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• Kiev protesters leave city hall
• The Nile: Downriver Through Egypt's Past and Present by Toby Wilkinson – review
• Cameroon-Nigeria border settlement faces tough development challenges
• When the Hills Ask for Your Blood by David Belton – review
• Coalition plan to unwind financial advice reforms could backfire
• John Kerry to make clarion call for more action on climate change
• With even Ukip promoting women, Cameron's gender gap could be lethal | Gaby Hinsliff
• Binyavanga Wainaina: coming out in Kenya
• Fish farms are destroying wild Scottish salmon, says leading environmentalist
• South Australia elections: Jay Weatherill says poll will be about jobs
• Indonesia: Australia and US need to clean up their mess
• Chinese thriller wins best film and best actor prizes at Berlin festival
• Popular TV mini-series propels INXS to top of Aria albums chart
• Sir Richard Branson says helping Qantas will deter investors in Australia
• Australia spied on Indonesia talks with US law firm in 2013
• Interpol alert for arrest of Australian conman Peter Foster
• Florida loud music trial: jury fails to reach principal murder verdict
• Flooding crisis likely to get worse, warns David Cameron
• Tony Abbott promises farm aid after 'listening' tour of drought areas
• Scott Morrison dismisses claims navy entered Indonesian waters deliberately
• Seven Japanese women still missing after disappearing on Bali scuba dive
• Climate change is an issue of national security, warns Ed Miliband
• Haunted survivors of Homs emerge from hiding as fragile truce holds
• Ugandan president condemned after passing anti-gay law
• UK warned that aid to Vietnam inadvertently supports death penalty

