World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

French factory output slides as Spain returns to growth - business live
Antarctic rescue under way – live coverage
Rwanda's former spy chief 'murdered' in South Africa
Fiat shares soar on Chrysler deal
India bus crash leaves 27 dead
Egyptian police in deadly clashes with Muslim Brotherhood activists
Marijuana shoppers flock to Colorado for first legal recreational sales
Eyewitness: Dunkirk, France
Syrian Electronic Army's war on the web: interactive timeline
The Fateful Year: England 1914 by Mark Bostridge – review
De Blasio vows action on inequality to tackle New York's 'Tale of Two Cities'
'Syrian Electronic Army' hacks Skype's Twitter and blog accounts
Pervez Musharraf misses third court date in treason trial
Antarctic rescue under way as helicopter lands next to trapped ship
China's first aircraft carrier completes sea trials
Kenya grenade attack targets nightclub near Mombasa
Specs appeal: German physics teacher brings affordable glasses to Rwanda | Mark Tran
The prospect of the 2015 general election will reveal our parties' true colours
World Cup 2014: Brazil's horribly invasive footballing trauma
Former medical chief gives qualified support to proposed new doctor’s fee
Female asylum seeker alleges sexual assault by Christmas Island detainee
Coal crackdown urged as air pollution breaches rise by 50% in Hunter Valley
Sydney king-hit victim still in a critical condition
Antarctic rescue gets under way – in pictures
Cambodia: child protection workers call for end to ‘orphanage tourism’

French factory output slides as Spain returns to growth - business live

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 01:42 AM PST

Worries mount for France as manufacturing output falls at fastest rate in seven months, but Spain and Italy improve

Antarctic rescue under way – live coverage

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 01:39 AM PST

Helicopter airlifting five groups of passengers from trapped Akademik Shokalskiy, which became stuck in thick pack ice on Christmas Eve

Paul Owen

Rwanda's former spy chief 'murdered' in South Africa

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 01:30 AM PST

Opposition accuses president of ordering killing of Patrick Karegeya, who was found strangled in Johannesburg hotel

Rwandan opposition leaders say the country's former spy chief has been found strangled in a hotel in South Africa and have accused President Paul Kagame of ordering his assassination.

The opposition coalition Rwandan National Congress (RNC) said on Thursday that Patrick Karegeya, a former colonel and wartime ally who turned against Kagame in peace, was found strangled in a room at Johannesburg's Michelangelo Towers hotel.

The RNC's coordinator, Theogene Rudasingwa, said in a telephone call from Washington that it was unclear if Karegeya had been killed on Tuesday or Wednesday.

He said the death followed a pattern of attacks ordered by Kagame, accusations the Rwandan government vehemently denies.

Gunmen twice tried to kill the former chief of staff of the Rwandan army, Lt Gen Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, while he was living in exile in Johannesburg.

Fiat shares soar on Chrysler deal

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 01:27 AM PST

Shares in Italian carmaker rise as much as 16% after it strikes $4.35bn deal to take full control of Chrysler

Shares in Fiat rose as much as 16% in early trade on Thursday after the Italian carmaker struck a $4.35bn (£2.6bn) deal to gain full control of Chrysler.

The agreement, announced late on Wednesday, ended more than a year of tense talks that have hampered chief executive Sergio Marchionne's efforts to combine the two automakers' resources.

"They paid less than the market had expected and there will be no capital increase to fund this, so no wonder the stock is flying," a Milan-based trader said.

"While it's still to be seen how this will bode for Fiat's future, this is a good start to the year for a company that has had quite a tough ride recently, especially in Europe."

Fiat will acquire the 41.46% stake in Chrysler it did not already own from a retiree healthcare trust affiliated with the United Auto Workers union.

The trust, known as a voluntary employee beneficiary association or VEBA, will receive $3.65bn in cash for the stake, $1.9bn of which will come from Chrysler and $1.75bn from Fiat.

After the deal closes, Chrysler has committed to giving the UAW trust another $700m over three years.

It remains to be seen whether a merger with the No 3 US automaker will be enough to cut Fiat's losses in Europe. Marchionne's plan depends on its ability to easily and cheaply share technology, cash and dealer networks with Chrysler.

