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

Comcast in $45bn Time Warner Cable takeover; Lloyds returns to profit – live
Eight years to the Qatar World Cup – but Fifa can act on forced labour now | Jim Murphy
Taliban video warns of armed struggle in Pakistan's Chitral Valley
Castaway José Salvador Alvarenga asks to be left alone
Nuclear fusion breakthrough raises green energy hopes
Mother of Australian boy killed at cricket practice speaks of decade of violence
Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement – review
Disability insurance scheme trials 'may cost $400m more than expected'
Cunard cruise ship threatened after flying British flag in Buenos Aires
Odd Future banned from entering New Zealand
The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood by Irving Finkel – review
UK storms: Cameron to lead talks on 'almost unparalleled' natural crisis
Warren Mundine wants Indigenous young offenders to be moved into jobs
Hurricane-force winds wreak chaos as floods continue across the UK
Coral off WA suffers shocking damage from marine heatwaves, scientists say
‘Rottnest monster’ mystery solved after defence force admits training exercises
The remote-controlled robot waiting to save lives on Syria's urban battlefields
Unaffordable cities: Singapore workers tread water on millionaires' island
Two more girls charged with assault as second school fight video surfaces
Hunt for Daniel Morcombe: court told how single black thread helped divers
Unemployment rises to 6%, Hockey considers intervening in Qantas - politics as it happened
Afghanistan releases 65 prisoners against objections from US
Joe Hockey's rising tide strategy: will Australia sink or swim?
MPs air their views on the future of Qantas – video
Nightjar and pine marten among Britain's most elusive species

Comcast in $45bn Time Warner Cable takeover; Lloyds returns to profit – live

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 01:37 AM PST

US cable TV merger to be announced, as Lloyds hands out bonuses of almost £400m after finally posting a profit – with its CEO cashing in

Graeme Wearden

Eight years to the Qatar World Cup – but Fifa can act on forced labour now | Jim Murphy

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 01:30 AM PST

These awful human rights abuses are the ugly side of the beautiful game, and today represents a big chance for Fifa

If you want proof that sport and politics do mix, you only have to look at Sochi. The build-up to the Winter Olympics has seen protests against the new repressive laws on homosexuality in Russia.

We all know that the power of sport can have a profound impact on politics and culture. Growing up in South Africa during the apartheid regime, I saw that first hand. The sporting boycott wasn't just a cultural body-blow to white South Africa, it was also a way of getting through to a cosseted minority that the rest of the world really did abhor their nation's policies of racial supremacy.

But in the modern world, global attention can sometimes be too fleeting to make a difference. That's why it's important that there has been an early focus on the rights of those workers building the infrastructure for Qatar's World Cup.

Qatar has a population of about 2 million, but just one in eight are Qatari nationals. The majority are migrant workers from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and an incredible 400,000 are from Nepal. Most of them are working on the building sites that will help Qatar deliver the Middle East's first World Cup.

The treatment of these workers is the ugly secret of the beautiful game. Some are tricked into travelling thousands of miles under false pretences. Too many have their passports confiscated, work without pay, suffer squalid conditions, work excessive hours, and deal with staggering levels of debt. These abuses aren't one offs – Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Guardian have all made clear that these problems are pretty widespread.

In the face of this mountain of evidence, there can be no choice but to act. No one who cares about human rights, international development, or the romance of football policy can ignore these abuses. Momentum for change has to start now.

Today, at the European Parliament, Fifa representatives will attend a hearing on migrant workers in Qatar. This isn't just about the World Cup venues, a commitment that covers only stadiums isn't enough. Many hotels, roads and railway projects under construction in Qatar are geared towards helping the tiny state deliver for Fifa in 2022. So Fifa cannot pretend that the only things that matter are the pitches and the stands.

Fifa must receive a full report from Qatar, cataloguing the full scale of the problem – and a serious plan to make things right. Nothing less will do. The shortcomings in the current system leave too many vulnerable people exposed.

Qatar has come an incredibly long way in the past 20 years, and there have been real advances that should not be ignored. But conditions faced by some of these workers – and no one is suggesting it is every single one – fall within the International Labour Organisation's definition of forced labour.

The UK government currently works with the ILO on the Work in Freedom programme, which aims to fight forced labour. I would like to see that scheme expanded.

The Department for International Development / ILO scheme currently covers 100,000 girls and women from South Asia. I'd like ministers to look at finding a way within existing Dfid budgets to double that programme to cover just as many men on the construction sites of Qatar.

People don't have to die to bring us this or any other World Cup or sporting event; not a single worker died building the sites for the London 2012 Olympics. According to the International TUC, the 2022 World Cup risks 4,000 lives.

Since the late 19th century, when football escaped from being a sport played largely in our nation's public schools, it has become the one truly global sport. Ahead of this year's World Cup I think it would be right to pause and remember all of those who have died making the Brazil World Cup possible. Tragically, at the current rate of loss of life there will be a terrifyingly long list to commemorate on the eve of Qatar in 2022.

I love football. I didn't agree with Bill Shankly who is said to have remarked: "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that." But in Qatar today, the 2022 World Cup is becoming a matter of life and death for far too many.

Jim Murphy

Taliban video warns of armed struggle in Pakistan's Chitral Valley

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 01:23 AM PST

Pakistani Taliban calls on Sunnis to join fight against Chitral Valley occupants

The Pakistani Taliban have announced an "armed struggle" against an indigenous tribe and Ismaili Muslims in the picturesque northern Chitral Valley, calling on Sunnis to support their cause in a video.

The valley was once dominated by moderate Ismailis and is also home to the Kalash, a polytheistic people who claim descent from Alexander the Great and who have maintained separate cultural traditions to the predominantly Muslim country.

But migration in recent decades has meant that Sunni Muslims are now the majority in the area, while the Kalash way of life has come under threat from the Taliban, which has also carried out a number of attacks against security forces in the area.