Kiev protesters leave city hall Posted: 16 Feb 2014 01:36 AM PST Concession from opposition comes after authorities released all protesters arrested since Ukraine unrest erupted in November Protesters who have been occupying city hall in Kiev for months as part of anti-government unrest sweeping Ukraine have started to evacuate the building in a symbolic concession to ease tensions. "City hall is almost completely evacuated," Ruslan Andriyko of the protest movement said, as people filtered out of the building in the city centre. He added that demonstrators would remain outside the building for now as protests aimed at bringing down President Viktor Yanukovych continue. City hall became the "headquarters of the revolution" after protesters stormed the building on 1 Decembe following a crackdown on demonstrators the previous night. The evacuation, a concession from the opposition, comes after authorities made a gesture of their own by releasing all protesters who had been detained since the unrest erupted in November, when Yanukovych rejected an EU pact in favour of closer ties with Russia. Ukraine Europe Protest theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Nile: Downriver Through Egypt's Past and Present by Toby Wilkinson – review Posted: 16 Feb 2014 01:30 AM PST The eminent Egyptologist brings depths of knowledge to his ancient history but can be shallow in the present You might assume that a book calling itself The Nile would consider the world's longest river in its entirety. But as the subtitle makes clear, this one covers the Egyptian section, less than a fifth of the whole. On an occasionally bumpy journey downstream through history and landscape, from Aswan to Cairo, from "the dawn of time" to the recent toppling of presidents and subsequent plundering of museums and tombs, the Nile emerges as potent as ever, the sole bringer of life to Egypt. Toby Wilkinson is an acclaimed Cambridge-based Egyptologist and the author of seminal books on life in ancient Egypt. His take on ancient and colonial history is impeccable, so his decision to open the narrative upriver in Aswan plays to his strengths. The southernmost frontier of the ancient Egyptian (and subsequently the Roman) empire is brought to life by an impressive range of sources. Most visitors to Aswan today hurry from cruise boat to airport, but if they read this account they might stay long enough to consider the ancient Egyptian belief that the annual flood began here, or to remember the story of Ankhwennefer, the last native pharaoh, who made his final, desperate stand against the Greeks here in 186BC, his defeat ushering in more than 2,000 years of foreign rule, or that the dam opened here in 1902 led to a four-fold increase in cotton production and a doubling of the number of Egyptians. The river that threads its way through the desert, supporting life and making possible green fields in an otherwise brown land, is a strong thread to hold a lively narrative together. Wilkinson boards a dahabiya, a large, luxurious sailing boat that harks back to the royal barges of pharaohs, to float downriver, telling stories of the illustrious, and occasionally the villainous, who have gone before him. His ancient sources are as thorough and as fascinating as any I have read, his 19th century colonial ones also well chosen, but I would have welcomed more coverage from the intervening millennia, specifically more Arab, Turkish and Egyptian voices. The most striking impression is of the remarkable resilience of the Egyptian people. Utterly dependent on the annual mid-summer rise of a river whose source and seasonal flood remained a mystery until 150 years ago, they, perhaps more than any other people on Earth, have witnessed and recorded the repetitive cycle of civilisation. Pharaohs, Persians, Romans, Byzantine Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims from Arabia, Baghdad and Kurdistan have all lorded it over the river, and all have fallen, while the Nile continues to flow. The basic concerns of these people –that the Nile keeps flowing, that they have enough food to feed their families, that their leaders rule with justice and their neighbours remain peaceful – have been as constant as their reliance on the annual flood. Visitors have been equally constant, sailing the Nile for pleasure for at least 2,000 years, and although several books have already told the story of their coming, some more thoroughly, Wilkinson's eye for significant detail, his great curiosity about and affection for his subject, justify the retelling. But there are times, especially when the contemporary world intrudes, when his purpose in writing this book looks less constant than the river. In places it seems to be about the river, in others about the experience of travelling on it, in others still about the exploits of foreigners in Egypt. And while his stories are always interesting, his attempt to tie in the disastrous presidency of Mohamed Morsi and the military coup that removed him from power last summer, is clumsy and occasionally trite. Any consideration of that future, especially one that focuses on the river, should look at the ongoing struggle between Egypt, Sudan and the other Nile basin states, to renegotiate water rights, or the attempts by Egyptians to optimise their use of the life-giving waters. Stranger still is his decision to stop his narrative at Cairo; the Nile, after all, flows on to the Mediterranean and the omission of Alexandria, with its rich seam of history, seems inexplicable. The most compelling parts are the ones where Wilkinson draws on his extensive knowledge of Egypt's ancient past. The observation, for instance, that the word for "cloud" has been found only twice in ancient Egyptian literature says so much about the dependency of Egyptians on the river. This reader would have welcomed much more from antiquity, perhaps even an entire book on sailing through ancient Egypt. Anthony Sattin is the author of Lifting the Veil and A Winter on the Nile. History Egypt Middle East and North Africa Africa Egyptology Politics Anthony Sattin theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Cameroon-Nigeria border settlement faces tough development challenges Posted: 16 Feb 2014 01:00 AM PST Despite progress in a difficult demarcation process, the Bakassi region faces an uphill struggle with basic services and security Twelve years after an international court of justice (ICJ) ruling demarcated the Cameroon-Nigeria border, the UN and the governments of both countries are making headway in physically laying down the border and helping develop the long-marginalised oil-rich Bakassi region. But while many positive lessons can be drawn from the Nigeria-Cameroon demarcation process, when it comes to development, there remains much work to do, according to Bakassi residents. The Cameroon and Nigeria governments have overcome tense periods of negotiation over control of Bakassi, in the Gulf of Guinea, and the Lake Chad area further north, both of which were assigned by the ruling to Cameroon. With the help of mediators, trust between the two countries has gradually improved, paving the way for joint security and economic ventures in support of Bakassi's fishing and oil industries. Since 2011, technical and logistics teams have travelled from Senegal's capital, Dakar, to lay down the concrete pillars that form the Cameroon-Nigeria border. The UN support team to the Cameroon-Nigeria Mixed Commission (CNMC), which is charged with physically demarcating the land and sea boundaries, is based in Dakar. The job poses enormous physical, logistical and legal challenges. The border spans 2,100km across mountains and desert in the north, dense forests in the south, and 21 border points in the ocean. The topography "and the climatic conditions present an unprecedented challenges in the demarcation process", said a member of the UN team. The project was "longer than the sum of the UN-led demarcation projects between Ethiopia and Eritrea, Indonesia and East Timor, and Iraq and Kuwait", he said. The concrete primary and secondary pillars – placed every 5km and every 500 metres respectively – are cast on site, but getting the materials to areas inaccessible by road is a hurdle, said team members. Steps involved in setting up a pillar include mapping the co-ordinates; preparing and excavating the site; constructing the pillar; curing the concrete and verifying it, said the project manager of the UN support team to the CNMC in Dakar. Some mountainous areas, such as the Alantika Mountains, are inaccessible to boundary-markers; cartographers have mapped these locations digitally, using global positioning system co-ordinates and a "digital elevation model", a programme that enables accuracy within 1cm. Complicating this process is insecurity in many of the target areas: Bakassi is on the Gulf of Guinea, where piracy is rife, on the Nigerian side Boko Haram and its affiliate militant groups engage in kidnapping and other violence , and there are "acts of banditry all over," said the UN head in Cameroon, Najat Rochdi. Still, the largely peaceful resolution of the border dispute – which at one point led to outright conflict – should act as a model for other boundary discussions ongoing elsewhere in Africa, said an official with the African Union. Just 30% of Africa's borders are precisely demarcated, he added, with ongoing discussions continuing all over the continent, from Burkina Faso to Sudan. While still insecure, the border area is now heavily patrolled, with military factions from both governments on either side. UN observers are also in place to monitor people's protection and basic rights. But some suspicions linger, said an officer with Cameroon's rapid intervention battalion, stationed in Akwa, near the Nigeria border. "We are there to protect both the land and people, but many locals do not understand this. Whenever we, the military, pass, some run into the bushes. I think they still think we are there for war with Nigeria," he said. He said that in 2013, nine soldiers and many local traders were killed in trans-border crime incidents. Development challenge Perhaps the biggest challenge for the Cameroonian and Nigerian authorities will be developing the long-marginalised Bakassi region, particularly supporting the area's fishing industry, the economy's mainstay, while under pressure to build up the lucrative but environmentally hazardous oil industry. Shoring up fishing is key to the region's long-term growth, said officials. Bakassi remains seriously underdeveloped. Residents have no mobile communication network, no electricity, and few have access to clean water. Paradoxically, many residents of oil-rich Bakassi buy oil from nearby Limbe, where refined oil is more readily available. "The absence of basic necessities such as water, electricity and communication facilities makes life there very difficult," said Hilary Ndip, a secondary school teacher who left Bakassi for Limbe because of his health situation. Nigeria is Cameroon's biggest economic partner in sub-Saharan Africa, after the Economic and Financial Affairs Council of the European Union. The two governments are building cross-border roads to try to support the fishing trade, and they have drawn up an agreement for joint management of oil resources in the Bakassi area. "The most important thing now is to make people understand that the border is not a barrier but a bridge between them," a former UN observer based in Yaoundé said. The governments, along with UN country teams, have developed several projects aimed at supporting cross-border inter-community relations, cementing social cohesion, cutting poverty and improving basic services. Several of these projects are now underway, including a measles vaccination campaign, community radio programme and project to build a refrigerated storage room for traders. But not all of the programmes have received financing, and progress has been slow. And though the government is increasingly its role, people will need time to adjust, said a 37-year-old trader who called himself Oyang. "Bakassi villagers … have never witnessed the role of public authorities … We have only known traditional chiefs, but today that is changing," he said. The Cameroon government has made education free, and in Ija-Bato 2, the area's municipal headquarters, it has equipped teaching hospitals to provide services for free, said Ndip, though "very few people use them". He says that while primary school enrolment rates are up, "no one cares about schooling … Early every morning, kids as young as five go out in canoes fishing with their parents. Very few people attend the hospitals … Most of them do not use the mosquito nets that are given to them. They prefer to use them for fishing." Some Bakassi residents do not access basic services because they lack identity papers, said Martin Edang, a trader and resident of Ija-Bato 1. According to the UN's Rochdi, some people in northern Nigeria living in areas ceded to Cameroon have still not received identity cards or documents allowing them to stay there legally. Cameroon has informed residents that they can get their papers free of charge, Bakassi residents said. It is more a question of choice, said Edang. "Many are still not willing to visit public offices … Many are still confused over which country they want to belong to." Food security Cameroon Africa Nigeria United Nations theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