By 0833 GMT shares in Fiat were up 13% at €6.725, with traded volume already more than twice the daily average of the last month.

India bus crash leaves 27 dead

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 01:25 AM PST

Packed passenger bus tumbles into 120metre deep gorge after collision with truck near tourist site of Malshej Ghat near Mumbai

The death toll from a bus that was in collision with a truck and plunged into a 120-metre (400ft) deep gorge in western India has risen to 27.

Police officer Raghunath Yadav says the driver lost control of the bus after ithe collision on Thursday near Malshej Ghat, a tourist spot about 100 miles north-east of Mumbai.

He initially reported 11 killed but the death toll has since risen to 27 as more bodies were pulled out.

Yadav said 10 others were injured, seven of them in serious condition.

India has the world's deadliest roads, with more than 110,000 people killed each year. Most crashes are blamed on reckless driving, poorly maintained roads and ageing vehicles.

Egyptian police in deadly clashes with Muslim Brotherhood activists

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 01:12 AM PST

Two dead as Mohamed Morsi supporters battle security forces and rival political factions, in Alexandria and capital

Two people have been killed in clashes that erupted late on Wednesday between pro-Islamist protesters and police in Egypt's coastal city of Alexandria, the ministry of interior said.

Egypt has been hit by a wave of violent demonstrations since the army removed elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi from office in July, following mass protests against his rule. Hundreds have been killed and thousands arrested since then.

The interior ministry said the clashes occured during two marches organised by some 200 Muslim Brotherhood members in Alexandria.

"They [the protesters] blocked the road ... set shops on fire, burned a citizen's car, fired guns and bird shot and clashed with and terrorised the people," the ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

It said some residents had exchanged fire with the Brotherhood protesters, killing two people and injuring three police officers. The police forces managed to end the clashes and arrested 10, according to the statement.

The police had earlier fired tear gas and water cannon at hundreds of pro-Morsi protesters demonstrating near the defence ministry in Cairo, after they blocked a road and chanted anti-police and army slogans, according to state media reports.

Police also fired teargas on pro-Morsi student protesters from the state's main university in the Nile Delta city of Zakazik, the former president's home town. Students supporting Morsi have been staging daily protests inside and outside their universities since the start of a new academic year in September. At least 10 students have been killed during clashes with the police.

Last November, Egypt's army-installed interim government issued a law that banned protests near or originating from places of worship and made it compulsory to seek Interior Ministry permission to hold a demonstration. Since the law was passed, hundreds of Brotherhood protesters and liberal activists have been arrested for demonstrating without permission.

In the southern city of Beni Suef, an activist in the leftist Popular Current group was arrested and security forces confiscated his laptop computer, the movement said in a statement, identifying him as Mohamed Mostafa. A police source said he was detained for posting anti-army and police comments on Facebook.

Since Morsi's removal, which opened the bloodiest chapter in Egypt's modern history, security forces have killed hundreds and arrested thousands of his supporters. Some 400 soldiers and policemen also have been killed, many in attacks by Islamist militants in the Sinai peninsula, bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Morsi and most of the Brotherhood's top leaders are on trial on a group of charges ranging from inciting violence against protesters to co-operating with foreign organisations to execute terrorist acts in Egypt.

Marijuana shoppers flock to Colorado for first legal recreational sales

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 01:08 AM PST

'This is going to be a turning point in the drug war,' says one customer at a cannabis dispensary, 'a beginning of the peace'

Rory Carroll

Eyewitness: Dunkirk, France

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 01:02 AM PST

Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series

Syrian Electronic Army's war on the web: interactive timeline

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 01:00 AM PST

The Syrian Electronic Army's successful hack of Skype, an instant messaging service, marks the latest in a long line of attacks by this pro-Assad group. We've looked at the victims, the type of attack and their timings to produce this interactive timeline of the SEA's attacks so far