The Taliban's 50-minute video released on February 2 on their media wing's website opens with a scenic view of the mountainous valley that is popular among domestic tourists and famed for its annual polo festival.

The narrator warns the Kalash, who are thought to number only 3,500, to convert to Islam or face death.

"By the grace of Allah, an increasing number of people from the Kalash tribe are embracing Islam and we want to make it clear to the Kalash tribe that they will be eliminated along with their protectors, the Western agents if they don't embrace Islam," he says.

The video also accuses international NGOs of creating an "Israel" like state in Chitral by attempting to protect the Kalash culture and take people away from Islam, and vows to foil their plans.

A charitable organisation headed by the Aga Khan, the Ismailis' spiritual leader and a globally renowned philanthropist, is singled out for condemnation.

"The Aga Khan Foundation is running 16 schools and 16 colleges and hostels where young men and women are given free education and brainwashed to keep them away from Islam," the narrator says.

He adds that the foundation's schools and hospitals, which are free for members of the public, are espionage tools in the hands of foreign powers.

The Kalash are also warned to stop producing wine, which they make from apples, mulberries and grapes.

"Western NGOs are promoting Kalash wine and we warn all those individuals and hotels selling it, they should stop production and selling of wine otherwise they will be sent to hell by the will of God."

Castaway José Salvador Alvarenga asks to be left alone

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 01:09 AM PST

Salvadoran fisherman who returned home this week after more than a year adrift at sea says 'I want to be alone with my family'

José Salvador Alvarenga has surprised doctors with his good physical condition, though they caution that the famed castaway is psychologically fragile as he recovers from what he has described as more than a year adrift at sea surviving on raw fish, turtles and bird blood.

All of the doctors who examined Alvarenga after he returned to his native El Salvador said he appears shaken and has asked to be given as much privacy as possible amid an international media furore over his apparent ordeal.

"I want to be alone with my family. They should give me time to talk after I have recovered, because right now I'm in no shape to explain anything," Alvarenga said from his hospital bed in a video shown to the press on Wednesday by the ministry of public health. "That's what I'm asking them, that they leave me in peace, so I can recover, that they don't bother my family, so I can be well. Nothing more than that."

Alvarenga underwent a battery of tests after being taken to hospital upon his return home from the Marshall Islands, where he showed up after what he has described as 6,500-mile (10,500km) journey from Mexico across the Pacific that began when his small fishing boat was thrown off course by bad weather.

He told doctors that several large ships came near his small fishing boat but none tried to rescue him, even though sailors on at least one even waved at him.

"They passed close by, he asked them for help and they didn't want to provide it," said El Salvador's minister of public health, Maria Isabel Rodriguez. "There was one that almost destroyed his little boat because it came so close, but nobody helped him."

Although he was close to despair, "his desire to live was greater, he thought of his family and said that he wanted to live", Rodriguez said.

The medical team that examined Alvarenga at the San Rafael hospital in the Salvadoran capital said he was in remarkably good physical health, with no skin lesions from overexposure to the sun and no cardiovascular or kidney issues. His only physical problem, doctors said, was a case of anaemia.

"All of the exams have been basically close to normal. It's incredible," Rodriguez said.

She and other Salvadoran experts who looked at Alvarenga's results said they had no doubt about the veracity of his tale, which left many sceptical even in the absence of an alternate explanation for his sudden appearance on the Marshall Islands' Ebon atoll.

"He challenges ideas about human physiology that we've had for a long time, but miracles exist and I don't think there's any reason to doubt him," hospital director Yeerles Ramirez told reporters.

Rodriguez said that after Alvarenga arrived at the San Salvador airport on Tuesday and saw dozens of waiting reporters, photographers and cameramen, "he quickly fell into a depression and started crying because he's not ready to talk to the whole world".

Alvarenga, 37, has asked for tortillas and a pupusa, a thick stuffed corn tortilla that is a Salvadoran speciality, and he has already eaten a tortilla with cheese, Rodriguez said.

The fisherman will remain hospitalised for at least two days while he rests and undergoes a series of exams, among them a test of his kidney function, Ramirez told reporters outside the hospital.

Alvarenga's story stunned the world when he washed up on Ebon almost two weeks ago, appearing robust and barely sunburned after more than a year at sea. But he had started out a much larger man, and doctors found that he was swollen and in pain from the ordeal, suffering from dehydration.

The journey back home after a week of rest and medical treatment in the Marshall Islands capital of Majuro was marked by long layovers in Honolulu and Los Angeles, where doctors checked his health and ability to continue the trip.

Alvarenga said he worked in a fishing village on the Pacific coast of Mexico's southern Chiapas state, where he embarked. A man with his nickname, "Cirilo", had been registered as missing with civil defence officials there. They said a small fishing boat carrying two men, the other named Ezequiel Cordoba, disappeared during bad weather on 17 November 2012, and no trace of them or the craft was found during an intense two-week search.

Cordoba died after about a month when he couldn't eat the raw fish and turtles, Alvarenga has said.

Nuclear fusion breakthrough raises green energy hopes

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 01:09 AM PST

Scientists have moved a step closer to achieving sustainable nuclear fusion and almost limitless clean energy

• Explaining nuclear fusion: is it the way to cheap energy?

US researchers have achieved a world first in an ambitious experiment that aims to recreate the conditions at the heart of the sun and pave the way for nuclear fusion reactors.

The scientists generated more energy from fusion reactions than they put into the nuclear fuel, in a small but crucial step along the road to harnessing fusion power. The ultimate goal – to produce more energy than the whole experiment consumes – remains a long way off, but the feat has nonetheless raised hopes that after decades of setbacks, firm progress is finally being made.

