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• Mandela death prompts soul-searching among 'coloureds' in racial limbo
• Fracking hell: what it's really like to live next to a shale gas well
• Nelson Mandela: South Africans on what Madiba means to them
• Iran arrests man on charges of spying for Britain
• Antarctica bound: scientists at work and play on a research vessel – in pictures
• Experience: I was trapped in my car hanging off a motorway bridge
• Seamus Heaney remembered by Polly Devlin
• Qantas: Tony Abbott hints foreign takeover might be allowed
• ANC accused of pettiness for excluding Desmond Tutu from Mandela funeral
• Nelson Mandela funeral: Madiba's remains on way to Qunu
• Colorado high school gunman shot two students before killing himself
• Stairwell death case: coroner blames British woman's alcoholism
• US and Chinese warships nearly collide amid tensions over airspace
• The blame game: when will it stop being Labor’s fault?
• Chinese scientists accused of trying to steal US seed samples
• Drones: can these stealthy killing machines become agents of good?
• Is selling Medibank a good idea? It remains to be seen | Luke Mansillo
• Designer finds growing market for bridal wear created for lesbians
• Iran and America: keeping to the bargain |
• Italy's Pitchfork protests unsettle country's traditional politics – in pictures
• Missing CIA operative failed by US government, family says
• Economic austerity: the island of Ireland | Editorial
• NSA deputy director John Inglis to retire at end of year
• Weatherwatch: Our severe gales are not hurricanes, but they can be as deadly
• Oil workers massacred in Iraqi town of Muqdadiya in al-Qaida-style attack

Mandela death prompts soul-searching among 'coloureds' in racial limbo Posted: 14 Dec 2013 01:01 AM PST As the nation mourns its first black president, many Cape coloureds are ambivalent about where their loyalties lie When Linda Orderson was 17 years old, the apartheid regime forced her to make an agonising choice: be "coloured" and live in poverty, or enjoy the privileges of being "white", and live apart from the rest of her family. "I could have played white. My best friend went for white, and she advised me, 'Go for white, you'll be better off'," said Linda, whose mixed race ancestry gave her milky skin and green eyes. Her four siblings, all darker skinned with brown eyes, were classified as "coloured". Linda chose coloured. Often simplified into a struggle between a repressive white minority and oppressed black majority, apartheid's rigid and sometimes contradictory racist classifications struggled with fluid identities – especially in the Western Cape, where centuries of settlers, slavery and immigration washed a tangle of ethnicities on to the country's southern shores. As the nation mourns Nelson Mandela, whose decades of struggle helped dismantle apartheid, many Cape coloureds are ambivalent about where their loyalties lie. "Apartheid was worse for blacks, it's true. But after everything we coloureds did to help [Mandela's party] the ANC, they only care about their own people. I spent time in prison for the struggle, and I can't see anything is better for us coloureds today," said former dock worker Lofty, 64. Cape coloureds like Linda and Lofty were originally descended from the mixing of white Afrikaner settlers and the sand-coloured Khoisan they conquered. Later intermingling with many other ethnic groups, they form a majority here, blurring the lines between distinct black, white, Malay and Indian racial groupings. As a child growing up in Cape Town's impoverished District 6, Linda had not been aware of discriminatory partitioning. "All of us had the same horrible rotting floorboards in our houses. But we never had any of those [whites only] signs in my street. On our street Africans mixed with Europeans," she said, using the terms assigned to blacks and whites under apartheid. Then, in 1966, the prime land in the heart of the city was declared a "white group area". Bulldozers razed the ramshackle houses so whites could move in. Today, cramped black and coloured townships on either side of the palm-studded valley are an enduring and stark reminder of persistent informal apartheid. "I doubt my friend who chose to be white is now sharing a house in a ghetto with grandchildren, but I'm happy here," said Linda, as two hyperactive dogs and dozens of grandchildren of varying shades of butterscotch darted around the wooden shack where she was relocated. It was one of the many injustices Mandela sought to end. But Cape coloureds, who had also enjoyed some privileges under apartheid, feared being cast alongside white nationalists at the advent of democracy in 1994, and overwhelmingly voted for the white Afrikaans nationalists who for decades had also oppressed them. Part of the appeal was a shared language. In Lofty's township of Valhala Park, almost everybody was raised speaking a creole version of Afrikaans. Black opposition to Afrikaans as "the language of the oppressor" triggered the 1976 Soweto uprising, during which the white minority government gunned down almost three dozen unarmed students. At that point, Lofty joined the armed wing of the ANC. He had already felt embittered after his eldest sister, Lilian, underwent the notorious "pencil test". When she shook her head, the pencil fell through, indicating an absence of kinky black hair. Lilian officially became white. "She didn't want to be seen walking down the street with us because then people would say, oh, she's not really white, she's coloured," he said, the pain still clear in his voice decades later. Today Lofty feels betrayed by the ANC, who he says have been too focused on blacks with clear clan lineages. The racial limbo coloureds suffered under apartheid continues. For many, Mandela's death has prompted painful soul-searching. Doreen Coetzee's caramel skin allowed her to migrate from black to coloured. "I wanted to be coloured so I could get a job, but it was very hard on my [black] mother. She couldn't even sit next to me on the bus," said Doreen, struggling to hold back tears. "It's going to take lifetimes to make peace with the damage that kind of thinking did." Every day this week, she has laid yellow flowers in the square where Mandela gave his first speech after being released from prison. At least for one week, the "mother city" was transformed into the rainbow city it aspires to become. Fingernails painted the bright yellow and green colours of the ANC, 19-year-old Siphokazi from the black township of Delft whistled and cheered raucously when Francois Pienaar, the white Afrikaans ex-rugby captain whom Mandela famously hugged, took to the podium during an official memorial ceremony. Nearby sat Louisa Power, a white designer, with her adopted black daughter. "When she was still in her pram, people would come up to me and say, you can dress her up as pretty as you like but she's still a kaffir. We've come here to put all that aside today," she said, as three-year-old Alba Blossom clapped her hands to a rousing rendition of My African Dream. South Africa Africa Nelson Mandela Monica Mark theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Fracking hell: what it's really like to live next to a shale gas well Posted: 14 Dec 2013 01:00 AM PST Nausea, headaches and nosebleeds, invasive chemical smells, constant drilling, slumping property prices – welcome to Ponder, Texas, where fracking has overtaken the town. With the chancellor last week announcing tax breaks for drilling companies, could the UK be facing the same fate? Veronica Kronvall can, even now, remember how excited she felt about buying her house in 2007. It was the first home she had ever owned and, to celebrate, her aunt fitted out the kitchen in Kronvall's favourite colour, purple: everything from microwave to mixing bowls. A cousin took pictures of her lying on the floor of the room that would become her bedroom. She planted roses and told herself she would learn how to garden. What Kronvall did not imagine at the time – even here in north Texas, the pumping heart of the oil and gas industry – was that four years later an energy company would drill five wells behind her home. The closest two are within 300ft of her tiny patch of garden, and their green pipes and tanks loom over the fence. As the drilling began, Kronvall, 52, began having nosebleeds, nausea and headaches. Her home lost nearly a quarter of its value and some of her neighbours went into foreclosure. "It turned a peaceful little life into a bit of a nightmare," she says. Energy analysts in the US have been as surprised as Kronvall at how fast fracking has proliferated. Until five years ago, America's oil and gas production had been in steady decline as reservoirs of conventional sources dried up. Then a Texas driller, George Mitchell, began trying out new technologies on the Barnett Shale, the geological formation that lies under the city of Fort Worth, Texas, and the smaller towns to the north, where Kronvall lives. Mitchell did not invent the technique. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, was first used in the 1940s to get the gas out of conventional wells. As the well shaft descended into the layer of shale, the driller would blast 2m-4m gallons of water, sand and a cocktail of chemicals down the shaft at high pressure, creating thousands of tiny cracks in the rock to free the gas. Mitchell's innovation was to combine the technology with directional drilling, turning a downward drill bit at a 90-degree angle to drill parallel to the ground for thousands of feet. It took him more than 15 years of drilling holes all over the Barnett Shale to come up with the right mix of water and chemicals, but eventually he found a way to make it commercially viable to get at the methane in the tightly bound layers of shale. The new technology has turned the Barnett Shale into the largest producible reserve of onshore natural gas in the US. Other operators, borrowing from Mitchell's work, began drilling in Colorado, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and, most recently, California. More than 15 million Americans now live within a mile of an oil or gas well, 6 million of them in Texas. The industry has been quick to publicise fracking's apparent benefits. Electricity and heating costs have dropped. The activity from the oil and gas sector has helped buoy up an ailing national economy and paid for new schools in country towns. Last October, the US produced more oil at home than it imported for the first time since 1995. New evidence, however, has begun to emerge that fracking, while reducing coal consumption, is not significantly curtailing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. Campaigners warn that fracking is binding the US even more tightly to a fossil-fuel future and deepening