When the Hills Ask for Your Blood by David Belton – review Posted: 16 Feb 2014 01:00 AM PST David Belton's account of the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath serve as a fitting tribute to the actions of a heroic Franciscan priest My first reaction when confronted with David Belton's book was to ask what is to be gained from yet another book retelling the horrors of the Rwandan genocide? A part of me still feels that way, but what makes this one stand out is that it is not simply an account of the events of 1994. It brings the story right up to date, confronting the dilemmas and tensions that lie not far below the surface in that most tragic and beautiful of countries. Belton is a television journalist who was first dispatched to Rwanda at the time of the genocide and who has since been back several times. This elegantly written book is part personal odyssey, part history, but above all it is a tribute to one remarkable man, a Bosnian Croat Franciscan priest, Vjeko Curic, who, almost alone among foreigners, stayed throughout the slaughter and in so doing saved many lives. No recitation of bald statistics can do justice to the nightmare. It is enough to note that in the space of less than 100 days 800,000 men, women and children were murdered, many chopped to pieces with machetes. The victims were mainly from the minority Tutsi tribe. The killers were mainly Hutus, the majority ethnic group. The killers were not some alien species or invading army, they were the former friends and neighbours of those they slaughtered, goaded into an orgy of hatred by an evil, insane regime determined to achieve ethnic purity. Nor was the picture unremittingly bleak; everywhere there were acts of heroism: Hutus who refused to participate in the killing, who sheltered Tutsi neighbours and who, in many cases, paid with their lives. Belton tells the story in three time frames: 1994, 2004 and 2012-2013. The genocide he recounts by painstakingly reconstructing the experience of two people – Jean-Pierre, his driver and fixer, and Father Curic. Jean-Pierre survived, with the help of a Zairean friend, by hiding for two months and 16 days in a disused sceptic tank. He emerged to find that while, remarkably, his wife and children had survived, his parents and seven of his 10 siblings had not. Father Curic, a latter-day Schindler, looms large throughout. A handsome, fearless, irrepressible, whisky-drinking bundle of energy, bribing, cajoling, bullying. One minute giving sanctuary to terrified Tutsi, the next smuggling them out of the country in a compartment on the underside of his lorry. We first come across him driving into the capital, Kigali, as the slaughter begins, to rescue a Tutsi businessman. Confronted by members of the Hutu presidential guard at a roadblock, he tells them that he is en route to collect his cook and offers them $500 for safe conduct. As he drops them back at the roadblock, one of the soldiers leans into the car and fixes the rescued man with a hard stare. "I know he is not your cook," he says. "No one pays that kind of money for a cook." Before long Curic is organising convoys of food and medical supplies from the Red Cross in neighbouring Burundi to the thousands of desperate Tutsi seeking sanctuary at the nearby cathedral and elsewhere. Each trip involves running the gauntlet of a dozen or more roadblocks and at every one the criminals manning them have to be bribed, and appeased. When some semblance of order is eventually restored, Curic redirects his efforts into building homes and feeding the tens of thousands of alleged genocidaires who clog the local jail. Perhaps it was inevitable that sooner or later the priest would fall foul of the new authorities. He soon noticed that, for all the talk of reconciliation and justice, revenge killings by forces loyal to the new regime went uninvestigated. Soon he was heard complaining that "life had been simple during the genocide: there were the victims and there were the killers. Now Rwanda was a seething mass of local jealousies and ethnic rivalries". Curic survived several attempts on his life and cheerfully ignored warnings that he should leave until, in January 1998, he was shot dead in broad daylight. His assassin was briefly detained by passersby, but escaped. His death remains unexplained to this day. In many respects, as Belton acknowledges, Rwanda's progress in the 20 years since the genocide has been remarkable. To be sure, the country is for all practical purposes a one-party state ruled by a Tutsi elite, but great order prevails under heaven. As anyone who has spent time there will testify, there is an energy and efficiency about the new Rwanda that is generally lacking in most other parts of Africa. Singapore, not Africa, is the role model. Officially at least there is no more talk of Tutsi and Hutu, only of Rwandans. And yet, as Belton soon discovers, one does not have to scratch hard to discover that all is not as it seems. Is it possible, he asks the president, Paul Kagame, for Rwanda to outpace its ethnic past? "There is a long pause. The two presidential aides sit motionless… when he next speaks his voice is whispery quiet. 'We have to,' he says. 'We have no choice.'" Chris Mullin is a former Africa minister and the author of three volumes of diaries Autobiography and memoir History Rwanda War reporting Africa Chris Mullin theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Coalition plan to unwind financial advice reforms could backfire Posted: 16 Feb 2014 12:22 AM PST Strategy to reverse protection of consumers via regulation rather than legislation might expose advisers to class actions Lenore Taylor

John Kerry to make clarion call for more action on climate change Posted: 16 Feb 2014 12:09 AM PST US secretary of state will make the case for 'undeniable' evidence that world faces a 'tipping point' for the environment