Fusion energy has the potential to become a radical alternative power source, with zero carbon emissions during operation and minimal waste, but the technical difficulties in demonstrating fusion in the lab have so far proved overwhelming. While existing nuclear reactors generate energy by splitting atoms into lighter particles, fusion reactors combine light atomic nuclei into heavier particles.

In their experiments, researchers at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California use a bank of 192 powerful lasers to crush a minuscule amount of fuel so hard and fast that it becomes hotter than the sun.

The process is not straightforward. The lasers are fired into a gold capsule that holds a 2mm-wide spherical pellet. The fuel is coated on the inside of this plastic pellet in a layer as thin as a human hair.

When the laser light enters the gold capsule, it makes the walls of the gold container emit x-rays, which heat the pellet and make it implode with extraordinary ferocity. The fuel, a mixture of hydrogen isotopes called tritium and deuterium, partially fuses under the intense conditions.

The scientists have not generated more energy than the experiment uses in total. The lasers unleash nearly two megajoules of energy on their target, the equivalent, roughly, of two standard sticks of dynamite. But only a tiny fraction of this reaches the fuel. Writing in Nature, the scientists say fusion reactions in the fuel released at best 17 kilojoules of energy.

Though slight, the advance is welcome news for the NIF scientists. In 2012, the project was restructured and given more modest goals after six years of failure to generate more energy than the experiment consumes, known as "ignition".

Results from the NIF facility will help scientists work out how to build a fusion reactor, but the centre is funded primarily to help the US understand how its stockpile of nuclear weapons is ageing. The experiments help to verify computer models that are used in place of nuclear tests, which are now banned.

Omar Hurricane, the lead author of the report, said the latest improvement came by controlling the implosion of the spherical pellet more carefully. In previous experiments, the pellet distorted as it was crushed, which seemed to reduce the efficiency of the process. By squashing the fuel more softly, helium nuclei that are produced in the fusion reactions dump their energy into the fuel, heating it up even further, and driving a cycle of ever more fusion.

"We are finally, by harnessing these reactions, getting more energy out of that reaction than we put into the DT fuel," Hurricane said. The report appears in the journal Nature.

The dream of controlled fusion remains a distant hope, and Hurricane said it was too early to say whether it was even possible with the NIF facility. The researchers need to get a hundred times more energy from the fusion reactions before the process can run itself, and more for it to deliver an overall surplus of energy.

Steven Cowley, director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy near Abingdon in the UK, said the study was "truly excellent" and began to address the core challenges of what is known as inertial fusion in the lab. He said the team may need a bigger laser, or a redesigned capsule that can be squashed more violently without becoming unstable. "Livermore should be given plenty of time to develop a better capsule. It strikes me that we have only just begun to understand the fusion regime," Cowley told the Guardian.

The Culham lab has taken a different approach, called magnetic confinement. As long ago as 1997, the facility generated 16MW of power with 24MW put into the device. "We have waited 60 years to get close to controlled fusion. We are now close in both magnetic and inertial. We must keep at it. The engineering milestone is when the whole plant produces more energy than it consumes," Cowley said.

The experimental fusion reactor Iter, which is being built in France, is expected to be the first plant to produce more energy than it consumes. The project has faced delays of more than two years and overrun budgets, but is still an international flagship for fusion research. "Iter is going slowly but progress is happening," said Cowley.

Ian Sample

Mother of Australian boy killed at cricket practice speaks of decade of violence

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 01:04 AM PST

A 54-year-old man was shot in the chest by police after his 11-year-old son died from head injuries at a Victorian cricket ground

Helen Davidson

Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement – review

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 01:00 AM PST

Kirsty Gunn on an intimate blend of fact and fiction that captures the inexorable cycle of lives shattered by Mexican drug cartels

There's a particular kind of American writing that has never properly made it here. It started with Thoreau and Melville, developed in the 1950s with the Beats, and came of age in the seventies when the likes of Tom Wolfe and Hunter S Thompson hit the headlines with their "new journalism".

It's about reality, this kind of writing – on-the-ground and up-close documentary, reportage, interview – but with the writer bang in the centre of things, looking out rather than in, and flinging into the project all of fiction's colour and edge. We see it in such books as Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and later, George Plimpton and Jean Stein's Edie: An American Biography, with its jagged prose comprised entirely of tape-recorded voices. It's literature that is more like oratory in its construction and tone; it's fun, fun, fun to read. And, in its own way, deadly serious too.

One of the writers who does it best, now, is Jennifer Clement. Her first book, Widow Basquiat, was a fragmentary text of fact and storytelling about the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat's long-term partner and muse, set against the downtown art scene of 80s New York.

Then came the fiction. Her novels A True Story Based on Lies and The Poison that Fascinates both fizz along the boundaries of what did and didn't happen, reading more as factual accounts than stories. Now comes Prayers for the Stolen, also described as a novel, but that's much too simple a description for what Clement is doing with the genre. In this startling tale of a young girl abducted into the Mexican drug trade, the social history – the reality of the world from which the fiction comes – burns away anything on the pages that could feel "made up". This is like the new journalism made newer still.

"My name is Ladydi Garcia Martinez," the protagonist tells us on the opening page (she was born at the time of Princess Diana's engagement). "And I have brown skin, brown eyes and brown frizzy hair, and look like everyone else I know. As a child my mother used to dress me up as a boy and call me Boy. I told everyone a boy was born, she said. If I were a girl then I would be stolen. All the drug traffickers had to do was hear there was a pretty girl around and they'd sweep onto our lands in black Escalades and carry the girl off."

Every sentence in Prayers for the Stolen is direct, potent, unexpected; twisting on the page like a knife in the gut. Ladydi tells us about Paula, a pretty girl who, unlike all the others, has been released by her captors and is able to return home, now hollow-eyed and dead inside. Her story is the catalyst for all the girls' stories in this terrifying narrative that exposes the inexorable repetition of lives brutalised by the sovereignty and corruption of the drug cartels.