Mona Chalabi

The Fateful Year: England 1914 by Mark Bostridge – review

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 12:50 AM PST

Anthony Quinn questions the 'innocence' of prewar Britain

The numerals have an ominous ring in retrospect. Philip Larkin said it was beyond him to call his great poem from The Whitsun Weddings "1914": its sound was too harsh. He preferred the "decent obscurity" of MCMXIV, with its suggestion of a lapidary inscription on a war memorial. Those famous lines – "Never such innocence,/ Never before or since,/ As changed itself to past/ Without a word" – conjure the year as a fatal break, the moment when a way of life was destroyed utterly and forever. But was it innocence that died? Mark Bostridge's The Fateful Year, an absorbing kaleidoscope of events and episodes from a century ago, argues that England in 1914 was no more or less innocent than any other time – indeed, even before war engulfed the country on 4 August, it was a crucible of violent antagonisms that touched on gender, class, labour and nationhood.

The temptation for posterity is to impose pattern and meaning where none originally existed. Historical events happen, one thing after another – not necessarily one thing because of another. Nevertheless, we can't help hunting for ways to make the jigsaw fit. Bostridge has laid out the year as a three-act drama, the first covering January to April, the second the summer leading up to war, the third the opening five months of the conflict, from August to December. But it could as easily have been structured as a two-parter, or a 12-parter; form has little bearing on content.

It was a society in uproar. While their sisters were being force-fed in prison, militant suffragettes had stepped up their campaign of urban sabotage, detonating bombs in London churches and setting fire to houses, pavilions and railway stations up and down the land. The most notable stunt occurred at the National Gallery, where Mary Richardson took an axe to the canvas of The Rokeby Venus, an act of vandalism recounted in the press as if it were an act of murder – "Slasher Mary" had left Venus with "a cruel wound in the neck" and a "broad laceration" near the shoulder. At the Royal Academy Sargent's portrait of Henry James suffered a similar attack from a militant's meat cleaver. James wrote to a friend: "I naturally feel very scalped and disfigured, but you will be glad to know that I seem to be pronounced curable." In this febrile atmosphere there arose the prospect of a political assassination – what Bostridge calls, modernly, a "nightmare scenario" – fuelled by rumours of suffragettes practising their marksmanship at shooting ranges. The clock keeps ticking, the sights keep narrowing on Archduke Franz Ferdinand's date with destiny in Sarajevo.

Industrial unrest picked up again (its high summer was in 1911). A coal strike in January put London in a deep freeze, forcing middle-class women to bring home coal in cabs. More heartening is the story of the Burston school strike, when a plucky 14-year-old, Violet Potter, led a walk-out of schoolchildren in protest at the sacking of their teachers, Tom and Kitty Higdon. The couple, hugely popular with their pupils, had been undermined and then dismissed by the machinations of the village rector, Charles Tucker Eland, who sounds like a fugitive from the pages of Middlemarch. This rural vignette of petty-minded animosities and grass-roots resistance ("Pupil Power" is the chapter title) became a celebrated case in the struggle for social justice. It also marks an early staging post in the decline of church influence on local politics.

On a more cosmopolitan level, we are presented with an account of the first English production of Shaw's Pygmalion, from troubled rehearsals to its premiere in April at Her Majesty's theatre. Two aspects of the production astonish. The first is that Eliza Doolittle, the unformed 18-year-old flowergirl, was played by Mrs Patrick Campbell, then in her 50th year. The second is the fuss over her utterance of a single expletive, which scandalised moralists and caused audiences to rock with laughter. The offending word was "bloody".

The backstage drama of unrequited passions and wounded vanities (Shaw on Mrs P: "a one-part actress and that one not a real part") makes for lively reading, but not for the first time in the book you wonder at its relevance. Bostridge, who confesses in his foreword that as a 14-year-old he wrote a play about Pygmalion's first night, seems to have included the anecdote for entirely personal reasons.

Similarly, I was fascinated by the unfolding story of the 61-year-old Prime Minister Asquith's yearning for the love of Venetia Stanley, a 26-year-old friend of his daughter Violet. His private correspondence to her is not only the record of an old man's romantic fancies but of his travails with the Irish on the question of home rule. The tightrope he walks fairly takes the breath away: where are the phone-hackers of yesteryear? But again, you have to ask what point is being made. Asquith's (mostly) unsuspected passion could only be called "fateful" if it had brought down his government. Instead, it's just an extraordinary sidelight.

