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

Gay rights: 'After 18 years together, we are finally getting married'
Kenya's unemployed youth find fresh hope in the form of LivelyHoods | Les Roopanarine
Eusébio, Portugal's footballing hero, dies at 71
India: rescuers search for survivors in collapsed building
The Fateful Year: England 1914 by Mark Bostridge – review
Ed Miliband promises to close loophole allowing exploitation of foreign workers
Sydney violence: teenager in coma after another alleged assault
UK storms 'worst in 20 years', and more on the way
Church of England accused of dumbing down baptism service
Amazon's Jeff Bezos flown from cruise ship after suffering kidney stone
Steven Seagal may run for Arizona governor
Three police seriously injured in Melbourne flat explosion
A more liberal America will emerge, but it isn't going to happen overnight | Michael Cohen
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom – review
US to see temperatures unknown for a generation
Transatlantic freeze that fuels the jet stream
Kerry labouring on Palestine deal
Al-Qaida allies 'driven out of Falluja'
Antarctic leader defends expedition against critics of its scientific value
Pancreatic cancer patients forced to seek life-saving surgery in Germany
How playing Banquo in China gave me a new love for Shakespeare
George Soros warns that Chinese slowdown is biggest worry in 2014
Macau is betting on a new kind of Chinese tourism
Asian reporters face a death threat even for everyday stories
Facing down the Taliban on the Himalayas' killer mountain

Gay rights: 'After 18 years together, we are finally getting married'

Posted: 05 Jan 2014 01:00 AM PST

In March, same-sex couples will finally be allowed to marry. Here, actor Sophie Ward, who has had to endure tabloid attention over her 18-year relationship with Rena Brennan, explains why it means so much to her

"Married, single, divorced or widowed?" The woman behind the counter looked up from her computer screen and smiled at me.

I stared at her. The crowd behind me was growing impatient. We had shared this journey for a while, the queue and I. And now, just when it seemed the hours of waiting were about to yield results, I was the one letting us all down.

"Are those the only choices? Married, single, divorced or widowed?" My face flushed. The microclimate at the desk seemed to have warmed. I am used to being asked whether I am married in every kind of situation, from the back of a taxi to the bar at a pub. For nearly 20 years I have come out as a lesbian several times a day. I am accustomed to the myriad reactions my answer might produce, from "good for you" and "shame on you" to "you could never tell" and "can I watch?" But I had spent most of the afternoon trying to buy a new phone and now I was concerned I was going to be rejected on a technicality.

"I'm civil partnered," I replied.

A man at the back of the shop gave up his place with a deep sigh.

The assistant looked sympathetic. "We don't have that option, I'm afraid." She pointed at the screen. "Which one would you like?"

Technically, three of the four options could have applied to me, but I hadn't faced my family, friends, strangers, the press, immigration services and various government offices with my nuptial ambitions only to be rebuffed by Carphone Warehouse.

"Married," I said loudly enough for the crowd to hear. I detected several nods of approval, though this may have been more in anticipation of their progress in the queue than any political statement. Emboldened nonetheless, I tapped the computer. "You might suggest they update the system," I said. "We have had civil partnerships for seven years."

"I know," the patient assistant replied, "my uni friends are always complaining about it." She shrugged her shoulders as if to acknowledge the futility of people going to university or being gay or possibly both.

In March of this year, my civil partnership will be eligible for a change in status. After 18 years together, my partner Rena and I will be able to get married. Had the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act already passed, I could have chosen the correct designation at the phone shop that day without coming out or lying.

Many of the difficulties are directly related to the lack of recognition for civil partnerships as opposed to marriages. But it is not because it will save companies the bother of rewriting their software that the new legislation is preferable; civil partnerships will continue to exist and will undoubtedly be offered to opposite sex couples. Computer systems and attitudes will be updated when heterosexual couples choose civil partnership instead of marriage.

In the meantime, homosexual couples in England and Wales will be allowed to choose marriage instead of civil partnerships. It remains to be seen whether other computer systems and attitudes around the world will be updated accordingly. The international recognition of marriage, as opposed to civil partnerships, is based on the longstanding tradition of marriage as the absolute standard for a legal, cultural and emotional commitment between two people. When issues of immigration are involved, the difference between marriage and civil partnership can change your life.

My partner, Rena, is American. For four years, she was not allowed to work in the UK or stay in the country for longer than six months, but we kept careful documentation and observed all the relevant immigration laws in the hope that one day our relationship would be recognised by our governments. We would leave England together and arrive back together and every time we approached passport control, in our separate lines, I would wait at the back of the hall, knuckles white with anxiety that Rena would be turned away.

In 2000 the government, under Tony Blair, changed the law to allow couples who had been together for four years to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain. We were told that the process was slower in the UK, but that the British embassies in the United States could process the application in one day. We flew to New York with all the paperwork and evidence of our four-year relationship.

We waited all morning at the embassy and were granted an interview for the afternoon. We thought we might be taken to separate rooms to answer questions about the colour of each other's toothbrushes, but in the end the rather grim collection of newspaper cuttings showing our respective parents being door-stepped by British tabloids in London and Springfield, Illinois, seemed persuasive.

Rena and I had come out as a couple rather publicly in 1996. It had not been our intention. We had thought we would give a small interview to a newspaper on a busy news day and so avoid a fuss. Rena, fresh to our shores, had asked me what I meant by a fuss, and I tried to explain. But the tabloids arranged a personal demonstration when they got hold of the story and told us they were printing it.

Would we care to comment? "You can die slowly or you can die in a car crash," we were advised. We chose the car crash.

A fuss was duly had. By the end of it, Richard Madeley was cheerfully informing my father on This Morning that if I were cast as a heterosexual, "I'd believe it." Not everyone was as generous.

Four years later at the British Embassy in New York, the pile of stories concerning the many different ways that you might, with enough determination, hang a gay couple out to dry, could have seemed a little sordid. But, on this occasion they did the trick. We were sent to the cash machine so we could pay the fees.

The passport that was returned to us included Rena's Temporary Leave to Remain. It contained, not the perfect little Green Card of my imagination, but a somewhat smudged stamp with the handwritten advice: 'ACCOMPANY PARTNER SOPHIE WARD'. This was the longed-for visa. The Disneyland pass to Small World was more elaborate.

We hastened down the street before they could change their minds and on the corner of 5th Avenue and E57th Street, I proposed. We could not have a legal ceremony – it would be seven years before even civil partnerships would be a possibility – but that day, we felt triumphant.

Six months later, we held a wedding of our own devising. After all the difficulties, the doubts and the uncertainties, it seemed important to celebrate our relationship, and to ask all those who had supported us to celebrate, too.

Of the many meanings that marriage holds, the one we understand from our earliest years is that of the expression of romantic love between two people. From nursery rhymes and skipping games to fairy tales, poetry, music and Shakespeare we learn that the search for our "other half" is a life quest that ends with marriage.

So deep is this message, that whether or not we personally reject its siren call, we will spend our official lives in the position of being "married, single, divorced or widowed". Without the language to describe the relationship, without the weight of the context supplied by the language, it could be said that the relationship itself does not formally exist. Nowhere was this more evident than in our life as a family.

When my children were at school, my partner and I would attend parents' evenings together. We had always been open with the schools they attended, had approached the head teacher at their primary school before our relationship became public knowledge, and we wanted to make the conversation with the faculty as comfortable as possible.

As an unmarried same-sex couple with no legal, and little social, recognition it was difficult for the teachers to know how to place us. There was no familiar language to use. Rena was our boys' "mother's girlfriend". They were unrelated to her in vocabulary and in the eyes of the law, yet she was of primary importance in their lives.

At one parent–teacher meeting, Rena and I sat in front of a teacher who clearly wished to be sympathetic to some of the issues our family might encounter. "I know it's difficult," she said, "I meet lots of single parents like yourself."

Even though our legal status was unchanged after our wedding ceremony in 2000, we felt we had made a statement of our commitment to one another and to our family. The interests of our children were part of that decision. Rena and I had "married" and from then on Rena was known as the boys' stepmother.

Of course, her relationship with the boys was defined by her actions as a mother; we cared for the boys together and they loved her in her own right. But the dignity of her role in our family was undoubtedly enhanced by a signifier that is recognised the world over. The boys knew they had their own relationship with Rena – they were her stepchildren. And for all those who needed to be introduced to Rena, as the children's guardian, as my partner, the language gave a context in which they could understand the importance of Rena's role in our family.

Some months after our wedding, Rena gained her Indefinite Leave to Remain, but the original visa is still in her passport and this passport, though since expired, is the one she must carry with her. At every international border Rena crosses, she is asked, "Where is Sophie Ward?"

Fortunately, we often travel together and I can wave at the customs officials from my place at the back of the hall. My knuckles are a little less white these days though some countries seem to enjoy the lesbian solidarity more than others. We don't tend to travel to the countries where we might be executed or imprisoned. With a passport like Rena's we wouldn't make it as far as the baggage collection hall.

Rena is studying for her British citizenship, but had we been married when she applied for her visa, she would have caused less international consternation. Marriage has what Leslie Green refers to as "portability". This was emphasised in July 2013, when the United States announced that the government would in future recognise the marriages of same-sex couples, even though many of its own states have not passed equal marriage laws. The implications for all those who work for the federal government (including the armed forces) and those applying for partnership visas are vast, and those rights extend to every visiting married same-sex couple.

In the meantime, homosexual couples in England and Wales will be allowed to choose marriage instead of civil partnerships. We are adults and we require the life choices of adults. Being forbidden to marry is to be labelled a perpetual child, dismissed to the nursery while the adults decide your democratic rights. There is no dignity in being told you may not aspire to that which your society places among the highest forms of human expression.

The change in law will affect gay and lesbian couples, their families and friends in every aspect of their lives from the relatively small indignities of commercial transactions to getting mortgages, visas and work permits along with their marriage licenses. These are some of the practical realities where the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act will have significant benefits. Most of all, equal marriage offers same-sex couples the right of cultural and social recognition to all those who choose to be included as well as those who don't.