The writing is electrifying not only because of its subject matter – anyone could report the facts – or because Clement is so strong on the insider viewpoint that gives new journalism its kick, but because she is a consummate stylist who makes sure nothing is wasted. Every scene is related with her trademark concision and fastidious attention to detail, her prose a gorgeous amalgam of spoken Mexican English, prayer, repetitions, incantations and American dreck. "May a wind blow out the candle of his heart," says Ladydi's mother, cursing her father. "May a gigantic termite grow in his navel, or an ant in his ear, she said. May his penis be eaten by a worm."

So there's brightness, too, humour in the darkness of Ladydi's world – a tenderness and love that are glimpsed as possibilities of another life, like the plastic flowers and glittery tinsel decorating a roadside shrine. "Poor Mexico, goes the local saying. So close to heaven, and so close to the United States." The world Clement is describing may be the bleak reality of a country that has such softness of sensibility, it's little wonder it has been so abused. But this work also gives us all of a novel's pleasures – a story laden with significance and drama and meaning, a keen feeling of relationship between reader and characters, a fully realised world through which we may roam. It leaves its mark upon us as surely as the illegal crop sprays, heralded by helicopter drones, that soak children and smallholdings and animals in poison so that the poppy fields can flourish: "As I moved down the hill an army of ants was marching in several lines down the mountain toward the highway. Lizards were moving in the same direction, moving very quickly. The birds above me were also disturbed … And then I knew why. Way off, far off, I heard a helicopter."

Clement's authority comes from her deep intimacy with the subject matter of her books. She is a good friend of Basquiat's widow; and as a Mexican, the territory of her three novels is her home. For Prayers for the Stolen she spent time with the girls and women in prison whose only real crime was having once been young and pretty. When she writes: "The Santa Marta Jail in the south of Mexico City was the biggest beauty parlour in the world," it rings true because it is true. She hung out with all those daughters and girlfriends and mothers and sisters left behind by the drug barons who kidnapped them from their homes and families. Now they sit around waiting for justice that won't come, doing their hair and painting their nails and telling stories – stories that are real lives.

• Kirsty Gunn's new collection of short stories, Infidelities, will be published by Faber later this year.

Kirsty Gunn

Disability insurance scheme trials 'may cost $400m more than expected'

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 12:39 AM PST

Coalition sounds warning on overruns but implementation agency cautions against reading too much into early trends

Daniel Hurst

Cunard cruise ship threatened after flying British flag in Buenos Aires

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 12:37 AM PST

Foreign Office says Cunard liner threatened with hefty fine for flying red ensign while in Argentina port

The Foreign Office has accused Argentina of "unacceptable harassment and intimidation" after a Cunard cruise liner was reportedly ordered to take down its British flag when it docked in Buenos Aires.

The captain of the Queen Victoria was told he faced a hefty fine if he continued to fly the red ensign – the flag of Britain's merchant fleet – while in the port, Channel 4 News reported.

The former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord West of Spithead, who was a passenger on the ship, described the action as "an insult to the nation".

"After we'd gone round Cape Horn I was at dinner with the captain, and the captain said to me that when they were in Buenos Aires that the ship had basically been threatened with a very punitive fine – about 10,000 US dollars – and also told there would be 'trouble' in inverted commas – not specified – if he didn't take down the red ensign which the ship flies," he told Channel 4 News.

The incident comes against a backdrop of continuing sniping by the government in Buenos Aires over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands, which Argentina has long claimed is rightfully theirs.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We condemn any attempts by the Argentine authorities to unnecessarily interfere with the legitimate transit of UK-flagged vessels. This appears to be another example of unacceptable harassment and intimidation.

"We robustly defend UK interests against any attempts by the government of Argentina to disrupt any lawful commercial activity. We are urgently discussing the matter with Carnival UK (Cunard's parent company) and will raise this with the Argentine authorities."

Odd Future banned from entering New Zealand

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 12:33 AM PST

Collective will not perform at rap festival Rapture after being deemed a potential threat to public order for past incidents and performances in which officials claim they incited violence

The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood by Irving Finkel – review

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 12:30 AM PST

The story of the ark, and animals 'two by two', is so much older than the Bible: why was the myth appropriated?

As Scott Franklin, producer of the forthcoming Russell Crowe epic Noah, has correctly pointed out, the story of the flood "is a very short section of the Bible with a lot of gaps". Unsurprisingly then, people have always been keen to fill them in. The rabbis laid claim to secret information that Noah had been kept so busy feeding the animals in his care that he didn't get to bed for a year. Bishop Ussher, in the 17th century, calculated that the flood had taken place in 2349 BC. Expeditions continue to be made to the slopes of Mount Ararat, in a perennially optimistic quest for the Ark's remains. Even Hollywood producers like to insist that their elaborations of Genesis are true to the original narrative. "We didn't really deviate from the Bible," Franklin has boasted, "despite the six-armed angels."

But was the story of the flood original to the Bible at all? We know that it was not. This first became apparent a century and a half ago, in a room above the secretary's office in the British Museum. It was there in 1872 that George Smith, a self-taught Assyriologist working among the thousands of ancient clay tablets brought back to Bloomsbury from Iraq, made a sensational discovery: a version of the flood story written in cuneiform. So overwhelmed was he by the implications of his find that he immediately leapt to his feet, ran around the room, and started taking off his clothes. His excitement, to the Christian elite of Victorian Britain, appeared only mildly overstated. When Smith presented his discovery at a public meeting shortly afterwards, both Gladstone, then prime minister, and the Archbishop of Canterbury were in the audience. Everybody listening to him understood that a thrilling – and, to the devout, faintly alarming – vista of research had been opened up. "I believe," as Gladstone observed with studied ambivalence, "we shall be permitted to know a great deal more than our forefathers in respect of the early history of mankind."

