World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk |
- Bangladeshi workers still missing eight months after Rana Plaza collapse
- Can you be too happy? | Philippa Perry
- Draff to dram: water cleanser created in chance study of whisky byproduct | Mark Tran
- Half a million face Christmas without power in north-east US and Canada
- 2014 in film preview: drama
- Scores rescued as homes flooded
- Antarctic expedition stranded as ship gets stuck in ice
- Christmas on ice: scientists retrace steps of great Antarctic explorer
- Autistic adults deserve the care – and recognition – we all do
- Teenager sets record for fastest trek from Antarctic coast to south pole
- Woman stabbed on her way to midnight mass in Sydney
- Uncapping university places no help to Indigenous, rural and remote students
- Storms across Britain leave five dead and Christmas travel in chaos
- Nasa astronauts complete ISS Christmas Eve spacewalk
- Macy's has a secret black Santa – for those who know how to ask
- Egypt arrests Morsi's former prime minister
- South Sudan: UN security council increases troops to 12,500
- Bill de Blasio's daughter reveals struggles with drugs and depression
- South Sudan mass graves discovered, UN says
- Eyewitness: Buckinghamshire
- David Cameron's Christmas message from Afghanistan – video
- Edward Snowden to broadcast Channel 4's alternative Christmas Day message
- Legal changes could put Canada's sex workers at further risk | Emer O'Toole
- 10 photo highlights of the day
| Bangladeshi workers still missing eight months after Rana Plaza collapse Posted: 25 Dec 2013 01:00 AM PST  Anger among relatives of victims who say authorities have not handed back bodies and are not paying them compensation Almost 200 workers are still missing from the Bangladesh factory that collapsed eight months ago, compounding the misery for relatives who have received little in the way of compensation. More than 1,134 people died in the disaster on 24 April, mainly workers making clothes for sale on western high streets by retailers including Matalan, Primark and other household names. The tragedy was the worst industrial accident anywhere in the world for a generation. The failure to finalise the death toll and to unite bereaved relatives with the remains of their loved ones will raise questions about the capacity of local authorities to effect the wide-ranging reforms of the garment industry that brands, campaigners, labour activists, consumers and local officials all say are necessary. The garment industry employs around four million people in Bangladesh and produces 80% of the country's exports. In the days after the tragedy, more than 800 bodies were visually identified by relatives or by identity cards or other personal possessions, officials said. Their families received 20,000 taka (£160) for immediate funeral expenses from the local administration and later a further sum of at least 100,000 taka (£790) from a special fund set up by the Bangladeshi prime minister's office. Relatives of victims who were identified have also received payment of outstanding wages by the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) and sums equivalent to monthly wage payments from Primark, the British retailer which sold clothes made in Rana Plaza. But those people whose family members are still officially missing have received almost nothing. "I am still waiting for any compensation. They found my daughter's phone but nothing else, even though she had her identity card on her," said Abu Kashem Mollah, who last saw his daughter Pervin when she left their one-room home to walk to the factory where she and 3,600 others spent 10 hours each day stitching clothes for western retailers. Mollah recalls that both he and his daughter were worried on the day of the accident. The previous day workers had been sent home early when cracks had been discovered in the walls of the nine-storey building. "I asked her if she had to go … and she said that if she didn't go her pay would be blocked," Mollah, 57, said. An hour later the news that one of the hundreds of garment factories in the neighbourhood had collapsed spread through its choked, narrow streets. Fearing the worst, Mollah ran to his daughter's workplace. Half of the building had fallen in. He found no trace of her. He has found nothing since. "I have searched frantically. I have given DNA samples. I have given my phone number again and again at many different offices and to many different people but no one has contacted me. I can't understand it," he said. Authorities are not always sympathetic. Officials at the BGMEA suggested that many claims were fraudulent. Mainuddin Khandakar, a senior home ministry official and author of a government report into the tragedy, blamed the victim's families. "Even if there are some missing, that is because these are village people who are unclear about how they can properly trace [their relatives]," he said. Most of the victims were young women from poverty-stricken rural areas who had come to Dhaka in search of work. Their relatives are ill-equipped to tackle Bangladesh's tortuous bureaucracy. Though his daughter had completed secondary education, Mollah is illiterate and relies on his remaining children to decipher official documents. But there are other explanations for his failure to find his daughter's body. In the aftermath of the tragedy, technicians at Bangladesh's only DNA testing laboratory, a small facility set up and funded by the German government, were only able to take samples from half the 324 unidentified bodies buried by a local NGO at Dhaka's Jurain cemetery. Without more samples "further answers cannot be found," said Sharif Akhteruzzaman, who runs the laboratory. There is another possibility too. In the chaos immediately after the collapse, many bodies were misidentified and handed over to the wrong families, according to Akhteruzzaman. "When we investigated one particular claim we looked at four samples, and found three [of these four] bodies had