the risks of climate change. There have been stories from homeowners of fracking chemicals seeping into their drinking water, video footage of flames shooting out of kitchen taps because of methane leaks. Companies have been fined for releasing radioactive waste into rivers. In north Texas, where Kronvall lives, the number of new oil and gas wells has gone up by nearly 800% since 2000. It's impossible to drive for any length of time without seeing the signs, even after the rigs have moved on elsewhere: the empty squares of flattened earth, the arrays of condensate tanks, the compressor stations and pipelines, and large open pits of waste water. Virtually no site is off limits. Energy companies have fracked wells on church property, school grounds and in gated developments. Last November, an oil company put a well on the campus of the University of North Texas in nearby Denton, right next to the tennis courts and across the road from the main sports stadium and a stand of giant wind turbines. In Texas, as in much of America, property owners do not always own the "mineral rights" – the rights to underground resources – so typically have limited say over how they are developed. Kronvall moved from the Fort Worth area to the small farming town of Ponder – population: 1,400 – for the peace and quiet, and the affordable house prices; it also meant a fairly easy commute to her job at the survey research centre at the University of North Texas. Wesley and Beth Howard moved into the Remington Park neighbourhood in the same year, two doors down, after making a similar calculation. It was close to where Beth works as a graphic designer at Texas Woman's University. Wesley, 41, a support engineer at IBM, works from home. The neighbourhood was still only partially built, but the developers said they were planning 150 new homes, a park and walking trails on the meadow behind their house. "This was the first home we had together," Wesley says. "We looked at being here for a good couple of decades. It was our expectation and our hope that this would grow and property values would improve and services would come up." In February 2011, Beth, 31, had just found out she was pregnant when the couple noticed some wooden stakes with fluttering bright plastic strips had gone up in the meadow behind their home. Kronvall had seen them, too, and assumed workers were staking out cul-de-sacs for the next phase of homes. She was away at a work conference in May 2011 when she got a call from another neighbour: crews had arrived with heavy earth-moving equipment. The meadow was about to be drilled for a well. None of the neighbours received any official notice, either from the energy company or the town authorities. "The law at the time didn't require them to tell us or give any public notice or anything," Wesley says. "They could just spring it on us as a surprise, and so they did." At that time, Texas law did not require companies to disclose which chemicals they were using to frack the well. Residents say that, to this day, none of them has any idea, though there is now a voluntary chemical disclosure registry at fracfocus.org. The crews proceeded to flatten the earth and install a 200ft red and white drilling tower that loomed high above their homes. Convoys of articulated lorries rumbled down the main road. "It was terrible," Kronvall says. "There was a lot of banging and clanging. The number of trucks was just phenomenal, and the exhaust, the fumes in the air, it was 24/7." She says the activities on the other side of her fence deposited a layer of white powder on her counter tops. The sound of the crew shouting into megaphones invaded her bedroom. Bright lighting pierced her curtains and made it difficult to sleep. The rumble of trucks and equipment rattled the glasses in her cupboard, and the smell – an acrid blend of chemicals – was all-pervasive. "My wife was pregnant the whole time the rig was there," Wesley says. There was the din of diesel generators belching soot, and a nauseating mix of chemicals competing with the aroma of dinner. The noise and smells penetrated to the next street over, where Christina Mills lives. Like the Howards and Kronvall, Mills, 65, was attracted to Ponder because of its sleepiness, and bought the fourth house built in the entire development when she moved to the town in 2001. "But when that derrick was up, you would have thought you were in Las Vegas," she says, "and I live one street over." Devon Energy Corporation, the firm drilling behind their homes, did install a sound curtain to try to buffer the noise. Devon – which bought out George Mitchell and has become one of the biggest operators in the extraction of shale gas – says it is committed to supporting residents. "We are always working to find new and better ways to do what we do with the smallest possible impact that we can have on our neighbours," says Tim Hartley, a Devon spokesman. "Wherever we are, we want to have a healthy, safe, best-in-class operation, so we are committed to that and we have delivered that in the Barnett Shale area for many years." The curtain did little to muffle the sound or reduce the other effects of fracking, say residents. The Howards' baby, Pike, arrived several weeks early. The couple say there is no way of knowing whether that was connected to the fracking, but they were very nervous about exposing him to possible chemicals from the process. "He was in really good health, but he was still a newborn," Wesley says. "When you can smell diesel exhaust and you have got other unusual odours, and all the things you don't know about what is going on with industrial stuff, it can be stressful. We didn't know what we were breathing in at any given time, and he was breathing it, too. It was what made his homecoming so stressful." Two doors down, Kronvall says, her eyes watered constantly when she was at home, stopping only after she had been at work for an hour or two. As well as bouts of nausea and low, throbbing headaches, there was blood when she blew her nose. "I had nosebleeds pretty much throughout the entire process," she says. Devon says it is not aware of any complaints about health problems suffered after it began its activities at Remington Park, though company representatives attended public meetings from 2011, and were accused by residents of being dismissive of health concerns. In response, Hartley has said, "It would be inappropriate for us to publicly discuss asserted claims." As well as struggling with the noise and smells, Christina Mills says, there was the dust. One morning she found a gritty white powder all over her car, so she stopped at a car wash on the drive to work. "I went there to wash the stuff off, and the black paint came off with it," she says, still shocked at the memory. "It took the paint off my car." The three neighbours all tried to stop the fracking, or at least get compensation. They sought legal advice and appealed to the town authorities and state environmental regulators. Inspectors for the Texas environmental regulator came out to Kronvall's home, commiserated about the smell and collected air samples, only to report back weeks later that they were unable to detect dangerous emissions. As the neighbours soon discovered, both they and the developer who owned the meadow behind Kronvall and the Howards were powerless because they did not control the mineral rights. The local authorities had already changed the zoning regulations to allow fracking close to their homes, and fought attempts to hold a public meeting about the drilling. Even now, Mills is furious at the way the council treated Remington Park: "They continued to allow them to build and sell homes, knowing full well that they were getting ready to drill behind us." She is, somewhat to her surprise, angry at the energy company, too. This is a first for Mills. An accountant, she started her career carrying out audits in the oilfields of Oklahoma. She considered herself a supporter of oil and gas. "In 17 years in Oklahoma, never did I see them intrude on a heavily populated area. They made it personal here, and that's when I had a problem… They came into the back of our neighbourhood, 300ft from the back fence. That is so intrusive." There have been cases where energy companies have compensated residents for damage to health and property as a result of fracking. The details of these agreements are closely held because of non-disclosure agreements. The Ponder residents, however, were unable to get their lawyer to pursue their case because their property values are too low: their lawyer told them the potential property damages were not enough to make it worth their while. All the neighbours could do, for the eight months it took to put the wells into production, was watch. Eventually, the rig was dismantled and moved on, leaving two oilwells and three waste tanks in the area just behind their homes. Another three wells, six more waste tanks and a large open pond were erected on the other side of the meadow. Heavy trucks still pull up almost every day to empty the tanks beside the well pad. There have been scares, too. At the start of this year, a loud whistling sound came out of the tanks and residents wondered if one of the wells was about to blow up. Some residents simply sold up – some for less than they had paid – or rented their homes and moved out. Mills now uses an inhaler after developing asthma. "I am not ever sick," she says, "but in the past 18 months I've had pneumonia three times." She has missed about eight weeks of work. "It just seems that this has been my whole life," Kronvall says. "It's hard to remember what it was like before, because this was such a dramatic event to go through. You feel violated. How can they come in and do this, and not even consult with the person? No respect for any kind of human decency or rights, just take what you want. And they will do it in the UK, too, if many lessons aren't learned." Now it's Britain's time to decide whether it wants a piece of "Saudi America". A report from the British Geological Survey last July significantly increased estimates for the amount of gas sitting beneath the north of England, raising hopes of replicating America's gas rush. The report suggests there could be as much as 1,300tn cubic feet of gas over an area stretching from Lancashire to Yorkshire and down to Lincolnshire. Depending on what fraction of that is recoverable, the gas could supply Britain for decades. The government began promoting the idea that it would be irresponsible not to take advantage, and talked of opening up lands to fracking not only in the north of England, but also in the south-east and Wales. The chancellor's autumn budget statement last week included generous tax breaks for fracking companies. "I want Britain to tap into new sources of low-cost energy