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Scandi crush: The Bridge's Sofia Helin
Seven Japanese scuba divers missing off Bali after storm hits island
Australia and Indonesia are now in 'open conflict', says Tanya Plibersek
Vicars needed: the Church of England's fight to fill its vacancies in the north
Obama considers tougher action against Syria
Hundreds rally against Medicare reforms and fees for GP visits
Wonder what happens to your Oxfam donations? Sorted
Cashless society – why there's no pain or gain from a plastic future
VW workers in Tennessee vote against having union representation
Clive Palmer will not support Tony Abbott on proposed Qantas changes
India's anti-corruption champion resigns after two months in Delhi job
South Australian parliament dissolved as Jay Weatherill kicks off March poll
Petrol supplies safe despite grounding of Cootes' fuel fleet, says VicRoads
Police told courts that father could kill Luke Batty and his mother - report
Muslim convert who agitated for sharia state in UK given groundbreaking asbo
Welfare reforms a 'disgrace', says UK's most senior Catholic
One Billion Rising to end violence against women – global day of action and dancing – live coverage
Readers get poetic about their lack of love for Valentine's Day
Texas attorneys ask court to free man locked up for decades awaiting retrial
Stuart Hall's legacy | @guardianletters
Giant leap needed on climate change | @guardianletters
Syrian peace talks in Geneva reach impasse after five days of sparring
Lib Dems mired in row after party donor blacklisted by fraud squad
Ralph Waite obituary
Kansas Republican leaders get cold feet over 'anti-gay' bill

Posted: 15 Feb 2014 01:00 AM PST

Saga in The Bridge is one of the great modern TV detectives: alarmingly straight-talking and honest, but damaged, too. But what of Sofia Helin, the actor who plays her?

Sofia Helin is explaining the inspiration for her character Saga Norén, the brilliant but blunt detective at the heart of Scandi crime drama The Bridge. Her English is flawless, but I'm not sure I've heard her right. Saga Norén is based on what? "A goat." She nods. "Charlotte, who was the first director, said, 'I want her to be like a small goat.'

"I also had a picture of a cowboy – no, a cowgirl," Helin continues. "A cowboy-girl. I thought about Clint Eastwood. I imagined that Saga had seen Dirty Harry. Then I realised, no, she doesn't like fiction at all. I don't think she's ever been to a theatre. She would think that is so… I mean, why?"

When she first signed up to play Saga Norén, Helin assumed she was going to be unpopular. The Swedish detective is abrupt, detached, unintentionally rude. She works through the night, finds it impossible to share a flat with her boyfriend, and yet has few boundaries when it comes to cross-examining other people, including her Danish sidekick Martin Rohde. ("Are you still having sex?" she asks after he starts seeing his estranged wife. "Are you good at sex?") "I thought no one would like her, that she would be so annoying," Helin admits. But when Swedish fans started to approach her in the street, she realised she might have got it wrong. "The thing I'm most surprised about is that people say, 'You know, I recognise myself in her.'" She mimes an exaggerated pulling away. "What?"

The Bridge is not the first Nordic noir show to have found an audience in the UK, but a second series has made it the most successful, with more viewers than Danish political drama Borgen, and even edging ahead of The Killing, our first romance with troubled detectives in washed-out snowscapes. A co-production between Sweden and Denmark, with connected crimes taking place in both countries, it centres on an odd couple who must work together to take down the bad guys. Martin, played by Kim Bodnia, is a sensitive lumberjack of a man, a perfect foil for Saga's social awkwardness. You imagine him weathering Copenhagen winters in practical knitwear and sturdy boots, while pursuing illicit affairs, hunting down murderers and interrogating the state of his soul. Saga, meanwhile, is the one with the fast car, the brown leather trousers and the long flowing coat – a uniform she is never out of. (Helin says she and the writers sat down at the very beginning and chose her wardrobe together. "When I started, they had already picked the car. I think they just thought it was a cool car." The director picked the brown leather trousers: "And I said, yeah, that's good. When I got the coat, I said, this is perfect. It wasn't hard.")

Otherwise sensible friends, who know that actors act, have asked me if Helin is like Saga in real life. She isn't, much: she dresses elegantly and talks softly – though she doesn't give a lot away, carefully weighing up everything she says. "Did I answer that?" she asks often, or, "Is that what you wanted to know?" It's impossible to imagine Saga Norén doing a fashion shoot, but Helin poses politely in a Stockholm studio, adjusts her hair, smiles, stops smiling, moves her arms, fiddles with her hat. Mostly, she is so unrecognisable that I ask her to do the Saga face. Immediately she tightens her features, tilts her head down, raises an eyebrow and looks straight at me. It's uncanny.

Helin says she gets so tense on set that she has to have a weekly massage. "Technically, as an actor, it's also hard to be so straightforward, and to speak so fast and say so many complicated things. It demands a lot from the brain. I think maybe my brain has changed."

She grew up in a small village called Linghem, which sits between Stockholm and Gothenburg. "It's the middle of nowhere. It's not a cute village, it's a village built in the 1960s for workers travelling into town." She did a bit of acting at school, then went to university to study the very Scandinavian-sounding history of ideas. "Very interesting," Helin says, "but I just felt it wasn't my way of thinking, to dissect everything. So I sat down in my student room and thought, when did I have a lot of fun? I realised it was acting. I was 22. Then I slowly started to make small steps."

She chucked in her degree, joined a student theatre and was accepted into drama school in Stockholm, where she was almost immediately cast in a Swedish soap, Rederiet. "It's about a ferry. Very famous here." She moved into film, and was nominated for a Guldbagge (the Swedish equivalent of a Bafta) for Masjävlar, in which she played a daughter returning home to celebrate her father's 70th birthday. By the time The Bridge came along, she was already relatively famous in Sweden, but this was a different experience altogether. "Of course, this is watched by so many people, and so more people want to talk to me on the street. But in Stockholm we have a culture where it's uncool to talk to anyone famous."

She seems quite relieved about this. Helin is married to Daniel Götschenhjelm, a priest in the Church of Sweden, and they have two children, aged 10 and four. It is her children, she says, who make aspects of her life as an actor more of a challenge. "I am struggling with it. I went on holiday with my kids and I had to make the choice – a good vacation for me, or a good vacation for them. A good vacation for them is to be with other Swedish kids, so I chose that, but I had to say, you have to behave, because I can't have a scene in the restaurant. But they had such a good time, and I realised I have to embrace the fact that people know who I am, and also try to be comfortable with it. Otherwise, I will go insane, I think."