been handed to the wrong relatives … so you can understand how far misidentification is possible," he told the Guardian. Such continuing confusion has led to rumours that the government secretly disposed of hundreds of bodies to conceal the true toll of the collapse and limit compensation schemes. Negotiations are still continuing to establish the amount of compensation western retailers that were supplied by the factories in Rana Plaza will pay to survivors and families. In September the global union IndustriALL called a meeting of some of the world's largest retailers in Geneva to discuss a £47.2m compensation fund for the workers injured in the disaster, and the families of those who died. Only nine brands using clothes from the factory attended. Union officials close to the talks say they are hopeful, however, that a deal will be concluded early next year. An office has also been opened to help relatives and survivors by the Ministry of Labour in the suburb of Savar where the tragedy occurred. However, Massoum Billah, its co-ordinator, said he "had no real idea" what was being done to resolve the problem of the missing. Mollah, the bereaved father of Pervin, said he simply hoped to return to his village, 150 miles from Dhaka, soon. "As soon as I have sorted this out I will leave," he said. "There is nothing here for me now. Pervin went into work that day and they killed her." 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       |
| Can you be too happy? | Philippa Perry Posted: 25 Dec 2013 01:00 AM PST  Jane Austen understood that the search for meaning in one's life may be more satisfying than the pursuit of happiness Is it possible to be too happy? When faced with such an existential question I usually go to my favourite psychologist, Jane Austen. "'Tis too much … by far too much … Oh! Why is not everybody as happy?" says Jane Bennett on first seeing her sister after Mr Bingley had proposed in Pride and Prejudice. Jane is a caring person, very mindful of others' feelings and at this moment she is very happy indeed. But Jane is aware that others around her may not be as happy and that it may be possible that she is too happy for them. We may sometimes make a brave show of pretending not to care what others think, but who would not, like Jane, be mindful if their mood was substantially different, was too happy, for others in their group? The things that make us happiest are our social relationships – happiness is a good friend. And the more empathetic we are to others the better friendships we are likely to have. This means we need to be able to relate to others' states of being when they are less than happy and if we are unable or unwilling to do this then that is what I would call being too happy. Jane, of course, has nothing really to worry about. She may have feared being too happy, but others are so happy for her that her happiness is neither too much for them nor is it for us. We might also be so happy that we are not worrying enough about everyday concerns. When Jane's father, Mr Bennett, makes a joke about the personalities of Jane and Bingley he could be hinting at the disadvantages of too much happiness brought about by being so easy-going. "You are each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so easy, that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will always exceed your income." Psychologists from the University of Virginia in 2007 seem to be of the same mind as Mr Bennett. Their paper suggests that, although happiness generally leads to success, higher levels of happiness do not lead to more success, at least not in a material sense. They found that people with the highest level of happiness are the most successful in terms of close relationships, but those with slightly lower levels of happiness are the most successful in terms of income, education and political participation. This suggests that in order to strive we need to feel a lack of some kind. Emily Esfahani Smith used the phrase: "There's more to life than being happy." She was examining research carried out at Stanford University in the US looking at the differences between leading a happy life and a meaningful one. Of course, there are many overlaps, but there are also distinct differences between the two groups. People who emphasised having a happy life more than a meaningful one tended on the whole to be takers who lived mainly in the present, whereas those who valued meaning over happiness tended to be givers who also thought about the past and the future as well. Jane Austen again: this is Anne Elliot, the heroine of Persuasion, thinking about her sisters-in-law, the Musgrove sisters: "Anne always contemplated them as some of the happiest creatures of her acquaintance; but … she would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments." Yes, Austen definitely understood that there is more to life than being happy. 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       This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Draff to dram: water cleanser created in chance study of whisky byproduct | Mark Tran Posted: 25 Dec 2013 01:00 AM PST  Leigh Cassidy explains how her grain research led to a system which can purify water poisoned by arsenic in Bangladesh A project to remove arsenic from groundwater in Bangladesh began by accident, when Dr Leigh Cassidy from Aberdeen University was working on technology to treat industrially contaminated water in the UK. Cassidy, who was working on her Phd, thought draff, the residue of barley husks that is a byproduct of using grain in brewing alcohol products such as whisky, would act as a cleansing agent. The idea was brusquely dismissed by one colleague. "I was told 'don't be stupid it will never work'," Cassidy says. "But someone else said to go ahead." Cassidy did indeed go ahead, modifying the draff with a secret ingredient, transforming it into a cleansing agent. She is now credited as the inventor of the appropriately named Dram – she admits to trying to