Hints, forewarnings, inadvertent prophecies of what was to come spike the air like pollen. The nation's paranoia was inflamed by scaremongering fiction that envisaged a German invasion (The Riddle of the Sands and so on). Foreign agents were suspected of lurking in readiness. A thunderstorm in June killed seven people on Wandsworth Common. An intruder was arrested inside Buckingham Palace. Yet whatever dread the public may have felt at these portents, Asquith's government seemed to be wholly unprepared for the coming catastrophe. With one eye still on Ulster, they were slow to react to the sparks in the Balkan tinderbox. Even this late in the day the Royal Flying Corps lagged far behind other European airforces in both the training of pilots and adequate airfields. This was principally because of a conviction that, if war came, the decisive battles would be fought not on land or in the air but at sea. Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, had been making sure that the navy was up to scratch.

As hopes of peace are extinguished, something is lost in the book, too. The ironic undertow disappears, and the narrative momentum rather stalls. Those first seven months have the uncertain peril of a dream, exciting and disquieting at once, wherein a last‑ditch escape seems always at hand. Once Europe is mobilised and the million-footed marching starts up, the escape route shuts fast: tragedy has commenced. Bostridge's clean, well-mannered prose and careful research never waver, and I was still gripped by some of the material he has chosen: for instance, the "white feather" phenomenon of women taking it on themselves to shame and intimidate men into enlisting. Suffragettes, alas, were among the feather-givers, perhaps goaded into revenge on menfolk who had belittled them during peacetime.

It's impossible not to be moved by the example of Violet Cecil's desperate efforts to discover the fate of her 18-year-old son George, missing in action after the Battle of Mons: "My instincts tell me he is alive – my reason that he is dead." Her experience leads her, poignantly, to take on the responsibility of notifying the mothers and wives of the soldiers in George's battalion of their loved ones' final resting place. There's no doubting this book's eye for a good story, or the skill in telling it. I'm not sure there's a unifying idea to chew on, though, other than Asquith's favourite axiom: "the Expected does not Happen". And that is merely the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

Anthony Quinn

De Blasio vows action on inequality to tackle New York's 'Tale of Two Cities'

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 12:46 AM PST

New mayor Bill de Blasio strikes resolutely progressive tone at inauguration

Ed Pilkington

'Syrian Electronic Army' hacks Skype's Twitter and blog accounts

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 12:30 AM PST

Hacking group briefly takes over messaging service's social media accounts to allege sale of data to governments and publish Steve Ballmer contact details - but Skype accounts unaffected. By Charles Arthur

Charles Arthur

Pervez Musharraf misses third court date in treason trial

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 12:30 AM PST

Former Pakistan army general taken ill and in hospital, say police, after missing two previous hearings due to bomb scares

Pakistani police said the former president Pervez Musharraf was rushed to hospital after feeling ill on his way to court for a hearing in his high treason case.

Deputy Inspector Jan Mohammed said Musharraf was taken to the armed forces institute of cardiology in the nearby city of Rawalpindi.

The hearing on Thursday was the third in the high treason case that Musharraf has missed so far. He missed the previous two, including one on Wednesday, following bomb scares.

Musharraf took power in a 1999 coup but was forced to step down in 2008. He returned to the country in March hoping to take part in elections but instead was hit by a series of legal cases.

The treason case is the most serious so far against Musharraf.

Antarctic rescue under way as helicopter lands next to trapped ship

Posted: 02 Jan 2014 12:24 AM PST

Saga of passengers on board the Akademik Shokalskiy trapped in sea ice for more than a week finally coming to an end

Bridie Jabour

China's first aircraft carrier completes sea trials

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 11:43 PM PST

The Liaoning has returned to port after 37 days in the South China Sea, according to state media

China's first aircraft carrier has successfully completed sea trials in the South China Sea, state media has reported.

The Liaoning returned to port on Wednesday after a 37-day voyage, the official Xinhua news agency said. Citing an unnamed naval source, Xinhua said the aircraft carrier had tested its combat system and conducted a formation practice and "attained the anticipated objectives".