I fully understand the urge people have to approach Helin. When we meet, it is barely hours after I finished watching the second series' devastating finale, and after hellos and handshakes, I blurt out that I'm feeling a bit traumatised.

"What traumatised you?" she asks, gently. I tell her that series two broke my heart at several points. "Many people say, 'Oh, Saga doesn't have any emotions, or sympathy,'" she says. "But she has. She's not without feelings. But I think this season we let her try things she hadn't dared to do before. According to me, that's because she met Martin, and he saw her. She has, kind of, a new self-confidence." I tell her I need a bit of reassurance about series three. She has just received the first script, she says, and can't tell me a thing.

Now that she's not filming, does she find herself wondering: what would Saga do? "I do. But that's a help! My understanding for people is greater now. When I realised that some people really can't think that way, not because of their childhood or anything, but because of the way they're created… That's so amazing."

And, actually, there are glimpses of Saga in her. For instance, I ask Helin if the second series was intended to be funnier than the first: were her character's quirks sometimes played for laughs? Her response has a Saga-like flatness. "A joke has to be there for a reason. You can't just find the joke. For instance, when I'm talking about the dead man's penis." She is referring to a scene in which she attends the autopsy of a male prostitute and draws some pointed conclusions. "When I was thinking as Saga, I thought: how could he be a prostitute and so successful with such a small penis? What's the clue? Then I could do it." I laugh again – it's a funny scene – but Helin says she can't find it amusing. "Oh no," she says. "I have to think, 'This is not funny at all.' It's just about the crime."

It's nearly the end of the day, and I compliment Helin on a bright orange coat she is wearing for our shoot. Her own style is more sober; she arrives in a black silk blouse and tailored black trousers which, she says, is her usual look. "This is me being normal. I went to this film gala recently. Just before, I had watched the Golden Globes, the bit when everyone arrives, and I just thought, oh my God, poor them – they look so tense, so scared. So I just put on a suit and I was so comfortable and I had so much fun."

I tell her the coat's flash of colour suits her. Instead of thanking me, she says, bluntly, "Yes." And, for a brief moment, I imagine that when she leaves, there will be a tiny green sports car waiting outside.

Rebecca Nicholson

Seven Japanese scuba divers missing off Bali after storm hits island

Posted: 15 Feb 2014 12:39 AM PST

Indonesia rescuers have found body believed to be one of the missing tourists but search goes on for five other women and one man

Australia and Indonesia are now in 'open conflict', says Tanya Plibersek

Posted: 15 Feb 2014 12:19 AM PST

Dressing down of ambassador over 'unacceptable' border protection policies a matter of enormous concern

Vicars needed: the Church of England's fight to fill its vacancies in the north

Posted: 15 Feb 2014 12:00 AM PST

When parishes in south-east England advertise for a priest, they shortlist and appoint within months. In parts of the north it's a different story, with posts lying vacant for years. Whatever happened to missionary zeal?

Tomorrow morning, like every Sunday, Anglican vicar the Rev Graeme Buttery will celebrate a Eucharistic service in his parish church in Hartlepool. If he's very lucky, the congregation might be nudging 40, in a church built to seat 800 – and four of those present will be his wife Gillian and their three children. Afterwards, the family will go back to their 1980s breeze-block vicarage next door to the church, where the glass in the front door was recently kicked in by a would-be intruder. All the windows have bars on them after the wife of Buttery's predecessor was attacked in her garden.

It's not what you might call an idyllic parish. But is being its priest the dregs of life in the Church of England or the 21st-century Christian missionary frontier? That's the question the Anglican church has been asking itself over the last few days, after a survey in the Church Times revealed that, while in London it takes around four-and-a-half months to fill a vacancy for a parish priest, with an average of three names on the final shortlist, in areas including the north-east many parishes are without a priest for two years or more, and shortlists are virtually unknown. Most priests, it turns out, simply don't want to work in places like Hartlepool; St Cuthbert's, another Anglican parish in the city, has just taken two-and-a-half years to appoint a new vicar. Of 75 names on the Lee List, a confidential list of clerical job-seekers, 54 were looking for a parish in the south-east.

The losers are parishes like that of St Cuthbert and another of Buttery's neighbours, Holy Trinity with St Marks. As with St Cuthbert's, it took two-and-a-half years to find a new priest for Holy Trinity after its last incumbent, the Rev Philip North, left in 2009; the Rev Roz Hall, its current vicar, was eventually appointed in 2011. North thinks that kind of wait can be "really damaging" to a parish, where continuity of services and events and the ongoing presence of a Christian minister are the main things the Church aims to provide. He thinks his colleagues should be delving deep into their souls and asking themselves: should I be putting myself forward for this sort of ministry?

"When you are ordained, part of the deal is that you will be deployed to areas where there's need," North says. "And I want priests to think about parts of the country where there are communities without priests, who really need what the church can offer. Too many priests seem to think it's grim up north – it's windy and it's cold and they'd rather be in the south-east. I think they have to revisit that." But isn't North the pot calling the kettle black? After all, he now runs the parish of St Pancras in central London. In a sense, he says, the challenge he made was to himself. He worked for 10 years in Durham diocese, and he certainly doesn't rule out a return. "But the thing is that the church in London is vibrant and energetic and there's lots going on in the church, and when you've experienced that it's important to be willing to export it to other areas, so you get a trickle-down effect," he says.

Make no mistake, he says: this issue is the most vital one in the Anglican church at the present time. "The battle for the Christian soul of the nation will be won or lost on the estates of the north-east," he says. "If we abandon the people there, we no longer have the right to be called the Church of England; and I fear that's what we could be looking at."

Back at his St Oswald'sparish, Buttery is talking about his most urgent issue of the moment – how to raise the £20,000 he needs to replace the lead that's been stolen from the church roof – and musing on how he manages to survive here, when many of his brother priests would presumably find it impossible. His two youngest children attend the primary school across the road, of which he is chair of governors (and he's proud that it's a community school, and not a church school) while his eldest son, aged 13, is at a state secondary down the road. "We use the local schools, our children play with the local children, we're embedded in the community and part of it," he says. All the same, he doesn't want to criticise priests who can't make the decisions he made. "There probably are some selfish clergy out there – we're only human," he says. "But I can't condemn my brothers who have to factor in issues like the needs of their partners and children, or perhaps the needs of elderly parents. Not all of them will be able to move to a place like Hartlepool."

