreign support.
"It is not enough to talk to a few tribal elders and decide that you trust them," Ruttig said. "No matter how well-trained and culturally aware the special forces are they will never be able to get to know enough about a local area to trust the people they are dealing with."
Another controversial aspect of the programme is the involvement of Arif Noorzai, an Afghan politician from Helmand who is widely distrusted by many members of the international community.
Although many western officials want to sideline Noorzai and give oversight to the Afghan army and police, some of the CDI militias will build upon the 12,500 militiamen in 22 provinces Noorzai helped to set up this summer in the run up to the presidential elections on 20 August, an official said.
Despite the lack of any announcement about the programme, which could radically affect conditions in unstable areas across Afghanistan, it has begun in 14 areas in the south, east and west, but is expected to extend far beyond that.
Another diplomat in the south-east of the country said in the last six weeks special forces have held several meetings with elders in restive districts in Paktia, close to the Pakistani border, seeking to embed themselves with the local people.
The diplomat said: "It is not clear anything has happened yet, but the elders in the area are all seeing dollar signs and very much want to qualify for this programme."
According to some western officials, the US government will make a pot of $1.3bn (£790m) available for the programme, although the US embassy said it could not yet comment on CDI.
A US military spokesman also declined to comment saying the programme was still in its early phases and public discussion could jeopardise the lives of some of the Afghans involved.
The plan represents a significant change in tack from a scheme promoted just last year by General McChrystal's predecessor, David McKiernan. The Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF) was piloted in Wardak province and involved the rigorous vetting of recruits who were then given basic training, a uniform and came under the authority of the Afghan police.
"McChrystal was always quite dismissive about APPF," a senior Nato official in Kabul said. "It was too resource-intensive and so slow we would have lost long before it had been spread to the whole country."
He added: "He wanted to move to a much more informal model, which is far less visible and unaccountable, using Noorzai to find people through his own networks and then simply paying out cash for them to defend their areas."
The US has shared few details of its plans with its allies. The programme is controlled by a newly created special forces group that reports directly to McChrystal as head of US forces in the country, but which sits outside the authority of the International Security Assistance Force, the Nato mission in Afghanistan.
Major Nidal Hasan in pain and not a flight risk, hearing told
Major Nidal Hasan, who has been charged with 13 murders over the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas, is paralysed from the neck down, incontinent and in severe pain, according to his lawyer.
The lawyer, John Galligan, told a hearing by a military magistrate yesterday that the army psychiatrist, who is accused of killing 12 soldiers and a civilian on 5 November, that his client was severely wounded by four bullets fired by military police and is not a flight risk. The magistrate was considering whether to move Hasan, 39, to a more secure location than the army hospital he is being treated at in San Antonio. He ruled that the major could remain where he is for now.
The military has said it will seek the death penalty for Hasan, a Muslim, for the killings which are increasingly spoken of in the US as an act of terrorism.
The hearing came amid fresh questions over whether the authorities were alert to Hasan's connections to a Yemen-based radical Muslim cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, after email messages between the two were intercepted by the FBI. Al-Awlaki formerly preached at a mosque attended by Hasan. The FBI has said an analyst with the Joint Terrorism Task Force concluded that Hasan's views on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were typical of those of many Muslims in the US military. ABC News reported that Nisan told al-Awlaki "I can't wait to join you [in the afterlife]."
Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate armed services committee, said he will be asking why the task force did not inform the army about the emails. Senator John McCain said on Saturday that he believes the emails were not acted on in part because of "political correctness".
The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, has ordered all branches of the military to seek better ways of "identifying service members who could potentially pose credible threats to others".
White House calls vote 'historic' as Republicans fail to kill off Barack Obama's proposals
Barack Obama's troubled healthcare reforms overcame another obstacle when the Senate voted last night to begin a full debate on the legislation.
The White House described the vote as a "historic" step after the Republicans failed to muster enough support to kill off the proposed reforms.
However, there were indications of more problems ahead for the US president as several senators crucial to winning the vote said they would not support the legislation as it is currently written.
They said this was because of the inclusion of a government-run insurance option, albeit one falling far short of that proposed by Obama after public protests and heavy lobbying by the health insurance industry.
The Senate voted along party lines, with all 58 Democrats and two independents producing exactly the 60 votes necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster.
That opened the way for weeks of what is likely to be robust Senate debate about an increasingly bitter and divisive issue.
The bill drawn up by the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, is designed to ensure 94% of Americans are covered by health insurance by – among other things – offering government-run health insurance, alongside private companies, that individual states could opt out of if they objected.