"All tests and training programmes went well as scheduled," it said.

Aircraft, naval vessels and submarines also participated in the Liaoning's tests.

Early in the Liaoning's trial run, one of the Chinese ships accompanying it was involved in a near collision with a US navy ship. A Chinese media report blamed the US ship for getting too close to the Liaoning, while the US defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, described China's behaviour as "irresponsible". It marked the two countries' most serious sea confrontation in years.

The Liaoning was bought from Ukraine more than a decade ago and extensively refurbished before entering service in 2012.

China claims virtually the entire South China Sea. A recent expansion of its naval reach has challenged the decades-old American dominance and alarmed its smaller neighbours, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam, which have competing territorial claims with Beijing to a string of islands.

Kenya grenade attack targets nightclub near Mombasa

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 11:37 PM PST

Attack injuring 10 is labelled a terrorist act by authorities as country remains on edge after mall massacre by al-Shabaab

Specs appeal: German physics teacher brings affordable glasses to Rwanda | Mark Tran

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 11:00 PM PST

OneDollarGlasses founder Martin Aufmuth is inspired by book on poverty to create inexpensive reading glasses

It took Martin Aufmuth three years to bring to fruition his idea to produce a device that makes cheap glasses.

Aufmuth, who won top prize at the Siemens Stiftung award in October, said his OneDollarGlasses project was inspired by the book Out of Poverty by Paul Polak, which he read in 2009.

Aufmuth, who teaches maths and physics in Erlangen, Germany, is a big fan of Polak's idea of developing practical solutions that harness the power of markets to reduce poverty. "It showed me the importance of innovations that sell for about $1 [60p]," he says.

Costing only $1 to make, the glasses will be sold for between $2 to $7, so OneDollarGlasses opticians can earn their living from them. The spectacles are made by hand on a specially designed bending and milling machine, which requires no electrical power. Virtually maintenance-free, it is designed to work in the most remote villages. All the equipment fits into a wooden box with outer dimensions of 30cm x 30cm x 30cm.

The lightweight and flexible frames are made from rustproof, hypoallergenic 1mm-spring-steel wire,and the polished, unbreakable lenses are made of polycarbonate with a hardened surface.

The OneDollarGlasses optician has a box with 25 lenses (made in China) varying in strength from -6.0 to +6.0 diopters in steps of 0.5 diopters (a diopter is a unit of measurement of the optical power of a lens).

Polycarbonate is much more resistant than glass or resin, which are commonly used in glasses. The lenses, which have notches, can be simply clicked into the frame by hand. Because the glasses – individually adjustable and almost unbreakable – are lightweight, they do not require traditional nose bridges.

Technicians can be trained in just 14 days, although it can take two sessions to perfect their skills. Eye testing is done with a simple chart that can be attached to a wall or a tree. Three to four people can operate one manufacturing unit to produce 5,000-10,000 pairs of glasses a year, Aufmuth says. After a pilot project in Uganda, Aufmuth and his teams have been training people in Rwanda since April.

The device, including the bending machine, optical equipment and material for the first 500 pairs of glasses, costs €2,400 (£2010). Aufmuth realises the startup costs are unaffordable in target countries, so they are covered completely by donations.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), about 150million people suffer from defective eyesight that could be rectified with a pair of glasses.

"Extreme poverty does not only mean hunger, but also illness, hopelessness, missed opportunities in life," Aufmuth says on his website. "Many of them cannot go to school for that reason, cannot work and can – as a consequence - not provide for themselves and their families. This is what I want to change."

Mark Tran

The prospect of the 2015 general election will reveal our parties' true colours

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 11:00 PM PST

Change-everything versus change-nothing conservatism, Labour's challenge to build a spirit of optimism and why the Lib Dems will need to recast their collusion as restraint

If the last election was fought on the post-crash, shell-shocked, shillings-and-pence territory of what common sense would do ("We're broke! Let's spend less money" – electorate strokes chin … "Yes, that seems sensible"), the next one in 2015 will be fought in the knowledge that common sense is a matter of perspective. Persuade people to look at things the way you do and everything you say will sound like sense. New year's political resolutions will centre on having something to say and doggedly, repetitively, saying it. I think for a while this will be a relief, after the careful circumnavigations of all the parties hitherto. That is, before we figure out what they truly mean by it, and stagger back, horrified.