Buttery and his wife are both Geordies, though he did his priestly training in Oxford before moving back to the north-east. But a big problem for the Anglican church is that, over the years, the southern half of England has consistently yielded more vocations than the north. And southerners tend to prefer the south, and in some cases know a scant amount about the north, says the local bishop, the Rt Rev Mark Bryant of Jarrow. "They think it's a long way away. Sometimes if they haven't been to the north-east they have an impression of it as industrial and smog-filled and full of scrap heaps," he says. The reality, he says, is very different: when they investigate, they discover there's an excellent quality of life, with good schools and plenty of space.

It could, though, be a hard sell. Life has a very different feel when, as in Buttery's case, you're the only professional person in your entire parish, and hardly any of your parishioners are employed. Archdeacon Julian Hubbard, director of ministry for the Archbishops' Council, agrees that it could well be tough for some of them, but says the Church of England has a long tradition of sending ministers into different cultures, and learning to live among the people there. "That's what the gospel is about – crossing boundaries," he says. "I know of outstanding priests who have done that, and it's been a struggle – but in the end it's been the making of their ministry." Bryant, the local bishop, was himself raised in Surrey before going to work in Coventry; he moved to Jarrow six years ago.

Ask Buttery why he's in Hartlepool, though, and he immediately references his own upbringing. "I'm here because I come from a place like this," he says. "I grew up in a tatty pit village, and I know how it feels when you think no one really cares about you, when you feel you can't influence anything and you feel powerless. That's why it matters so much to me that the Church is here, that it's standing here in solidarity with the people of Hartlepool, and that it can help them to realise their power and to become more self-confident about themselves as a community." He thinks it's important that the church is now redoubling its efforts to train priests in the north of England: until recently, almost all Anglican priests were trained at Oxford or Cambridge. Last September, an offshoot of London's St Mellitus theological college opened in Liverpool, 44 years after the last ordination college in the north-west, St Aidan's, closed its doors. And at Cranmer Hall in Durham, a theological college that has been training Anglican priests for more than a century, there's a renewed emphasis on trying to recruit from the local community, according to Bryant.

Buttery has been a member of the church's ruling body, its general synod, for many years; he watched the battle for women's ordination from a front-row seat, and he now feels that too much of the church's energy and attention was taken up with internal politicking, and that evangelisation was neglected. One fallout from that is that areas such as his own have almost slipped below the Church of England radar, with dwindling congregations and a dearth of ministers.

His own guiding stars are the great names of the 19th-century Oxford revival movement, which aimed at reintroducing aspects of Catholic spirituality into the Church of England – figures such as John Henry Newman and Edward Bouverie Pusey, who both went on to become Catholics, but not before they had changed the Anglican church. Many of the leading lights of the Oxford movement worked in slums, which is why their legacy is so important to Buttery.

And St Oswald's is very much in the tradition of the Oxford movement: it's a huge barn of a church, with oak carvings and stained-glass windows, opened in 1904 to serve the burgeoning working-class population of the then-thriving Hartlepool, one of the centres of the shipbuilding trade. Almost everyone in the streets that surrounded the church back in those days would have been a churchgoer; when the first incumbent, the Rev Harry Robinson, complained about low turnout, he was bemoaning a congregation of 1100. Buttery has photographs of the scenes when Robinson died of scarlet fever in 1919: the wide street outside the church is packed with people as thousands turned out to pay their respects.

The shipyards have closed, the slums have been razed and new houses have been built – but new homes, as Buttery is fond of saying, don't change the people in them. Meanwhile, Church of England congregations have been decimated right across the country, but especially in places like this, where the number of Anglican worshippers is as low as it is anywhere. The first building you see when you come out of the station in the town centre, a mile away, is the former Christ Church, opened around the same time as St Oswald's and now an arts centre. The pulpit is still there, surrounded now by landscapes by local artists, but its stairway descends into a small cafe, and the font has been reinvented as a rather grand flower pot.

Neither Buttery nor Bryant nor North – nor, in truth, anyone else in the Church of England – wants this to happen to St Oswald's; but there are already plans in place to amalgamate it with another parish if and when the post of parish priest becomes vacant. It's fairly clear, Buttery says, that this would be a job that's hard to fill.

Bryant and Buttery both admit it can be tough to stay optimistic. "On a bad day I'm gloomy – but then I go out and I visit a priest and a congregation who are doing wonderful work and I think, with God's help we can do something here," says Bryant. Buttery's logic, meanwhile, is unassailable. "I'm confident that if this work is of God, then nothing can destroy it," he says. "And there are enough signs of hope that I'm not despondent. We've got a congregation, even though it's small; we've got a wonderful school in our parish; we're renovating our church hall and we're creating a community garden." And, though he doesn't want to quite come out and say it, in his bones Buttery can't help feeling that being a priest in the north-east might be a tad more interesting than being one in, say, Tunbridge Wells. The rich need churches, too, of course, but it's just possible, he thinks, that you might have more scope to change lives if you're a priest in Hartlepool.

Joanna Moorhead

Obama considers tougher action against Syria

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 11:51 PM PST

US president announces more help for King Abdullah and officials hint at more aggressive policy against Assad

Hundreds rally against Medicare reforms and fees for GP visits

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 11:13 PM PST

Watering down Medicare will be prohibitive to some Australians and cost the health system more, says Tanya Plibersek

Wonder what happens to your Oxfam donations? Sorted

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

Thanks partly to a huge recycling plant, Oxfam can spend 84p in £1 on helping others. Rebecca Smithers went to see for herself

From a vast metal cage at the end of a warehouse men in high-vis jackets are ripping open hundreds of bags full of clothing and more. A rainbow of sweatshirts, T-shirts, knitted sweaters, curtains, blankets and shoes – and even a striking adult dinosaur onesie – comes tumbling out on to a series of conveyor belts, signalling the beginning of a complex sorting process, virtually all of which is done by hand.

"I've had the occasional Vivienne Westwood number," chirps one sorter as she ploughs her way through a sea of clothes. Standing in a row of six "podiums", their experienced eyes are trained to spot quality or designer clothes, or leather or heavy wool coats that fetch good prices in eastern Europe.