think of a clever name. Dram is short for device for the remediation and attenuation of multiple pollutants. Instead of using draff in Bangladesh, Dram will use local ingredients such as coconut shells or rice husks to act as the organic filter media that traps the arsenic. The arsenic crisis in Bangladesh is considered by the World Health Organisation to be the largest mass poisoning of a population in human history. About 77 million people are at risk of arsenic poisoning despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in addressing the problem. One in five deaths in Bangladesh are due to arsenic poisoning. Dram works using a stainless steel unit connected to contaminated water in a tubewell. The water is pumped into the bottom of the unit where it rises up through a bed of the organic filter media, binding the arsenic. Clean water is displaced and forced out of the top of the unit and through the built-in tap. PurifAid, a Canadian social enterprise based in Toronto, Canada, founded by Shahreen Reza, who is of Bangladeshi origin, is working with Brac, the Bangladeshi NGO, to deploy Dram in Bangladesh. PurifAid is using a $100,000 (£60,000) award from Grand Challenges Canada to start the project in Bangladesh as soon as the political situation calms down. Tension is high in the country before the scheduled January elections. Reza had been thinking of a water purification scheme for Bangladesh ever since she was a student at the prestigious Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris in 2010 and found out about Dram on the web. She is drawn to the device because of its simplicity and requires no change in behaviour from villagers. "The water is decontaminated at a rate of 1,000 litres an hour, which is at industrial levels," Reza says. "The filter, which must be replaced every four to six months, can be used as biofuel and the units only need a simple cleaning every four to five months." PurifAid plans to use a franchise business model for Dram. Local villagers will filter and deliver purified water, perform maintenance, acquire new filters, and dispose the used ones. Dram's designers say it removes 95% of arsenic from contaminated water within five minutes of exposure and claim it is cheaper to manufacture than existing alternatives such as the Sono Filter, the market leader, which sells for about $40. No price has been decided yet for Dram, but it is expected to cost about $10. Villagers are expected to invest collectively to purchase, install and operate Dram on existing tube wells. 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       |
| Half a million face Christmas without power in north-east US and Canada Posted: 25 Dec 2013 12:42 AM PST At least 24 deaths linked to ice storm as authorities warn of dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning       |
| Posted: 25 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST  We're getting mighty serious on the fifth day of our 10-part series previewing the key movies of 2014 Jane Got a Gun
Two Days, One Night
True StoryWe know James Franco can do drama if he wants to. We know Jonah Hill can, too, after Moneyball and The Wolf of Wall Street. This, though, looks a touch more ambitious than either has yet attempted: an adaptation of Michael Finkel's memoir about having his name appropriated by an FBI Most Wanted List murderer living abroad. Think Identity Thief, but with even fewer laughs. Felicity Jones and - of course! - Gretchen Mol co-star. Inherent Vice
Winter's TaleAkiva Goldsman's latest looks like a mildly-bonkers mix of Benjamin Button, Autumn in New York and A Beautiful Mind. It reunites that last film's Jennifer Connolly and Russell Crowe and adds Colin Farrell as a modern day amnesiac and a turn-of-the-century burglar. Russ is his olde worlde love rival with wild Irish accent. Men, Women and ChildrenAn adaptation of the Chad Kultgen novel about the affect of porn and the internet on modern-day relationships, this features Emma Thompson on voiceover duties and, in the lead, Adam Sandler, hopefully back on his Punch-Drunk Love/Funny People beat. Jennifer Garner co-stars; Juno, her previous collaboration with Jason Reitman (maybe returning to more familiar territory after Labor Day), earned her great reviews and, by dint of its popularity, her biggest payday yet. RudderlessA Sundance premiere beckons for the prodigiously-talented William H Macy's tale of a grieving father who forms a band inspired by his dead son's demo tapes. Mrs Macy, Felicity Huffman, is also in the cast, likewise youngsters such as Selena Gomez, Jamie Chung and Anton Yelchin. This is Macy's directorial debut, but here is a man it's hard not to place your faith in. Foxcatcher
The CutSince his breakthrough role in A Prophet, Tahar Rahim has demonstrated an uncannily good eye fora script, as well as working with some of the best directors around. Now, coming off the back of Our Children, The Past and Grand Central, he's starring in the latest from Head-On's Fatih Akin, a man who can make even the most niche music documentary compelling. There's not a lot known about this one, other than that it deals with "the devil, or the inherent evil of mankind". Okey-cokey! The Judge
Grace of Monaco
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       |
| Scores rescued as homes flooded Posted: 24 Dec 2013 11:47 PM PST Environment Agency issues 130 flood warnings across England and Wales as rescue services take people to safety       |
| Antarctic expedition stranded as ship gets stuck in ice Posted: 24 Dec 2013 11:02 PM PST Scientists and explorers on Spirit of Mawson voyage will spend Christmas and Boxing Day awaiting rescue       |