And there will be many gay couples who will opt out of the perceived homogenisation of queer culture… many lesbian feminists who will shudder at the thought of embracing the patriarchal systems they fought so hard to vanquish. Their fears are understandable. All of human history supports them. For myself, I have never felt that the argument should be framed by the failure of our species to celebrate, liberate and respect women or gay people. We can define our own relationships. When we have equal rights under the laws of our land, then we have the choice to act according to our conscience.

Around the world, LGBT people are fighting for their civil rights. There are not fewer gay people born in countries where the punishment for their existence is death or imprisonment, there is just more misery. And there are no more gay people born in countries that legislate for equal marriage, but there might possibly be more happiness.

If we are to accept gay people as equals, with the same rights and obligations as heterosexual people, we cannot stop short of offering them the same fundamental liberties. Not "gay" marriage, any more than "gay" food, or "gay" houses. And not only a civil partnership, a neat legal solution and a significant step forward but still, a version of marriage often known as "marriage". Civil partnerships may meet the legal requirements, but they arrive without the poetry of our heritage. Just as opposite-sex couples do not refer to their unions as marriage-under-the-Marriage-Act-of-1949, we do not expect our marriages to be known as Marriage (Same Sex Couples). We ask for that which has been established in Article 16 of the Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations: marriage.

In March 2014, Rena and I will apply for our marriage licence. We will be equal before the law with all other married couples. Fourteen years ago, we had held our own ceremony, unrecognised by the law and much of society. But for Rena and I, it had been the end of some of the doubts and fears we had lived with for our first years. We had won immigration status for Rena, we had outlasted the controversy and our family was flourishing. In our hearts, it was the beginning of our married life. We hoped for the day when it would be legal for gay people to marry the person they loved. We didn't dream it would happen in our lifetimes.

A Marriage Proposal: The Importance of Equal Marriage and What it Means for All of Us by Sophie Ward is out now as a Guardian Shorts Originals ebook (£1.99). Visit guardianshorts.com to find out more

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Kenya's unemployed youth find fresh hope in the form of LivelyHoods | Les Roopanarine

Posted: 05 Jan 2014 01:00 AM PST

A social enterprise project that trains young people to sell goods of benefit to local communities in the slums of Nairobi is thriving

In 2010, Tania Laden and Maria Springer founded LivelyHoods, a social enterprise project designed to create work for young people in the urban slums of Kenya. In the two and a half years since, an initiative born of the willingness of two American twentysomethings to listen to the needs of Kenya's youth and tailor their methods accordingly has shown that, with invention and open-mindedness, it is not impossible to forge economic opportunities for a generation faced by massive unemployment.

An estimated 17 million people are without work in Kenya, 70% of whom are between 15 and 34. Government measures have had little impact on these numbers, with President Uhuru Kenyatta's Uwezo Fund – a 6bn Kenyan shilling (£43m) initiative designed to foster economic growth among the country's youth and women – the latest scheme to falter.

The LivelyHoods project, which began in Kawangware, a densely populated urban slum about nine miles (15km) from Nairobi, is designed to create employment opportunities by training young people to sell products tailored to the needs of their communities. Cornerstones of the scheme's iSmart brand include fuel-efficient cookstoves, of which 3,233 have been sold so far, as well as solar lamps and reusable sanitary products for women. All the products are vetted for their suitability, first by the LivelyHoods sales team and then by potential customers.

On completing their training, sales agents are invited to select a daily consignment of goods worth $75 (£50) from one of the project's two shops. They earn up to 20% commission on everything they sell, and are free to return or replenish stock as they see fit. So far, the scheme has provided training for 227 young people, 84 of whom have been given full-time jobs. In 2014, Springer and Laden hope to double the number of trainees.

Regardless of whether participants go on to work for LivelyHoods, the emphasis is on equipping them with transferable skills that will bolster their future employment prospects. "When we bring in new recruits, we tell them: 'This is a very special opportunity, a chance to change the rest of your life, so it's up to you to do something with that'," says Laden. "We train them not only in basic sales skills, but also in team-building and how to manage their own futures – their goals, finances, and success – because it requires a big mindset change to go from idle youth to full-time employee."

From the outset, LivelyHoods has been defined by the ability of its co-founders to think on their feet. Laden and Springer originally arrived in Kawangware to work on a microloans project, but altered course after canvassing opinion among 278 young people, the overwhelming majority of whom said they wanted jobs rather than funding. When the time came to open a second shop, Springer fronted a crowdfunding campaign in which she put 25 sticking plasters on her face, peeling one off every time $1,000 was raised. It's fair to say imagination has not been in short supply.

While the project remains a work in progress, it is growing all the time. Already the second LivelyHoods store, which opened in August in Kangemi, another Nairobi slum, is almost matching the sales figures of its predecessor. A $64,802 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation will fund training for a further 585 young people in Mombasa, while a D-Prize fellowship award worth up to $20,000 will encourage further expansion.

By enabling companies to get their products into the hands of people in slum communities – a global market that Springer estimates has an annual purchasing power of $4bn – Springer and Laden have created an initiative that looks sustainable and scalable.

"We're figuring out ways to penetrate even the hardest-to-reach markets," says Laden. "You normally have distribution points or stores on the periphery of the slums, but they struggle to reach every single customer in that area. So we look at the way we want to scale kind of like a Starbucks or a McDonald's – on every corner."

"We tap the talent of populations that are completely overlooked as unemployable," adds Springer. "Human capital among the youth workforce is one of the largest untapped resources of our time, and there's no reason we can't ensure that all of these young people have an opportunity. The results so far have been incredible."

Les Roopanarine

Eusébio, Portugal's footballing hero, dies at 71

Posted: 05 Jan 2014 12:51 AM PST

The star of Portugal's team that lit up the 1966 World Cup before losing to England in the semi-final has died

India: rescuers search for survivors in collapsed building

Posted: 05 Jan 2014 12:01 AM PST

At least 14 die, with more believed trapped under the rubble, after five-storey building under construction in Goa collapses

The Fateful Year: England 1914 by Mark Bostridge – review

Posted: 05 Jan 2014 12:00 AM PST

Moments of levity sit uneasily alongside the portentous and the poignant in Mark Bostridge's account of England in 1914

In 1914, the celebration of Christmas was considered a patriotic duty, the only concession to the war, now four months old, being the replacement of tinsel and paper chains with strings of brightly coloured allied flags. In London, the West End was thronged. In the suburbs, poulterers fairly bulged with geese and turkeys; happily, the cost of Christmas dinner would be only a touch more expensive than in peacetime. All the same, those who went out, baskets on arms, couldn't help but notice that this wasn't any old Christmas. According to the writer Katherine Mansfield, on Oxford Street the shop windows were filled with "khaki and wool and pots of Vaseline and marching socks". More poignantly, the department stores had baskets prominently on display into which shoppers could drop gifts for "Our Men at the Front". Among the more popular presents for soldiers were "tinder lighters with their natty little plaited rope and striker" and – oh, how the heart aches to read this! – "waterproof squares for trench seats".

The Fateful Year, Mark Bostridge's idiosyncratic diary of 1914, is rich with details such as this, the domestic and the quotidian quietly standing proxy for the loud horror and fear one has learned from histories of a wholly different kind. Its power as a narrative, however, comes from an altogether stranger and less physical realm, for this is a book of shadows and portents, a series of harbingers that might have come straight out of a film script, and sometimes a pretty creaky one at that.

It begins, after all, with the murder in January of a small boy called Willie Starchfield whose malnourished body was hidden beneath a seat on a train to Dalston Junction in east London – and since this crime has no connection whatsoever to the coming war, the reader has little choice but to see its inclusion as a foreshadowing of the innocence that will shortly be lost.

There follow descriptions of paintings, music and poems that seem to predict the coming carnage, each one more unnerving than the last: David Bomberg's The Mud Bath was exhibited before the outbreak of war and inspired by the vapour baths close to where he grew up in Whitechapel, and yet to the 21st-century eye, its exuberant vorticist shapes speak only of the sludge of northern France, a mire of blood and bones in which a "waterproof square" would have seemed like a bad joke indeed.

No wonder, then, that by the time the calamity finally arrives, the reader's mind is likely to be playing tricks on them. When I took in the revelation, courtesy of his friend Edmund Gosse, that in the days before the declaration of war, the foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey escaped for peace and quiet to the birdhouse at London Zoo, I pictured not exotic species, green of wing and yellow of belly, but rooks and carrion crows, their oily feathers as black as the gathering storm.

Knowing what's coming makes every cloud look like an omen. But on the matter of "innocence" at least, Bostridge remains clear-sighted: prewar England wasn't precisely the sunny, sepia world, all archaic moustaches and tidy gardens, conjured by Larkin's poem, MCMXIV. It's not only that the weather wasn't quite so good as we've been led to believe; these were fiery, febrile months, irrespective of what was happening in the Balkans.

The suffragettes were becoming ever more militant, committing 141 acts of destruction in the first half of 1914 alone. Meanwhile, in Holloway prison, those on hunger strike were still being force-fed. When Mary Richardson, the woman who had recently slashed the National Gallery's Rokeby Venus with a small axe, was treated for appendicitis, her doctor recorded the painful scars inside her mouth, wounds that had been inflicted by the fingernails of her guards.

As the public mood turned against Mrs Pankhurst and her followers, some argued that the government should simply let these infernal women die in prison; others suggested they be deported to St Kilda. In Ireland, the prospect of civil war loomed. In English cities, industrial unrest had returned. A coal strike had London's middle classes bringing their fuel home in cabs.

Nevertheless, the war brought with it "a different world". How could it do otherwise? As John Galsworthy wrote in his diary: "The horror of the thing keeps coming over one in waves, and all happiness has gone out of life." The conflict put out the fires of home rule and militant suffrage overnight. But it also turned every stranger into a spy, making the lives of the 57,000 Germans who then lived in the country extremely difficult; when Cosmo Gordon Lang, the archbishop of York, dared to remind people that it wasn't that long ago that the Kaiser had knelt at the bier of his grandmother Queen Victoria beside Edward VII, the public opprobrium was so severe, he developed alopecia.