We are behind the scenes at Wastesaver, the textile and clothing recycling facility run by Oxfam in West Yorkshire. Oxfam was one of the first major charities to launch such a resource, which aims to maximise revenue from clothing donations, while minimising the amount of textiles sent to landfill.

At the end of the conveyor belt the vintage and top-end fashion is sorted, steam-cleaned and photographed on dummies before being priced and listed for sale online. Causing huge excitement is a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes, which will be priced at £340 (they would probably cost double that brand new). Vintage wedding dresses, cashmere and "Gatsby-style" items all sell well.

Oxfam's pricing policy has attracted controversy. Its bookshops have arguably made life tough for the UK's struggling secondhand booksellers; some shoppers complain its secondhand clothes are too expensive, squeezing out its poorer customers; while others bemoan the lack of vintage bargains on the racks. But the charity says it has a duty to find the best price for donated goods, and if the Westwoods or Louboutins weren't priced correctly then they would simply be bought and resold on eBay, with the charity losing out. Fee Gilfeather, trading head of marketing at Oxfam, says: "It really is about maximising value for money for the charity, as we need to raise as much as money as possible for our work. Shop managers are given discretion to price donations, depending on their area. We would also be criticised if we priced items on the low side. We keep our costs very low – for every £1 donated to Oxfam, 84p is spent on emergency development and campaigning work."

On the conveyor belt I help sort the donations into nearly 100 different grades depending on type, condition, style and fabric. The premium grade is the most valuable and the most saleable – designer brands and vintage clothing which will either go on to the high street in one of Oxfam's nine "fashion boutiques", or be sold online. Good quality, lightweight cotton garments head to Africa, including to Senegal and an Oxfam-run social enterprise, Frip Ethique, where the workers make money selling the clothing on to local market traders. Denim, waterproofs, wellies, umbrellas and so-called "Nana blankets" (patchwork squares) are earmarked for the 10 temporary Oxfam shops that pop-up at music festivals.

At the bottom of the pile are the items too damaged to have much value. These are known as low or "wiper" grade and are sold on in bulk to recycling and reprocessing companies to be used as mattress filler, carpet underlay, upholstery, cleaning cloths or loft insulation.

The money Oxfam makes varies enormously. National logistics manager Lee Widdowson says: "The wiper grade items have a value of just £25 a tonne, which is a break-even situation once the costs have been factored in, while the high-end fashion, with prices dictated by what shoppers are prepared to pay, is worth anything between £20,000 and £30,000 a tonne."

The big brand and vintage goods for sale online now make more for the charity each week than any of its high street shops. It lists more than 111,000 products and sells about 1,000 units of women's clothing a week.

Many of the clothes arriving at the sorting centre come from its long-standing partnership with Marks & Spencer. It started on a modest scale in 2008 when the retailer encouraged shoppers to donate their unwanted M&S clothing to Oxfam to receive a £5 voucher. It has since morphed into "Shwopping", which encourages M&S shoppers to routinely donate clothing in-store when they buy something. Since the scheme was launched in April 2012, Oxfam has received 6.9m items worth £4.5m.

Each week, 200 tonnes of clothing arrive at Wastesaver – the equivalent of 36m items a year – disgorging bags from Shwopping, the 750 Oxfam clothing banks in car parks and supermarkets, plus the items that have failed to sell in the high street shops. Only 26% of the items donated to local shops are sold in them – the rest goes to Wastesaver.

"We get spikes in donations after Christmas and after major disasters," Gilfeather says. "We don't take real fur and we don't take electrical goods. We don't like to put off potential donors by imposing too many rules, so basically we ask that items are clean and in a strong bag that is not going to collapse."

Rebecca Smithers

Cashless society – why there's no pain or gain from a plastic future

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST

Cash purchases create a tight coupling between consumption and payment, and offers the best form of budgeting

After four days in Iceland I realised something very odd. I hadn't reached into my wallet to get out a single krona note. Even the coat check at a nightclub in Reykjavik breezily handed over a payment machine for the 250ISK (£1.30) fee. The buses don't take cash; taxis assume you are paying by card; coffee shops expect you to wave the plastic for the merest Americano. Iceland is on the way to becoming the first cashless society in the world, although Sweden is giving it a run for its money, so to speak.

The End of Cash has been predicted for some time, and there's a mild thrill to the idea of visiting a foreign country and never having to go to a cash machine or change money at an expensive bureau de change. But how far and how quickly do we really want to follow the Nordics down this particular path?

I have an old-fashioned love of cash. Petrol station attendants look startled when I hand over four folded 20s. Am I the last person in the country to hand over real money for petrol? Years ago in Guardian Money we identified petrol stations as one of the worst sources of ID theft (although that's probably no longer the case) and since then I've stuck with the habit. At cash machines I rarely take out less than £100. Not that I'm flash. Quite the reverse – relying on cash is the most basic form of budgeting.

Studies as far back as the 1970s prove that we don't see cards as "real money" and have a tendency to spend more when using plastic rather than cash. At the extreme are casinos where the use of chips decouples gamblers from financial reality. Cash is vivid, transparent – and painful to spend. Debit and credit cards, and in the near future just waving your smartphone in front of a scanner, are "easy" and "fun".

A report for the American Pyschological Association found that, when paying with cash, "there is a tight coupling of the consumption and the payment, thereby accentuating the pain of paying. In the case of credit card purchases, actual parting of the money occurs after the purchase decision, thereby dulling the pain of paying." In other words, we think "I'll worry about that later". The research also shows that our brains remember cash spending, but we are less able to recall spending on cards. In particular, substituting gift cards or credit notes for the same amount of cash make us spend as if it's play money.

Ultimately, cash encourages self control while other forms of payment encourage spending, often on unnecessary luxuries. Moving to a totally cashless society is therefore only likely to accelerate the vast build up in personal debt witnessed over the past four decades – unsurprisingly the same period in which cards have become ubiquitous.

Hopefully I'm not a Luddite on this issue – I am the first to warn anyone buying goods above £100 to use a credit card for the protection it enjoys. I have also found "wave and pay" at M&S or Pret a Manger fast and convenient. But the challenge for tomorrow's cashless generation is how do we introduce a bit more pain into spending?