| Christmas on ice: scientists retrace steps of great Antarctic explorer Posted: 24 Dec 2013 11:00 PM PST  A century after Douglas Mawson almost lost his life mapping unknown Antarctic regions, scientists are repeating and extending many of his wildlife and weather observations In the early hours of Christmas Day 1912 the Antarctic explorer and scientist Douglas Mawson was trekking across the endless plateau of the frozen continent with his companion, Xavier Mertz. They were hundreds of miles from base camp and, 10 days earlier, they had been struck by tragedy when the third member of their team, the British officer Belgrave Ninnis, had fallen into a crevasse with his sledge and died. "We wished each other merry Christmases in the future," Mawson wrote in his diary on 25 December. "I found two bits of biscuit in my bag so we had a piece each. We started at 2.30am, did 10 miles on a course WNW (general), rising for about 3 miles." They had lost most of their food along with Ninnis and, to stay alive, Mawson and Mertz had started eating their sledging dogs. At 9.30am on Christmas morning, exhausted from their overnight trek, they set up camp and heated up their meagre Christmas dinner. "An ounce each of butter was served out from our small stock to give a festive touch to the dog-stew," wrote Mawson in his account of the original Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE). Almost 50 people – half of them scientists, half of them paying members of the public who volunteer as assistants on the research projects – have been sailing through the Southern Ocean on board the Shokalskiy research ship, repeating and extending many of Mawson's wildlife and weather observations in order to build a picture of how this part of the world had changed in the past 100 years. Mawson's records are one of the earliest and most valuable scientific datasets that exist about Antarctica. Despite the unfolding horror of his trek over the Christmas of 1912, he continued this work – even after Mertz died two weeks after Christmas; no one knew at the time that the dog livers they were eating contained toxic levels of vitamin A and Mertz succumbed to a fever, probably caused by the poisoning. After a month of trekking alone, Mawson got back to his base camp in February 1913, just a few days after his ship, the Aurora, had left Antarctica for the winter. With a small team, Mawson was stuck on the ice for a year longer than he had planned. All the time, he carried on making scientific measurements of the area. But the visit, a century on, to sites such as Mawson's "Penguin Hill" discovered that there had a been decline in numbers of Adelie penguins, a problem most likely due to changing ice patters in the region, a predominance of unbroken fast ice that means the local colony no longer had easy access to the open sea to feed. Direct access from the sea has been impossible for the past four years, however, ever since a 75-mile-long iceberg called B09B grounded itself in the entrance to Commonwealth Bay. A thick band of sea ice has since built up around the iceberg, sticking fast to the land and blocking ships from getting to Boat Harbour, where Mawson moored the Aurora in January 1912. Until last week, no-one knew if the "fast ice" was safe enough to get across with surface vehicles. The Shokalskiy arrived at the Antarctic coast just over a week ago and, after several days of scouting, the scientists on board plotted a potential 40 mile (70km) route across fast ice from the ship to Cape Denison. A small group left the ship at 6am on last Thursday morning to make the cold, uncomfortable journey – the farthest ever driven across a patch of sea ice – using small all-terrain vehicles that could also float in the event the sea ice underneath their tracks broke. "Getting to the huts was something we've worked so hard for these last two years," said Turney. "It's amazing how all those years of preparation tunnel down to this few days where, if the conditions aren't in your favour, it's game over." Their five-hour journey was riddled with stops as the vehicles got trapped in sludgy pools of melted ice and snow, but they made it to Mawson's huts by lunchtime, staying on site for 12 hours before making the arduous journey back to the ship. A second group made the same journey on Friday. Turney said he felt not only a sense of relief at reaching the huts, but also a good deal of emotion at reaching the place that was the inspiration behind his own AAE. "This is a place I've lived at in my dreams for the last two years," he said. "It's almost as close to a holy ground as you could get on this trip." Six scientists made it to Cape Denison over two days and they used their limited time, among other projects, to record how the presence of large swaths of fast ice caused by B09B, where there should be open ocean, has caused a collapse in the ecology of the local seabed. They also found that the many nearby colonies of Adelie penguins have suffered – these birds need access to the ocean to feed and the nearest shoreline is more than 60km away, because of the fast ice. The scientist were also accompanied by a conservation team that carried out maintenance work on Mawson's huts themselves, century-old buildings that have become icons of the original expedition and which have not been properly visited since 2011, due to the problems with access. Turney's team had hoped to repeat more of Mawson's measurements at Cape Denison but the difficulty in getting to the site meant they had to cut down their research programme. Glaciologist Chris Fogwill, for example, tried to drill an ice core above Cape Denison – these cores are filled with ancient air bubbles that provide a record of the Earth's atmosphere over several thousand years – but the conditions on the day were not quite right to do it properly. "The problem was that it was so warm at the time, the water was flowing over the surface and re-freezing when you were drilling down any depth," said Turney. "I'd love to go at a different time of year – who knows what climate record is in that, that's got huge potential." Beyond the Antarctic coastline, scientists on board the Shokalskiy have been busy with research that has, so far, included everything from measuring the temperature and salinity of the surface layers of the Southern Ocean to counting its