like shale gas," George Osborne said. "Shale gas is part of the future and we will make it happen." David Cameron has said that unlocking the shale will transform Britain as it has America, driving down energy prices, creating tens of thousands of jobs and providing new revenue for local councils. Fracking has not had an easy start in Britain. In April 2011, two small earthquakes and dozens of aftershocks occurred when Cuadrilla Resources drilled its first well in Weeton, Lancashire. The tremors could be felt as far away as Blackpool. The company halted its operations for a seismic investigation, but continued work on its other wells. Protesters forced companies to delay or back away from other well sites. Even with those challenges, however, the industry remains committed to going ahead. At least six oil and gas companies have announced plans to pursue shale gas in Britain. Cuadrilla has already drilled exploratory wells at Singleton and Becconsall in Lancashire, and is pursuing another at Balcombe in West Sussex. Celtique Energie and Coastal Oil and Gas have applied to drill in Kent, West Sussex and Wales. The main industry body, the United Kingdom Onshore Operators Group (UKOOG), expects a number of those exploratory wells to go into production in 2014 or 2015. The pro-industry Institute of Directors said in a report that there could be 100 well sites across the country in the next 10 to 15 years. The industry maintains that fracking in Britain will be vastly different from that in America because of the nature of the geology and more stringent regulations. The Bowland shale is much thicker than the Barnett shale, for example, which, industry experts say, means energy companies will be able to dig many more wells spiralling out from a single site, and so limit the impact of fracking above ground. "The reality is there will be a much smaller footprint for the industry," says Ken Cronin, chief executive of UKOOG. "The other reality is that we have a vastly more comprehensive regulatory system in the UK." Unlike in Pennsylvania, where there have been multiple complaints of contaminated drinking water wells, Britain will require that drillers monitor water quality throughout the fracking process. The regulations also require companies to disclose what chemicals they are using, and the British government has already restricted some chemicals used in the US. Cronin says Britain would also have higher standards for dealing with the enormous amounts of radioactive and toxic waste water that results from fracking – some 280bn gallons last year alone in the US, according to a report by Environment America. That's enough to flood all of Washington DC beneath a 22ft-deep toxic lagoon. Unlike Texas, where waste water from fracking is sometimes left to evaporate in open pits, Britain will require sealed disposal units. And unlike North Dakota, where producers simply burned off excess gas, spewing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, companies will capture the gas and feed it into the national gas supply. Perhaps most important of all, Cronin says, there would be strict standards for well quality, and regular inspections to ensure there is no escape of frack fluids or gas into the water supply. Cuadrilla believes that these regulations put Britain far ahead of America in terms of protecting human health and the environment. The company, however, has already been warned by ministers about its performance for failing to recognise the significance of the damage to its well following the 2011 earthquakes, and for failing to report it for six months, according to documents released under the freedom of information act. The company would respond only to written questions through its PR firm, which continues to maintain that Britain is better prepared for fracking than the US, stating: "The regulatory standardisation and world class performance-based regulations make the UK better prepared for a growing shale gas industry sector." Opponents of fracking remain unconvinced. "No system is foolproof," says Caroline Lucas, the Green party MP arrested in August for blocking a drilling site in Balcombe. "No system is entirely robust. We have to make a judgment as to risk and trade-off, and it just seems to me that with fracking, even if regulations are tighter than they are in the US, there are risks we don't need to run." Lucas says she is concerned about water shortages – huge volumes are needed to frack a well – especially in the south-east, and about the risks of bringing a new industry into a much more densely populated terrain than America's fracking heartland. But Lucas's biggest fear by far is that launching a shale gas revolution in Britain will destroy any prospects of action on climate change. "Scientists are telling us that we need to leave four-fifths of already proven fuels in the ground if we are going to have any chance of avoiding two degrees' warming. Therefore to be hunting around for new sources of fossil fuel seems particularly perverse." Another prominent opponent of fracking, the landowner Lord Cowdray, says that if fracking went ahead, he could foresee a scenario of well pads scattered across the South Downs. Some of the proposed sites around Fernhurst in West Sussex, he says, are within 600ft of private homes, about twice as far as the Ponder site from Veronica Kronvall's, but still very close. What Cowdray fears most, however, is that the oil companies are not prepared, or sufficiently insured, to deal with a major contamination event such as a leak of fracking fluids or waste into the water supply. "I don't trust the industry," he says. "I think there have been too many contamination events in the past around the world – many we know about and some that we possibly don't." Can Britain do it differently? Back in his small town in Texas, Wesley Howard says that, as fracking spread from state to state across the US, he often heard that refrain. "That is the same sort of thing that got said in Ohio, when people said, 'Look what has happened in the Dakotas.' Every state in the US, you hear that story get told one way or another: that the ground here is different, that the types of shale here are different, that the rules here are different, that the companies doing it are different." He goes on: "It's always different but, sooner or later, it is always the same." Shale gas and fracking Gas Fossil fuels Energy United States Suzanne Goldenberg theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Nelson Mandela: South Africans on what Madiba means to them Posted: 14 Dec 2013 01:00 AM PST From a fellow inmate at Robben Island to a pupil at the school where he cast his first, historic vote, South Africans from key locations in the ANC leader's life tell Matteo Fagotto what Mandela means to them 'I saw him as a father figure': Nozolile Mtirara, Mqhekezweni, Eastern Cape A 92-year-old woman sits calmly on a plastic chair in the garden of one of the few plastered houses in this village in the countryside of the Eastern Cape region. "I've always seen Mandela as a father figure, since the first time we met," she says. In 1945, Nozolile Mtirara married the cousin and childhood friend of Mandela, Justice Mtirara, and moved to Mqhekezweni, the village where Mandela had spent most of his childhood under the guardianship of the local regent, Justice's father, Chief Jongintaba Dalindyebo. "Justice and Nelson Mandela were very close. He and my husband grew up together, and did everything together," she remembers, pointing at a series of green cottages in the garden. The last one, now empty, used to be shared by Mandela and Justice. Their bond was so close that, when they discovered the chief had arranged a double wedding for them, the boys fled to Johannesburg together in 1941. "They sold two of the chief's cows to a white guy to fund their trip. The chief had to go and buy them back." A year later, Mandela was forgiven by the chief, who died not long after. Returning to Mqhekezweni for the funeral, Justice decided to settle there and marry Nozolile. The paths of the two friends diverged. When Justice died in 1974, Mandela was in Robben Island. When he was released from prison in 1990, Nozolile met him for the first time. "My house was built by him, as a thanksgiving for having spent his childhood here," she says. "The Mandelas treat me as part of their family. "I am sure he will go straight to heaven, after all the good work he did for this country," she says, with a peaceful smile on her face. 'We are not equal under the law': Vusimuzi Ngcobo, Walter Sisulu Square, Kliptown "Steve Biko would have been the real leader of South Africa, but he was uncompromising towards the apartheid regime. That's why they killed him and let Mandela live. Biko was saying blacks had to be proud of their accent, their origins and their skins," Vusimuzi Ngcobo says, referring to the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, who was arrested, tortured and killed in police custody in September 1977. With almost all the ANC leaders arrested or in exile, at that time Biko was one of the main voices opposing the apartheid regime. His message is still cherished by many young black South Africans unsatisfied by the state of the country and the ANC leadership, who are accused of having left the economy in white hands in exchange for political power. Ngcobo, 26, shares a room with his mother, five sisters and his two-year-old daughter. A board member of a local youth organisation, Ngcobo acts as a guide for the tourists coming to visit Walter Sisulu Square, the location where, on 26 June 1955, 3,000 delegates adopted the Freedom Charter, a manifesto calling for a non-racist, democratic and equal South Africa, which is still the backbone of the ANC ideology. A chimney-like structure has been erected to celebrate the adoption of the 10-point manifesto, which Ngcobo calls a wish list. "Most of the principles written here have not been upheld," he says angrily. "We are not equal under the law. President Jacob Zuma just spent 200m rand (£12m) to upgrade his house in Nkandla, while his fellow villagers still have to fetch water from the river." His views are shared by many South Africans who lament the high levels of corruption, unemployment, economic disparity and illiteracy. "I don't blame Mandela for these problems. He made a lot of sacrifices for this country. But many of us feel that apartheid has continued." Ngcobo maintains that, with a more uncompromising leader, things might be better now. 