• It is odd that the end of cash is happening in a country that beats even Argentina when it comes to financial crises. Iceland's 2008 catastrophe, when every major bank went under, was – relative to its population – the biggest financial collapse in economic history. The run on Landsbanki's Icesave accounts in the UK, where British savers had deposited £5bn, played a large part in toppling the country's overblown banking sector, which had grown to 11 times the size of Iceland's GDP – and we are still trying to recoup our money. Only half has been repaid, and the British and Dutch governments are rightly pursuing Reykjavik for the rest. To Iceland's credit, just before Christmas it put four of its worst financial hooligans behind bars. One doubts the perpetrators in the City of London will ever see the inside of Belmarsh.

Patrick Collinson

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

VW workers in Tennessee vote against having union representation

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 09:58 PM PST

Ballot is a crushing blow to hopes of United Auto Workers to expand into the South and reverse years of falling membership

Clive Palmer will not support Tony Abbott on proposed Qantas changes

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 09:22 PM PST

Millionaire businessman says airline has both heritage and service value, especially to rural Australia

India's anti-corruption champion resigns after two months in Delhi job

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 09:10 PM PST

Arvind Kejriwal quits as capital's chief minister but vows to teach main parties a lesson at the general election

Jason Burke

South Australian parliament dissolved as Jay Weatherill kicks off March poll

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 06:38 PM PST

Premier says voters have a choice between electing a government that will either build or cut

Petrol supplies safe despite grounding of Cootes' fuel fleet, says VicRoads

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 06:28 PM PST

Defects were found in fuel tankers' brakes, shock absorbers and air bags, as well as there being loose bolts and oil leaks

Police told courts that father could kill Luke Batty and his mother - report

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 05:31 PM PST

Magistrate still granted bail to Gregory Anderson, despite his pattern of erratic and aggressive behaviour

Muslim convert who agitated for sharia state in UK given groundbreaking asbo

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 05:23 PM PST

Jordan Horner told by Old Bailey judge to stop preaching in public – a legal first – after promoting extreme versions of Islam

A Muslim convert who targeted members of the public as part of a campaign for a sharia state in Britain has been given a groundbreaking asbo, police have said.

Jordan Horner, 20, from northeast London has been ordered to stop preaching in public, in a legal first.

He had taken part in vigilante patrols and street protests promoting extreme versions of Islam in the city's East End.

He is also thought to have distributed leaflets and posters advertising a "sharia controlled zone" in Waltham Forest, the Metropolitan police said.

Horner appeared at the Old Bailey on Friday, where a series of restrictions were imposed.

Among these was an order not to meet with Anjem Choudary, Royal Barnes, Ricardo McFarlane or Dean Le Page "except for peaceful worship inside a mosque or other Islamic cultural centre".

Barnes, 23, of Hackney, east London, this week pleaded guilty to posting videos on YouTube glorifying the horrific killing of Fusilier Lee Rigby in May last year.

Barnes and his wife, Rebekah Dawson, 22, recorded and uploaded three videos shortly after the murder in Woolwich, south London.

In one of the videos posted through his Musa Real Talks account, Barnes hailed the murder as a "brilliant day".

In a followup, he mocked the outpouring of public grief, laughing uncontrollably as he drove past floral tributes.

He admitted three counts of disseminating a terrorist publication and one of inciting murder during a hearing at the Old Bailey. He is currently awaiting sentence.

He was also told he must not be in possession of a loudhailer in public or enter any educational establishment, unless he is a student there.

As well as being forbidden to preach and hand out leaflets in support of sharia law, Horner was banned from defacing public adverts.

The Met said: "Waltham Forest is one of London's most culturally diverse boroughs with almost half of its 235,000 residents being of a minority ethnic origin and from a multitude of religious backgrounds.

"Discrimination and persecution based on a person's cultural or religious background is something the police or council will not tolerate.

Chief Superintendent Mark Collins – Waltham Forest borough's commander – said: "The granting of an asbo against Jordan Horner sends a clear message that extremist behaviour will not be tolerated on our streets."

The asbo will run for five years and be in effect throughout London.

Kevin Rawlinson

Welfare reforms a 'disgrace', says UK's most senior Catholic

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 04:58 PM PST

Archbishop of Westminster says Duncan Smith's reforms leave people with nothing if they fail to fill in forms correctly

Britain's most senior Catholic cleric has described the coalition's welfare reforms as a "disgrace" and said they have removed even the most basic safety net for those threatened by poverty and left society's most vulnerable facing "hunger and destitution".

Cardinal-designate Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, attacked the reforms led by Iain Duncan Smith. The work and pensions secretary is a practising Catholic.

He said that the welfare system had become more "punitive", leaving people with nothing if they fail to fill in forms correctly.

His move follows attacks by prominent figures in the Church of England against the government's programme.

"People do understand that we do need to tighten our belts and be much more responsible and careful in public expenditure," the archbishop said.

"But I think what is happening is two things: one is that the basic safety net that was there to guarantee that people would not be left in hunger or in destitution has actually been torn apart.

"It no longer exists and that is a real, real dramatic crisis. And the second is that, in this context, the administration of social assistance, I am told, has become more and more punitive."

The archbishop also told the Daily Telegraph: "So if applicants don't get it right, then they have to wait for 10 days, for two weeks, with nothing – with nothing. For a country of our affluence, that, quite frankly, is a disgrace."

In March last year, Anglican clergymen, including the archbishops of Canterbury and York, accused Duncan Smith of ignoring the concerns of ordinary people when they signed a letter claiming that capping benefit rises would have a "deeply disproportionate" effect on children.

But the work and pensions secretary – a millionaire who drew derision when he claimed he could live on the £53 per week that one claimant said he was allotted – hit back. He said the system was out of control and simply "giving more and more money" would not help.

"There is nothing moral or fair about a system that I inherited that trapped people in welfare dependency," he added.

Cardinal-designate Nichols is one of 19 senior clerics chosen by Pope Francis to be elevated to the Roman Catholic clergy's second highest rank.

It means he will be granted a place at the conclave that will elect the next pope. The archbishop is one of only two Europeans on a list of clergymen to be made cardinals next week, aside from those already holding senior offices at the Holy See, with the rest hailing from the developing world.

Since his election as pope in March last year, Francis has cultivated a radical image, challenging politicians over their treatment of immigrants and adopting a more tolerant stance towards homosexuality.