As enlistment began, the white feather brigade patrolled the streets, publicly and cruelly shaming those not yet in uniform (it is miserable to be reminded of just how many vengeful suffragettes were involved in this horrible, misguided pastime). Worst of all – and this is often forgotten – there was the terrifying early morning bombardment on 16 December of Scarborough and Hartlepool by German warships, an attack that killed 136 people and maimed hundreds more. Sylvia Pankhurst visited Scarborough on Christmas Eve, but it was "too sad" for her and she soon scarpered.

All of this is extremely well told. But some other episodes feel misplaced. Bostridge's account of Herbert Asquith's crush on his daughter's friend, Venetia Stanley, is fascinating – I longed to know more about her pet penguin, with which the spoony prime minister was once photographed – but I wondered about its inclusion in this book, especially since he does not appear to have turned up anything new. By 1915, Venetia had married another suitor and the fumbling Asquith had turned his attentions to her sister; Bostridge's interest in the affair seems to belong to another volume altogether.

And while his sketch of the staging of Shaw's Pygmalion is hilariously funny – the hammy antics of its ageing stars, Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Mrs Patrick Campbell, drove the playwright halfway round the bend – such high comedy sits rather uneasily in his narrative, mostly so plangent. Mrs Pat, playing the 18-year-old Eliza Doolittle at the ripe age of 50, may well have belonged to an old order – the elaborate wigs, the heavy makeup and the dazzling spotlights were on their way out, thank God – but it wasn't the old order, actors not being representative of anything very much.

The complicated heroism of the poets Edward Thomas and Rupert Brooke is familiar by now, and there is something a little dutiful about its appearance here. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, for all its many pleasures, for all its wonderful stories, The Fateful Year is sometimes desultory. It left me with the uneasy feeling that its primary engine was a desire to honour an important anniversary rather than the careful unpicking of a knotty new idea.

Rachel Cooke

Ed Miliband promises to close loophole allowing exploitation of foreign workers

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 11:07 PM PST

Labour leader focuses immigration debate on low pay, but says it is 'not prejudiced' to believe some Britons lose out economically to migrants

Sydney violence: teenager in coma after another alleged assault

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 10:36 PM PST

Alexander McEwen, 19, in critical condition after he and his brother were allegedly punched outside a McDonald's in Penrith

UK storms 'worst in 20 years', and more on the way

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 09:47 PM PST

Weather experts warn of even more flooding, with 96 warnings throughout England and Wales on Sunday and another storm due

Church of England accused of dumbing down baptism service

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 07:18 PM PST

Former bishop of Rochester attacks proposed alternative wording which will be on trial until April

Amazon's Jeff Bezos flown from cruise ship after suffering kidney stone

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 07:07 PM PST

Amazon founder evacuated by Ecuadorean navy helicopter and flown to the US for treatment

Steven Seagal may run for Arizona governor

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 05:25 PM PST

Star of Hard to Kill and Under Siege, 61, reveals he is considering going for political office

Action-movie star Steven Seagal says he is considering a run for Arizona governor. The actor, star of martial arts and action films including Marked for Death, Hard to Kill and Under Siege, told KNXV-TV that he is considering a shot at the state's highest office and has had a talk about the bid with the self-proclaimed toughest sheriff in America.

The 61-year-old made the comments while talking about his newly released reality series, Steven Seagal – Lawman: Maricopa County. Seagal teamed up with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for the show, which was shot in Arizona and airs on cable TV's Reelz Channel.

The martial arts expert is a member of Arpaio's posse, made up of 3,000 unpaid civilians. He also has been deputised with sheriff's offices in New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana and says he wants to increase border security.

Three police seriously injured in Melbourne flat explosion

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:28 PM PST

One officer in critical condition with burns to 90% of her body after police and firefighters enter Middle Park flat

A more liberal America will emerge, but it isn't going to happen overnight | Michael Cohen

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:07 PM PST

Popular opinion is moving towards more progressive policies, though Republicans won't go down without a fight

Oh to be a liberal in America today. In New York City, a Democrat has finally been elected mayor after a 24-year absence from City Hall – and he's a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. Gay marriage is legal in 18 states including, most bizarrely, Utah, one of the most conservative states. The minimum wage is going up around the country and you can even smoke a joint in Colorado. Obamacare, for all its speedbumps over the past few weeks, is the law of the land; the Senate filibuster just took a big hit (and along with it Republican obstructionism); a nuclear deal with Iran is in the works and even Obama is talking about the scourge of income inequality.

Everything, it seems, is coming up roses.

But before progressives start donning their Che Guevera T-shirts and popping their artisanal champagne corks the liberal moment is coming face to face with a difficult reality: conservatives are not going down without a fight.

In fact, just over a year since President Obama was re-elected and it seemed the country was moving in a more progressive direction, Republicans have thwarted much of his agenda and 2014 (as well as 2015 and 2016) promises more of the same.

Immigration reform, which was at the forefront of Obama's re-election bid, is on life support; gun control was blocked in the Senate (and never would have made it through the House anyway). The harsh budget cuts from sequestration remain largely intact as government spending is growing at anaemically low rates.

In the states, the story isn't much better. Twenty-three of the Republican ones have rejected Medicaid expansion, which is leaving more than 5 million Americans on the outside looking in on Obamacare. Emboldened by the Supreme Court decision to overturn a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, states across the country are enacting new and onerous voting restrictions; perhaps worst of all, 2013 was the culmination of a three-year period in which more state restrictions on abortion were enacted than in the entire previous decade.

Quite simply, as the country has taken a giant step forward on a number of progressive goals, it has also taken a major step back. Indeed, in key regards, while Obamacare represents an enormous victory for American progressives and is perhaps the most important piece of social policy in more than four decades, so many liberal priorities remain unfulfilled. And nowhere is that more true than on fiscal policy. While Democrats were finally able to wring tax increases out of the Republican party they've been unable to get conservatives to agree to the sort of government spending that is key not only to the country's economic recovery but to creating new jobs and reducing income inequality.

While New York City's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, ran on a platform of universal pre-kindergarten, the president's own plan along these lines is dead on arrival in Congress. The same is probably true for his $50bn proposal for infrastructure spending. At the end of December, unemployment insurance expired for more than a million Americans and there seems to be little impetus in Congress to restore the funding. This comes only months after the Republicans ruthlessly cut food stamp benefits for poor Americans.

The reason for this is not surprising or new. Republicans have, since Obama took office in 2009, made it their number one goal to obstruct practically every piece of legislation that the president and his party supporters favour. With the Republicans in control of the House of Representatives this year – and for the foreseeable future – that is unlikely to change soon.

This speaks to a larger challenge of American democracy: it was constructed to be a bulwark against progress. Whether it's the three branches of the US government, the separate legislative bodies, the 50 individual state governments or a court system with the power to strike down laws, the number of obstacles in the American political system are far greater than the number of glide points. This has always given conservatives a political advantage – it's much easier to stop reform (or water it down) than it is to enact new laws. If anything, the liberal moment may find its greatest opportunities in the same places it did during the civil rights era – in the court system (as has been the case on the issue of gay marriage). Although even there it may have to wait for President Obama to get his court picks through the Senate before significant progress can be made.

But liberals shouldn't lose all hope. On a range of issues, progressive goals have never been so strongly supported by the American people. From gay marriage and marijuana legalisation to raising the minimum wage, immigration reform, background checks for gun buyers and even the specifics of government spending, public opinion is strongly in their favour. Americans are more supportive of activist government, populist politics and socially liberal policies than at any time in recent memory. In addition, millennials (or those in their 20s and early 30s) are decidedly liberal, even going so far in a recent poll to prefer socialism to capitalism.

The failure of liberalism to enact the types of reforms that are essential to their vision of America does not come from an inability to move popular opinion in their favour – it comes from their failure to find a way around last-gasp conservative rejectionism. But as Republicans have taken increasingly extreme positions on a host of issues – from abortion to taxes and, most damagingly, immigration – they've marginalised themselves and diminished the appeal of conservatism, particularly to young Americans, women and Hispanics (the fastest growing demographic group in the country).

Indeed, the success of Republicans in blocking reform is more of a desperate rearguard action to hold back progress than it is an indication of conservative success or even political ascendancy. If anything, it is making the realisation of the liberal moment that much more likely by making conservatism that much more unpopular.

The problem is: that's not much good for the woman today who is seeking an abortion in a Republican state or the person looking for a job who is about to lose his unemployment benefits or the next victim of gun violence.

In the near term, American politics is likely to look like an extreme version of the gridlock and dysfunction to which Americans have become all too accustomed. The question then is not will liberals get their day in the sun – it's when. Unfortunately for them – and the voters who support them – 2014 is unlikely to be the year it happens.

Michael Cohen

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom – review

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:07 PM PST

A diligent biopic of Nelson Mandela is lifted by a beautifully supple performance from Idris Elba

Nelson Mandela died quietly at his home in Johannesburg on the evening of 5 December, just as the dignitaries were gathering for the royal premiere of Justin Chadwick's epic account of his extraordinary life. In the darkness of the London cinema, the audience sat, oblivious, and watched a man being slowly, deliberately stitched into history; his rough edges planed down, his achievements set in stone. By the time the credits had rolled and the news was announced, the monument to Mandela had already been built.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is a conservative film about a radical man, a movie so bowed down by the weight of responsibility that it occasionally trudges when you wish it would dance. At various stages of his turbulent life, Mandela inspired fear and loathing, adoration and awe. But Long Walk to Freedom, although made with rigour and intelligence, is largely content to print the legend and tidy the tensions. To misquote John Huston in Chinatown, "Ugly buildings, whores and Nelson Mandela – they all get respectable if they last long enough."