'A part of this place will die with him': Isaac Mangena, Alexandra township, Johannesburg Isaac Mangena, 35, a human rights agency spokesman, can't hide his emotion. "People in Alexandra feel they own a 'share' of Mandela. A part of Alexandra will die with him." Alexandra was the first place Mandela settled when he arrived in town in 1941. It was here that, on 11 February 1990, Mangena heard that Mandela would be freed from prison. Due to an information blackout, Mangena, who was 16 at the time, had never seen Mandela before. "It was like talking about Jesus," he says, adding that he started believing the news only after seeing cars carrying banned ANC flags. On one of the most memorable days of his life, Mangena and his fellow students decided to celebrate at a nearby university. The joy was so overwhelming that "neither me nor my friends passed our exams that year. But nobody cared about studying at that time." 'I never regretted joining the armed struggle': Thulani Mabaso, Robben Island "We all played our part, from the families who lost husbands and children, to the guys who died or were disabled in the struggle. There were many Nelson Mandelas in our history." The tall figure of Thulani Mabaso, 50, sits before the grey cliffs of Robben Island, the infamous prison-turned-museum off the coast of Cape Town where he works as a guide. In 1981, Mabaso was sentenced to 18 years in prison for setting up a mine that wounded 57 people at the Defence Force building in Johannesburg. Mabaso was then a member of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC. "I could have killed people, if I had wanted to. But our goal was to make a statement." Mabaso spent seven years in Robben Island with Mandela, and was one of the last prisoners to be released in 1991. Arriving at Cape Town harbour in the first days of July, he was taken to Durban, where the unbanned ANC was having its first national congress in 32 years. "Nelson Mandela had wanted me there," he reveals proudly. "He greeted me warmly, before introducing me to all the party leadership. It was a great moment." When he was eight, Mabaso's family was forcibly removed from a village in KwaZulu-Natal and moved into an arid township, where eight families had to share a shanty house made of asbestos. At school, there was one textbook for 80 pupils. "All our chickens and goats had been confiscated. We had to sleep on the floor. My grandfather was moaning all the time. Finally he had a heart attack and died." Working at Robben Island can be punishing. "I still have nightmares," he confesses. "But I never regretted my decision to join the armed struggle. Life under apartheid was bad." 'It's not easy to meet white people': Promise Shezi, Ohlange high school, Inanda, KwaZulu-Natal The building where Mandela cast his vote on 27 April 1994, in South Africa's first democratic elections, is now a museum inside Ohlange high school in Inanda, KwaZulu-Natal. For 19-year-old Promise Shezi, a friendly schoolgirl, being close to a historical landmark is a source of constant inspiration. "I feel so proud to study in the same place where Madiba cast his vote," she says. "When I heard he was hospitalised, I cried together with my mother." Shezi comes from Pinetown, a nearby suburb close to Durban. She lives with her mother and two brothers, aged 17 and 10. Shezi's dream is to become a teacher, a job she thinks will help her bridge the gap to other South African communities. "I'd like to have white friends; the problem is it is not easy to meet them where I live. I wouldn't even rule out having a white boyfriend," she laughs. 'Under apartheid, our relationship would have been illegal': Jeremy Papier, Cape Town city hall Papier is a 32-year-old DJ from Cape Town. On 11 February 1990, he was in front of the city hall when Mandela delivered his first speech as a free man. The square was swamped with people waving ANC flags: for many, it was the first time they'd seen Mandela. "I was nine, too young to understand what was going on, but I could feel the energy. People were dancing, shouting and going crazy. I remember my father saying, 'Something very important is going on.' It wasn't until high school that I realised the importance of what I had witnessed." Papier's fiancee is Mia Everson, a white Afrikaner; under apartheid, their union would have been illegal. That's why, in his DJ sets, he sometimes uses phrases from that Mandela speech. "I like the part when he addressed South Africa and the world, pleading allegiance to the country. It is so powerful. I like to play it and see people's reactions. It warms my heart." 'Madiba told us to forgive our oppressors': Thembeni Sibeko, Regina Mundi church, Soweto "I remember the day of the protests. It was hell. The boys were burning shops belonging to whites. The wounded students were brought inside the church." Wrapped in a blanket with the colours of South Africa, today 63-year-old Thembeni Sibeko spends her days collecting alms for Regina Mundi, the biggest church in Soweto, the sprawling township complex just outside Johannesburg. But in 1976, during the student uprising against the compulsory use of the Afrikaans language in schools, she was a 26-year-old woman living beside the church, in front of which most of the protesters had gathered. At least 176 people died following the police crackdown, which marked a decisive turn in the struggle against apartheid. "Some families never got the bodies back. There are mothers who still don't know what happened to their kids," Sibeko says. In 1995, a few months after being elected president, Mandela paid a surprise visit to Regina Mundi during a Sunday mass. Sibeko was there. "He told us to forgive our oppressors, which I did," she says. "I pray for them every day. May God have mercy on them." 'People are losing hope': Mpoh Pebane, Mediclinic hospital, Pretoria Every day after Mandela was taken to hospital (in June 2013), a small, bald figure visited the hospital at night after work. "I'd say a small prayer and go home," says Mpoh Pebane, a 45-year-old doctor living in a nearby suburb. "Sometimes I'd bring my two kids here. I'd tell them it's because of him that today we can live where we live." Originally from Bochabela, a township close to the city of Bloemfontein, Pebane says, "I've always admired his humanity, openness and forgiveness. Few humans have these traits." He looks at the thousands of photos, candles, letters and thoughts people have left. "We need a person of his calibre," he says. An ANC member since 2010, Pebane feels the ideals Mandela fought for have been betrayed by the current party leaders. "Poor are getting poorer, and rich are getting richer. People are losing hope." 'The government is implementing a form of reverse racism': Cornel Van Heerden, Ellis Park Stadium, Johannesburg Despite Mandela's efforts to bridge the gap between communities in South Africa, the country is still racially divided; sporting events are one of the few occasions when blacks and whites mingle. In June 1995, Mandela reached out to white South Africans by embracing the rugby World Cup, a traditionally white sport, being played in South Africa. "During that World Cup it felt as if we were all together," says Cornel Van Heerden, 28, a well-built Afrikaner. "I wouldn't have liked to live under apartheid, without all my black friends." Van Heerden, who was nine when apartheid ended, doesn't feel any personal guilt for it. On the contrary, he is opposed to the affirmative action laws. "The government is implementing a form of reverse racism," he says. "We young people who didn't take part in apartheid, it leaves a bad taste in our mouth." Nelson Mandela South Africa Africa theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Iran arrests man on charges of spying for Britain Posted: 14 Dec 2013 12:37 AM PST Media report says man has confessed to exchanging information with four British intelligence agents Iranian authorities have arrested a man on charges of spying for Britain, according to media reports. The semiofficial ISNA news agency said on Saturday that the man was arrested in the town of Kerman, south-east Iran, after authorities spent months tracking him down. A Kerman judiciary official, who was not named by ISNA, said the man had exchanged information with four British intelligence operatives. The man has not been identified but the report says he is currently standing trial and has confessed. Iran periodically announces the arrest of alleged foreign agents. Often few further details are released. The arrest comes as Iran and Britain are patching up ties following the election of President Hassan Rouhani in June. The British embassy in Tehran was closed in late 2011 after hardliners overran the building. Iran Middle East and North Africa Espionage theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Antarctica bound: scientists at work and play on a research vessel – in pictures Posted: 14 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST Researchers and journalists on board the Akademik Shokalskiy brave rough seas as they go about their work – but also find time to eat and relax Guardian journalists Laurence Topham and Alok Jha are with the Australasian Antarctic Expedition Laurence Topham

Experience: I was trapped in my car hanging off a motorway bridge Posted: 14 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST 'There was no road where it should be. There was just a 30ft drop on to the East Lancashire Road' My wife Olivia and I were driving home to Sussex from our friends' house in Ayrshire. It was early November, and it had been raining hard the previous day and night. We'd left at 5am to avoid the traffic. As we drove along the M6, it was still raining solidly, but I felt comfortable, driving along the outside lane at about 70 miles an hour while Olivia read the newspaper next to me. What seems strange now is that earlier in the journey I was mulling over different scenarios. What if we have a crash? I imagined having to tell my in-laws that Olivia had died. Three and a half hours into the journey we reached Haydock, Merseyside, when the car hit a 60ft stretch of standing water. We veered off to the left and crossed two motorway lanes as I steered to the right trying to bring it back. My body tensed up. I didn't feel fully conscious; I could feel my brain semi-shutting off to cope. I felt powerless, frightened. I thought, "This is either going to hurt a lot or it's going to hurt so much I won't come out alive." With an explosion of glass, my side of the car hit the outside safety barrier, inflating my side airbag. The car then continued sliding and spinning, as the front and sides sheared off the vertical posts. Then it swivelled until my wife's side impacted on one of the posts. I shut my eyes and then realised we had stopped. "Thank God that's over," I thought. I checked Olivia. She said she was OK but sounded sleepy. I was worried she was going to lose consciousness, so I tried to keep her talking. She spoke to me, but kept going quiet and sounding dazed. Her legs were trapped. Everything was covered in this very fine dust of shattered glass. I had no