Kevin Rawlinson

One Billion Rising to end violence against women – global day of action and dancing – live coverage

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 02:23 PM PST

Coverage of events around the world seeking to end violence against women and girls

Readers get poetic about their lack of love for Valentine's Day

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 02:15 PM PST

For some of our Twitter followers, Valentine's Day isn't all teddy bears and chocolates. Read their #darkValentines poems

Kayla Epstein

Texas attorneys ask court to free man locked up for decades awaiting retrial

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 01:58 PM PST

Jerry Hartfield spent more than three decades in prison serving life sentence after his murder conviction was overturned

Stuart Hall's legacy | @guardianletters

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 01:00 PM PST

The death of Stuart Hall (Obituaries, 11 February) came as a great shock as he inspired me and countless others into socialist action. As an orator I would rate him the equal of Nye Bevan. I remember a byelection in Harrow East where he was speaking about nuclear disarmament. I was sitting in an all-white, conservative audience in the 50s or early 60s. I could feel the atmosphere change as this black guy came on to the platform. But within five minutes they were listening intently and at the end he received an ovation. Hall and New Left Review decided to do grassroots work in North Kensington amid the poverty, the appalling housing and the prejudice of the police towards the black community. Out of this experience came the first Law Centre in 1970, representing people in police stations for the first time, as it wasn't until 1984 that solicitors were paid to go to police stations. And representing tenants in civil courts who would never otherwise have been represented. Thank you, Stuart. I wish his family well.
Peter Kandler
Co-founder, North Kensington Law Centre

Giant leap needed on climate change | @guardianletters

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 01:00 PM PST

Nicholas Stern is right on two counts (Climate change is here now, Front page, 14 February). He is right to say that industrial transformations have and can happen quickly. Unfortunately he is also spot on to say that in the case of the most important industrial revolution – the low-carbon one – progress is not happening fast enough. Many of the technologies that we can use to make the next giant leap to a climate-friendly energy system exist but they are in desperate need of a Manhattan Project-scale innovation push to bring their costs down to acceptable levels so that they can be deployed at scale with political conviction.

But there is strong evidence to show that the cost of the innovation needed to refine and cut costs of key technologies, such as offshore wind and carbon capture and storage, are small relative to the benefits they will bring in terms of reduction in capital costs and lower prices for consumers. We have analysed 11 technologies and the conclusions show that investment now in low-carbon innovation is a clear win-win.

Take offshore wind. We expect that an investment of less than £500m in innovation over the next five years would put the UK on track to secure some £45bn of cost-reduction by 2050. As politicians count the costs of the flooding they should not ignore the fact that we need to urgently find technological solutions to climate change. Innovation that harnesses public and private funding will unlock the door to deliver the next industrial transformation at high speed and at the lowest cost.
Tom Delay
Chief executive, Carbon Trust

• The growth of climate scepticism is indeed a big threat to climate policy, but so are many of the government's own policies. Combating climate change is not only about generating clean energy. How much energy we use is at least as important. How is the ordinary punter to reconcile a big push for renewable energy, accompanied by fine speeches on climate change, with the biggest roads programme since the 1970s (a boast of Ed Davey's Lib Dem colleague Danny Alexander), growing enthusiasm for new runways in the south-east, backsliding on the commitment to zero-carbon new housing, and glacially slow progress on retrofitting existing buildings and settlements to make them less energy profligate.

Ed Davey works hard on the supply side, but he needs to do battle with his colleagues to conserve energy and reduce demand for it. Nimbys may be a problem, but they are a tiny one when set beside the Treasury, the Department for Communities and Local Government, and other government departments.
Shaun Spiers
Chief executive, Campaign to Protect Rural England

• In 2005, I foolishly said to Nicholas Stern that it might actually be nice if the UK got a little warmer. With patience borne of the necessity of dealing with lesser intellects, he asked me if I ever had boiled eggs for breakfast. He pointed out that in heating the pan the water stays still for a long time, but that in the space of a few more degrees starts to swirl more and more violently. That is what trapped energy does to the atmosphere: it makes the weather more volatile and extremes more likely. He explained that although the average temperature increase will be small, the temperature range will get much bigger and UK winters much wetter. Some fellow lesser intellects have not moved on: "The cabinet minister responsible for fighting the effects of climate change claimed there would be advantages to an increase in temperature predicted by the UN, including fewer people dying of cold in winter" (Guardian, 30 September 2013). It is unusual for an economist to make such unnervingly accurate predictions. We should "agree with Nick" and do what he says.
Andy Ross
Visiting professor, University of Reading

• The growth of climate scepticism is indeed a big threat to climate policy, but so are many of the government's own policies. I've just walked 3/4 of a mile to buy my Guardian. It was raining but I had my umbrella so I was not unduly affected. On the way back I saw a procession of cars ferrying children to school. It seemed ironic these cars were contributing, in some small way, to the global warming that has arguably created this awful weather in the first place.
Ivor Mitchell
Wellington, Somerset

• Thank you for leading on the link between flooding and climate change. All other news organisations again appear pusillanimous or downright mendacious when compared with the Guardian.
Alan Horne
Poynton, Cheshire

Syrian peace talks in Geneva reach impasse after five days of sparring

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 12:40 PM PST

Arguments centred around responsibility for violence and Bashar al-Assad, say government and opposition delegates

Peace talks aimed at forging a path out of Syria's civil war have reached an impasse with no guarantee of continuing after five days of sparring over responsibility for mounting violence back home and President Bashar al-Assad's future, government and opposition delegates have said.

Echoing the position of the rival camps, senior US and Russian officials traded accusations over who was to blame for the stalemate, adding to the polarisation of a war that has killed 130,000 people, displaced millions, destroyed a country and threatens to engulf the Middle East in religious conflict.

It was unclear on Friday how long the weary sides were willing to continue with the talks, which have been on the verge of collapse since they were convened last month. Despite the rancour, both sides left the door open for more negotiations, including a possible final session on Saturday.

A senior US official acknowledged that "talks for show make no sense" but told reporters there was still "enormous" energy for a political solution, adding that perhaps what was needed was a few days of recess for people to reflect. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity in keeping with rules established by the US administration.

Both the US and Russia have kept the talks going, knowing that it was the only option on the table at least for now.