And so it has proved. Over the years, cuneiform flood tablets have continued to turn up. Three distinct Mesopotamian incarnations of the myth have now been identified, one recorded in Sumerian and two in Akkadian. It has become clear that the tale of a universal flood was widespread in Mesopotamia for an entire millennium and a half before the hapless Judaeans, defeated in the early 6th century BC by Nebuchadnezzar, were dragged away from their smoking cities into exile, there to weep beside the rivers of Babylon. Now, courtesy of Irving Finkel, the British Museum's eminence grise of cuneiform studies, there comes a further clinching piece of evidence: a tablet that actually describes animals entering an ark "two by two". Not only that, but it offers startlingly precise specifications on how best to construct one. An ark, so the tablet instructs us, should properly be circular in shape, have an area of 3,600 metres, and be fashioned out of plant fibre. All those living in the Somerset Levels may wish to take note.

Although, disappointingly, spontaneous stripteases do not seem to have been a feature of his own find, Finkel's account of how he came by the tablet – featuring as it does an enigmatic collector who once starred as Doughnut in the 1970s children's show Here Come the Double Deckers – is wryly and entertainingly told. Even so, it does not take him long to broaden out his focus. The tablet, for much of the book, in effect plays the role of a MacGuffin. Finkel's real passion is less the story of the flood than the script in which it is written. "Cuneiform!" he declaims rhapsodically. "The world's oldest and hardest writing, older by far than any alphabet, written by long-dead Sumerians and Babylonians over more than 3,000 years, and as extinct by the time of the Romans as any dinosaur. What a challenge! What an adventure!"

Finkel's excitement is entirely understandable. As his own and Smith's examples both demonstrate, the ability to decipher cuneiform is one that gives to those rare few possessed of it a heady privilege: the prospect of making remarkable discoveries in texts that have been unread for millennia. Such is Finkel's desperation to convey to those unversed in Sumerian or Akkadian just how thrilling this can be that he reaches for metaphor after metaphor. An undeciphered clay-tablet is described by him as variously a potato waiting to be harvested, a sponge to be squeezed as tightly as possible and a bombshell that might go off at any minute. The great achievement of his book is to demonstrate not only how challenging he found it as a young man to master cuneiform, but how richly rewarding the effort of his discipleship has been ever since. "I would go so far," he declares at one point, "to recommend Assyriology enthusiastically as a way of life". So might a rabbi enthuse about the Talmud.

Small wonder, then, that Finkel should confess to a strong sense of fellow-feeling with the ancient scribes whose tablets he has devoted his life to reading. Cuneiform, so he poetically declares, is "a magic bridge to a long-dead world populated by recognisable fellow humans". But it is hard not to wonder whether perhaps Finkel might be pushing the claims of kinship a bit far. "And those ancient peoples," he writes of the Babylonians, "writing their tablets, looking at their world, crawling between heaven and earth … like us." Well – up to a point. It is certainly the case, as Finkel points out, that Babylon was a metropolis with high-rises, bankers and immigrants; but it was at the same time very different from London or New York. Kingship was its heartbeat; fish-garbed priests played out cultic rituals in its streets; its scholars laid claim to a heritage that reached back to the first fashioning of the world out of mud. Above all, it was a city whose people consciously aimed to set the rest of mankind in their shadow. "They shall eat up your harvest and your food," as the prophet Jeremiah despairingly expresssed it. "They shall eat up your sons and your daughters; they shall eat up your flocks and your herds; they shall eat up your vines and your fig trees; your fortified cities in which you trust they shall destroy with the sword."

No one transported to a city such as Babylon could possibly fail to feel provincial. This, surely, is the context that best explains the biblical appropriation of the Mesopotamian flood myth. Finkel, following the Book of Daniel, has various Judaean exiles being taught cuneiform after induction into a "three-year teaching programme" – which, while perfectly plausible, hardly gets to grips with the likely dynamics of the transmission. The Judaeans were not graduate students in some Ivy League college, but the bewildered and embittered victims of superpower aggression.

By plundering the heritage of Babylon, they were at once paying homage to its cultural prestige, and annexing it to their own ends. Just as Christians and Muslims would subsequently transform the biblical figure of Noah into a prefiguring of their own respective theodicies, so the Judaeans transformed the myths of their Babylonian overlords into something that would end up as Jewish. In Mesopotamia, where it was the custom to erect buildings over the remains of levelled ruins, the ancient past literally provided the foundations of new temples. In a similar manner, its legends were made to serve the self-mythologisation of the Jews. Some details of the flood tablet discovered by Finkel – the animals going in two by two, for instance – were cannibalised; others – the specifications of the ark's measurements, and the detail that the great ship had been round – were not. This, for me, is the real fascination of his find: the light it sheds on how a despised and defeated people won a victory over their conquerors so remarkable that it now gets to be commemorated by Russell Crowe.

Tom Holland

UK storms: Cameron to lead talks on 'almost unparalleled' natural crisis

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 12:29 AM PST

Heavy rain across western parts of UK to bring more flooding as violent storms leave 100,000 properties without power

The prime minister, David Cameron, will lead talks on Britain's recovery from one of the wettest winters on record after savage storms left one man dead and tens of thousands without power.

Hundreds more were stranded as winds of up to 108mph stopped trains in their tracks, blew roofs off stations and closed major transport links on a day dubbed "wild Wednesday".

The floods, which have wreaked havoc, were an almost unparalleled natural crisis, the army chief Major General Patrick Sanders said, as hundreds of troops continued to help distraught homeowners defend their properties from ever-rising waters.

The Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, said the chaos even threatened to derail Britain's economic recovery.

More than 100,000 homes and businesses were without power on Wednesday night after trees and debris were blown on to power lines.

After a brief respite on Thursday Britain faces more chaos as another storm brings heavy rain, strong winds and further risk of flooding on Friday and into the weekend.