idea where we were. The windows had smashed and I couldn't see out. My fear was that we were in the fast lane, about to be shunted. A guy ran towards the car and started pushing down on the bonnet. I thought that was strange: why wasn't he trying to get us out? That's when he told us the back tyres were hanging over the edge of the motorway. I didn't quite believe him, and I think I was so relieved to be out of the fast lane I even felt it was not a bad thing. Then the glass completely crashed out of my window and I looked out and saw tarmac. But when Olivia looked out of her side she could only see down. There was no road where it should be. There was just a 30ft drop on to the East Lancashire Road. Neither of us moved. We could feel the vibrations created by the lorries as they drove over the flyover. There were strong winds and I worried that something big would drive past as the wind blew and buffet us backwards off the bridge. The man who had come to help was a railway engineer. He told me to stay put, but I couldn't move anyway because the door had caved in, trapping my body. I wanted to stay alert and speak to him. We talked about our families. If this was going to be my last conversation, I wanted to have a connection. About 10 minutes later, the emergency services arrived. Once they'd established we could talk and move our toes, they put us in neck braces. Because of the way the car had impacted, they couldn't just drag us forwards on to the road, because this would risk harming Olivia's legs. The fire brigade had to get a winch on to the back of the car to secure it, get me out, then swing the car diagonally on to the carriageway to rescue her. About an hour later they cut me out, using hydraulic cutters that looked like huge lobster claws. I still didn't feel safe. I worried there could be a bit of metal in the wrong place, and that instead of cutting the metal, it would dig into me. I was finally out. I'd been squashed in a tight space for nearly an hour and a half, so I was desperate to walk around, but the ambulance crew wanted me on a stretcher quickly. I had so much adrenaline, I wasn't aware of any pain, even though it turned out I'd shattered my collarbone. Olivia arrived at the hospital about 15 minutes after me. Incredibly, she was fine. People tell me you can't live your life as if every day was your last, but sometimes it's good to shift the balance away from the mundane. I realised that most of my life had been spent creating the illusion of security and safety – that's just how you have to live. I've had to accept that if someone or something comes along to take that away or stir things up, there is very little I can do. • As told to Sarah Smith Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@theguardian.com Transport Road safety Road transport Sarah Smith theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Seamus Heaney remembered by Polly Devlin Posted: 14 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST The sister-in-law of the great Irish poet and Nobel laureate recalls his fine-grained intelligence, his generosity, humour – and the time he rustled up a perfect poem on demand • Moe Tucker on Lou Reed, Greg Dyke on David Frost, Irvine Welsh on Antonia Bird... see the Observer's obituaries of 2013 in full on Sunday It was a sunny day in July, over 40 years ago – how did that happen? – and my sister Marie and her husband Seamus Heaney had just arrived to stay for a few days. Daisy, my second daughter, who had been christened just a few days before, looking touching in the long lace confection that her great-grandmother had worn in 1866, was in her pram in the gardens of Bradley Court, the house where I lived then – an Elizabethan house, in Gloucestershire, the sort of house you might find in the Irish countryside behind high walls – and the irony of that was never lost on me, or I surmise on Seamus. Noisy peacocks strutted up and down yew walks as though they owned the place, not knowing I could have wrung their necks and longed to. Marie was worried they hadn't had time to get Daisy a christening present. "Go you and write a poem," she said to Seamus – that was what he was like then: on demand, as it were, he could extemporise an exquisite poem, profound and delicate, strong and subtexted, full of charm and glowing with observation and truth. Halfway through writing it we all went for a walk, me pushing Daisy in the pram, and came on a fallen peacock's feather. Seamus went back and finished the poem immediately – A Peacock's Feather for Daisy Garnett. He was shy enough about it – his modesty was part of his character – but now it has became a much-loved part of his canon. It began: Six days ago the water fell To name and bless your fontanel That seasons towards womanhood, But now your life is sleep and food Which, with the touch of love, suffice You, Daisy, Daisy, English niece. Gloucestershire: its prospects lie Wooded and misty to my eye Whose landscape, like your mother's was, Is other than this mellowness Of topiary, lawn and brick, Possessed, untrespassed, walled, nostalgic… It ends, and I cry when I read it now: … So this is a billet-doux to say That in a warm July you lay Christened and smiling in Bradley. While I, a guest in your green court, At a west window sat and wrote Self-consciously in gathering dark, I might as well be in Coole Park! So before I leave your ordered home Let us pray: may tilth and loam Darkened with Celts' and Saxons' blood Breastfeed your love of house and wood. And I drop this for you, as I pass, Like the peacock's feather in the grass. He could and did give the gift of his talent, not only to the world but also to individuals with warm and smiling generosity. Wordsworth wrote: "The face of every neighbour whom I met/ Was as a volume to me", and Seamus too read every face and responded to it. The moment he walked on to the stage it was as if a dear friend had arrived; but people who had never heard him read, or had never read his work, greeted him with pleasure as he went about his daily life. Innumerable people have told me over the years of how he remembered them on slight acquaintance, of how he took the trouble to write to them. He is often thought of as a man of country ways, but he was enormously sophisticated, a cosmopolitan animal, with a ravening intelligence and a sensibility that was the finest I ever met; so down to earth, so ready to be made to laugh, so full of humour, so appreciative of the good things in life and yet so fine-grained that I feel he was like William Blake who, when he stared at a knot of wood in a tree, became frightened I was outcast on Martha's Vineyard, off the coast of Cape Cod, when I got the news of Seamus's death in the middle of that dark night. Obviously it was a cosmic tragic mistake. A friend texted: "The world is a darker place without him: the brighter the light – the darker the shadow!" It was as if a void had opened up and where there was goodness, warmth, genius, the knowledge that we could learn how we wanted to live; of what, in the words of another Irish poet, Eavan Boland, "that most fabulous of beasts – language" could do, of words speaking to the springing spirit in all of us, there was instead a galactic, silent cold. As Seamus wrote himself about a death: "That morning tiles were harder, windows colder,/ the raindrops on the pane more scourged, the grass/ Barer to the sky, more wind-harrowed." His death caught all our hearts off guard and blew them open; we never knew how much we loved him or how much he had given us until he had gone. How did he do it? He carried our hopes and aspirations and our longings for a better and more truthful life and he carried them so lightly and with such grace. "If poetry and the arts do anything," he said, "they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness." He did fortify me; not just with his words but with his generosity of spirit, never mind his and my sister's embracing hospitality in their daily lives. "The way we are living,/ timorous or bold,/ will have been our life," he wrote, and the words inspired me daily. I was so lucky to be his sister- in law. I never saw him but my heart jumped with pleasure, I never met him but he didn't welcome me as though he had been waiting to see me, and I know of no one who did not feel the same. We have come to the end of a dispensation with his passing. Seamus Heaney Poetry Nobel prize for literature theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Qantas: Tony Abbott hints foreign takeover might be allowed Posted: 13 Dec 2013 11:40 PM PST Prime minister suggests Australian majority share rule could be relaxed as airline argues it needs overseas finance to compete Tony Abbott has backed releasing Qantas from restrictions on foreign investment, saying it is not an unreasonable request for the Australian airline to be allowed more than 49% overseas ownership. "Where we can be helpful we will certainly try to be helpful but as I understand it, what Qantas wants is to be unshackled [from the 49% restrictions]," he told the Financial Review newspaper. The prime minister had previously said "the Australian economy would be a stunted impoverished thing without foreign investment", while ruling out the government subsidising the airline or acting as a guarantor for its debt. The Qantas Sale Act 1992, under which the airline was privatised, limits foreign ownership to just under half. The Qantas chief executive, Alan Joyce, has said the airline is not competing on a level playing field, with competitor Virgin receiving a $350m injection from its foreign owners Etihad, Air New Zealand and Singapore Airlines. Qantas has announced it plans to shed 1,000 jobs, impose pay freezes and make cuts across the board as it confronts the prospect of massive losses. Its credit rating was downgraded to junk status by Standard & Poor's after it unveiled half-year losses of $300m and said it needed to cut $2bn from its costs over the next three years. The independent senator Nick Xenophon has challenged Joyce to show one dollar of profit since setting up Jetstar Asia and other offshoots. "If the CEO Alan Joyce and the chairman Lee Clifford go, that will transform the airline because they have presided over monumental strategic mistakes including the failed Jetstar experiment in Asia where they have burned hundreds of millions," he told AAP. "The airline is now vulnerable to a private equity takeover because the share price is so low. The private equity buccaneers are now circling the airline." The Labor MP Matt Thistlethwaite backed the restrictions in the Qantas act. "Given what happened to private equity in the global financial crisis you could probably fairly say if we didn't have the Qantas Sale Act … Qantas would not be here today," he told Sky News. The Liberal Josh Frydenberg MP said Qantas was an iconic Australian brand that should survive and proper. "It would be negligent of us not to investigate the various ways we could help Qantas," he told Sky News. "Ultimately if you were to change the ownership restrictions, that would be an issue for the Australian parliament." Chris Bowen, the Labor shadow treasurer, has said the government could intervene to support Qantas but argued that relaxing the foreign ownership restrictions is not the answer. Its problems accessing capital needed to be minimised and "if there's a role for government to constructively play we would lend our support to the government of the day to do so". Qantas Tony Abbott Australian politics Australia theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