bird populations and deploying robotic probes and buoys to map long-term information about ocean currents and temperatures. On the two-week return journey to New Zealand, the scientists will continue their study of the ocean and, at the half-way point of the return journey at the sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island, Turney will also drill a metre into the sea bed to extract a core of the sediments there, which should provide details of how the sea environment has changed over the past few thousand years. His teams will also measure sea temperatures in the area, work that Mawson did on the original AAE but which has only been repeated once since, in the 1950s. In just over a week, the modern AAE will pull into port in Bluff, New Zealand. Meanwhile, Turney knows that the carefully-made plans for the final few days of work could change at any second, depending on the conditions at sea or on the lands they visit. But that is just a consequence of working in the Antarctic, according to Turney. "You've got to treat the land and ice and environment you're in with an enormous amount of respect, which you don't have to do when you're back home in the civilised world, where you can get away with almost being unaware of your environment and you'll survive," he said. "Here you can't do that, you have to be so careful all the time. In a way, that's also lovely – it's not often that you just make observations about the landscape you're in and understand that landscape. It's an incredible privilege and honour to be out in these environments." 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       |
| Autistic adults deserve the care – and recognition – we all do Posted: 24 Dec 2013 09:00 PM PST At graduation they wouldn't even call my sister's paper a diploma because she's special needs       |
| Teenager sets record for fastest trek from Antarctic coast to south pole Posted: 24 Dec 2013 08:22 PM PST Environmental campaigner Parker Liautaud, 19, becomes the youngest man to have skied to the pole after 18-day journey       |
| Woman stabbed on her way to midnight mass in Sydney Posted: 24 Dec 2013 07:09 PM PST Witnesses called police and followed man to a block of units in city's east after 44-year-old attacked       |
| Uncapping university places no help to Indigenous, rural and remote students Posted: 24 Dec 2013 04:34 PM PST Review shows more Commonwealth supported uni places didn't lead to more students from under-represented groups       |
| Storms across Britain leave five dead and Christmas travel in chaos Posted: 24 Dec 2013 02:24 PM PST  Deaths linked to severe weather rise as rail, road, air and ferry disruptions hit thousands trying to get away for Christmas Five people have died since Monday and thousands have had Christmas disrupted after the UK was battered by strong winds and heavy rain causing widespread chaos to rail, road, air and ferry travel. Hundreds of travellers were left stranded at Gatwick airport because of cancelled flights and power cuts at the airport, and emergency services evacuated homes near the River Mole in Surrey, which was expected to rise to record levels late on Christmas Eve. The Environment Agency issued a severe flood warning for Leatherhead in Surrey, where the Mole was expected to reach a peak just before midnight on Tuesday. Firefighters in Kent and Surrey broke off from a planned Christmas Eve strike to help people deal with flooding in their counties. Angry travellers at Gatwick had to be calmed by police after waiting all day before finding that their delayed flights were cancelled. All rail services to and from Gatwick stopped at 10pm for planned engineering work. A spokesman for Gatwick airport said that staff were trying to do all they could to find hotel rooms or camp beds for the "few hundred" people who were stranded. Several thousand homes in the south east were expected to be without electricity on Christmas Day. A spokesman for UK Power Networks said that 300,000 people in England suffered power cuts at some point because of the weather but that all but several thousand customers in the south east would be re-connected by Christmas Day. In Scotland, winds of up to 80mph caused further disruption on Christmas Eve, leaving some 800 homes without power in the north of Scotland. Earlier, torrential downpours made conditions hazardous in many places. Three people died in rain-swollen rivers, including two men in Cumbria and Devon who were trying to rescue their dogs. Simon Martindale, 48, from Hest Bank in Lancaster, fell into the river Rothesay in Ambleside, Cumbria, on Monday afternoon in an attempt to save his dog. The body of a 46-year-old man was pulled from the river Lemon, in Newton Abbot, Devon, after he too attempted to rescue his dog. A woman in Gwynedd, north Wales, was recovered from a fast-flowing river after she left her house to check on her water supply. The body of a man was also found in a stream by a dog walker in Horton, Telford, just before 9am on Tuesday, but West Mercia police could not immediately confirm his identity. In Shrewsbury, Shropshire, a woman died on Monday night after a three-car crash in what emergency services described as difficult driving conditions. With trains cancelled or severely delayed on a number of rail networks, crews have been working to clear storm debris from lines and repair power cables. There is currently a limited train service to Gatwick airport, south of London, which has also seen some flights cancelled or delayed by a storm-caused power problem in the north terminal. The Environment Agency has 157 flood warnings in force, meaning flooding is expected, principally in the south-east and south-west of England, and a further 273 lower-level flood alerts. The Met Office has amber weather warnings in place for the west of Scotland and Northern Isles, cautioning of winds gusting to 90mph, with less severe warnings for wind and snow across all Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as parts of