Reid said it was morally right that reform of the US healthcare system, in a country in which half of all bankruptcies are the result of medical bills and half of those are among people who have private health insurance, would now be debated by the full Senate.
"Imagine if, instead of debating whether to abolish slavery, instead of debating whether giving women and minorities a right to vote, those who disagreed were muted, discussion was killed," he added.
Opinion polls have shown that a clear majority of Americans support the inclusion of publicly run health insurance.
But the Republicans have sought to reinvigorate their party after last year's presidential election defeat by rallying opposition to the reforms, arguing that they are socialist, would lead to government bureaucrats controlling which doctors patients saw and would force up taxes.
The chairman of the Republican party, Michael Steele, has said he sees defeating Obama over healthcare as a way of undermining and neutralising his presidency.
But the real challenge for Obama and his allies will be to keep on board those senators who voted in favour of beginning the full debate but said that they would not support the bill as written.
Reid would need all their votes – or to bring on board one or two Republican senators – if the bill is to pass.
The Senate's Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said his party would keep up its fight to kill the legislation, adding: "The battle has just begun."
South Africa 250-9 (50 overs); England 252-3 (46.0 overs)
England win by seven wickets
Paul Collingwood celebrated his record 171st England one-day international cap with an unbeaten century, two wickets and a brilliant catch to steer England to a comprehensive seven-wicket victory over South Africa and a 1-0 lead in the five-match ODI series.
Collingwood partnered Jonathan Trott in a stand of 162 which eased England to the win at Centurion after restricting South Africa to a total of 250 for nine. Their task at first appeared to be an awkward one after Andrew Strauss and Kevin Pietersen – promoted to No3 in the line-up – were both gone with only 45 runs on the board.
Collingwood finished unbeaten on 105, his fifth ODI hundred, to complete a memorable day as his fielding was in stark contrast to that of Strauss, who dropped threee catches, as South Africa were propped up by half-centuries from Hashim Amla (57) and Alviro Petersen (64).
Collingwood's superb catch at backward point dismissed the dangerous AB de Villiers for just two in the ninth over and later took two wickets for his medium pace bowling, finishing with 2-24 from six overs.
The South Africa-born Trott threw away the chance for a maiden ODI century, caught at deep square leg for 87 after opening the batting in only his second match at this level in place of the injured Alastair Cook. Trott and Collingwood refused to panic after the wickets of Strauss and Pietersen and as Trott put together a risk-free half century they accumulated runs in consistent if unspectacular fashion.
Trott fell in the 42nd over but Collingwood's 108-ball century which contained two sixes and seven fours helped bring England home with four overs to spare. Eoin Morgan hit the winning runs in a quick-fire 27 from 24 balls as England made the most of the batting powerplay to end the match quickly.
"It was a big day for me on a personal note," Collingwood said. "I thought the team put in a fantastic performance today. We were quite comfortable in the end.
"The wicket played really well throughout the day and it was a special performance by all the boys really.
"It was a top knock by Trotty. He really played the anchor role. Credit to him, all the international innings he's played so far have been special ones and hopefully that continues."
England's captain, Strauss, added: "Jonathan Trott and Paul Collingwood both played exceptionally well. We always felt 250 was chaseable but we needed to get stuck in and get a partnership.
"It was a good performance from us and hopefully we can take this on to Newlands on Friday."
The Cape Town venue will stage the third match in the series, the first day-night of the series.
Strauss plans to sharpen up his own fielding before that game after dropping three catches. "That was the one negative," Strauss admitted. "My hands went missing somewhere. I'll have to do some practice over the week."
The South Africa captain Graeme Smith said: "Credit to England, they bowled well today and we just lost too many wickets along the way."
Nuclear firm Westinghouse expected to appoint Shaw Group to lead its construction programme
Thousands of jobs that were to have been created in Britain to build the next generation of nuclear power plants could be heading overseas instead, after Westinghouse, the nuclear company sold by the government three years ago to Toshiba, chose one of its largest shareholders as the lead contractor to build reactors.
Westinghouse is expected to confirm this week that it has appointed US-based Shaw Group to head up its £10bn nuclear programme, passing over the favourite for the contract, rival engineering group Fluor.
Industry sources said that Shaw is likely to source far more reactor components from overseas than Fluor, which has close relationships with British manufacturers. The Unite union claimed that 10,000 new jobs in the UK would not be created as a result of Shaw being selected.