The West Country is expected to have 7cm (2.75in) of rain by Thursday, the Met Office said – more than the region would expect to get in the whole of February – while south Wales, western Scotland, Northern Ireland and other parts of southern England are also expected to be lashed by the deluge.

Snow is expected in northern England and parts of Scotland on Thursday, and on Friday more rain and winds of up to 80mph will arrive from the south-west.

The bad weather continues to cause travel chaos, with warnings that customers should expect more major disruption on the rail network.

With some 5,800 properties flooded since early December and no immediate end to the crisis in sight, Cameron will cut short his attendance at an international wildlife conference on Thursday to focus on dealing with the flooding.

A new cabinet committee on flood recovery will also meet, replacing a scheduled meeting of the full cabinet.

Cameron, who chaired a meeting of the government's Cobra emergencies committee in 10 Downing Street, promised on Tuesday that "money is no object" in offering relief to those affected by the floods, though the transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, indicated that there would be "careful consideration" before money was spent on the larger rebuilding exercise after water levels recede.

Sanders said 1,600 troops had been committed and thousands more were available if needed to help communities deal with flooding.

"There's more that we can do and we want to do more wherever we can make a difference, so please use us – that's what we're here for," he said.

The Ministry of Defence said on Wednesday night more than 2,000 military personnel were on "high-readiness" to respond to requests in flood-affected areas.

On Wednesday residents in parts of the UK were warned not to venture out after the Met Office issued a red weather warning for exceptionally strong winds in western Wales and north-west England.

Wiltshire police said a man in his 70s had died in a suspected electrocution while attempting to move a tree that brought down power cables near Chippenham.

A lorry driver was taken to hospital after high winds blew over his vehicle in Bristol, while another man received treatment after becoming trapped under a fallen tree in Chivenor, near Barnstaple, Devon.

Severe flood warnings remain in place in Berkshire, Surrey and Somerset, where severe flooding has caused hundreds of homes to be evacuated.

The river Thames is predicted to rise to its highest level in more than 60 years in some places. Residents in Windsor, Maidenhead and communities in Surrey – where police said 600 people had been evacuated and 1,000 homes affected – have been warned to expect severe disruption and the risk of flooding.

On Wednesday night the Energy Networks Association (ENA), which represents energy companies in the UK, said about 130,000 homes and businesses were without power across the country.

Some 10,000 customers were affected in the north-west, 52,000 in mid and north Wales, 10,000 in Cheshire, 13,000 in the West Midlands and 19,000 in the south-west.

Engineers were working through the night, an ENA spokeswoman said, but some homes may still be without power on Thursday.

Road and rail travellers also endured another miserable day, with wind and rain closing major routes and wrecking train services across the UK.

Thousands of passengers were stuck on trains as wind and rain caused rush-hour disruption across most of the UK, with a section of the west coast mainline in Lancashire closing between 7pm and 9pm. At one stage all Virgin Trains services out of London Euston were suspended.

A train travelling from London King's Cross to Edinburgh was stranded on the North York Moors between Darlington and Northallerton, and was hauled to Edinburgh shortly before 1am by another locomotive, the BBC said.

Firefighters were called to Crewe train station after roof panels fell on to overhead lines and caused a small fire. The station was evacuated as a "precaution" and trains did not stop there.

On the roads, the southbound carriageway of the M6 between junctions 33 and 32 was closed overnight after a lorry overturned in gales, while the M48 Severn bridge has now reopened to all traffic, the Highways Agency said.

Some ferry services from the Port of Dover are also delayed because of rough sea conditions and force 8 winds.

The adverse weather also brought disruption to Premier League football fixtures, with Manchester City's match against Sunderland and Everton's clash with Crystal Palace both postponed just an hour before kick-off.

Police in Manchester took to the force's Twitter account to urge members of the public to stay at home, saying: "Severe weather warning – do not come into the city centre unless it's absolutely essential, due to strong winds."

Carney warned that the adverse weather could affect the economy.

"There's a big human cost here and I absolutely recognise that," he told ITV News. "Then there's the disruption to economic activity that we see just through transport, but farming clearly will be affected for some time, other businesses.

"It is something that will affect the near-time outlook."

Toby Willison, programme director at the Environment Agency, said a number of rivers in the south-east and south-west, including areas of the Thames, were at their highest recorded levels.

"This is an exceptional event; it was the highest rainfall in January since 1776 and we think it is likely December, January and February will be the highest for 250 years," he said.

The weather forecaster MeteoGroup said Capel Curig in north Wales had seen the UK's highest rainfall on Wednesday, with 35mm recorded from 6am to 6pm.

The Thames valley has seen its third wettest winter since 1908, according to the University of Reading's Atmospheric Observatory.

It has had 319.3mm of rain since 15 December – compared to an average of 164.4mm for December, January and February.

Andrew Barrett, a storm expert at the university, said: "It will be a miracle if this is not the wettest winter on the record – with yet more storms set to batter the UK over the coming days."

Nearly 1,000 people have been evacuated from homes in Surrey as the Welsh Fusiliers help with the operation.

But concerns have been raised about whether the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has equipped the soldiers with the specialist equipment needed to wade through stagnant water.

David Hughes, a former member of the Royal Artillery, said he had heard some soldiers had not been given proper gear. He told BBC Surrey: "We're used to being dropped in at the deep end.

"I've spoken to the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency and they say they have strict needs for their staff being deployed, for them to be provided with their own specialist kit and clothing.

"You don't know what's in the water and what submerged dangers are there."

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Hurricane-force winds wreak chaos as floods continue across the UK

Posted: 13 Feb 2014 12:00 AM PST

Tens of thousands without power supplies as hundred mile an hour winds prompt Met Office warnings

Hundred mile an hour winds have buffeted Wales, leaving tens of thousands of premises without power supplies and causing chaos on the road and rail networks in north-west England as storm havoc continues in Britain.