With even Ukip promoting women, Cameron's gender gap could be lethal | Gaby Hinsliff Posted: 16 Feb 2014 12:05 AM PST Cameron is in trouble with his old boys' cabinet. But parliament is losing its attraction for both men and women Forget the slut jokes, the mad talk of how women don't make it to the boardroom because they can't play chess. Forget, if you can, the general air of a smoke-filled officers' mess circa 1985. Nigel Farage wants you to believe that Ukip isn't really like that any more. And so his big interview on the morning after his party came second in the Wythenshawe byelection was with BBC Woman's Hour, where he plaintively insisted that when he said City women who take maternity leave are worth less than men, actually it wasn't as bad as it sounded. (Apparently, he was talking to stockbrokers at the time and that's just how the City is; he thinks it's probably fine to go and have kids if you're a dentist, or something. Lady dentists, take note.) Anyway, now Ukip's got some women and they've done "amazingly well!" he cried, fondly. "There are some saying that women are about to take Ukip over!" It wasn't true that, as one of his former MEPs put it, he thinks women belong in the kitchen or the bedroom: "Nobody has done more to promote women in Ukip than I have!" Which, strictly speaking, is true. The last three Ukip byelection candidates before Wythenshawe – in Corby, Rotherham and Eastleigh – were women. The party's female faces will be constantly pushed in front of the cameras in the run-up to the European elections in May and, if all goes to plan, Farage reckons that about half his top nine MEPs will be female (as are one in six of his candidates), all somehow without any official kind of positive discrimination or intervention. And when even the natural party of golf club bores opens the clubhouse to the ladies like this, it means the Conservatives have a woman problem all right, but not necessarily – or only – the one you think. As the YouGov analyst Anthony Wells points out, Labour have younger women's votes mostly sewn up: they're 21 points ahead of the Tories among women aged 25-40s. But the Tories are ahead of Labour among women over 60, who have stuck by them more loyally than older men. And therein lies the key. So far, Ukip has torn chunks out of the Conservative vote mostly by appealing to grumpy old men. If it could attract older women too, it could take things to the next level. This may be tricky for a party famously disapproving of slatterns who don't clean behind their fridges, but one can see why Farage thinks it worth a go. Did Ed Miliband realise what a nerve he was hitting when he taunted David Cameron for having an uncharacteristically all-male frontbench at prime minister's questions? Tory women were piled like sandbags around Cameron last Wednesday, but too late to stop a rumbling internal debate going public. A growing number of female MPs fear that, without a repeat of measures used before the 2010 election but dropped straight afterwards, such as the A List, an approved list of more diverse candidates from which constituency associations were encouraged to pick, the party will backslide into its male comfort zone. And while it's too crude to say that female voters will invariably vote for female MPs, a party that won't hire women looks horribly as if it doesn't value them. Which is why the former environment secretary Caroline Spelman wants shortlists for seats split 50/50 between the genders and Baroness Jenkin, co-founder with Theresa May of Women2Win, the pressure group set up in 2005 to tackle a dire shortage of women, says all-female shortlists should now be considered. Even the influential ConservativeHome website has carried a post suggesting such measures might now be inevitable, although readers' responses suggest that would be over their dead bodies. (Positive discrimination offends not just every free-market instinct Tories possess, but the memory of Margaret Thatcher, who made it the hard way.) Others, meanwhile, simply want the A List reinstated. But will even that be enough? Cameron is said to have been exasperated when he discovered that fewer than a third of selections so far have gone to women. But I'm told only about 30% of those applying for seats are women, which suggests the problem isn't merely prejudice. More women might well come forward if encouraged by some new measure sending a signal that they're actually wanted. But as one rising female minister suggests, is it possible that women are canaries down the Westminster mine, identifying a deeper problem now beginning to threaten the supply of good men too? In Cameron's honeymoon years as leader, a safe Tory seat could expect to attract 200 applications if it fell vacant. Yet one plum seat currently up for grabs has had barely half that. Perhaps that's because this time Conservative victory looks uncertain. But the gossip is that it's not just women now contemplating a life of being treated by the public like a criminal, while working 60 hours a week and never seeing the kids, before deciding there are better ways to have an influence. And yes, that is the world's smallest violin playing, but still: it's bad for the quality of democracy when too many people conclude they could run a medium-sized charity, or start a successful social enterprise, and not just earn more but achieve more in public life than they would as a lowly backbencher. Women may be historically more likely than men to consider the quality of their lives in the round like this, but that's starting to change, particularly for men with small children and working wives. Certainly, the five Tory women now quitting aren't going for the obvious reasons. Louise Mensch, the only one with small children, said she could have coped fine but for having a new husband in New York; Anne McIntosh was defenestrated by her association. Lorraine Fullbrook apparently wants a "new challenge" while both Jessica Lee and Laura Sandys talked vaguely about personal or family circumstances. (It's worth mentioning that women are also more likely than men to care for older parents, something barely on parliament's radar though it's why Labour's Patricia Hewitt and Beverley Hughes both left the Commons.) Are we moving from a culture where MPs stayed in parliament until booted out, to one where many do five years and move on, frustrated and exhausted? It seems unlikely that Cameron can now meet his goal for a third of the government to be female by 2015 and those who think he'll lose no sleep over that are wrong. He always knew the target was probably over-ambitious but saw it as a way of focusing minds. Cameron's government undoubtedly has a blind spot for poorer women, who have suffered disproportionately from austerity. But he is utterly comfortable, as leaders before him were not, championing professional ones: he has weathered a significant backlash from overlooked Tory men to fast-track women such as Esther McVey, Elizabeth Truss and (rather less successfully) Maria Miller to the top. But the risk is that he's running out of road to do more. Cameron spent a lot of political capital forcing through the original A List against furious resistance and that was when the party was so depressed by losing three elections that it was prepared to try almost anything. Does he really have the strength to confront his associations now that they are angry at not winning outright in 2010, sceptical about his prospects in 2015, and inclined to think they need not more modernisation but less? Parties will grudgingly swallow a great deal from a leader on a high, as Farage is, but a leader on the slide quickly loses the authority to dictate to his grassroots. How ironic that Tory women's prospects may still depend so heavily on the power of one man. Women in politics Conservatives Women Nigel Farage UK Independence party (Ukip) David Cameron ConservativeHome Gender Gaby Hinsliff theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Binyavanga Wainaina: coming out in Kenya Posted: 16 Feb 2014 12:04 AM PST When the writer published a lost chapter from his memoir titled 'I am a homosexual, Mum', it caused a sensation – and has placed him at the heart of the African debate on gay rights Binyavanga Wainaina made his name with a short and celebrated satire called "How to Write About Africa". It was the perfect anti-primer for any would-be "dark continent correspondent", skewering every cliche under the vast, red, setting savannah sun: "Always use the words 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title," Wainaina advised, to begin with. "Never," he went on, "have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these…" Critically, he suggested, "Africa is the only continent you can love – take advantage of this. If you are a man, thrust yourself into her warm virgin forests. If you are a woman, treat Africa as a man who wears a bush jacket and disappears off into the sunset. Africa is to be pitied, worshipped or dominated. Whichever angle you take, be sure to leave the strong impression that without your intervention and your important book, Africa is doomed…" Wainaina wrote this piece for Granta magazine in 2005, and it subsequently became a kind of calling card for him, leading indirectly to visiting lectureships in America (he was until recently director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Literature and Languages at Bard College, a post that came with a fine house by a lake in upstate New York) as well as star-turn invites to the global literary festival circuit (he lived for a winter in Hay-on-Wye, while studying for a masters in creative writing, and was anointed Field Marshal of Africa by the self-appointed local "king"). Wainaina provided another answer to his satirical corrective three years ago with an inspired first book, part memoir, part reportage, called One Day I Will Write About This Place. It was a sub-Saharan Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and confirmed Wainaina's voice as one authentic articulation of his complex "Africa rising" generation – often, like him, the sons and daughters of post-independence pioneers, who strove and suffered under cold-war-backed dictatorships – richly playful, combative, highly educated in post-colonial history and not suffering fools, particularly those bearing imposed solutions from the west. It was, I'd say, in this spirit, too, that on his 43rd birthday – 18 January this year – Binyavanga Wainaina wrote and published a lost chapter from his memoir entitled, "I am a homosexual, Mum". The chapter was written as a blog for the influential literary magazine Kwani? (a Swahili expression meaning "so what?"), which Wainaina co-founded in Nairobi more than a decade ago, and was quickly republished around the world. The chapter imagined scenarios in which the writer told his mother on her deathbed – she died 13 years ago – that he was gay, and set them against what actually happened, which was that he had been stuck in South Africa with visa issues, having not seen his mum for five years, and arrived too late to tell her anything at all. The piece had all the hallmarks of Wainaina's best writing; it was sharp, intimate, alive to all the Hollywood cliches of that particular well-worked mother-son drama, but it was significant mostly in this instance for its timing. It came out – he came out – at a moment when his country, Kenya, is ratcheting up its official and colloquial homophobic rhetoric. When its neighbour Uganda – his mother's home nation – has had before its parliament a bill introducing the death penalty for some homosexual acts and where a leading gay rights campaigner was not long ago murdered. And at a time when Nigeria – a country Wainaina is in the habit of visiting several times a year – has criminalised any same-sex relationship or its promotion, apparently giving official sanction to the beatings, whippings and stonings of gay men and lesbian women in the fundamentalist Islamic north of the country, and imposing mandatory 10-year jail terms elsewhere. Wainaina's lost chapter, then, was a pointed and deliberately provocative act. Sitting on his terrace in the Nairobi suburb