north Wales and northern England. Conditions will ease into Christmas Day, and Boxing Day will be calmer still, but another front of strong winds and heavy rain is forecast to hit much of the UK on Friday. The cumulative effect of the tempestuous conditions has been to severely hamper many people's Christmas getaways, albeit with the chaos alleviated by the fact this year's travel rush has been spread out, with many people making their trips at the end of last week or over the weekend. Flights were badly affected on Monday night, with a number diverted to alternative airports due to the storm. Passengers recounted storm-tossed descents into airports including Gatwick, Heathrow and Bristol, with some planes diverted at the last moment. One passenger on a flight from Stockholm to Heathrow told the BBC "everyone thought they were going to die", with the plane being "thrown about like a toy". While most airports were operating normally, passengers were advised to check with airlines before travelling. Gatwick's north terminal remained affected by the power cut, with delays to check-in and bags being loaded manually as conveyor belts had no power, while storm damage meant for a period there were no trains at all to the airport, with both Gatwick Express and Southern services suspended while repairs to the line were made. Gatwick's south terminal was operating normally. Some tempers were fraying among delayed passengers. Graziella Vella, a 37-year-old makeup artist from Kilburn in north-west London, was due to fly to Malta to spend Christmas with her family. She said: "I am fuming and absolutely desperate – there has been no information at all and we can't make alternative plans. We're just hanging in limbo. At least if they said: 'Nothing is going to happen, come back tomorrow', but there is no information of any kind. It is absolutely chock-a-block and in the check-in room upstairs there are 50 people queuing for the one toilet that is working." Deborah Oliver, 57, was bracing herself for the possibility of not seeing her 81-year-old parents on Christmas Day after her flight from Gatwick to Edinburgh was cancelled. "I've been here since 6.30am and you just want to get home for Christmas," she said. "My flight was at 8.25am and we've just had so little information. We've not even been offered a cup of tea. It's just such a shame. You just think: 'What the heck can I do?'. It's seeing my parents and it means a lot to see them at Christmas." Many other rail lines were less severely affected, including South West Trains, First Great Western, East Coast, Virgin and local services in Wales and the Midlands. Travellers on a First Great Western service to Plymouth spent the night stranded at Taunton in Devon. Passengers tweeted photos of their "bed for the night" – a seat – but praised train staff for their assistance. On the roads, the Highways Agency reported a number of routes closed or subject to delays as a result of flooding, fallen trees or other incidents, with areas affected including Kent, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and Cornwall. In Dorset fire crews had to rescue 25 people trapped in their cars by floods. Many ferry services remained disrupted, including services between Scotland and Northern Ireland, and to the Isle of Man. The port of Dover had to close overnight due to the strong winds but reopened at 7.30am. 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       |
| Nasa astronauts complete ISS Christmas Eve spacewalk Posted: 24 Dec 2013 01:44 PM PST The replacement of a damaged cooling pump means a third repair spacewalk will not have to be conducted.       |
| Macy's has a secret black Santa – for those who know how to ask Posted: 24 Dec 2013 01:20 PM PST Macy's tries hard to maintain the fiction that there is 'only one Santa Claus,' but customers in the know can call for 'special' Santa       |
| Egypt arrests Morsi's former prime minister Posted: 24 Dec 2013 01:07 PM PST  Hisham Kandil held while trying to flee to Sudan, according to interior ministry Egyptian security forces arrested the former prime minister of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi on Tuesday. Hisham Kandil had been sentenced to one year in prison for failing to implement a court ruling to renationalise a textile firm. "Security forces managed to arrest Hisham Kandil, former prime minister, in carrying out a court order issued against him. He was caught in a mountain area with smugglers trying to flee to Sudan," Egypt's interior ministry said in a statement. Kandil was appointed in July 2012 by Morsi after he won Egypt's first democratic elections that followed the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. Morsi was ousted by the army in July after protests against his rule. The judgment against Kandil was issued in April 2012, while Morsi was still in office and was upheld by a higher court in September. The case related to the sale during the Mubarak era of a state-owned firm to a private investor. The arrest came as the death toll in a suicide bomb attack on a security compound in Nile Delta reached 15. 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  |
| South Sudan: UN security council increases troops to 12,500 Posted: 24 Dec 2013 12:35 PM PST UN security council resolution, adopted unanimously also called for 'an immediate cessation of hostilities'       |
| Bill de Blasio's daughter reveals struggles with drugs and depression Posted: 24 Dec 2013 10:23 AM PST Daughter of New York mayor-elect Bill de Blasio talks about battle with substance abuse and depression in online PSA       |