Adapted by William Nicholson from Mandela's 1995 autobiography, the film is at its best in its urgent opening half, when it charts the political education of its subject against a backdrop of hysterical institutionalised racism. Mandela (superbly embodied by the British actor Idris Elba) starts out as a wily young lawyer, audaciously defending a domestic servant accused of stealing her mistress's knickers. Outraged by the death of a drunk in police custody, he becomes involved in the ANC struggle against apartheid, burning his identity papers and shuttling between safe houses. It is during these moments that the film catches Mandela at his most knotty and raw. He's a militant firebrand, the scourge of the state. Chadwick's movie shows him cheating on his first wife, neglecting his infant son and smoking like a chimney. In the wake of the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, he embraces armed resistance, blowing up factories and government buildings. "We no longer accept the authority of a state that wages war on its own people," Mandela explains in those fraught, giddy years before the police run him down and his trials begin.

In the dock at Pretoria, Mandela says he is prepared to die for a free and democratic South Africa. Instead, the authorities sentence him to life imprisonment and fly him out to Robben Island where he and his fellow activists are dressed up like boy scouts and ordered to break rocks in the yard. The decades crawl by and the man turns to myth. He finds himself overtaken by his own reputation. He is forced to sit on the sidelines, growing stooped and grey-haired while the struggle continues. When a young activist, Patrick Lekota (Zenzo Ngqobe), is interred on the island, he comes to peer at Mandela through the chain-link fence, like an unimpressed kid visiting an old lion at the zoo.

Elba's central performance is the movie's trump card, and one it employs with abandon, shuffling the other players far down in the deck. Until now we have known Elba as an imposing, granite presence (as brooding Stringer Bell in The Wire or the stentorian commanding officer in last year's Pacific Rim). But his portrayal of Mandela is beautifully limber; a supple, easy performance inside a stiff and formal film. Elba catches Mandela's loose, rolling gait and the lovely, lolloping melody of his speech. It's not his fault that his acting grows rather less compelling the longer the film goes on. By the time Mandela is released from prison, the activist has become the statesman, with all that this entails. He returns to the stage as a vessel of nobility, urging South Africa back from the brink of civil war; preaching peace and reconciliation to both sides. The film touches lightly on the friction his stance causes with his second wife Winnie (robustly played by Naomie Harris), who has now become an active agent in the war against apartheid and is altogether less willing to let bygones be bygones. There is, perhaps, a whole other movie to be made of this conflict, one that narrows the focus and plays the Mandela marriage as a microcosm for the wider political struggle. But Chadwick rushes us through the domestic ructions in his last-gasp push towards his final destination. The drums are thundering, the strings are soaring and our Long Walk to Freedom is just about through.

Is it a redundancy to mention that Chadwick's tone is weighty, verging on the cumbersome, or that the handling is so respectful that it tips towards reverence? These, surely, are the inevitable pitfalls when it comes to tackling a man like Mandela. The prison could not hold him and the biopic can't contain him. His life was too unruly and expansive to be shoehorned into a neat, three-act structure; its implications too far-reaching to be topped and tailed by the credits. Long Walk to Freedom covers the ground with aplomb and then erects a handsome shrine. It gives us the Mandela of history and allows the man to slip free.

Rating: 3/5

Xan Brooks

US to see temperatures unknown for a generation

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:06 PM PST

Fans at a crucial NFL playoff have been advised to wrap up well and sip hot drinks at a match where the forecast is -22C

New York state was facing nearly two feet of snow this weekend after storms in the north-eastern US on Friday claimed the lives of at least 16 people. With temperatures as low as -23C, forecasters issued dire warnings of what lies in store.

One meteorologist, Ryan Maue of Weather Bell, called the system of cold air approaching the midwest a "polar vortex". "All the ingredients are there for a near-record or historic cold outbreak," he said. "If you're under 40, you've not seen this stuff before."

The temperature was predicted to fall as low as -35C in parts of Minnesota, with wind chill potentially making that feel like -56C. In a region accustomed to brutally cold weather, however, the Green Bay Packers' NFL wild-card playoff game against the San Francisco 49ers at Lambeau Field is expected to go ahead today, as the coldest NFL game ever played.

Forecasters said it would be -19C at the evening kickoff and -22C by the fourth quarter. Fans, who bought the remaining 40,000 tickets last week after the NFL threatened to prohibit local TV from airing the game if the team were unable to sell out, were warned to take extra precautions, such as dressing in layers and sipping warm drinks.

Minnesota's governor Mark Dayton ordered schools closed across the state for the first time in 17 years. In North Dakota, "life-threatening wind chills" were forecast until Tuesday morning.

Maue added that, although the cold spell approaching the midwest would last for only a few days, "it raises the chances for future cold" across the country. The NFL is watching such forecasts closely, as it has scheduled Super Bowl XLVIII to be played on 2 February at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, the outdoors venue shared by the New York Jets and the New York Giants. Contingency plans are in place to play the showpiece game, which is usually staged at warm-weather venues or in domed stadiums, on 1 or 3 February if necessary.

"Right now for the winter we will have had two significant shots of major Arctic air and we're only through the first week of January," said Maue. "And we had a pretty cold December."

The cold blast will also affect parts of the east coast, which is still clearing up after Friday's storms. Sally Johnson, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Sioux Falls, said: "This one happens to be really big and it's going to dive deep into the continental US. And all that cold air is going to come with it."

Nearly two feet of snow fell on some north-eastern areas on Thursday night and into Friday, causing widespread road and flight delays, closing schools on the second day back after Christmas and leading the governors of New York and New Jersey to declare states of emergency.

Cities from Washington DC to Portland, Maine, were affected, although the heaviest snow fell north of Boston. Nearly 18in fell there and in parts of New York state. There was 6in of snow in Central Park, New York.

Nearly 3,500 flights were cancelled on Friday across the US; 12,394 were delayed. On the roads, deaths were reported in Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois. A road gritter was killed in Philadelphia when a pile of rock salt fell on the machine he was operating. and authorities said a 71-year-old New York state woman suffering from Alzheimer's disease died after leaving her rural home.

Authorities rescued a number of peple from accidents caused by the ice and snow. On Friday a man was rescued after falling through the ice at Ramapo Lake in New Jersey. A police dive rescue team pulled 34-year-old Guncel Karadogan to safety and resuscitated him. He was taken to a local hospital. In Monmouth, in the same state, fire officials said the three people were rescued after the Shrewsbury River flooded on Friday morning.

In New York City, the snow provided an immediate test for the new mayor, Bill De Blasio, who took office on New Year's Day. De Blasio, who in 2010 was one of the leading critics of his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, for allegedly prioritising the clearing of Manhattan over the other four boroughs, was photographed shovelling snow in front of his Brooklyn home.

Asked about the snow-shovelling effort made by his 16-year-old son Dante, who achieved a certain fame in the election campaign and who the mayor's wife, Chirlane McCray, said would be sent out to shovel snow, De Blasio said: "I give Dante an A for effort and a D for punctuality."

New York City transport was affected by the storm, with some highways shut overnight and commuter services running on weekend or reduced schedules, but by Saturday morning services were largely back to normal. Over the Hudson river in New Jersey, the governor, Chris Christie, closed state offices and courthouses and ordered non-essential workers to stay at home.

Authorities warned the public to be ready for continuing low temperatures. The governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, said: "Temperatures are expected to be extremely low, and dangerously so. These are dangerous conditions."

New York City's department of homeless services doubled patrols seeking those who needed shelter and streamlined its check-in process.

Martin Pengelly

Transatlantic freeze that fuels the jet stream

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:06 PM PST

The series of storms that are battering Britain's coasts find their origin in a dramatic variation of temperatures in the US

Three thousand miles west of the UK, in the skies above the eastern seaboard of North America, lies the explanation for the battering that Britain's coasts are currently undergoing.

Just south of New York City, extremely cold air from the north and relatively warm air from the south are coming together to create the climatological instability that is fuelling a particularly strong jet stream.

Forecaster Emma Compton at Met Office headquarters in Exeter said: "The reason why the jet stream is really quite strong is because there is some quite interesting weather going on in America at the moment.

"The very marked temperature contrast between northern and southern parts of North America, that tightening of the thermal contrast, is making the jet stream quite strong."

The jet stream can be compared to a fast-flowing torrent of high-altitude winds whose strength has been dragging the recent sequence of storms across the Atlantic and towards the UK. The stream's unusual ferocity has supplied a series of low-pressure systems that have deepened on their approach to Britain, which meant that even before the most recent storm arrivals the UK had experienced its stormiest December since 1969.

Compton said the conveyor-belt effect of the intense weather systems was also being intensified by a process of positive feedback – the power of the storms boosting the strength of the jet stream and vice versa: "This means we get these storms clustering together, a stormy spell, then a respite, then another system coming through."

She said that although the force was impressive there was nothing particularly unusual in the current pattern, which was all to be expected as part of a longer-term "natural variability" in our weather.

But she warned that the turbulent weather shows little sign of abating: a low-pressure system is scheduled to arrive (on Sunday) and with it fresh flood warnings. Monday also looks set to be very windy again, with unsettled weather likely to continue into the immediate future.

Mark Townsend

Kerry labouring on Palestine deal

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:06 PM PST

US secretary of state struggling to overcome leaders' reluctance to alienate their parties

John Kerry, the US secretary of state, is engaged in intense efforts this weekend to coax reluctant Israeli and Palestinian leaders towards an agreement to end their decades-old conflict.

He is shuttling between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah for a series of separate meetings with the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. His 10th trip to the region since March takes place as Israel braces itself for the death of former prime minister Ariel Sharon, who is suffering multiple organ failure after being in a coma for eight years.

Kerry is discussing a US-authored "framework agreement" with the two leaders to set parameters for further negotiations in the hope of reaching a deal. It covers the issues of a border on the basis of the 1967 line, refugees, security, Jerusalem as a capital for both states, and Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Speaking after talks with each leader, Kerry sounded somewhat hopeful about the chances of ending the conflict, despite misgivings voiced recently by both sides and a lack of tangible signs of movement. "I am confident that the talks we have had in the last two days have already fleshed out and even resolved certain kinds of issues and presented new opportunities for others," he said after meeting Abbas.