of Karen, in which slightly crumbling old-colonial bungalows like his are fenced among tropical woodland and scrub, Wainaina is anxious to provide more context for what he wrote. He is a vivid presence, mischievous and considered by turns, a big man, with a voice that ranges from a lifelong smoker's depth to sporadic giggled high notes. His head is shaved at the sides and the hair on top is dyed bright blue and crimson, matching the swirl of his cotton print trousers and the trim of his shirt. He leans forward on a low stool, cigarettes to hand. Friends, including his secretary, Isaac, come and go bearing laptops and coffee and breakfast. I've asked him to elaborate on his decision to make his very public declaration, and he is unpicking it and its implications in his head. "The strategy for me was very loose," he says. "I am not a chess player, but I had been thinking about it for months. We were burying a friend's mother on my birthday, and the night before I was determined that I was not going to sleep until the chapter was done." That imperative had begun for him last year when a young friend, who had been living at his house, and whom he had helped fund through college, died. The man had been gay, and it is Wainaina's understanding that he died from an Aids-related illness, but he had felt unable to admit that even to his closest friends. The family line was that he suffered throat cancer. Wainaina returned home from New York for good in time for the funeral and decided, angry, that he should perhaps do some of his friend's talking for him. The news from Uganda, and then Nigeria, heightened that anger. "If you are middle-class here, or international enough here, you can pretty much live as you want," he says, of his own circumstance. That was not so easy, though, still, for his young friend, and increasingly impossible for gay men and women in Nigeria and Uganda (and to differing degrees in the 36 other African countries in which homosexuality remains illegal). "It is an irony," he says, "that my friend had worked in the past for an NGO counselling people about the importance of being open about health issues, but he couldn't even tell us he was going through this thing. I thought, 'It is time: I have to write about it.'" Wainaina had originally pictured a longer, polemical article. He finally found his way of writing it at one in the morning, "when my mind wakes up". He pressed send at 4am, went to sleep, and the following day went to his friend's mother's funeral, got a bit drunk afterwards, and it wasn't until that evening, when somebody said, "Look at all this shit about you on Twitter!" that he fully remembered, "Oh yes, I wrote that thing." He had decided not to comment further for 48 hours. "I wanted people to digest it a bit," he says, "before I had microphones in my face asking, 'What's the difference between bestiality and homosexuality?'" Partly as a result, the coverage in all the more serious African papers he read was broadly sympathetic, though there was the raft of inevitable antagonistic comment online. One question, given his apparently open and confessional spirit, has to be: why did it take him so long, why didn't he include the chapter in his memoir to start with? He's not sure he has an answer. He says he knew he was gay from about five years old, though he might not then have had the language to describe it. The early part of his book is all about his sense of quirky difference from his elder brother and younger sisters. His siblings used to tease him for his daydreaming, for acting weird, for having "lost his marbles" and he rolled those transparent glass taunts around in his head. That sense of being an observer, of being alive in language more than reality, was part of it. "That feeling was always there," he says now. "In kindergarten, we had this Irish Catholic headmistress called Sister Leonie, and I remember she would tell us, say, to put the crayons in the box. I remember thinking, 'Why is everyone finding this so easy? Why should the crayons be in the box?' It's like I was always not quite sure even how to move in space somehow; I would watch people and then copy them. I found it really hard to walk straight. My brother was always on at me for walking off the pavement. I guess I always expected people to bring me back into line." He finds retrospective comedy in his book in some of the cultural imports he was obsessed by in the Kenyan living room of his boyhood: Abba, Pam Ewing from Dallas, Grizzly Adams ("It was always scary but comforting adult males with me"), and "the one with the beard in the Bee Gees". He wanted to be Michael Jackson, for the shiny clothes as much as the moonwalking. ("Is there a kind of gay committee that sits down and decides these things that you will be attracted to?") From those camp beginnings, however, he remained celibate – as a homosexual, at least – until he was 33. He got depressed and locked himself in his room for months on end reading novels during disastrous years studying accountancy, to please his father, in South Africa. He found some release from that depression by starting to "scribble fiction" in his mid-20s. Partly, he says, he could not have told his mum he was gay at 30, as he fantasised, because by the time she died he had never touched a man sexually, though he was already, he says, with a laugh, a "quite significant user of internet pornography". Eventually, 10 years ago, while staying at the house of his oldest friend in London, Wainaina says, "I found this great website, Black Orpheus, hired a hooker, got a massage, quick wank, and that was that." Later he was having a beer with his friend and he told him what had happened. The friend just looked at him. "I said, 'I'm not gay, it was just a bit strange'," he recalls, "and my friend looked at me some more. And I thought, 'Oh, OK' and we carried on drinking. After that," he says, "it was pretty easy." (Though he also admits not calling himself gay until he was 39). Would it, I ask, be possible for a young Kenyan to make that admission to a friend in Nairobi rather than in London? "The circumstances clearly differ from person to person," he says. "I can recognise, travelling around the continent, that there is no standard reaction. I know a guy, for example, the most visible effeminate gay man you can imagine, who runs a hair salon and supports his entire family in his village; he openly has his boyfriend, husband, and it is never an issue. I recently met a young man in Mombasa who had been brought up in the most disconnected, remote village. On the last day of primary school his mom brought him a magazine of wedding pictures and it was like, 'Are you the husband or are you the wife?' He told me he pointed to the wife, and his mother said, 'Fine, no problem.' When he went to boarding school, he was completely open about being gay simply on the strength of feeling of his mother's sanction. And, perhaps because of the confident way he carried himself, he said it was never a problem. But then you equally hear of other cases, where people are told, 'Never come home again', or they are found wives and forced to marry." Talking to Wainaina, just off the plane from London, I'm wary of falling into "how to write about Africa" generalisations. Still, I risk one by noting how on my last working visit to Ghana, in October, I'd been struck by how quickly homophobia seemed to come up in different conversations. Local men, mostly businessmen, worldly in every respect, would apparently feel the need to make some crude gay-bashing comment soon after introductions. Twice I was asked directly, not quite joking, how I could believe sex between men was natural. The implication was that homosexuality was a European import, encouraged by liberals (of whom I seemed to have been identified as the representative), and alien to the African male. It was very far from a representative sample, but why, I wonder of Wainaina, did the subject seem so very raw in African societies now? He pauses, before giving me a brief lesson in political history. "Partly homophobia is seasonal," he suggests, "particularly with regards to election seasons. And it comes in different packages. Sometimes it is packaged with abortion, for example, what they call a wedge issue, a for or against." Given the caveat that the cultural history is different in Islamic parts of Africa, Wainaina believes those currents of bigotry are best understood by examining the recent patterns of church-going. "In any forum where people discuss the issues – in the media, or in conversation – you will quickly hear almost the exact wording that has been distributed and disseminated in the churches," he says. "Most importantly, the Pentecostal churches, which have in turn influenced Catholic and Anglican because they are shouting loudest and growing fastest." That language was no accident. It entered Africa in the late 1980s on the back of the heavily funded right-wing Pentecostal movement, mostly imported from the rapture-obsessed white southern churches of America. "They came in the last days of those dictatorships in the 1980s, and they came with presidential sanction," he says. "From Malawi to Zambia to here to wherever. Those churches talked a lot about obeying your leaders, and about the mortal dangers of decadent influences bringing in abortion and homosexuality." They used the fear and reality of HIV, often pictured as vengeance, to back up their preaching. In Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria charismatic churches are now everywhere. As in their American heartlands, the more extreme often preach how to remove, among many other demons, the demon of homosexuality from your child. "Their language," Wainaina argues, "has invaded every bit of oxygen here. And because of the Christian church's perceived legitimacy – there are far more Anglicans for example in Nigeria and Uganda than anywhere [which explains Lambeth's continuing self-destruction over gay marriage] – that language attracts politicians." Nigeria under the presidency of Goodluck Jonathan, who spends a lot of time courting the born-again, has become a case in point. "Listen," Wainaina says, "your nation is being polarised between Islamic militants and Pentecostal reactionaries: what is the single issue they can agree on and unite around? Your economic miracle is stalling, your popularity is tanking, and so in your desperation you create not just an anti-gay law but you blink your eyes to a wave of thuggery, beatings, whippings and everything else. Then you have that shit run on CNN and people suggest that it is part of a programme 'to eradicate western influences', and the beatings are to save young men from themselves." In Uganda, where President Museveni last month eventually refused to sign his parliament's bill, which would have led to life sentences in jail for gay couples, and the death penalty for HIV-positive gay men having sex, the politics goes back much further. Museveni's published justification for his refusal was that there were better ways than prison of "saving" gay people from an "abnormality" he believed was created by the "random breeding of western societies" or, in women, by "sexual starvation". A century ago, however, it was those western societies, or particularly British colonials and Catholic missionaries, making that argument in reverse. The last ruling monarch of the Buganda people, Kabaka Mwama II, was apparently gay. His "bestial enslavement" of 23 young courtiers was used to justify his overthrow and the seizing of his territories by colonial forces. Many of those 23 men became Christian converts and martyrs for plotting against the king. They were the first African saints and the unity of Ugandan state and its church were, Wainaina argues, forged from the propaganda of their homosexual suffering. "That sexual secret has been simmering at the heart of Ugandan identity ever since," he suggests. "It goes very deep." (That long internalised schism perhaps also helps to explain why, in Google's 2013 Zeitgeist survey, Ugandans searched for "homosexuality" more than any other nation on earth; Kenyans were third.) One of the compelling things about