| South Sudan mass graves discovered, UN says Posted: 24 Dec 2013 10:13 AM PST  Graves discovered at two different sites, while senior official said emerging civil war's death toll had run 'into the thousands' The United Nations said on Tuesday that it had found three mass grave sites in two different parts of South Sudan, while a senior official said the death toll in the country's emerging civil war had run "into the thousands". UN human rights investigators, who have faced some criticism in South Sudan at their inactivity since the crisis began on 15 December, said they had identified sites in a rebel-held northern state and in the capital, Juba. In New York the UN Security Council was due to vote on a new mandate to boost its peacekeeping force from about 7,000 to 12,500 following a call by secretary general Ban Ki-moon. Meanwhile forces loyal to the president, Salva Kiir, claimed they had retaken Bor, a strategically important town in the vast Jonglei state that was among the first to fall under rebel control last week. The reports of mass graves strengthen fears that the death toll in the conflict will grow. UN officials said 14 bodies were found in a single grave in Bentiu, capital of Unity State, and 20 more on a riverbank nearby. Earlier in the day the UN in Geneva had said that 75 bodies had been found but this was later revised to 34, with 75 feared missing and presumed dead. A UN spokeswoman said that the victims appeared to be soldiers from the Sudan Peoples' Liberation army, the national military. They were reportedly ethnic Dinka, the tribe of President Kiir. South Sudan's minister of information, Michael Makuei Lueth, said Bentiu was under the control of rebels loyal to the country's former vice president, Riek Machar, who is Nuer. The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, called on both sides to protect civilians and warned that political and military leaders could be held to account for crimes. "Mass extrajudicial killings, the targeting of individuals on the basis of their ethnicity and arbitrary detentions have been documented in recent days," Pillay said in a statement. "We have discovered a mass grave in Bentiu, in Unity State, and there are reportedly at least two other mass graves in Juba." The violence began after a fight between Dinka and Nuer soldiers in the presidential guard on 15 December, igniting a simmering political power struggle in South Sudan's ruling party and sparking widespread ethnic killings. UN officials said the death toll has risen above 1,000. On Monday, the Guardian uncovered details of a massacre in a police station in Juba where more than 240 people were allegedly killed. Aid workers admit in private that the real toll could stretch to the "tens of thousands" but firm numbers are not available while heavy fighting continues in several areas. "I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that we're into the thousands," said the UN's chief of humanitarian affairs, Toby Lanzer. With rival militias and army factions on the march, as well as reports of targeted killings in government and rebel controlled areas an estimated 50,000 civilians are now hiding in five UN bases across the two-and-a-half-year-old nation. Some 24,000 civilians have gathered in the bush in Lakes States, aid workers said. Tens of thousands more have sought sanctuary in churches, including 5,000 in a single Catholic Church in the capital. Clashes broke out between rival army factions in the capital of the oil-producing Upper Nile state, Malakal, on Tuesday. It comes on top of fighting in Unity State, now under rebel control and in Bor, the capital of the restive Jonglei state. South Sudan's president, who continues to insist that he was the victim of an attempted coup over a week ago, said that government forces had retaken Bor. There was no independent confirmation of a change in control of the town. The United States, Norway and Ethiopia are leading efforts to open peace talks. Officials say Kiir and Machar have agreed to meet but specifics including the status of prisoners are holding up talks. The new mandate for the UN mission will boost troop numbers and provide additional UN police. It also calls for more active protection of civilians. 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       |
| Posted: 24 Dec 2013 08:11 AM PST Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series       |
| David Cameron's Christmas message from Afghanistan – video Posted: 24 Dec 2013 08:06 AM PST David Cameron delivers his Christmas message to British troops serving in Afghanistan and elsewhere on Christmas Eve  |
| Edward Snowden to broadcast Channel 4's alternative Christmas Day message Posted: 24 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST  NSA whistleblower records message from Russia, filmed by Laura Poitras, warning of the dangers of a loss of privacy Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who prompted a worldwide debate when he leaked a cache of top secret documents about US and UK spying, has recorded a Christmas Day television message in which he calls for an end to the mass surveillance revealed by his disclosures. The short film was recorded for Channel 4, which has 20-year history of providing unusual but relevant figures as an alternative to the Queen's Christmas message shown by other UK broadcasters. It will be Snowden's first television appearance since arriving in Moscow. The address, to be broadcast at 4.15pm on Christmas Day, was filmed in Russia – where Snowden is living after being granted temporary asylum – by Laura Poitras, a film-maker who has closely collaborated with him on the NSA stories. In excerpts from the address released by Channel 4, Snowden says George Orwell "warned us of the danger of this kind of information" in his dystopian novel, 1984. Snowden says: "The types of collection in the book – microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us – are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person. "A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves an unrecorded, unanalysed thought. And that's a problem because privacy matters; privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be." In the other extract of the address released, Snowden notes the political changes that have taken place since his leaked the cache documents to newspapers including the Guardian. He highlights a review of the NSA's