Shaw was one of the main contractors to build Total's controversial Lindsey refinery and made 51 workers there redundant this year, which sparked a series of wildcat walk-outs around the country over the use of foreign labour.
British-based manufacturers such as BAE Systems and Rolls Royce are also understood to be concerned that lucrative contracts to make reactor modules could be lost to Shaw's manufacturing bases in the US and Belgium. A spokesman for Westinghouse in the US confirmed that Shaw had been appointed but claimed that "up to 80%" of the components would be sourced from the UK. He admitted that this was not finalised as none of the supplier contracts had been signed.
He added that Shaw had teamed up with British construction firm Laing O'Rourke for the bid, but the firm will not be involved in providing any of the high specification reactor components.
Japanese firm Toshiba owns 77% of Westinghouse, with 20% owned by Shaw Group. Westinghouse is hoping to secure contracts to build at least four of its AP1000 reactors with E.ON and RWE npower, who have formed a nuclear joint venture in the UK, soon after Christmas.
Dougie Rooney, Unite's national energy officer, said: "The implications are massive. With Fluor, there is a far greater opportunity to get UK companies involved. Shaw has no allegiance to the UK and it's wrong that a company with an equity share should be involved in the competition."
It was also claimed by several industry sources that Westinghouse had initially recommended to Toshiba that Fluor be appointed, but that the parent company insisted that Shaw be chosen instead. A Westinghouse spokesman in the US said that Shaw and Westinghouse already had a partnership to build reactors in the Middle East and the US. "It was a decision made in conjunction with a number of parties, including our parent company Toshiba," he said. "It's our intention to use British labour as much as possible."
Rival French reactor firm Areva is building the rest of the UK's reactors, on behalf of EDF Energy, and has only promised to allow British firms to bid for up to 70% of the supply contracts.
Business secretary Lord Mandelson has drawn up a "low-carbon industrial strategy" to enable British manufacturers and workers to benefit from the country's huge construction programme of less polluting power plants such as wind farms and nuclear reactors. Mandelson has also repeatedly spoken of the need for the government to demonstrate "industrial activism", or a willingness to intervene on behalf of key sectors of the economy.
But British manufacturers in the power sector have so far yet to benefit. The closure of the Vestas wind turbine plant in the Isle of Wight became totemic of the UK's inability to develop its own renewables industry. Unions are now anxious that manufacturers could similarly miss out on the opportunities from plans to build at least 10 new reactors in the UK.
Deal appears to be attempt by Hamas to prevent another descent into conflict
Hamas has won an agreement from other militant groups in Gaza to halt rocket fire into Israel for the first time in almost a year, asboth sides indicated progress on a deal to release a captured Israeli soldier.
The agreement, announced , appears to be an attempt by the Palestinian Islamist movement to prevent another descent into fighting at a time when reconstruction has barely begun almost 12 months after the devastating conflict with Israel.
It also reflected more progress in secretly mediated talks to release Gilad Shalit, the soldier captured more than three years ago, in exchange for the return of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
Last month, Hamas handed over a video showing Shalit in apparent good health, in return for which Israel freed 20 female Palestinian prisoners.
A Hamas newsletter issued yesterday said a deal was "reaching completion."
The Israeli president, Shimon Peres, in Cairo for talks with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, whose government has acted as a mediator in the case said: "As we all know, there is progress. I hope it will end positively." Reports suggested Israel would release 450 prisoners once Shalit had been handed over to Egypt and flown to Israel. At a later date, another 550 prisoners would be freed, but disagreements remain over exactly who and where they would be returned to.
Lieutenant General Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel's chief of staff, said yesterday: "We have a deep commitment … to bring [Shalit] home, but I prefer to leave this effort behind the scenes."
Hours after Fathi Hamad, the Hamas interior minister in Gaza, announced the ceasefire agreement, Israeli jets bombed what the military said were two "weapons-manufacturing facilities" in northern and central Gaza.
The strikes, in which seven Palestinians were injured, also targeted a smuggling tunnel. The Israel Defence Force (IDF) said it had been responding to rocket fire early yesterday.
An IDF statement said nearly 270 rockets and mortars had been fired from Gaza at Israel since the end of the war in January – far fewer than in previous years.
Hamas is believed to have stopped firing rockets after the war, but it took months to persuade more hardline groups – such as Islamic Jihad – to stop as well.
Israel has maintained a tight economic blockade on Gaza, and continues to prevent the import of most construction supplies. Egyptian cement has been smuggled in through tunnels.