Wainaina's book is that he lived with many of these political shifts in his own family history. Part of his anger with the extreme evangelical church is directed at the pastor who persuaded his mother to stop her treatment for diabetes and put her faith in Jesus for a cure, a decision that contributed to her early death. Her faith was itself, he suggests, a political gesture. She became born again, along with other middle-class friends in Nairobi, at about the time Daniel Arap Moi enforced his brutal dictatorship and destroyed the Kenyan economy in the mid-1980s. "My parents' retirement plans and all they had worked for were suddenly pretty worthless," Wainaina recalls. "When the ground shifts so suddenly like that, your polite Catholic God is no good; you might need a bigger saviour." There is a chapter in Wainaina's book in which his mother takes in a local crippled boy to live with them and be charismatically healed in church. He and the young Wainaina compete awkwardly for her attention for weeks, until the crippled boy eventually, literally, crawls away. One possibility for a fully paid-up Afropolitan like Wainaina might have been to decamp permanently abroad and to fight those historical battles in newspaper columns and at literary festivals. His decision to come out, though, was the same kind of impulse as his decision last year to return home from his wandering life in America. On turning 40 he had a full-on bout of what Martin Amis called "the Information", that mid-life whispered knowledge rising to a cacophony in the male brain that suggests you, too, are going to die. At just about the time he completed his memoir, Wainaina experienced a series of such whispers. Like his mother, he was diagnosed as a diabetic. While in America, he suffered a number of minor strokes resulting in a brain angioplasty. To help his efforts to give up smoking, a doctor had prescribed Zoloft, the Prozac alternative, and in withdrawal from that he had a kind of breakdown, became lost and disoriented in New York and found himself crying uncontrollably at the airport. He had never come out to his father, another reason why that knowledge is not included in his book. When he got home his dad asked him why he was staying in a hotel with a friend rather than at home – "Which sounded to me," Wainaina says, "that for the first time he wanted to open the file on the subject." That file was never opened further, however; the following day his father himself had a huge stroke, entered a coma and died five days later. Would he have had that conversation had his father not died? "I was ready to have it." Doesn't he think his parents knew anyway? "In the way that nobody's parents have ever had sex, it is still hard to imagine talking in that way to them. Put it this way. Neither of them ever asked, 'Do you have a girlfriend?' But then equally I don't suppose they would have wanted me on CNN discussing my sex life." It was, despite this never spoken conversation, his father's example that really prompted Wainaina to change the direction of his life, though, to come back to Kenya, to write the chapter. After Kenyatta and independence, his father, with little schooling, had become, aged 26, managing director of a major agricultural company in Kenya's Rift Valley. He partly used his role to build workers' housing, to improve their conditions and training. Under the decades of Moi, he saw some of that work come to nothing, but he stuck with it, and raised his four kids. During the 2007 emergency after the election, civil war threatened to come up to his door again. Wainaina, watching on TV in New York, urged his father by phone to get out. "The men with machetes are coming over the hill!" His father wasn't going anywhere, except maybe to play golf, Wainaina says. "He told me, 'This is my home.''' Wainaina took the implications of that comment to heart. "I guess, really, it's for the example of my father's generation that I am doing this," he says, by which he means, deciding to become the most visible gay voice on a continent that often violently refuses to hear. He is wary of being a spokesman, but he felt it needing saying on his own terms (in this same spirit, he refused the honour a few years ago of becoming a World Economic Forum "young global leader", writing to Queen Rania of Jordan, who made the offer, to say: "The problem here is that I am a writer. And although, like many, I go to sleep at night fantasising about fame, fortune and credibility, the thing that is most valuable in my trade is to try, all the time, to keep myself loose, independent and creative… It would be an act of great fraudulence for me to accept the trite idea that I am 'going to significantly impact world affairs.'") Richard Branson recently proposed an international boycott of Uganda over its stance on gay rights (though Virgin continues to fly daily to Nigeria, promising visitors "a once in a lifetime experience"). Wainaina has not much interest in such western posturing ("You guys are in the retirement home already as far as we are concerned"). He strongly believes the conversation he is opening has to be an African one, and, given the great cultural and political change that will attend the current economic growth of the continent, he is hopeful of opportunities for revolution within the forces of reaction. He plans to write a new chapter on the subject every month, published online. He is weighing up a long-standing invitation to go to Nigeria to judge a book prize. "In a way," he says, "it feels like the best kind of gamble you can take. Everything is in play and that is prime time for noisy individuals like me." There is a memorable passage in his book where he watches his dad mend a car with his friends, effortlessly capable as ever in the world of engines and manliness; the young Wainaina was quietly troubled by his inability to exist in that world, to be a man (when he was circumcised at 13, in the rite-of-passage ceremony, his reaction was to get home and lose himself in his mother's stash of Mills & Boon). There is, though, he has discovered lately, more than one type of courage and more than one way of being male. I wonder if his chapter felt like a conclusion, in this sense, or a beginning? He suggests it is just a start. "It's like my father said, 'When trouble comes you don't put your worldly goods on a bicycle.' This is my place. I am 43, I have bad knees, you know, diabetes. I could easily take another teaching gig in New York, hang out in Brooklyn, have some nice sex, write a funky book. But you know, that's gone. I want to put a stake in the ground. My mum and dad are not here. It's kind of my turn." Binyavanga Wainaina is the author of the memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place (Granta £8.99) Binyavanga Wainaina Gay rights Sexuality Kenya Africa Uganda Fiction Tim Adams theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Fish farms are destroying wild Scottish salmon, says leading environmentalist Posted: 16 Feb 2014 12:00 AM PST Founder of influential conservation body accuses Holyrood of contributing to catastrophic decline in salmon stocks on rivers One of the world's most influential conservation bodies has accused the Scottish government of ruining the country's lucrative salmon-fishing industry. In a strongly worded letter to all of Scotland's MSPs, Orri Vigfusson, chairman and founder of the North Atlantic Salmon Fund (NASF), accuses Holyrood of contributing to a catastrophic decline in salmon stocks on Scottish rivers. Vigfusson, who is lauded in Iceland for his work in salmon conservation, writes: "Your country encourages and supports the proliferation and expansion of unsustainable fin fish farms. You overfish your fish stocks and you encourage interceptory mixed-stock salmon fisheries that target the fish we have protected while they feed in our waters. "We have given these salmon safe passage in the belief that they will be allowed to spawn and help restore Scottish rivers. Instead, far from being rebuilt, your salmon abundance has declined by 80-90% in recent decades. This is principally due to the failure of your authorities to manage them properly." The letter, which is supported by organisations representing Faroese and Icelandic fishermen, contains the strongest criticism yet of Scotland's management of its fisheries. It also overshadows the announcement last month by Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, of an independent review into how Scotland's wild fisheries are managed. The industry is worth around £200m a year to the Scottish economy. The unprecedented warning encapsulates fears long expressed by stakeholders in the industry. The proliferation of salmon farms off Scotland's west coast has led to fears about contamination of the species through sea lice. Meanwhile, the indiscriminate netting of mixed stocks off the north-east of Scotland and the Northumberland and Yorkshire coasts has prevented mature salmon from returning to spawn in rivers that are already running low. An editorial in the current issue of Country Life warns of the disastrous effects of intensive farming to meet an insatiable demand from China: "As the pesticides used by aquaculture to battle the sea lice grow ever stronger, wild salmon are exposed to infestations as their migratory routes take them through sea lochs bursting with farmed fish. Setting up more of these highly-intensive farms is looking increasingly unsustainable, as both wild and farmed fish will suffer." Salmond stands accused of overheating production of Scottish farmed salmon to meet China's insatiable demand for sushi in return for its loan of two pandas to Edinburgh Zoo. On the River Tay last week, the chief ghillie of the Tay Salmon Fisheries Company described his craft as he urged help for the industry. David Godfrey has been working his beat for 10 years, teaching the art of freshwater fishing in the world's wildest and oldest open-air school. His only competition comes from ospreys, which in springtime will occasionally swoop within 10 feet of him to deprive a client of his silver prize. "You don't do this to get rich," said Godfrey, "but to watch a soul catch his first salmon is to witness pure contentment." The Tay is the pre-eminent salmon fishing river in Scotland, ahead of the Tweed, Spey and Dee. Godfrey described the life-cycle of a salmon in reverential tones. After two years or so on the river of its birth, it turns to silver and heads out into the Atlantic to feed for another three years before returning to its birth-river to spawn. "Farmed salmon, on the other hand," said Godfrey, "can complete that process in just 18 months." The process by which they do that can be seen mouldering at the bottom of cages off Scotland's west coast and it turns Godfrey's stomach. "There can be a place for them if they are better regulated and brought inland in closed-off waters. This way they don't pose a danger to our wild Atlantic Scottish salmon. But there are about 85 of these off the east coast or on sea lochs." The veteran Tay ghillie also believes the government could do more to help the industry. "If the Greenlanders start using nets again in their waters it will prevent multitudes of Scottish salmon returning to their rivers. But now they are questioning why they are tying up their nets when the Scottish government is encouraging interceptor mixed stock fisheries off its own east coast." The Scottish government points to recent agreements to show that it is not dragging its feet. "We operate a robust, internationally recognised regulatory system which the Aquaculture & Fisheries (Scotland) Act 2013 will enhance," said a spokesman. "We are already taking action to improve sea lice control on marine fish farms, including measures to require all operators to enter into farm management agreements which set out arrangements for managing fish health and parasites." The fisheries review process starts next month. At stake is the survival of the precious silver beneath its running waters. Scotland Fishing Farming Marine life Food Animals Alex Salmond Wildlife Conservation Kevin McKenna theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