The rebellion against Assad's rule has been sapped by deadly infighting among moderates, Islamic groups and al-Qaida-inspired militants competing for control of territory, weapons and influence. Assad's forces are solidifying gains, but the battle lines are largely stalemated leading to a growing sense internationally that neither side is close to victory.

For the Americans, backing down from a threat to strike militarily following a chemical weapons attack in August has left the Obama administration with little choice but to pursue a diplomatic track to end the carnage.

The opposition, which holds little sway among the dozens of rebel groups on the ground, is under pressure to come away with a deal rather than risk Assad holding on to power in a grinding war of attrition.

"Unfortunately we have reached a dead end," said Louay Safi, the opposition spokesman, following separate meetings on Friday between the UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi with opposition and government delegations. "I hope we can still find an opening in that wall," he added, saying that for now government "belligerence" was making it impossible to forge ahead.

Safi said it was too early to say whether there would be a third round of talks.

Syria's deputy foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, also announced "with deep regret" that the talks were not going anywhere.

He said: "We came to Geneva to implement Syria's declared position to reach a political solution to the crisis … Unfortunately the other side came with another agenda, an unrealistic agenda."

The charges underscored just how far out of reach a political solution for Syria's ruinous civil war remains. It also demonstrates the clashing interests that go far beyond Syria's borders to the warring sides' international sponsors, Russia and the United States.

US and UN officials have said merely getting the two sides in the same room was something of a victory. Some credit the talks, now in their second round in Geneva, with leading to an evacuation of hundreds of civilians from the embattled Syrian city of Homs. Other than that they yielded little more than acrimony.

That's largely because the Syrian delegates have a fundamentally different interpretation of what the talks are about.

The western-backed Syrian National Coalition agreed to the Geneva talks only if the focus were on an end to the Assad dynasty through the establishment of a transitional governing body. The Damascus contingent zeroed in on fighting terrorism before anything else.

Instead of hard bargaining behind closed doors, the two sides did most of their haggling in public, finger-pointing and repeating long-standing positions to reporters.

Still both sides have tried to soften their approach in the past few days. On Wednesday, the opposition delegation submitted a paper to Brahimi with its vision for a post-war Syria that surprisingly omitted any mention of Assad, ignoring its long-time demand that he step down and stand trial. The government said it was willing to discuss a transitional government but in due time.

While haggling continues in Geneva, violence has escalated in Syria, with both sides blaming each other for a soaring death toll.

The US and Russia tried to put the onus on each other to exert influence their Syrian patrons.

The Russian foreign sinister, Sergei Lavrov, accused the US of using the talks for the sole purpose of "regime change," while US secretary of state, John Kerry, suggested Moscow was backtracking on earlier commitments.

"The only thing they want to talk about is the establishment of a transitional governing body," Lavrov said after meeting the German foreign minister in Moscow. "Only after that are they ready to discuss the urgent and most pressing problems, like terrorism."

Kerry said in Beijing that agreeing on a transition government was the sole purpose of the Geneva talks. He said Lavrov had stood beside him several times when Kerry said that was the goal.

Kerry said: "There is no question about what this is about, and any efforts to try to be revisionist or walk back or step away from that frankly is not keeping work or keeping faith with the words that have been spoken and the intent of this conference."

Lavrov insisted the talks should have no "artificial time constraints or deadlines".

Lakhdar Brahimi

Lib Dems mired in row after party donor blacklisted by fraud squad

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 12:18 PM PST

Benefactor Sudhir Choudhrie who donated £500,000 to party is named as arms dealer on Indian police list of 'undesirables'

The Liberal Democrats were mired in a fresh donor row when it emerged that one of the party's biggest benefactors is an international arms dealer listed on the Indian fraud squad's blacklist of "undesirables".

Sudhir Choudhrie, who has donated more than £500,000 to the Lib Dems via his family company since 2010, was named by India's Central Bureau of Investigation as one of 23 "unscrupulous persons" in 2012, the Guardian can reveal.

However, the Lib Dems accepted donations from Choudhrie as recently as November 2013, when his C&C Alpha Group family company donated £30,000. His family and companies have donated more than £500,000 since 2010.

Choudhrie's activities were thrown into the spotlight this week when he and his son Bhanu were arrested and questioned for several hours by the Serious Fraud Office in connection with an investigation into allegations of multimillion pound bribery and corruption at Rolls-Royce, which supplies engines for military and civilian jets. Sudhir Choudhrie has always denied claims that he is an arms dealer.

The revelations about the Indian businessman come as a growing network of links between the Choudhrie family and the Lib Dems emerged.

• Nick Clegg and his wife Miriam hosted an event in 2011 for Choudhrie's charity, Path To Success, in Lancaster House, London, an official government residence.

• Justice minister Simon Hughes received a £60,000 donation in November 2013 after a request for the cash.

• Bhanu's wife, Simrin Choudhrie, says on her LinkedIn page that she worked as a campaign assistant in Hughes's office on his 2004 mayoral campaign and "later assisted Simon with the bid to host the Olympics in 2012".

• Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury, visited Choudhrie's home last year during an official government trip to India.

Lib Dem sources said the party had no knowledge that Choudhrie was on the CBI list of people "suspected to be resorting to corrupt or irregular practices in their dealings with official agencies".

The sources said the party had done full due diligence on the Choudhries along with other donors before the last election in 2010. At this point, they were given documentation – a chit – showing that Sudhir Choudhrie had been cleared of all allegations against him in India. The sources said the party only found out about Choudhrie and his son's arrest on Wednesday from newspaper reports.

It is understood Clegg has met Choudhrie many times as he has been a major donor for a decade, but they could not be described as personal friends.

"The Choudhrie family are long-term party supporters and donors. Sudhir Choudhrie has met Nick Clegg and other senior party figures on a number of occasions," one aide said.

The Indian-born businessman, who lives in a £5m apartment in Chelsea, was placed on the Indian list of "unscrupulous persons" following two formal investigations of alleged bribery in Choudhrie's work brokering arms deals.

Choudhrie was investigated and later cleared of allegations he accepted a $150,000 (£90,000) commission as part of an arms deal with the Israeli company Soltam in 2000.

The Indian CBI also investigated claims that Choudhrie and his companies received "a number of suspected remittances to the tune of millions of dollars" from arms firm Israel Aircraft Industries over a deal to supply seven Barak missile systems and 200 missiles to the Indian navy. The CBI closed its seven-year investigation into the allegations on 24 December 2013 due to a lack of evidence.