"We are not there yet, but we are making progress," Kerry told reporters in Ramallah, seat of Abbas's government. "It's a tough process, step by step, day by day".

Netanyahu and Abbas will not be asked to formally sign the framework agreement. American officials are reportedly undecided on whether to make its contents public, wary of creating a political backlash among critics of the negotiation process.

The deadline for reaching a final deal is April, but almost no one expects that to be met. Netanyahu is reported to be pressing for an additional 12 months of talks; the Palestinians are opposed to any extension. An extra six months is a likely compromise.

Rightwing MPs from Likud – the party led by Netanyahu – and Jewish Home, a key coalition partner, have called for the framework agreement to be rejected. Naftali Bennett, leader of Jewish Home, has told Netanyahu in the past week that his party would not stay in the coalition if red lines were crossed.

Eight Israeli ministers backed a parliamentary bill calling for the de facto annexation of the Jordan Valley, a swath of land in the West Bank which has become a key factor in Israel's demands relating to security. Although it is unlikely to be passed, the support of key ministers is indicative of the hostility at the heart of the Israeli government to Kerry's initiative.

On the Palestinian side, Abbas faced demands last week from the Palestine Liberation Organisation's executive committee to walk out of negotiations and resume the strategy of signing Palestine up to global bodies such as the international criminal court.

On Friday, the secretary of state was greeted in Ramallah by demonstrators chanting "Kerry go home". In a statement, senior official Yasser Abed Rabbo described the framework agreement as a "worthless piece of paper". The Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, has said Israel is not interested in reaching a final deal.

Many analysts have pointed out that resisting pressure in their political backyards and settling the conflict will require enormous strength and courage from both leaders, qualities each is widely perceived to be lacking.

The attention focused on Sharon in the past few days, as doctors warned of his impending death, has inevitably revived comparisons between the "warrior" leader and his old adversary Netanyahu. Sharon, an uncompromising rightwinger, confounded the world by dismantling the Israeli settlements he had established in Gaza, and effecting a military withdrawal in the face of stiff opposition.

"When Sharon reached a dead end, he could find a way out by taking bold steps. But for Netanyahu, instead of doing the bold or unexpected thing, everything is about his political survival," said Uri Dromi, a political analyst and former government official.

"Israelis now feel emotional about the imminent loss of a hero, a giant, the last of the generation that fought to create our state. And they are lamenting the poverty of the current leadership."

Harriet Sherwood

Al-Qaida allies 'driven out of Falluja'

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:06 PM PST

Conflicting claims over city's fate after serious fighting between Sunni Islamist militants and government troops

Iraqi police and tribal fighters claimed to have retaken the western city of Falluja from al-Qaida affiliates on Saturday after heavy clashes that left scores of dead there and in the neighbouring city of Ramadi in recent days.

Amid reports of civilians fleeing fighting elsewhere in Anbar and Ninevah provinces, social media in the country described continuing serious violence in western Iraq between Sunni Islamist militants and forces of the country's Shia-dominated government.

Officials and witnesses said the northern and eastern parts of Falluja were still under the control of tribesmen and militants on Saturday despite shelling from government troops, Reuters reported.

The sudden escalation of violence broke out early last week after a government clampdown on a year-long protest camp in Ramadi demanding more civil rights for the country's Sunni minority.

Falluja has been held since Monday by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), which is also fighting in neighbouring Syria, in the most serious challenge yet to the authority of the Shia-led government in Anbar province.

According to a local journalist working for CNN in Falluja, tribal forces and police were again in control of a city where US forces and militants fought one of the bloodiest battles of the Iraq war. Other reports suggested, however, that ISIS fighters still controlled parts of Falluja.

The claims, none of which could immediately be confirmed, follow a night that saw government forces mortar al-Qaida positions in the north and east of the town.

The escalating tension shows that the civil war in Syria, where mostly Sunni rebels are battling President Bashar al-Assad, who is backed by Shia power Iran, is spilling over to other countries like Iraq threatening its delicate sectarian balance.

Officials and witnesses in Falluja said the northern and eastern parts of the city were under the control of tribesmen and militants after residents fled the neighbourhoods to take refuge from the army shelling. The fighting in Falluja came as al-Qaida affiliates across Iraq, Syria and Lebanon appeared to suffer a day of reverses on Saturday amid escalating conflicts between al-Qaida-backed groups and more moderate Sunni fighters.

Syria, meanwhile, saw continued fighting between ISIS and the Free Syrian Army not least in Idlib province where it was claimed Al Qaeda fighters had withdrawn from several locations after heavy clashes.

In a separate development it was announced in Lebanon that the suspected leader of an alQaida-linked group that claimed responsibility for bombing the Iranian embassy in Beirut two months ago had died in custody on Saturday, security sources said.

Majid bin Mohammad al-Majid, a Saudi national wanted by authorities in his own country, had been suffering from kidney failure and went into a coma on Friday, the sources said. He died in a military hospital in Beirut, they added.

Majid was believed to be the leader of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which have claimed attacks across the region, most recently the double suicide assault on Iran's Beirut embassy, which killed at least 25 people.

Peter Beaumont

Antarctic leader defends expedition against critics of its scientific value

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:06 PM PST

Chris Turney speaks of a 'growing sense of frustration over what appears to be a misrepresentation of the expedition'

The leader of the ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic whose members were airlifted to safety last week has condemned the sniping of its critics, accusing elements of the media and climate change deniers of deliberately distorting the scientific value of the trip.

Chris Turney, head of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, says in an article in the Observer that despite the rescue of those on board the Akademik Shikolskiy, the expedition's research ship that has been trapped in ice since Christmas Eve, there was a "growing sense of frustration over what appears to be a misrepresentation of the expedition in some news outlets and on the internet".

Variously, the expedition has been accused of being a "tourist trip" and of being hampered by poor preparation, while others have cited the "irony" of climate researchers being stuck in unexpected ice, claiming it as proof that global warming was overhyped.

However, Turney, professor of climate change at Australia's University of New South Wales, rejected such claims, stating that the Antarctic ice that trapped the ship had no bearing on the debate about climate change. Instead he said the buildup of ice was caused by the aftermath of a collision between a huge iceberg known as B09B and the Mertz Glacier Tongue.

"The [expedition] is not a jolly tourist trip as some have claimed," he added, explaining that the trip had been struck by bad luck as opposed to human error.

"There was nothing to suggest that this event [the thick ice trapping the vessel] was imminent." Turney said that the team had relied upon two separate credible weather forecasts used frequently by expeditioners. "Both forecasts suggested consistent conditions with no significant changes expected," he added.

"The forecasts were correct, but it was soon clear that the armadas of ice that suddenly started to appear were thick and old."

The expedition leader also explained that it was an extremely vital scientific expedition whose success would ultimately be quantified by peer-reviewed studies.

Meanwhile, international rescue efforts to liberate the Akademik Shikolskiy – as well as the Chinese vessel Xue Long, which itself was trapped in ice after attempting to free the expedition vessel – appeared last night to be gaining fresh momentum with reports that a massive US icebreaker might be deployed to the scene. The Polar Star, one of the most powerful non-nuclear icebreakers in the world, is thought to have been asked to help rescue both ships and is expected to arrive in the area in around seven days' time.

The expedition's academic aspirations include investigating the circulation of the Southern Ocean and its impact on the global carbon cycle. Many of the research projects, he added, "were firsts for the region" and that during the first leg of the expedition the data collected by the team of scientists had "far exceeded our expectations".

One study, said Turney, aimed to provide a new view of the entire planet's ocean circulation which could offer "a legacy of the expedition that will last years after our return."

Mark Townsend

Alok Jha

Pancreatic cancer patients forced to seek life-saving surgery in Germany

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:05 PM PST

Dozens of British sufferers refused operation on the NHS travel abroad for treatment

Patients with pancreatic cancer are paying for surgery abroad when it is not offered on the NHS, as the number of cases of the fifth most deadly form of cancer rises.

Deaths from pancreatic cancer could overtake those from breast cancer by 2030, say experts. Several dozen patients have paid to have life-saving surgery at Heidelberg university hospital in Germany because, under guidelines for treating pancreatic cancer in England, some patients are being told their cancer is too far advanced or has spread to other organs, making surgery inadvisable.

Experts say clinicians in some European hospitals are less "risk averse" than in England and more willing to carry out surgery. In health systems in many EU countries, patients have direct access to a consultant or surgeon and health insurance schemes pay the cost of the surgery.

A report published two weeks ago by the all-party parliamentary group on pancreatic cancer called for radical improvements in NHS treatment of the condition, which kills about 8,500 people a year. It points out that survival rates for pancreatic cancer have not improved in the UK for about 40 years, and that while 20% of patients could benefit from surgery, only 10% are operated upon.

Many patients are not diagnosed early enough to benefit from surgery, and some see their GP four or five times with symptoms before they are referred to a hospital for investigation. Symptoms can range from abdominal pain and persistent indigestion to jaundice, and are often misdiagnosed as other conditions, such as dyspepsia or ulcers. Richard Charnley, a consultant pancreatic surgeon at the Freeman hospital in Newcastle, said: "One of the main problems in diagnosing the illness is picking up the early signs and, unless a patient presents with jaundice, GPs may not consider pancreatic cancer as a possibility.

"Then they may be referred for an endoscopy, which can take a few weeks, and then eventually a CT scan, which takes longer, and this picks up a lesion in the pancreas. Unfortunately, delays are built into the system and GPs need to elevate pancreatic cancer on their radar."

The prognosis even after an operation is not good – only 3.5% of patients survive for five years after successful surgery. On the positive side, the number of specialist pancreatic cancer surgeons has risen in recent years and patients are seen in 25 specialist centres around the country, which allows surgeons to improve their skills by treating a high number of patients and a good "case mix", which is vital for maintaining competence. The number of patients surviving for one year after surgery rose from 13.7% in 1999 to 18.3% in 2009, according to Charnley, who is chairman of a professional body representing pancreatic cancer surgeons.