ANC accused of pettiness for excluding Desmond Tutu from Mandela funeral Posted: 13 Dec 2013 10:21 PM PST South Africa's ruling party lambasted for not inviting retired archbishop and old Mandela ally turned fierce government critic Retired archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the most prominent figures in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, has been excluded from the funeral of Nelson Mandela on Sunday in what has been described as a politically motivated snub. Critics accused the governing African National Congress (ANC) of looking petty by apparently failing to invite Tutu, one of the most vocal campaigners for Mandela's release from jail during white minority rule. An estimated 5,000 guests including Prince Charles, Malawian president Joyce Banda and various other dignitaries will attend the state funeral in Qunu, the village where Mandela grew up in Eastern Cape province. Tutu's daughter Mpho, chief executive of the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, said on Friday: "The archbishop is not an accredited clergyperson for the event and will thus not be attending." His office declined to comment further. Against this backdrop of dispute, Mandela's body arrived in the early hours of Saturday at Waterkloof air base for a farewell ceremony held by the African National Congress ahead of being flown on Saturday afternoon to the Eastern Cape. Tutu has become a fierce critic of the ANC in recent years. In 2011 he compared it unfavourably to the apartheid regime and warned that "one day we will pray for the defeat of the ANC government". Eyebrows were raised when Tutu's name did not appear on the order of service for Mandela's national memorial service in Johannesburg on Tuesday. He was eventually invited to speak after the main programme, but by then the stadium was virtually empty. His absence from Sunday's burial, the climax of an unprecedented week of mourning in South Africa, provoked anger and bewilderment. Bantu Holomisa, a former ANC politician close to the Mandela family, said: "There must be a mistake. Why would the government not do that? He should be the first person accredited. It's strange – there must have been a breakdown." Asked if Tutu's attacks on the ANC were the cause, Holomisa replied: "They cannot use that. Mandela and Tutu were like brothers. Mandela had time for Tutu and Tutu had time for Mandela. It doesn't sound good at all." Aubrey Matshiqi, a research fellow at the Helen Suzman Foundation, said: "It's quite sad that he's not been invited. Is it the family or is it the government? Is it both? Did the family come under pressure not to invite him? "It's a very bad decision, given how close they were. In the absence of a convincing explanation, it looks petty." Allister Sparks, a veteran journalist and biographer of Tutu, said: "I don't know what to make of it. I would have thought he belonged there. Tutu has been quite a vocal critic of the ANC. It comes as a surprise and arouses suspicions of a political motivation behind it." Reflecting on Tutu's relationship with Mandela, Sparks added: "They were very close. Through the period when Mandela was in jail, Tutu was effectively the leader of the liberation struggle in this country." Earlier this year Tutu condemned the Mandela family for fighting each other in court while Mandela lay ill in hospital, describing their public battle over his children's reburial place as "almost like spitting in Madiba's face". A spokesman for the Mandelas said: "The family is not involved in who should come and not come at that level. They are busy mourning. It is the state that is encouraging people to attend or not attend. I'm not aware of any exclusion." Government ministers in Qunu on Friday were reluctant to comment on the matter. Dipuo Peters, the transport minister, said: "In African culture we don't invite people to funerals; they say they would like to attend. I don't know about Bishop Tutu - you're giving me news." ANC spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment. The South African government also faced further embarrassment over reports that a sign language interpreter who gesticulated nonsense during Mandela's memorial service once faced a murder charge. A spokesman said officials were examining how Thamsanqa Jantjie was selected to interpret at the event, during which he stood close to Barack Obama and other leaders. The South African television channel eNCA reported on Friday that court records showed he had previously been charged with murder, rape, kidnapping, theft and other charges, although many of the charges were subsequently dropped on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to stand trial. Mandela's last journey will bring sections of Eastern Cape province to a standstill. Commercial flights will be redirected to cities further south and his coffin was expected in the provincial city of Mtatha at nine o'clock on Saturday morning.Roads will then be closed for the funeral cortege, which includes a phalanx of outriders and more than a dozen armoured personnel carriers, to make the short drive to Qunu ahead of his burial on Sunday morning. Preparations for the three-hour funeral have overwhelmed the sleepy village where pigs, goats, sheep and cattle roam around among single story roundhouses. A giant marquee that resembles an early 20th century airship has been erected on Mandela family land to receive guests expects to include dozens of heads of state as well as Prince Charles, Bill Clinton and civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson. Desmond Tutu Nelson Mandela ANC (African National Congress) South Africa Africa David Smith Daniel Howden theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Nelson Mandela funeral: Madiba's remains on way to Qunu Posted: 13 Dec 2013 10:20 PM PST Casket taken to Waterkloof air base for African National Congress ceremony ahead of funeral in Eastern Cape province The remains of Nelson Mandela were transferred in the early hours of Saturday to Waterkloof air base for a farewell from the African National Congress. The military handed over Mandela's flag-draped coffin to the ANC at a solemn ceremony broadcast live on South African television. The proceedings included a multi-faith service and a musical tribute. The remains were to be returned to military control later on Saturday morning, then flown to the Mthatha in Eastern Cape province and greeted by a full military ceremony ahead of the funeral on Sunday. Rituals are to be performed before a motorcade takes the casket from Mthatha to the village of Qunu where Mandela will be buried. The public has been invited to view the cortege as it makes its way to Qunu. The body will be taken to the Mandela family farm, where more rituals are to be performed. A night vigil by the ANC is taking place at Walter Sisulu University in Mthatha on Saturday, with party leaders and government officials honouring Mandela on the eve of his burial. Nelson Mandela South Africa Africa theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Colorado high school gunman shot two students before killing himself Posted: 13 Dec 2013 08:42 PM PST • At least one student injured after gunman opened fire at school • Governor condemns 'all-too familiar, unspeakable horror' Tom McCarthy

Stairwell death case: coroner blames British woman's alcoholism Posted: 13 Dec 2013 08:09 PM PST Findings released in case of Lynne Spalding, whose body was found in hospital 17 days after she disappeared from room A woman found dead in a locked stairwell 17 days after she went missing from her room at San Francisco general hospital died accidentally, probably due to a chemical imbalance related to chronic alcohol abuse, the medical examiner's office has said. Lynne Spalding, 57, had been dead for days when she was found on 8 October inside the hospital building, the San Francisco assistant medical examiner Ellen Moffat said. Spalding had been admitted to the hospital on 19 September with a urinary infection and had been in an altered mental state for one to two months, as well as having lost weight, Moffat's report said. Laboratory test results were consistent with "alcoholic liver disease". Two days after Spalding was admitted she disappeared from her hospital room. According to the coroner's report Spalding had been confused and delirious that day. She did not know the day, time or why she was in hospital. Her remains were not found until 8 October when a maintenance worker walked down the stairwell during his quarterly inspection. Four days earlier a hospital staff member had reported to police seeing a body in a locked stairwell of the building where Spalding had been a patient. A sheriff's dispatcher told hospital officials the department would respond but "there is no indication that any one was dispatched to that stairwell", the sheriff's department has admitted. Several employees with the city sheriff's department, which provides hospital security, were reassigned after Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi acknowledged that a thorough search was never conducted for Spalding. Sheriff's deputies at the hospital did a "perimeter search" of the 9.7ha (24-acre) campus within an hour of Spalding's original disappearance but it was not until 30 September that they attempted a more extensive search of the grounds, Mirkarimi said. The next day, after it became clear that not all the stairwells used as fire exits had been searched, a supervisor ordered the stairwell searches to continue but "only about half the stairwells" ever were, he said. Spalding's death was an accident, the coroner's report said. The cause was listed as "probable electrolyte imbalance with delirium" due to "complications of chronic ethanolism". David Perry, a family spokesman who knew Spalding for six years, said he had been pressing for the report's release for weeks. He denied that Spalding ever had an alcohol problem. "Lynne was certainly not an alcoholic nor was she in any programme that I was aware of," he said. According to the report Spalding's body was clad in street clothes when it was discovered — including a black and white jacket, a black top, black pants and a pair of black boots. There were no signs of injury. An exact time of death was not determined – Perry said this was disappointing. "The only issue is did she die on 21 September or sometime later," he said. "If the answer is she died after 21 September then her family and friends feel that Lynne Spalding was killed through the neglect and malfeasance of San Francisco general hospital and the San Francisco sheriff's department." In a statement released on Friday hospital spokesman Tristan Cook said a number of new measures had been put into place after Spalding's death, including daily stairwell checks and new training for security staff. A hospital spokeswoman said the witness who reported seeing Spalding's body in the stairwell 4 October was a University of California San Francisco researcher. She was interviewed by authorities but the substance of that interview has not been made public. San Francisco United States California theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