South Australia elections: Jay Weatherill says poll will be about jobs Posted: 15 Feb 2014 10:45 PM PST Premier kicks off campaign by showcasing redevelopment of Adelaide Oval and attempts to modernise the state

Indonesia: Australia and US need to clean up their mess Posted: 15 Feb 2014 10:42 PM PST Presidential adviser responds to 'perplexing revelation' that ASD spied on a law firm representing Indonesia in a trade dispute Oliver Laughland Bridie Jabour

Chinese thriller wins best film and best actor prizes at Berlin festival Posted: 15 Feb 2014 09:56 PM PST Asian films take limelight with best actor and best actress prizes but Richard linklater wins best director for Boyhood

Popular TV mini-series propels INXS to top of Aria albums chart Posted: 15 Feb 2014 09:10 PM PST Renewed interest in the Aussie rockers has seen two albums shoot back into the top 10

Sir Richard Branson says helping Qantas will deter investors in Australia Posted: 15 Feb 2014 07:51 PM PST Virgin Airline entrepreneur steps up camapign against rival, saying federal aid would damage competition Oliver Milman

Australia spied on Indonesia talks with US law firm in 2013 Posted: 15 Feb 2014 07:45 PM PST Australia spied on Indonesia and shared the information with the United States when the two countries were involved in a trade dispute in February 2013 Bridie Jabour Martin Pengelly

Interpol alert for arrest of Australian conman Peter Foster Posted: 15 Feb 2014 06:49 PM PST Authorities have asked for the 51-year-old fugitive to be listed after he failed to front a federal court hearing in Brisbane

Florida loud music trial: jury fails to reach principal murder verdict Posted: 15 Feb 2014 06:21 PM PST Michael Dunn guilty of second-degree murder over shooting of black teenager Jordan Davis in dispute about thumping rap at gas station Richard Luscombe