"Another problem is that there are not many effective drugs designed to treat the condition, and we need more research into what works well," he said.

Steve Lewis, 59, from Swansea, was diagnosed in December last year after seeing his GP only once. "I went to my GP as I had been having continuous indigestion for some time, and she referred me to hospital immediately. I was seen within two weeks, had some investigations and a CT scan. I was then told it was inoperable, which obviously I wasn't that happy about, and was started on a course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. I'd lost around 15kg in weight before that, but after radiotherapy, I started to put weight back on.

"Before my radiotherapy, the surgeons in Heidelberg agreed with my consultants here that surgery was not advisable, but later, as I was doing well, they said they would be prepared to take a shot at it, so I went for the operation in September. Unfortunately, once they had gone in, they found that the tumour was wrapped around one of the arteries, and it would be too risky to proceed, so they stopped the operation. They had told me this was a possibility, so I had to accept it. I took around 10 days to recover in hospital and I'm now discussing next steps with my consultant in Swansea." The operation cost €51,000, which is being paid for under Lewis's company health-insurance scheme, and the hospital has agreed to refund a large proportion of this as the operation was not completed. Lewis said his experience with the NHS in Wales was very good, but that GPs in general need to be more aware of the symptoms of the disease.

The report by the by the all-party parliamentary group calls for a "wholesale review" of pathways between primary and secondary care for referrals and investigation of the disease, a comprehensive national audit of pancreatic cancer treatment similar to that for bowel cancer, and an awareness-raising campaign about the symptoms of the disease.

At an event at the Houses of Parliament to launch the report, the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said pancreatic cancer was a disease that the NHS had been "least successful" at treating in recent years. "We have spent £140m on improving early diagnosis of cancer and we need to do the same as we did for breast cancer, namely, to establish targets and set better standards. I know this is a real problem, as I have seen a number of cases in my own constituency where it has not been picked up early enough," he said.

The UK has lagged behind many other European countries in survival rates across all cancers, with the most recent figures showing the UK coming 27th out of 35 countries surveyed.

Paul Dinsdale

How playing Banquo in China gave me a new love for Shakespeare

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:05 PM PST

Actor Michael Wagg tells of a passionate response to a touring production of Macbeth – and his own glimpse into a changing culture

Every one of the 2,000 small plastic stools was occupied. More students stood behind and perched around the edges of the outdoor stage in front of the sports hall. Stars shone brightly over the South China Sea, and there was a chill in the air. But the cold night was never going to deter these students from a night of Shakespeare at Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai.

Our TNT theatre company had been taking Macbeth across China, covering vast distances and playing to similarly vast and mostly youthful Chinese audiences. We played in wildly differing venues, from standard proscenium arch theatres such as the quirky 9 Theatre, Beijing, or the beautiful art deco Shanghai Lyceum; to concert halls – Xinghai in Guangdong province and the spectacularly lit "Bird's Nest"-like Suzhou Culture and Arts Centre; and huge barn-like lecture hall stages at the universities. Just finding the dressing rooms, if there were any, was a baffling exercise – "Actor to Prepare District" was the sign to follow. Wherever we performed there were few empty seats and the most common factor was scale. Everything in China is big. And so much in China is changing.

Everywhere, but particularly in the south, there was a lovely and disarming sense of occasion, often leading to a mild frenzy for our signatures and for photographs. Every student had a smartphone and we were asked to pose for numerous photos. I don't know why they were so sought-after or if these pictures ended up on social networking sites but there were certainly times when the photo seemed to be of more value than the play itself. I wondered if Shakespeare was another western brand among many others for which there was now a growing hunger.

Certainly there was a fascination with us as the bringers of a very British thing. And a passionate curiosity to know more about the world we came from. A group of four asked me what I did in England when I wasn't being an actor. I said I watched football, played it sometimes, and enjoyed drinking beer. They replied with noises of wonderment. When the students talked about Shakespeare, they spoke with passion about the power of his words: "Shakespeare is not about nationalities; it's universal, about being human," said one student in Hangzhou. "That's why he's popular in China."

We asked another in Zhuhai whether Shakespeare was well-known: "Yes, he is well-known here. Do you in Britain know Confucius? It is the same, I think." Another student desperately searched for the right words to explain that she valued Shakespeare's presentation "not just of outer worlds but of inner – what's in your heart".

We found that most often the biggest response of the evening – at least the noisiest – came in response to the discussion between Lady Macduff and her son on husbands: "How wilt thou do for a father?" "Nay, how will you do for a husband?" "Why, I can buy me twenty at any market." There are many more men in China than women, so this is a complex and deep-rooted issue. Shakespeare's comic inversion is also felt as a sharp truth here.

For a large part of the audience this was their introduction to live Shakespeare. The complete works weren't published here in translation until 1978 (and were the first complete works of any foreign writer to be published in Chinese translation). Chinese is a tonal, primarily monosyllabic language, so the audiences were simultaneously hearing the rhythms of Shakespeare's blank verse and reading the very different Mandarin structure – "Two truths are told."

Though there are, I'm sure, many Chinas, this life on the road gave us only glimpses of a few and for the most part we were meeting the representatives of a new China, emerging in the wake of a sustained economic boom. I'm not sure where the world of the university students and the concert hall regulars meets the beautiful grey, Beijing hutongs of dusty back streets or the pavement life of Guangdong. It feels clear which China will own the future though. Our young audiences talked longingly of Wangfujing, the main Beijing shopping thoroughfare, full of Apple and Armani products; the hutongs are fast disappearing.

The arts appear to be lagging well behind the pace of economic change and transformation. I met a regular actor at the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre, who told me he thought there was a lack of playwriting in China engaged with contemporary issues. A change was needed, he said, but that for that to happen "we need the students to change".

I also spoke to a man in his 40s who had seen our show, whom we met in a German beer hall. He talked openly of the dissatisfaction with government that he senses from all ages. He thought that both the young and older generations were very aware of a growing gap between the rich and the poor, with many of the older people increasingly calling for a return to the old, Maoist, days, "where people were equal, but poor", while the young looked for a more fundamental shift forward. He saw a strong connection between the Macbeths and the case of Bo Xilai, the charismatic and ambitious star of the Chinese Communist party, and his wife Gu Kailai, both of whom are now behind bars following one of the biggest corruption scandals in modern Chinese history. "Vaulting ambition" of this type was, he said, widespread: "They think: 'If you get in my way, I will get rid of you'. "

We're back now, reflecting on some remarkable highlights. The variety of the places we found ourselves in was challenging at times, but also inspired us to improvise. One night our Macbeth, noting how the vocal sound from the stage was bouncing back off the hall of residence building in front, simply said "Tomorrow and …", then let the echo reply, and added his final "tomorrow" to complete the famous line, in which Macbeth expresses his existential despair after hearing of the apparent suicide of his wife.

Of course there was the occasional lowlight too. The Porter's underpants are drifting somewhere along the Pearl river, after a hotel window mishap. They will have to be our gift to China for now. We might try to get them back the next time round.

Michael Wagg was playing Banquo in Macbeth for TNT Theatre. The tour was produced in Germany by ADGE and in China by Milky Way Productions

Michael Wagg

George Soros warns that Chinese slowdown is biggest worry in 2014

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:05 PM PST

Slower growth in Chinese manufacturing could be just the start of a new global economic threat, the financier has warned

George Soros is worried about China, and we should take note. The hedge fund boss, who built his fortune betting on the world's money markets, is concerned that 20 years of rapid growth is about to run out of steam.

Soros, who famously bet against the strength of the pound in the European exchange rate mechanism and won during 1992's Black Wednesday debacle, will be a prominent figure at the World Economic Forum in Davos later this month, when policymakers and business people debate how to foster global growth.

In the Square Mile, a brief glance at the stock market shows the impact of a slowdown in Chinese manufacturing output last month – and the fear that this will become protracted. The FTSE 100 is down 30 points since the new year break. It includes mining companies such as Rio Tinto and Anglo American, which have strong links to the Chinese economy. Signs that the world's second-largest economy is slowing have caused the price of many commodities to fall, and helped break a 12-year bull run for the gold price. (China consumes around half of the world's iron ore and coal, and buys more than a third of its base metals.) Beijing's move to cut back on corn imports made the grain the worst-performing commodity last year, as it fell almost 40%.

Predictions that China's economy lost momentum in the final quarter of last year were underscored by figures showing that the manufacturing sector grew at a slower pace in December as export orders weakened. Official figures can say whatever the Chinese authorities want them to say, but there is widespread agreement that the economy is suffering a longer-term slowdown.

Mark Williams at thinktank Capital Economics said the news that China has a $3 trillion (£1.8tn) local government debt mountain would fuel the fear: "Activity among large firms has turned down again and is likely to cool further as policymakers rein in local government debt. We therefore expect China's economy to slow again this year."

Soros bluntly states that three years of worrying over the eurozone should give way to worrying about China. It's not that he believes a solution has been found to the debt mountains in parts of Europe; it's just that he thinks the euro problem has reached a plateau while China could be on the skids.

He said: "The major uncertainty is not the euro but China. The growth model responsible for its rise has run out of steam."

Until recently China has thrived by restricting households' spending, effectively forcing them to save. The savings are channelled into industrial production.

Foreign exchange built up in the boom years has mostly been invested in international expansion – in Africa and in parts of Asia neglected by a previously aloof Japan.

The financial crisis showed the weakness in the idea of becoming the workshop for the world when that world couldn't afford to go on buying. To keep the wheels turning, local authorities and other government agencies were allowed to borrow.

Last year the Chinese leadership said it recognised that plan was flawed, and public sector debt needed to be cut. But when the economy slowed dramatically after borrowing was restricted, the policy was quickly reversed. The subsequent boost looks shortlived, even if China has billions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves to soften any economic blow.