The Tory position all starts with Boris Johnson's cornflake speech, in which he claimed that wealth and IQ were basically in lockstep, the rich carried the rest of us, and indeed they had to, because the poor were too dumb to be much use. Ergo, the best hope for society was to shake that cornflake box as hard as it could, ensuring the overlords their space at the top, to make the money the rest of us so relied upon. It was decried by Labour and the Lib Dems (as he intended) but wafted over Conservative headquarters as just the vivid views of an idiosyncratic but well-loved political wildcard.

In fact, that is precisely wrong – in that speech is contained all the principles the right needs us to accept to win the next election. First, that rich people are good for society rather than bad; second, that hands-off, small-state circumstances create the best conditions for rich people to flourish; third, that the people who appear to lose out from laissez-faire government would lose out from any kind of government because they're too thick to prosper (their best hope is a subsistence job, and rich-enough rich people to give them charity when subsistence isn't enough).

If we accept that argument, the rest is a matter of degree. Privatise the NHS? It's not privatisation, it's opening the door to commercial ingenuity. Cut social security? There is a limit to the amount the rich can be squeezed. The approach is distilled in the following exchange between Dan Hannan, the Conservative MEP for South East England, and Matt Ridley, Conservative peer and former chairman of Northern Rock. Hannan recalls: "Matt said, 'If you think about it, our way of looking at the world, the idea that if you leave people to get on with it, everybody does better, is totally counterintuitive. On paper, if you have intelligent people who sit down and plan it, that must work better than letting millions of people go around and make their higgledy-piggledy decisions. And yet, there it is.'"

And yet, there it is: the small state is the crowning and sincere desire of the party's intellectual wing. The people who fall through the floorboards on the way to achieving it needn't, because that's what charities are for. In hindsight, Cameron hinted at this basically American vision with his Big Society rhetoric at the last election. We just didn't get it. We thought he was saying it was nice when people were nice to one another. Well, duh.

Clearly, people will try to pull debate towards immigration. Ukip may benefit here, because representing a genuine, change-nothing conservatism (as opposed to the new, change-everything Conservatives) is their best chance of taking votes off the Tories; and the centre-left too, because this is where Conservatives seem most divided and least likable. It will be the work of the thinking Tory to keep the campaign off this ground (and that's a battle they have lost before, recalling Michael Howard's "It's not racist to keep saying racist things", preceded by "I'm not racist", campaign).

Labour has been mired, pretty well since 2010, in a kind of defensive timidity, where – to the naked eye – the party won't oppose any coalition policies, but Ed Balls will get incredibly angry about a small amount of growth. Their challenge at election time will be to foster a spirit of optimism, avoiding the inevitable pitfalls of dirtiness that will proceed if they concentrate on how they feel about the government. If the Conservative narrative is that a rising tide lifts all boats, it is not enough for Labour to point out that a) economically, this doesn't work, and b) even if it did work, some boats would inevitably sink. They need a bigger boat.

Lisa Nandy, Labour MP for Wigan, says: "We've got to make the point that this unabashed commitment to competition is not just bad for the poor, it's bad for all of us. We do better together. I've heard different Labour figures finding different ways to express it. Andy Burnham, when he was doing education, said: 'I don't want a system that creates winners and losers among kids.' Ed echoed that with: 'Britain can be better than this.'"

I thought Miliband's line sounded a bit like the positive self-talk mantra they teach you to do in post-traumatic stress counselling. But the point stands – this side could spend its time critiquing what the Conservatives actually mean when they say: "We're in it together." Or it could develop its own picture of cooperation, what it would look like and what it would be capable of, and those two things are probably mutually exclusive. You can't snarl and backbite, and build a better tomorrow at the same time.