A high of 108mph was recorded in Aberdaron on Wednesday as the Met Office issued a rare red warning for Wales and north-west England, indicating people should take action because the winds were so strong that there was a likely risk to life.

As more weather-related misery overwhelmed the country on the back of the devastating flooding, a Met Office forecaster, Kirk Waite, said: "Red warnings are a very rare thing for us to issue. We only issue them when we do think there is a need to take action to preserve life." He said the last such warning was issued due to snow in January last year.

Officials said more than 100,000 homes and businesses were left without power on Wednesday night because of trees and debris blown on to power lines.

Waite added the winds were expected to die down in England and Wales during the day on Thursday – but he went on to warn that there would be fresh problems in the shape of wintry showers which would bring a risk of ice.

Rain and strong winds are then expected to return on Friday and likely to exacerbate flooding in areas already affected – as the level on the river Severn in Worcestershire reached what was thought to be a record while the Thames reached levels not seen since 1967 in places.

There was at least one fatality: a man in his 70s was electrocuted while attempting to move a tree that brought down power cables near Chippenham, Wiltshire.

Crewe station was evacuated after roof panels fell on to overhead lines causing a small fire, leading Virgin Trains, which runs the bulk of its services through the pivotal north-west junction, to urge customers across to "abandon travel" on its network. Shortly before 6pm, Virgin announced that it would deposit all customers at the nearest station.

In Bristol, Clifton suspension bridge was briefly closed for the first time in its history after gusts reached 60mph and a lorry driver in the city was taken to hospital after his vehicle was blown over.

Police in south-west Wales also reported parts of roofs being blown off buildings and advised people to stay indoors. There was a similar message in north Wales where people were advised not to travel unless absolutely necessary.

In South Wales alone, 42,000 properties had their power supplies cut off by early evening on Wednesday, with 10,000 suffering the same fate in the west Midlands and 8,100 in south-west England.

Western Power Distribution said it had drafted in extra engineers "to get everyone back on as quickly as possible" but the properties affected were over a wide area and its efforts were being hampered by the adverse weather conditions.

It said "significant flooding of homes and businesses" was expected in Windsor, Maidenhead and communities along the Thames in Surrey. On Tuesday night, around 50 homes along the Thames Valley were flooded, bringing the total number of homes flooded since 29 January to 1,135.

The political row over the response to the crisis continued as Ed Miliband challenged David Cameron during prime minister's questions to halt 550 job losses at the Environment Agency.

Responding, Cameron announced a modest support scheme that included grants of £5,000 for households to improve their flood protection, 100% relief on business rates for three months for firms affected by flooding and a £10m aid fund for farmers whose fields are under water but conspicuously failed to address the issue of job cuts on three occasions.

The GMB union accused the communities secretary, Eric Pickles, of "incitement" with respect to his critical comments about the Environment Agency, revealing that agency staff had been withdrawn from Wraysbury, Berkshire, because of hostility from members of the public. The agency itself confirmed that staff had faced verbal abuse and been temporarily withdrawn on the advice of the police on Monday but said they had since been back "working alongside members of the community".

The combination of rain and wind caused major problems on the roads, as well as the rail network, creating hazardous driving conditions. The M6 was closed in both directions in Cheshire, due to gale force winds with cross winds, while falling trees caused a number of roads to be shut across the country.

Flooding continued to cause problems on the roads and by early afternoon on Wednesday, the AA said it had attended 29 flood-stricken vehicles. On the rail network, those trains that were not cancelled were subject to speed restrictions.

Across the Irish Sea hurricane-force winds left 100,000 homes and businesses without power on Wednesday in the Republic. The Electricity Supply Board aid it was the worst mass power outage to hit Ireland for more than 15 years.

Haroon Siddique

Coral off WA suffers shocking damage from marine heatwaves, scientists say

Posted: 12 Feb 2014 11:43 PM PST

Study reveals that remote reef with coral hundreds of years old has undergone severe bleaching and 'decimation'

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The remote-controlled robot waiting to save lives on Syria's urban battlefields

Posted: 12 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

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Unaffordable cities: Singapore workers tread water on millionaires' island

Posted: 12 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

With 17% of city state's residents worth S$1m, those who serve, drive and treat them may as well live on another planet

Your views: have soaring city property prices affected your life?

It is a balmy Saturday afternoon in the suburbs of Singapore. Patricia, 21, and her partner Sham, 28, share their first meal of the day: a box of chicken nuggets at McDonald's. "It's getting much harder to survive in Singapore," Patricia says between bites. "I love my job, but my pay doesn't match up to the cost of living here. But what choice do I have?"

Patricia recently moved out of her parents' house to be with Sham. In Singapore, with its sky-high housing prices and conservative Asian values, most young people have no choice but to live with their parents until they get married. Singles cannot apply for public housing until they turn 35.

Patricia works full time as a nurse in a government hospital. She is undereducated by Singapore's standards, with only n-levels (below high school) and an ITE (technical college) certificate in nursing, and earns S$1,400 (£670) per month.

In a country where a small, two-room condominium unit in the city centre can fetch a monthly rental of S$5,000 or more, Patricia pays a pricy S$850 a month to rent a non air-conditioned room in a flat at Admiralty, a suburban area in the north of Singapore, a 90-minute commute by public transport to her workplace.

Her monthly rental does not entitle her to the use of her landlord's kitchen, so she has to eat out for all her meals. "Definitely life is hard, with the increasing costs in Singapore," Patricia says. "Somehow I buck up and struggle through these storms. Though I know I'm suffering inside, I still motivate and push myself to work harder."