Soros said: "China's leadership was right to give precedence to economic growth over structural reforms, because structural reforms, combined with fiscal austerity, push economies into a deflationary tailspin. But there is an unresolved contradiction in China's current policies: restarting the furnaces also reignites debt growth, which cannot be sustained for much longer than a couple of years."

Phillip Inman

Katie Allen

Macau is betting on a new kind of Chinese tourism

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:05 PM PST

The former Portuguese colony is threatened by a crackdown on its controversial 'junkets'. Now, with new malls and lavish shows, it is hoping to replace high rollers with middle-class families

Walk into a casino in China's gambling mecca, Macau, and the first thing that strikes you is the silence. There's no blaring music, no sharp cries of victory; all you hear is the rustle of clothing, a hushed conversation, the occasional thump on a table – subtle signs of fortunes made and lost.

If Las Vegas is a gaudy monument to the American dream of endless possibility, Macau, the only place in China where gambling is legal, is a fitting Chinese counterpoint: a temple to the acquisition of extreme wealth by any means necessary.

The former Portuguese colony, administered by Beijing as a "special autonomous region" since 1999, is just a speck on China's south coast, an 8 sq kilometre peninsula joined by bridges to two hilly islands in the South China Sea. Yet it's home to 35 casinos, which last year brought in a record $45bn (£27.4bn), according to figures published last week by Macau's regulator, the Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau. That is estimated to be more than seven times the amount made on Las Vegas's Strip.

But the peninsula has a problem: two-thirds of its gambling revenue still comes from closed-door VIP rooms controlled by "junkets" – companies that bring high-rolling punters across from the mainland on extravagant package deals and load them up with credit. Multimillion-pound bets and flights on private jets are common, as are suggestions of money laundering and links to organised crime. But over the past year the once-untouchable junkets have felt the chill of president Xi Jinping's crackdown on corruption among party officials.

Casino bosses have taken note – they are investing heavily in lavish resorts, high-end shopping malls and elaborate stage shows as the region tries to reinvent itself. Just as it once turned itself from colonial backwater to den of organised crime, now Macau needs to become a family tourist destination, a playground for China's burgeoning upper middle class. And they seem to be succeeding: last year's $45bn takings were up nearly 19% from 2012.

"An accountant would say, looking at the balance sheets, that this thing is far from broken," said Glenn McCartney, a tourism expert at the University of Macau. "But when you go beyond the economics, you realise you shouldn't have all of your eggs in one basket."

Leading the transformation is the Venetian Macau, the world's largest casino (51,000 sq meters), housed in one of the world's largest buildings. Despite temperatures in the mid-teens, the ground outside its main entrance was covered in fake snow this Christmas. Opera singers belted out carols from a high balcony framed by ersatz gothic columns. Nearby, a man was handing out sweets.

"We're trying to give everybody a feeling of Christmas," said entertainment manager Guy Lesquoy.

Venice is too far away for most Chinese holidaymakers, but the Venetian offers a handy substitute. Over Christmas, 120,000 visitors a day walked its ersatz Italian streets and filled its 3,000 hotel suites. Lesquoy has 200 performers on his staff, including Russian acrobats, Belarusian flautists, and Filipino opera stars who croon Chinese folk tunes from gondolas plying the resort's third-floor grand canal. Overhead, a computer-controlled artificial blue sky was set to dusk.

The Venetian also includes a 15,000 capacity sporting arena, a 92,000 sq metre shopping mall, four swimming pools, and an exhibition hall so vast that looking straight across its empty expanse inspires a feeling of falling. It recently hosted a fight featuring Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiáo, as well as performances by Rihanna, Justin Bieber and Alicia Keys. The Rolling Stones will perform there in March; according to Lesquoy, tickets sold out in two hours.

Competitors have followed suit. Over the road, the mega-casino City of Dreams has opened two regular shows: Taboo – a cabaret – and the House of Dancing Water, an acrobatics spectacle directed by Franco Dragone, formerly of Cirque du Soleil.

Nearby, six more resorts are under construction. One, MGM Resorts, will include a 20,000-seat arena; another, an ultra-upscale boutique resort called Louis XIII, will boast a suite that costs nearly £80,000 a night.

Investors say Macau's bet on the continued prosperity of the middle class is a safe one. About 800,000 tourists from mainland China visited Macau in 1999; last year, that had grown to 17 million. Most arrive ready to spend.

"The average bet in Macau is at least US$100, and I'm talking about the mass market," said Aaron Fischer of CLSA Asia Pacific Markets in Hong Kong. "That's a reflection of how crazy things have gotten in China."

Most of this money changes hands in round after lightning-fast round of baccarat, an old European card game based on chance. "Chinese gamblers don't come here for fun; they come here to win," said Desmond Lam of the University of Macau. About half of them only stay in Macau for about 24 hours: they play baccarat until first light, then stumble bleary-eyed on to the first Hong Kong-bound ferry of the day. Hence the silence.

"They believe in feng shui and they believe in luck – it's much stronger here than in western countries, and their gambling reflects that," said Lam.

On the casino floor of the Grand Lisboa hotel, a glittering, pineapple-shaped skyscraper visible from almost anywhere on the peninsula, two businessmen from China's Hunan province were bemoaning their losses over Taiwanese cigarettes, paying little attention to the nearly naked woman performing aerial acrobatics on a dangling blue ribbon behind them.

Such scenes were repeated across the peninsula. In a lush, suite-like room on the fourth floor of the Ponte 16 casino, a middle-aged woman with purple eyebrows sat alone at a baccarat table. She bet £300, lost it, and immediately laid down another stack of chips. In the Sands Macau, a man in a puffy pink jacket blew on the card he'd been dealt, slowly turned up one corner to reveal an eight of diamonds, pumped his fist in the air and slammed his elbow on the table. He collected his winnings and left. His seat was taken immediately.

Ben Lee of Macau-based consultancy IGamiX said Macau would struggle to be a tourist destination on the lines of Las Vegas. Beijing may want Macau to be an international showcase for China, much like its gleaming neighbour Hong Kong, but, said Lee: "All Macau is a showcase for is how much the Chinese from mainland China gamble." For non-gambling tourists there was simply much more to see elsewhere, he added.

And despite President Xi's crackdown on the junket system, some experts say that VIP rooms are still thriving. Junkets are nearly impossible to regulate: in private rooms several floors above the hordes of tourists, top clients continue to spend millions of pounds in off-the-record bets.

"Junkets are legitimate agents in Macau's casino system," said Philippa Symington of FTI Consulting's Shanghai office and the author of a recent report on money laundering in Macau. "Their activities can stray into criminal territory. This can range from working around occasional loose regulations – for example, enabling players to avoid identification – to relying on organised crime groups to collect gambling debts."

In some ways, money laundering is to Macau what corruption is to mainland China – ubiquitous, yet impossible to eradicate without undermining the entire economy.

China restricts the amount of money its citizens can carry abroad to about £2,000 per trip and £30,000 over a year. Macau appeals to wealthy mainlanders who, fearing scrutiny and volatility at home, may want to funnel their fortunes into overseas property markets and bank accounts.

Junkets take advance payments on the mainland and offer easy credit across the border, allowing clients to far exceed Beijing's limits. Streets near major casinos are lined with brightly lit pawn shops selling shrink-wrapped luxury watches for thousands of pounds, which punters from the mainland buy on credit and immediately return for cash.

The 2013 annual report from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, a US government agency, quoted an anonymous academic as saying: "Each year, $202bn in ill-gotten funds are channelled through Macau."

In December 2012, one of the region's most notorious criminals, gangland boss Wan Kuok-koi, known as Broken Tooth, was released after serving 14 years in prison for loan sharking, criminal association and illegal gambling. Wan once led 14K, the region's most notorious triad, and for many locals, his release was a reminder of how much had changed.

"I don't want to affect the stability of Macau," he told the South China Morning Post. "There's absolutely no way I want to do that."

Yet the lure of Macau's casinos again proved irresistible. In July, Wan told Hong Kong's Next magazine that he planned to open a VIP room in an unnamed casino. Rumour has it he's doing quite well.

Jonathan Kaiman

Asian reporters face a death threat even for everyday stories

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:05 PM PST

In some parts of the world the ordinary business of exposing corruption remains a deadly one – as the International Press Institute's list of journalists killed last year shows

It's grisly to keep count as the International Press Institute's death watch tots up the number of journalists and media people killed during 2013 in the line of duty: at least 117 of them, the second worst total since records began. There's Syria, of course, with 16 journalists gone; but Iraq, with 13, most of them shot, somehow seems just as bad. But at least the Middle East, with 38 killed overall, was a region in ferment. What about the 37 who died in Asia, 13 of them in the Philippines, 11 in India, and nine in Pakistan (an old horror story – 66 murdered in a decade)?

The Asian tragedy somehow seems more malign because it's not civil war or civil strife that takes the main toll – just ordinary local reporters and editors exposing corruption and getting murdered for their pains in lands where impunity rules. (Bang goes the first Pakistani assassination of 2014, even as I'm writing.) You turn over stones because the community you serve needs to know the truth, you wind up just another corpse in the gutter. Press freedom, press duty? It's so often a matter of life, and death.

Peter Preston

Facing down the Taliban on the Himalayas' killer mountain

Posted: 04 Jan 2014 04:05 PM PST

Last June, 11 climbers were shot on one of the world's highest mountains. So why is Simone Moro now chancing a winter ascent of Nanga Parbat? He talks to Ed Douglas about fear, extreme cold and refusing to be cowed by the Taliban

When climber Zhang Jingchuan saw the gunmen breaking laptops and phones they'd grabbed from the tents, he knew he was about to die. The men threatening him weren't ordinary thieves. The 42-year-old former soldier had been settling in for the night of 22 June 2013, below the vast Diamir face of Nanga Parbat, an 8,126m mountain in Pakistan, when 16 armed men dressed in local paramilitary fatigues stormed into base camp.