US and Chinese warships nearly collide amid tensions over airspace Posted: 13 Dec 2013 07:30 PM PST USS Cowpens was near Liaoning aircraft carrier in South China Sea when another Chinese ship closed in, officials say A US guided missile cruiser operating in international waters in the South China Sea was forced to take evasive action last week to avoid a collision with a Chinese warship, the US Pacific Fleet has revealed. The USS Cowpens had been operating in the vicinity of China's only aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, at a time of heightened tensions in the region following Beijing's declaration of an air defence zone farther north in the East China Sea, a US defence official said. Another Chinese warship came near the Cowpens in the incident on 5 December. The US ship was forced to take evasive action to avoid a collision, the Pacific Fleet said in its statement. "Eventually, effective bridge-to-bridge communications occurred between the US and Chinese crews, and both vessels manoeuvred to ensure safe passage," said a defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The Cowpens had been in the Philippines helping with disaster relief in the aftermath of typhoon Haiyan, which hit the region in November. The US navy said it was in the South China Sea conducting routine "freedom-of-navigation" operations – which are intended to assert the right of passage through a disputed area – when the incident occurred. China sent the Liaoning to the South China Sea in the midsts of the tensions over the air zone, which covers the skies around a group of tiny islands in the East China Sea that are administered by Japan but claimed by Beijing as well. Beijing declared the air zone in November and demanded that aircraft flying through provide flight plans and other information. The United States and its allies rejected the Chinese demand and have continued to fly military aircraft into the zone. Beijing claims most of the South China Sea and is involved in territorial disputes with several of its neighbours in that region as well. Asked if the Chinese vessel had been moving toward the Cowpens with aggressive intent, an official declined to speculate on the motivations of the Chinese crew. "US leaders have been clear about our commitment to develop a stable and continuous military-to-military relationship with China," the official said. US military China US foreign policy United States Asia Pacific theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The blame game: when will it stop being Labor’s fault? Posted: 13 Dec 2013 05:43 PM PST By the time Joe Hockey tries to pin on Labor the numbers in the mid-year economic statement, the voters may not be buying it Lenore Taylor

Chinese scientists accused of trying to steal US seed samples Posted: 13 Dec 2013 05:25 PM PST Prosecutors say two agricultural scientists passed trade secrets to Chinese delegation who were found to have seeds in luggage Two agricultural scientists from China have been accused of conspiring to take seeds from a research facility in Kansas and pass them to a Chinese delegation visiting the United States. At a detention hearing in Arkansas on Friday, a judge ordered one of the scientists, Wengui Yan, to remain in custody. The other scientist, Weiqiang Zhang, is set to have a hearing on Tuesday in Kansas. Yan and Zhang are charged with conspiracy to steal trade secrets. Prosecutors say the pair arranged for a Chinese delegation to visit the US this year and that customs agents later found stolen seeds in the delegation's luggage as it was preparing to return to China. At Friday's hearing, a federal judge ordered Yan, a naturalised US citizen, to remain in custody after prosecutors argued that he could flee the country. Yan's lawyer, Chris Tarver, said Yan had lived in the US for years and that authorities had seized his passport. Zhang's lawyer did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. US magistrate Judge J Thomas Ray acknowledged that Yan has strong ties to Arkansas, but added, "There is a strong inference from the complaint that Dr Yan and his co-defendant were involved in a conspiracy to try to get advanced agricultural technology into the hands of the delegation that they helped to invite into the country." Also this week, prosecutors in Iowa said six men from China, including the CEO of a seed corn subsidiary of a Chinese conglomerate, have been charged with conspiring to steal patented seed corn from two of America's leading seed developers. It was not immediately clear if the cases in Kansas and Iowa were related. Seed developers spend millions of dollars a years to develop new varieties and carefully protect them against theft to maintain a competitive advantage. Yan worked for the Department of Agriculture as a research geneticist at the Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Arkansas, and Zhang worked as an agricultural seed breeder for a biopharmaceutical company that has a production facility in Junction City, Kansas, according to a court document. Prosecutors only identified the business where Zhang worked as Company A, but said the business invested about $75m in technology used to create seeds. "If this technology was compromised or the seeds were stolen, Company A believes its entire research and development investment would be compromised," an FBI special agent wrote in a court document. Zhang allegedly took seeds that his employer had grown and kept them at his home in Kansas. After a Chinese delegation visited the US, customs agents searched its luggage and found stolen seeds in envelopes and also in makeshift containers, including a newspaper page that had been folded in the shape of an envelope, according to court documents. If convicted, Zhang and Yan could face up to 10 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000. United States China Asia Pacific Agriculture theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Drones: can these stealthy killing machines become agents of good? Posted: 13 Dec 2013 03:33 PM PST From spotting sharks to fighting fires, pilotless aircrafts are getting a PR makeover. But privacy and safety concerns remain Paul Daley

Is selling Medibank a good idea? It remains to be seen | Luke Mansillo Posted: 13 Dec 2013 03:00 PM PST Luke Mansillo: A sale of Medibank Private would further entrench wealth inequality in Australia. As it stands, the government has no mandate to do it – this shouldn't be theirs to sell Luke Mansillo

Designer finds growing market for bridal wear created for lesbians Posted: 13 Dec 2013 02:51 PM PST Couples' requests for wedding dresses keeping Helen Bender increasingly busy in her studio in Mainz, Germany In 2011, two of Helen Bender's lesbian friends approached her with a problem. They wanted to enter a civil partnership and throw a big party, but could not figure out what to wear. Neither of them were into dresses, but they did not want to wear trouser suits either: they were women in love with another woman, after all, they said. They also insisted on not seeing each other's clothes before the ceremony. After much counselling, Bender came up with a solution – a gold overall with a jacket and a matching cream-coloured dress of variable length – and soon realised that she had chanced upon an unexpected gap in the market. Requests for on-demand wedding dresses for lesbian couples have been flooding into the 27-year-old's small studio in Mainz, Germany, ever since. And after her label La Mode Abyssale ("fashion without limits") was invited to New York fashion week in September, the international market now beckons too. Because most dressmakers and tailors still tend to cater for heterosexual couples, there is often a tendency to either go for matching outfits, or to recreate the traditional suit/dress combo, Bender said. "But for me the challenge is to go beyond traditional gender roles. You can be so much more creative when dressing a homosexual couple." Now she says she is waiting to be commissioned to work for her first male gay wedding. Germany has allowed registered partnerships for same-sex couples since 2001, and according to the Gay and Lesbian Federation there are currently 37,000 couples who have taken up that option. Unlike in the Netherlands, France or (from late March next year) Britain, gay couples in Germany still do not enjoy the same advantages as married heterosexual couples when it comes to tax and adoption law. In March this year, a bill was passed to establish legal recognition of same-sex marriage, which is now waiting for approval by the parliament. However, there is no commitment to change the law in the coalition agreement. "I think it's a real shame that Germany is so out of step with the rest of Europe in that respect," Bender said. "I feel the people here are more than ready for it – it's just politics that is lagging behind." Bender is set to marry her partner next year, and despite initial resistance, she has agreed to design both outfits. "Mine is going to be a long, cream-coloured dress – that much I can say. The rest is a secret." Wedding dresses Gay marriage Sexuality Gay rights Germany Europe Marriage Weddings Philip Oltermann theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Iran and America: keeping to the bargain | Posted: 13 Dec 2013 02:45 PM PST It would be tragic if the success of the nuclear deal were to be undermined because of short-sighted posturing in either country When countries demonise their opponents as thoroughly as the United States and Iran have demonised each other over the years there are penalties to be paid when the time comes to make a change. Leaders may decide that circumstances have altered, that yesterday's enemy is, if not today's