Nandy is wary of sounding like a thinktank but says: "There was a sense people had when we were in government that the state had become very remote from people's lives. It existed to do things to you. It wasn't enabling, it was policing. Tax credits were a great example – it was all very complicated, and then you had an official-looking letter telling you to pay them back money. Older person care, the NHS – people were looking at these bureaucracies, feeling like: 'This is not a human thing, this is not on my side.' That's going to be really important for us. We do believe in the state, and if you do believe in it, you need to renew people's faith in it."

It is unclear what the Lib Dems are going to do; tactically, they're trying to take what many perceive as their collusion with the Conservatives, and recast it as restraint. So that will be very ding-dong dirty politics, peddling the (improbable) line that the Tories could actually be much worse (witness Danny Alexander, chief defender of social security cuts, warning that the Tories have more to come, and this time they're ideological).

Anybody who tells you that the election is just about something as simple as living standards is masking their true agenda.

Zoe Williams

World Cup 2014: Brazil's horribly invasive footballing trauma

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 11:00 PM PST

Brazil 2014 is already dominating the year. Beset by controversy and corporate greed, it epitomises the new breed of inequitable sporting mega-event

If 2013 was a sporting year spent slopping around the house, lying on the sofa, drinking Irn-Bru and trying to shake the sense of curdled euphoria after the Olympic binge of the previous 12 months, 2014 promises a return to grander things. Already the year to come in sport is dominated by a single event. Oh yes, this is big. Think of something big. Bigger still. Bigger. Well, it's much bigger than that.

The heart of the sporting year is of course the World Cup in Brazil: football tournament, economic powerhouse, and to date a kind of skyscraper-scale tuning fork transmitting the wider notes of sporting hysteria, social unrest, global brand armageddon and – let's face it – pretty much everything else that's going on in the world right now. All World Cups start long before they actually start, an induced labour of balls and draws and songs, countdowns and prequels. This one already feels as if it has been going on for the best part of a decade, a beautifully nuanced, horribly invasive footballing trauma lurking at the midpoint of the coming year. All things considered, it might be best to have a little sitdown and take a breath or two before we get going.

The World Cup will take place in 12 cities spread across Brazil's Atlantic coast, Amazonian interior, tropical north and Euro-flavoured south. After an unusually sharp-elbowed qualification, all the major nations are there for what already looks like a genuine wide-screen epic. Including England, of course, who after some preliminary grumbles about the weather from Roy Hodgson – successfully styling himself for all his cosmopolitan tastes as the kind of Englishman who goes on holiday with a suitcase full of Spam and a fly-swatter – have duly been awarded the schedule from hell. First up is a sweat-soaked meltdown in the rainforest city of Manaus, with its swamps and manatees and 80% humidity. A week later comes the final group stage game against tiny Costa Rica in Belo Horizonte, scene of England's greatest ever footballing humiliation, the 1-0 defeat by the USA in 1950. What could possibly go wrong?

And yet, if the prospect of protracted English suffering only adds to the sense of authentic footballing pedigree, beyond the pitch this is a World Cup already beset by problems. The faultline at the heart of this vast entertainment product, with its 4bn TV viewers, its eight-year construction frenzy, its Bric economy coming-out schtick, is the irreconcilable disparity between the scrummage of corporate interests that follows the World Cup and the concerns of those – citizens, fans, baffled and powerless observers – who form its backdrop.

Brazil may be growing fast. It may have a coronational World Cup in the bag. But it isn't that happy about it. In June last year tens of thousands of people took part in street protests against public transport fares, corruption, inequality – and most strikingly the World Cup itself. In a country where inflation is making the poor poorer, where there are chronic shortages of doctors and nurses, and where infrastructure is laughably basic at times, the World Cup is burning through vast amounts of money, with all six new-build stadiums behind schedule and federal prosecutors seeking injunctions to block the use of further public funds to pay for the delays.

It wasn't meant to be like this. Brazil 2014 will be just the second South American World Cup in more than 50 years: the talk from Fifa was of an opening-out to the developing world, a kind of mushy, face-painted collectivism, but in reality this is among the most socially inequitable sporting mega-events staged during the current era of inequitable sporting mega-events, with just 400,000 of 3.3m tickets available to ordinary Brazilians, most at prices well beyond the reach of the average salary. Welcome to the new world order.