A 2013 white paper on increasing Singapore's population to a recommended 6.9 million by 2030 made reference to nursing as a low-skilled job. After a public outcry, the note was amended and the national newspaper the Straits Times subsequently ran an article with the headline, "More nurses are now better qualified" [pdf].

Patricia, though, feels she's discriminated against by superiors who refuse to recommend her for further studies. "I care for the patients; I do love nursing," she says. "But my colleagues tell me, this job is all about passion. Even if it is, passion is paying me peanuts!"

Her late hours are exacerbated by a long and uncomfortable commute. "When I'm on back-to-back shifts, I'll reach home around midnight and have to leave by five in the morning to get to work. But I won't get a seat to rest in the train and moreover, when I'm in my nursing uniform, people expect me to give up my seat. Don't nurses have the right to sit down, too, or are we supposed to stand throughout our journey?"

Patricia's situation stands starkly against the case of Anton Casey, a British wealth manager who ignited the wrath of Singaporeans when he referred to public transport commuters as "poor people". He also posted a status update about washing "the stench of public transport off me" once he had gotten his Porsche back from the workshop. Despite apologising publicly, Casey and his family (he's married to a former Miss Singapore) were forced to leave the country and he was also fired.

In 2001, Singapore was ranked 97th in the list of world's most expensive cities. Ten years later, it was ranked sixth. Ongoing inflation means that basic amenities such as food continue to rise without an equivalent match in real wages.

According to Hui Weng Tat, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy: "We have a large number of households who are earning income in the lower end and not having enough to cover their household expenditure, especially at the lower 20%."

This hits home hard for Patricia and Sham, who have to eke out a living on Patricia's salary alone. Singapore does not have a minimum wage, and Sham felt this most acutely when she was forced to work for S$900 a month doing essentially the same job (dog handling) that she used to get S$2,500 for at a different company.

This was a precipitating factor in causing Sham to seek employment elsewhere. But it seemed companies didn't take too kindly to a gay Indian girl with a penchant for dressing boyishly. She was rejected from numerous job interviews even before being seen. She says, not without irony, "Dogs don't discriminate against you".

A study by the National University of Singapore's (NUS) social-work department stated that "the working poor in Singapore … is defined as someone earning less than half of the average monthly income of a Singaporean, which now stands at S$3,000". The World Bank's poverty line is set at 50% of the country's mean income.

But Singapore's minister for social and family development, Chan Chun Sing, has said the government doesn't want to define a poverty line in Singapore. The reason is to avoid a cliff effect, where families narrowly above the poverty line will not be privy to the subsidies and benefits offered to families below the line. "We don't feel poor because we have each other," says Patricia, looking at Sham, "but knowing how rich some people are in Singapore, I think we are poor".

In contrast, it's coming up roses for a growing upper class – 17% of Singapore's population has a net worth of over S$1m and more rich individuals are flocking here, drawn by the low corporate tax rate, no capital gains or estate tax, and a personal income tax capped at 20%.

Jim Rogers, the famed American investor, now resides in Singapore. He has said "Singapore is the most successful country of the past 40 years. We've gone from half a million people living in poverty to 5 million people living prosperous lives."

When Patricia is asked what she would desire if money were no object, however, she replies immediately: "A flat of my own, a diploma, and for someone to give Sham a chance at a job." Simple things, yet indicative of a growing gap between a wealthy minority and the rest of the country.

Marc Nair

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

Two more girls charged with assault as second school fight video surfaces

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Nightjar and pine marten among Britain's most elusive species

Posted: 12 Feb 2014 10:00 PM PST

Naturalist Sir David Attenborough admits even he has not spotted all of the top 20 most elusive creatures in the wild

British people who have seen a nightjar, a pine marten or a golden eagle in the wild are one of a lucky few, according to a new survey.

They are the top three among Britain's most seldom-seen creatures. Other elusive species include the beaver, red squirrel, stoat and adder.

Nightjars were once one of the most enchanting sights of a British summer night, flying low in copses where they congregated at dusk. But a massive loss of habitat and intensive farming have sent populations of the shy bird crashing. In the poll, published on Thursday, only about 4% of people reported seeing a nightjar in the wild. Most people believe them to be extinct, according to the research.

About seven in 10 people have never seen an adder, the UK's only poisonous snake, while two-thirds have never seen a dormouse. The research, called the Natural Curiosities report, involved a survey of 2,000 British adults, who were asked whether they had ever seen any of 20 of the most elusive creatures in the wild. Even Sir David Attenborough admits that he has not spotted all of the animals listed.

Sir David, who will present a new programme on elusive British wildlife next week on TV channel Watch, said: "I have been lucky enough to see most of the animals listed in the wild except the pine marten, which are exceptionally hard to spot as they live up in the tree tops. It is interesting to note that many of our supposedly common species are also hard to spot in the wild."

Even some common species remain unseen by large numbers of the population. Sir David said: "The fact that a quarter of British adults have never seen a wild hedgehog suggests that we are witnessing rapidly dwindling numbers."

Eight out of 10 of the people polled said they were concerned at dwindling numbers of iconic wildlife in the UK, and 68% said the government should be doing more on wildlife conservation.

According to the report, there are probably only about 4,000 breeding pairs of nightjars in the UK, and an estimated 442 pairs of golden eagles. Eagles and other birds of prey have been targeted by gamekeepers in some parts of the country, in the belief that they deplete the number of game birds for shoots. It is illegal to kill the birds, but there has been a spate of prosecutions over suspected poisonings of birds of prey in recent years.

Stoats and weasels were once a common sight, but there are now less than 500,000 in the country. There are estimated to be about 16,000 pairs of cuckoos still breeding, but their unmistakable cry – traditionally heralding the start of summer – has been heard by only about one-fifth of the population, as their numbers decline.

Among the other top 10 "most elusive creatures" are slow worms – really a lizard – and kingfishers, so quick that they are often seen as just a blue flash above a river.

Fiona Harvey