friend, at least somebody with whom it is worth doing business. But around their necks hangs the albatross of adverse public opinion and the prejudice of party rank and file. So it is with the Iran nuclear deal. Both President Obama and President Hassan Rouhani face sceptics not content with mere criticism of the bargain, but seemingly ready to sabotage it. Rouhani had to cope this week with what seemed very much like threats from the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, but at least so far faces no hostile action from the country's legislature. President Obama does, with Republicans and his own Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate in mutinous mood. In both houses there were moves to prepare new sanctions on Iran to come into effect if the interim deal does not lead to the fuller agreement hoped for after six months of further negotiations. Although ostensibly designed to strengthen Washington in those talks, such legislation would almost certainly kill the deal at a stroke. It now seems as if the White House has persuaded some key players in both houses to hold off on these plans. But to do so it has had to send secretary of state John Kerry to argue before them that he is just as mistrustful of the Iranians as they are. America also this week punished companies that have in the past traded with Iran in defiance of US sanctions, presumably to convince critics that the US government is still playing tough. Predictable muttering followed from Tehran. But these are not sanctions, and Iran will not allow them to unravel the deal. That could still happen, however, if Congress meddles again in diplomacy. The context is that a large proportion of American lawmakers and citizens think Iran will cheat, and that it still wants to acquire nuclear weapons. In particular, Americans worry that Iran would hand them to terrorists. Ignorance is in play here, as it seems hugely unlikely that a Shia state would give such power to Sunni extremists. John Kerry has tried to show that negotiating with Iran is not about naively trusting Tehran but about exploring its intentions and shaping its choices. Different though their respective political situations are, Rouhani is saying the same thing in Iran. It would be tragic if this chance were to be thrown away because of short-sighted posturing in either country. US Congress United States US politics Iran Middle East and North Africa Nuclear weapons Editorial theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Italy's Pitchfork protests unsettle country's traditional politics – in pictures Posted: 13 Dec 2013 02:25 PM PST A wave of demonstrations by disparate groups unite under the banner Il Forconi (Pitchforks) to protest against the Italian government's austerity measures Bridget Coaker

Missing CIA operative failed by US government, family says Posted: 13 Dec 2013 02:21 PM PST • Robert Levinson's family to Obama: 'Time to step up' • White House says it cannot comment on CIA revelations Ed Pilkington Spencer Ackerman Saeed Kamali Dehghan

Economic austerity: the island of Ireland | Editorial Posted: 13 Dec 2013 02:13 PM PST European austerity has its poster boy. But Ireland's story has few parallels with other nations, where there is more rage in the air European austerity finally has its poster boy, as Ireland demonstrates that bailout is not a permanent state, by exiting its emergency deal with the "Troika" of international financial institutions. We can expect George Osborne, who used to cite the Republic as an example of low-tax virtue up until it collapsed, to start mentioning it once again. But there are, in truth, few serious parallels with Britain. After a disastrous promise to protect banks with the public purse in 2008, previously-prudent Dublin was suddenly bust. No one but Europe and the IMF would finance it at all, a predicament the UK never approached. Whereas the Republic was locked into the single currency, Britain could and did price itself back into world markets by letting its currency sink. Remarkably, membership of the euro remained consensual through these punishing times, and within that constraint, it truly could be said of Ireland, as it never could of Britain, that there was no alternative. Supposed "lessons for Britain" here are thus point-scoring rhetoric; the serious question is what – if anything – Ireland has to teach Portugal and Greece, nations still under the Troika's yoke. A couple of years ago, there were Irish citizens who would protect their mental health by routinely switching radio stations whenever the headlines came on. Against that background, Taoiseach Enda Kenny is naturally keen to make the most of a moment of good news. He will deliver a declaration of independence on television on Sunday night, a good moment for his standing at home, no doubt, and one that will have leaders in Athens and Lisbon looking on in envy. But under the heartening symbolism of a free state restored, a host of troubling statistics remain, after five years of budgeting by bludgeon. Previously low public debt remains well in excess of national income, and although Dublin is currently proudly financing this through private means, any fresh bout of market jitters could send it back to the emergency room. The unemployment rate remains in double digits, and in a few short years, one young man in every 10 has left the country. The human toll has been devastating. Nonetheless, from jobs to GDP the data is now finally suggesting a corner has been turned. Does that imply that as long as you swallow enough of the pain, the gain will arrive in the end? There is no such certainty. Keynes acknowledged how, in very particular circumstances, it might be possible to deflate out of recession. His contention was not that austerity could never work, but rather that it could only do so through a tortuous mechanism, which could go wrong at several points. It might, for example, simply not be possible to cut wages, if enough workers took to the streets; it might be impossible to get anyone spending at all if scared consumers were bent on clinging on to their cash; and, however much money gets squirrelled in banks, businesses are never going to borrow it to invest if expectations are stubbornly depressed. In short, while austerity is always painful, its efficacy is entirely contingent. Ireland was probably better-placed than some other countries to avoid the many traps laid by austerity. The role of foreign firms in sectors like high-tech makes overall investment less dependent on animal spirits at home. And beyond business psychology, there is the wider stoic psychology of a traditionally poor, property-owning population that never quite believed in its boomtime riches. An idiosyncratic party system, dominated by two centre-right parties, allowed voters to let off steam in 2011 by obliterating one government without fundamentally changing the course. Austerity's triumph in Ireland is still not assured, and – even if it comes – it will have extracted a terrible price. The tale of an island that has suffered in silence has little read-across to other lands, where there is more rage in the air. Austerity Economics Ireland Europe Enda Kenny George Osborne Editorial theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

NSA deputy director John Inglis to retire at end of year Posted: 13 Dec 2013 01:54 PM PST Top civilian had been tipped for top job at scandal-hit agency which Barack Obama now has chance to fully reshape Spencer Ackerman

Weatherwatch: Our severe gales are not hurricanes, but they can be as deadly Posted: 13 Dec 2013 01:30 PM PST In December 1999, Cyclone Anatol struck northern Europe, leaving a trail of damage across Denmark and Germany. Anatol's winds gusted at over 110mph, equivalent to a Category One hurricane, but technically it was an extra-tropical cyclone, or European windstorm. These storms are circular like hurricanes, but lack the structures of true hurricanes, such as the relatively calm eye at the centre with its surrounding eyewall of dense storm cloud. The Met Office refers to them as "severe gales". Europe typically suffers four or five wind storms a year, when deep low-pressure areas move in from the Atlantic. They tend to curve northwards, so Northern European countries, including the UK, are most commonly hit. Few are as powerful as Anatol, but they cause immense economic damage, ranking second only to North American hurricanes for insurance losses. The storm at the start of this month, known as Xaver, caused a major storm surge which threatened to submerge coastal areas. There has not yet been a full assessment, but insurance industry commentators suggest that effective flood defences will keep claims comparatively low. Of the 20 most damaging European storms ever, two have been in October, five in December, nine in January and four in February. In December 1999, Anatol was only the start. Lothar and Martin arrived on the 26th and 27th, killing more than 100 people across Europe and leaving three million without electricity. Weather Flooding Hurricanes Natural disasters and extreme weather David Hambling theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Oil workers massacred in Iraqi town of Muqdadiya in al-Qaida-style attack Posted: 13 Dec 2013 01:01 PM PST 18 oil and gas workers, mainly Iranians, killed and 8 others wounded, amid Iraq's worst spate of violence in five years Masked gunmen shot dead 18 oil and gas workers, most of them Iranians, outside the north-eastern Iraqi town of Muqdadiya on Friday, witnesses and officials said. One worker wounded in the assault told Reuters the attackers arrived in three cars as he and his colleagues were digging a trench to extend a pipeline. "Three of them got out of a car and started firing on the workers inside and outside the trench," said Ibrahem Aziz by phone from hospital. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the assault, but officials said it bore the hallmarks of the Iraqi affiliate of al-Qaida which has carried out a string of attacks amid the country's worst spate of violence in five years. Fifteen Iranians and three Iraqis were killed and a total of eight other workers wounded, medical and local officials said. Iran signed a deal in July to build a pipeline and import gas into Iraq to fuel power plants in Baghdad and Diyala province, where the attack took place. In a separate incident, at least five people were killed and 14 wounded when a car bomb exploded in southern Baghdad's outskirts of Nahrawan, police said. A further six people were killed in a car bomb explosion in the town of Madaen, south of Baghdad, police said. Iraq Al-Qaida Oil Middle East and North Africa Oil and gas companies Energy industry theguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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