Of course, this is simply the way in which the new breed of sporting mega-beano interacts with its captive audience. The World Cup provides Fifa with £5.5bn in commercial revenue over its four-year cycle, from the bulging roster of "partners" – the usual alpha male arm-wrestle of Adidas, Coke, Sony, Visa, McDonald's and the rest – to the ghastly prospect of the "official song", outsourced this time to Samsung which has launched a social media campaign calling for songs to be submitted, with the winning entry recorded by – for reasons that remain unclear – Ricky Martin. In Brazil there is a sense more than ever of the big-ticket event as a kind of death star hovering above its target nation, colonising its infrastructure, suspending its laws, co-opting its leaders.

This is where the dear old World Cup, now in its 20th incarnation, has decisively located itself: in among the overclass, albeit wearing at all times a public face of glazed and benevolent smiling-child populism. It is a ghastly confection, its tone set by the chronic insincerities of Fifa president Sepp Blatter, a strangely bulletproof figure who, tanned and perma-groomed, increasingly resembles the World Cup trophy itself, with its polished dome, its sheen, its impenetrable corporate lustre.

Meanwhile, in Rio de Janeiro a reported 30,000 families are being forcibly relocated, a longstanding Brazilian municipal tradition, albeit never performed on such a scale and never so driven by vaulting land prices. Little wonder the global heavyweights are circling, most notably the woefully under-represented Coca-Cola, its shamefully small Brazilian market share kept at bay until now by local giant Guarana Antarctica. Plus, of course, Adidas and Nike will continue to do battle, warring Sith Lords of their own relentlessly tedious global sporting two-hander.

Inanities abound. The official Brazuca match ball is currently retailing for the equivalent of £98, but that's OK because it will be free to Brazilians, 95% of whom can't afford it, who were born on the day of its launch. Elsewhere, street vendors in Bahia have been banned from selling Acaraje, a favourite Brazilian snack, around the World Cup stadiums because of puritanically observed "product placement" principles.

So far, so clogged and confusing – but then the World Cup is perhaps too large and too politically alluring ever to be anything else these days. For all this it is still worth remembering that it remains above all a beautifully pure sporting occasion beyond all the corporate flummery. The enduring power of the World Cup lies in its basic sporting innocence. It is extremely likely the winner will come from Brazil and Argentina, with Spain and Germany Europe's best and probably only hopes of winning a first World Cup in the Americas. But beyond this international football represents that rare thing, a form of elite sporting competition that cannot be bought, or bought off, or managed by money. Colombia, Uruguay, Italy, Belgium and Chile all have a chance of reaching the late stages. Ivory Coast have the players and, finally, the draw to do well, while the best player in the world this year plays for Portugal (England, it should be noted, are excluded from this discussion on grounds of good taste). However you look at it, the World Cup of all World Cups is a beautifully alluring prospect, and an impossibly more-ish sporting centrepiece to the year.

Barney Ronay

Former medical chief gives qualified support to proposed new doctor’s fee

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 10:48 PM PST

Bill Glasson, who hopes to replace Kevin Rudd in Griffith, says Coalition’s $6 co-payment should not affect the vulnerable

Daniel Hurst

Female asylum seeker alleges sexual assault by Christmas Island detainee

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 10:35 PM PST

Australian Federal Police confirm the claim by a female housed in the Aqua family compound was referred to them on 27 December

Oliver Laughland

Coal crackdown urged as air pollution breaches rise by 50% in Hunter Valley

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 09:58 PM PST

Environment centre wants all coal wagons and stockpiles covered, and plans for a new coal terminal in Newcastle to be rejected

Oliver Milman

Sydney king-hit victim still in a critical condition

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 09:53 PM PST

Doctors say Daniel Christie, 18, will probably suffer a serious brain injury if he survives New Year's Eve assault

Antarctic rescue gets under way – in pictures

Posted: 01 Jan 2014 09:51 PM PST

First pictures from the Guardian's Laurence Topham as a Chinese helicopter arrives at the icebound Akademik Shokalskiy in the Antarctic in an apparent first step towards evacuating passengers and crew

Laurence Topham