The "Undesirable Contactmen" list, which was prepared by the CBI and distributed to all Indian government departments, states politicians and officials should be "careful and cautious in dealings with unscrupulous contact men whose names are on these lists, to avoid associating with them socially and accepting hospitality and gifts from them.

"Even official dealings with the UCM should be discouraged. Nefarious activities of these individuals should not be allowed and they should not be allowed sponsorship of Govt projects."

The Choudhries' spokesman confirmed that the list, seen by the Guardian, was genuine but said there was "no reason why Mr Choudhrie is still on such a list".

He said Choudhrie was probably placed on the list while the CBI was conducting its inquiries, and could have been removed from it now that both investigations have been "formally closed". The Indian CBI did not respond to requests for comment.

Of the Choudhries' arrests in connection with the Rolls-Royce bribery scandal, the spokesman said: "The allegations made against Bhanu and Sudhir Choudhrie are strongly denied. Full co-operation is being given to the authorities."

Rolls-Royce is alleged to have used middlemen to bribe Tommy Suharto, the son of Indonesia's former president General Suharto, with $20m (£13m) and a blue Rolls-Royce car.

John Rishton, Rolls-Royce's chief executive, has stressed that the company will not tolerate illegal conduct. He said: "I want to make it crystal clear that neither I nor the board will tolerate improper business conduct of any sort and will take all necessary action to ensure compliance."

Choudhrie, who is in his 70s, was named by Clegg as a potential future peer last year. Last autumn it was reported that he had fallen off the prospective peer list following a damning official report into hospitals and care homes he owns.

The arrests of the Choudhries in connection with allegations of bribery is particularly embarrassing for the Lib Dems because it comes after major donor Michael Brown was sentenced to seven years in jail for theft, furnishing false information and perverting the course of justice. After nearly four years on the run, Brown, who gave the party £2.4m in 2005, was sent to prison in 2012. The party has not paid the money back.

The escalation of the SFO's Rolls-Royce bribery investigation could also prove embarrassing for David Cameron and the royal family, who have spoken of their pride in one of Britain's best-known companies.

The prime minister has praised Rolls-Royce as an enterprise "of which the whole country can be proud", and the Duke of Cambridge has described it as "one of the United Kingdom's great global companies".

Additional reporting by Solomon Hughes

Posted: 14 Feb 2014 12:14 PM PST

Actor best known for playing John Walton Sr in the US television family drama The Waltons

Ralph Waite, who has died aged 85, worked as a social worker, Presbyterian minister, publicist and book editor before turning to acting and landing the part as patriarch of a struggling American family in the wholesome US television drama The Waltons (1972-81).

For nine series and more than 200 episodes from 1972 to 1981, as John Walton Sr – "Pa" – he was the quiet tower of strength bringing up a family of seven during the depression and second world war with his wife, Olivia (Michael Learned).

The barefoot Virginia hillfolk operated a sawmill on Walton's Mountain, in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. Their trials and tribulations, based on Earl Hamner Jr's autobiographical novel Spencer's Mountain, were seen through the eyes of the eldest son, John-Boy (played by Richard Thomas for most of the run, then Robert Wightman), a character who eventually realised his literary ambitions by having his first novel published. Waite's "Good night, John-Boy" closing line was a catchphrase for millions of fans of The Waltons around the world. The actor himself directed 16 episodes.

The run ended with John selling the mill to his entrepreneurial son Ben (Eric Scott) and moving with Olivia to Arizona, where she could recover from tuberculosis. The series was followed by six television specials – three in 1982, A Walton Thanksgiving Reunion (1993), A Walton Wedding (1995) and A Walton Easter (1997). Waite's character was voted third in a 2004 TV Guide poll of the 50 "greatest TV dads of all time". President George Bush Sr wished in 1992 that American families could be "a lot more like the Waltons, and a lot less like the Simpsons".

Waite was born in White Plains, New York, the son of a construction engineer. He described himself as "a show-off, a dreamer, a storyteller" who was never taken to a play or concert as a child.

He served in the US Marine Corps (1946-48) and graduated from Bucknell University, Pennsylvania, in 1952, before working briefly as a social worker in Westchester County, New York.

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After gaining a master's degree from Yale University Divinity School, Waite became a minister with the United Church of Christ on Fishers Island and in Garden City, New York. Dissatisfied with what he saw as hypocrisy in the church, he left to become publicity director and assistant editor of religious books at Harper & Row.

Switching to acting at the suggestion of a friend, as his marriage went downhill and his drinking increased, he trained with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio and made his professional debut as the chief of police in a 1960 New York production, The Balcony. Broadway plays followed, including Blues for Mister Charlie (1964), which Waite and the cast reprised at the Aldwych theatre in London in 1966.

After his first film appearance, alongside Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke (1967), Waite appeared in dozens of big- and small-screen roles. He played Slater, the slave ship's sadistic third mate, in the television mini-series Roots (1977) and Kevin Costner's father in the film The Bodyguard (1992).

He sobered up after realising that his life was at odds with the caring father figure he portrayed in The Waltons. He then had regular roles on television as the retired lawyer Ben Walker in The Mississippi (1982-84), a corrupt billionaire in the second series of Murder One (1996), and priests in both Carnivàle (2003-05) and Days of Our Lives (2009-13).

In 1975, Waite was founder and artistic director of the experimental Los Angeles Actors' Theater. Seven years later, he married his third wife, Linda East, an interior designer. They moved to the Coachella valley in Palm Desert, California, in 2002. With his late brother Donald and other family members, Waite opened Don and Sweet Sue's Café in Cathedral City.

Political ambitions, inspired, he said, by the example of Czech playwright Václav Havel, led the actor to run unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in 1990 and twice in 1998, when he tried to take the Palm Springs, California, a seat formerly held by the singer Sonny Bono. That campaign was hampered by a commitment to complete a run in the leading role of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman for a theatre in New Jersey.

After shunning organised religion for half a century, Waite returned to it in 2010 as a minister with the liberal Spirit of the Desert Presbyterian Fellowship. He saw it as reflecting his own progressive and political views.

Waite's first two marriages, to Beverly Hall and Kerry Shear, ended in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, her son Liam, an actor, and two of the three daughters from his first marriage.

• Ralph Harold Waite, actor, born 22 June 1928; died 13 February 2014

Anthony Hayward