power that recommended it be no longer permitted to collect phone records in bulk or undermine internet security, findings endorsed in part by Barack Obama, and a federal judge's ruling that bulk phone record collection is likely to violate the US constitution. Snowden says: "The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying." The latter comment echoes a sentiment expressed by Snowden during a series of interviews in Moscow with the Washington Post, another paper that has carried revelations based on documents leaked by him. In this, Snowden said the effect of his actions had meant that "the mission's already accomplished". In the newspaper interview, he added: "I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself. "All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed." The alternative Christmas message, a counterpoint to the traditional festive broadcast by the Queen, began in 1993 with a broadcast from the writer and gay activist Quentin Crisp. Other notable participants include Iran's then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in 2008, and a team of midwives two years later. 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       |
| Legal changes could put Canada's sex workers at further risk | Emer O'Toole Posted: 24 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST  The experiences of Sweden and the Netherlands show that legislation to protect prostitutes often has negative repercussions Prostitution is legal in Canada, but governed by provisions within the criminal code. On Friday, the Canadian supreme court struck down three of these provisions as unconstitutional, deeming them incompatible with the rights of sex workers. The court ruled that three key pieces of legislation – against keeping a bawdy house; living off the avails of prostitution; and soliciting on public streets – endanger the nation's sex workers. Should it rise to the challenge, Stephen Harper's conservative government has just one year to draw up a new legal framework for Canada's sex industry. The women who brought the case to court – Terri-Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott – are delighted by the ruling, which they see as a step towards ensuring the dignity and safety of Canada's sex workers. I very much hope they're right: that any new legislation will be in keeping with the liberal spirit of Friday's judgment, and that a failure to legislate will not expose Canada's sex workers to exploitation. But I have qualms. It's highly unlikely that Harper will push for criminalising prostitution, as per, for example, the United States. This move would be contrary to the rights-based thrust of the ruling, and we'd soon end up back in court. But, realistically, with Harper at the helm, how permissive is Canada's new prostitution legislation likely to be? Just last month a conservative party convention in Calgary resolved to "develop a Canada-specific plan to target the purchasers of sex and human trafficking markets through criminalising the purchase of sex as well as any third party attempting to profit from the purchase of sex". This is basically the Nordic model, pioneered in Sweden, in which people paying for sex rather than prostitutes are criminalised. And I, for one, think it's ludicrous. The model has cut down on trafficking and street prostitution, sure, but a 2004 report suggests that it is making things more dangerous for prostitutes, who are now experiencing increased violence, lower payments and pressure to have unprotected sex at the hands of customers who are not afraid to engage in criminal activity. Here's the kernel of the problem: legislation seemingly focused on sex workers often has negative repercussions for the people it aims to protect. Canada's provision regards living off the avails of prostitution, for example, was originally intended to protect against parasitic pimps; in reality, it stopped women from hiring legitimate drivers and bodyguards, and put them at greater risk. But the kind of loosely regulated system that would result from a failure of the Harper government to legislate is no better option. In 2005, just five years after the Netherlands legalised prostitution with the goal of protecting sex workers, reports made plain that Amsterdam's ballooning red light district was a hotbed of criminal activity, coercion and violence. The Netherlands remains a major global destination for human trafficking. Germany's decriminalisation in 2002 also led to an increase in prostitution, and Germany too is now a focal point for human trafficking. Into all this doom and gloom I will insert the tale of New Zealand, where, since 2003, prostitution has been legal, but coercion is illegal, as is immigration to perform sex work and investment in the sex industry. In dialogue with prostitutes, the government developed a health and safety structure for the industry, meaning that anyone selling sex has a legal responsibility to use a sheath. In 2005, someone was even charged for slipping the condom off without a prostitute's knowledge. A report commissioned five years after the legislation showed that the sex industry still had many problems – stigma and violence among them – but there was no increase in prostitution, and sex workers were more empowered. Canada has the chance to do something groundbreaking here – to learn from experiments with liberalisation and legislation around the world, and to develop a new framework to protect and empower prostitutes while disenfranchising their would-be exploiters. But it may be too much to hope that Harper listens to voices from within the sex industry and, in the spirit of this supreme court ruling, helps to lift vulnerable sex workers out of the shadows. 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       |
| 10 photo highlights of the day Posted: 24 Dec 2013 07:42 AM PST The Guardian's picture editors bring you a selection of top photographs from around the world       |
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