Still shocked from his ordeal, Zhang Jingchuan told journalists as he arrived home in Kunming how he was forced from his tent in his thermal underwear and bare feet, had his hands bound and was ordered to kneel. His two companions, leading Chinese mountaineers Yang Chunfeng and Rao Jianfeng, were already outside in the freezing cold with the barrel of a Kalashnikov held to their heads.

While the gunmen looked for other foreigners, Zhang suggested to his friends they make a run for it. Yang tried to reassure him that it was just an armed robbery and they'd soon be let go. By the time the gunmen began destroying the laptops they'd collected – and Zhang knew this was no robbery – it was too late.

Most of the 50 or so foreigners with a climbing permit were up on the mountain, but the attackers managed to round up 11 foreigners from a disparate range of countries: three Ukrainians, two Slovaks, three Chinese, a Lithuanian, a Chinese-American and a Sherpa from Nepal.

The half-dozen local men working as cooks for the expeditions had been confined to a mess tent and told to stay quiet until the attackers had fled. But 28-year-old Ali Hussain from Hushe in Baltistan wasn't so lucky. When the attackers discovered he was Shia, he was forced to kneel alongside the 11 climbers.

What exactly happened next in those hours of darkness and the real intentions of the armed gang are still uncertain. Pakistani investigators have claimed it was a kidnapping gone wrong. If that really is the case, it went wrong very quickly.

"After they searched everyone, the massacre began," Zhang said. "A shot was aimed at my head." Eleven men where killed.

The bullet grazed his scalp and Zhang collapsed, bleeding from his wound. When he regained consciousness, he knew his only chance was to act. Freeing his hands, he sprinted into the darkness, zigzagging as he had been trained to do for 30 metres, before jumping into a ravine. He stayed hidden for 40 minutes, shivering in the cold as the gunmen hunted him, and then crept back into camp, found warm clothes and a satellite phone and went to raise the alarm.

The Pakistani authorities were quick to respond, sending a helicopter at first light. The Taliban claimed the murders were retaliation for the death in a US drone strike of the Taliban leader Wali ur-Rehman. Within days security forces announced they knew the identities of the men who carried out the attack – a faction of the Taliban based around the nearby town of Chilas. As the net tightened, two Army officers and a senior police officer investigating the massacre were ambushed driving through Chilas and shot dead.

Those believed responsible for the Nanga Parbat and Chilas killings are now in custody and awaiting trial. Temporary closures to tourists visiting the Nanga Parbat region have been lifted. But the damage to Pakistan's already anaemic adventure tourism industry has been done. Until then, trekkers and climbers from all over the world had continued to visit Pakistan's high mountains, believing them to be comparatively safe from the violence that has devastated other areas. Not any more.

Manzoor Hussain, president of the Alpine Club of Pakistan, called it "a fatal blow" to his attempts to persuade foreigners to visit. "We are still in shock," he said "and we've had to apologise to so many mountaineers across the world." As though climbing Nanga Parbat was not dangerous enough, the prospect of doing so with the threat of terrorist attack hanging over base camp is far too much for most climbers to contemplate.

Under such conditions, climbing Nanga Parbat in the frozen depths of a Himalayan winter looks like insanity. Meet Simone Moro. Six months after the attack, he is soaking up California's winter sunshine. The 46-year-old Italian mountaineer is here to run the North Face 50-mile ultra-marathon. For most athletes this would be the climax to a season's training but for Moro it's just final preparation for the far more extreme and perilous challenge of climbing Nanga Parbat in winter and in defiance of the Taliban. And for Pakistan's impoverished region of Gilgit-Baltistan, his arrival – alongside two other small teams – to attempt the mountain this winter has a lot more riding on it than mere sporting history.

Just 14 mountains exceed 8,000m, strung like jewels across the arc of the Himalaya, and there is no crueller game in world mountaineering than climbing them in winter. The cold is endless and bitterly intense, so intense your bones ache. Temperatures can plunge to -50C, making frostbite more likely than not. The wind scours ice into glass, hunting out any weak spot in clothing or shelter.

For many years climbing these giants in winter was the speciality of one nation – Poland. Something about the Eastern European psyche allowed them to cope in such miserable conditions. That changed with Moro. He was the first non-Polish climber to achieve a first ascent in winter on an eight-thousander – Shisha Pangma in Tibet, in 2005. Since then the Italian has notched two more – Makalu in 2009, the world's fifth-highest peak and, in 2011, Gasherbrum II, the first of Pakistan's five eight-thousanders to be climbed in winter.

Only two other men have three first winter ascents: both Poles, both mountaineering legends. Jerzy Kukuczka died in 1989, climbing in Nepal. Krzysztof Wielicki, the first person to climb Everest in winter, is still leading expeditions in his mid-60s, but his best climbing days are behind him. And because there are now just two eight-thousanders left to be done in winter, Moro has the chance to make a fourth first ascent and set a record that will never be broken.

The bad news is that those two peaks are K2 and Nanga Parbat. K2's reputation for savagery has only been burnished in recent years following the disaster in 2008 when 11 climbers died in just one day. Even now, in an era when novices are guided up Everest, years still go by when no one climbs K2 – and that's in summer, when the sun warms the upper slopes a little.

Moro believes it's possible to climb K2 in winter, but he won't be going there, thanks to a psychic intervention from his wife Barbara Zwerger. "The day after I reached the summit of Gasherbrum II," he says, "my wife dreamed I was dying during the first winter ascent of K2. She never told me to do anything in our relationship before – don't climb this, don't climb that – but this was the first and only time she's said to me, if you can, don't go to K2. And she's good at predicting. It's happened before that she's had a dream about something and it's come true."

So that only leaves Nanga Parbat, a peak whose gothic history, even before the Taliban attacked, is so crammed with tales of tragedy and loss that road signs on the Karakoram Highway refer to it as the Killer Mountain. There have been just 350 ascents since it was first climbed in 1953 and 69 fatalities. Just a day's drive from Islamabad, at the western limit of the Himalaya, the peak towers above the Indus in glorious isolation, which presents challenges that are all its own.

"Nanga Parbat is not protected by any other mountain," Moro says. "It's like an island – this huge, huge peak. It's the biggest mountain on the planet, not in terms of height, of course, but the difference in height between base camp and the summit. On Shisha Pangma it was only 2km. On Gasherbrum II it was 3km. The top of Nanga Parbat is 4.5km above base camp. So you have no shelter from the wind and you need twice the time to reach the top. This is why no one has done it in winter."

It's not for want of trying. There have been 16 separate attempts to climb Nanga Parbat in winter, including one by Moro in 2012. That year ferocious storms blocked his progress before he was halfway up. This year the odds are even longer – he reckons on a 10 or 15% chance of success – thanks to the extra and very current threat from the Taliban.

How does Moro cope with the prospect of sharing a mountain with the Taliban? "This is what I'm thinking," he says. "When someone robs a bank, usually, the next time, if you want to continue this activity, you go to another bank. If I was a terrorist, knowing how much attention there is on Nanga Parbat, it wouldn't be the best decision to go to Nanga Parbat.'

To limit the risks still further, he has chosen to climb from the more difficult southern side of the peak, known as the Rupal face. Unlike the Diamir face to the north, there is only one way to approach base camp on this side of the mountain. "And in winter," Moro says, "you can't hide the way the terrorists did in summer. Plus, it gets more sun in winter, so we will be a bit warmer." Then he adds: "But for sure, I will not have just an ice axe in base camp."

His physical preparation has been both intense and highly scientific. As a physiology graduate who specialised in hypoxia (lack of oxygen), Moro is obsessed with his metabolism. Unlike many climbers, he doesn't put on weight in readiness for an expedition. "I'm not superlight – 69kg – but then I have to wade through snow up to my hips." He trains relentlessly, running up to 140km a week and rock climbing to a high standard. "But in the end," he says, "it's not these factors that mean success or failure, it's psychology. The hardware has to be ready, but it's the software that the real key."

Missing from Moro's team on Nanga Parbat will be his great friend and longstanding climbing partner Denis Urubko, the man the Italian regards as "a younger brother". The Kazakh has been with Moro on many previous winter triumphs and attempts – but not this time. "He's super-afraid of terrorists," Moro says. "He told me that living in Kazakhstan he's become afraid of Muslim extremists. He knew some of the people who were killed last summer." Moro will instead be climbing with German mountaineer David Goettler.

When asked what he admires about Eastern Europeans, Moro replies: "They're quite rude. They don't do this false politeness. They're very straight. They either love you or hate you. They're pure and honest, there's no double game. This is very important at high altitude."

These, of course, are many of the qualities Moro exhibits himself. In an era of exploration that often has more to do with marketing than pushing boundaries, the Italian stands out as a maverick over-achiever who speaks his mind. If he's known at all in this country it's as the climber who on Everest last May called a Sherpa "a motherfucker" after an altercation over crossing ropes at 7,200m, prompting a violent reaction that ended with Moro and his companions, Swiss climber Ueli Steck and British photographer Jon Griffith, fleeing.

"I apologised for that [word]," Moro says. "But a bad word, one single bad word, after someone has tried to hurt your partner, that's understandable."

Moro returned to Everest within days, at the controls of a helicopter, working as a rescue pilot. Among the first people he evacuated was one of the Sherpas who had led the attack on him. "You can't justify violence, especially on a mountain. The biggest dangers are always human – more than avalanche, more than crevasses. We don't know our own limits and don't stop before it's too late. Then there's the stupidity of terrorists and bandits. Those are dangers we should fear more.

"I'm doing something more dangerous than playing the guitar, that's true. But everybody reading this will die sooner or later. I'm trying to push that date as far back as possible. That's why I fail so often. But equally I don't want to be a potato, stuck in the ground until something eats me. I want to enjoy my life and in the mountains I'm happy – a happy husband and a happy father. I'm 46. I've done 50 expeditions, including 12 in winter. Altogether I've spent 13 years of my life in the most dangerous places on earth. That doesn't happen altogether by luck. Don't you think?"

Ed Douglas