Flooding crisis likely to get worse, warns David Cameron Posted: 15 Feb 2014 05:46 PM PST Even though storms ending, PM says volume of rain over past few weeks means groundwater levels will keep rising David Cameron has warned that the flooding crisis is likely to get worse even though Britain is set for a respite from the devastating winter storms. The prime minister said while the weather was due to improve, the sheer volume of rain over recent weeks meant groundwater levels would keep rising in many places. The comments came as power firms struggled to reconnect tens of thousands of homes after the latest downpours and high winds. Despite weather forecasters predicting an "improving picture" with lighter winds and less rain, the Environment Agency said parts of southern, south west and central England remain at risk of flooding due to high river levels following the recent heavy rainfall. Cameron, who visited flood-hit Chertsey in Surrey before chairing the government's Cobra emergency committee on Saturday, said the next 24 hours would be vital as river levels were set to rise again. "Thankfully, it does appear that we will see less rain and wind over the next few days," he said. "However, after so much rain over recent weeks, groundwater levels remain very high and in many places will continue to rise." The EA said it had closed the Thames Barrier for a 16th consecutive time to help lower river levels. Paul Leinster, the chief executive of the EA, said; "We continue to see the very real and devastating impacts that flooding can have on communities and business. We know the distress that flooding can cause and are doing everything we can to reduce the impacts. "Despite an improving forecast the risk of flooding will continue for many communities in southern parts of England over the next few days. We ask people to remain vigilant and take action where necessary. "Environment Agency teams are working round the clock to support local authorities' relief effort. We have also teams out working to reduce the risk of flooding to communities and have deployed over 50 temporary defences. "Over 1.3 million properties have been protected since the start of December thanks to Environment Agency defences and the Thames Barrier will close for a record 16th consecutive time today." On Saturday night, yellow "be aware" weather warnings of icy driving conditions were in place for most of the UK. Across the south of England, Wales and the Midlands there were also warnings of heavy rain. The Met Office forecaster Charlie Powell said temperatures could drop to -3C overnight, then Sunday is expected to be dry for most areas. "It will be markedly different than it has been in the last few weeks," he said. Meanwhile, the Environment Agency chairman, Chris Smith admitted he "could have done better" during the flooding crisis and said the country needs to take a "serious look" at how it prepares for more extreme weather. He told LBC Radio: "I think there are certainly some things that I could have done better. "I think we could and should have worked harder to persuade partner organisations in Somerset to undertake some of the longer term work that's needed down there which we were wanting to start last year but we weren't able to get the other bits of money that we needed on to the table. "I should have worked harder to do that – I probably should have gone down there earlier than I did. "But on the whole I've been actually very proud of the way that the Environment Agency's staff have responded and in the process have managed to protect 1.3 million homes around the country that would otherwise have flooded if our defences and our work hadn't been in place." He added: "Now, we need to have a serious look as a country at how we prepare ourselves for that and how we build our flood defences." The Ministry of Defence said more than 3,000 servicemen and women were committed to helping the flood relief effort with "thousands more at a state of high readiness" to assist if requested. The Energy Networks Association said the number of homes without power had fallen to 65,409 on Saturday evening, with 600,000 customers reconnected since Friday's storms. Flooding David Cameron Natural disasters and extreme weather Environment Agency Chris Smith theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Tony Abbott promises farm aid after 'listening' tour of drought areas Posted: 15 Feb 2014 05:25 PM PST Cabinet expected to approve package of debt relief, income support and extra social services for affected communities next week Oliver Milman

Scott Morrison dismisses claims navy entered Indonesian waters deliberately Posted: 15 Feb 2014 05:02 PM PST Immigration minister promises to release a report proving that incursions by warships were not intentional Bridie Jabour

Seven Japanese women still missing after disappearing on Bali scuba dive Posted: 15 Feb 2014 04:21 PM PST Experienced Japanese group never returned to the surface after their third dive of the day, says boat skipper

Climate change is an issue of national security, warns Ed Miliband Posted: 15 Feb 2014 04:09 PM PST Labour leader says UK is 'sleepwalking to a crisis over climate' as storms bring more major disruption and flooding Britain is sleepwalking towards disaster because of a failure to recognise that climate change is causing the extreme weather that has blighted the country for more than a month, Ed Miliband has warned. The Labour leader says in an interview with the Observer that climate change is now an issue of national security that has the potential not only to destabilise and cause conflict between regions of the world, but to destroy the homes, livelihoods and businesses of millions of British people. Criticising David Cameron for appearing to backtrack on his commitment to the environmental cause, he calls on senior figures in all parties to unite behind the scientific evidence that climate change is a key factor in extreme weather. Failure to do so, he warns, will have catastrophic consequences. Miliband says the science on the issue is now overwhelming, citing the government's own special representative on climate change, Sir David King, who recently warned: "Storms and severe weather conditions that we might have expected to occur once in 100 years in the past may now be happening more frequently and the reason is … that the climate is changing." Miliband says: "In 2012 we had the second wettest winter on record and this winter is a one in 250-year event. If you keep throwing the dice and you keep getting sixes then the dice are loaded. Something is going on." Suggesting the country rebuilds the frayed national consensus on climate change and shows the kind of cross-party unity seen in wartime, he adds: "We have always warned that climate change threatens national security because of the consequences for destabilisation of entire regions of the world, mass migration of millions of people and conflict over water or food supplies. "But the events of the last few weeks have shown this is a national security issue in our own country too with people's homes, businesses and livelihoods coming under attack from extreme weather. And we know this will happen more in the future. "The science is clear. The public know there is a problem. But, because of political division in Westminster, we are sleepwalking into a national security crisis on climate change. The terrible events of the last few weeks should serve as a wake-up call for us all." With the Tory party divided over whether extreme weather can be linked to climate change, a leading independent adviser to the government has also joined the fightback against the sceptics. Lord Krebs, a member of the Climate Change Committee, described those who question the science as "the flat earthers of contemporary society who show a flagrant disregard for the future needs of our children and grandchildren". Krebbs said not enough was being spent on flood defence because "we have not taken a long-term view of what needs to be done". An Opinium/Observer poll shows more than half of voters (51%) believe the recent floods are a sign of climate change and global warming while 24% do not and 20% are neutral. Among young people aged 18-34, 60% blame climate change, while 44% of those aged over 55 take the same view. Some 51% say David Cameron has handled the crisis badly while 21% says he has done well. Political fallout from the floods and storms continued as it was confirmed that three people died on Friday during weather which left tens of thousands of homes without power. A woman killed in a car crushed by falling masonry in Holborn, Holborn, central London,, was named as minicab driver Julie Sillitoe, a 49-year-old mother of three. An 85-year-old man died after the 22,000-tonne liner Marco Polo, on which he was returning from a cruise to South America, was hit by a freak wave in the Channel causing water to enter through a window. The man was airlifted off the vessel with a woman in her 70s, but later died. Bob Thomas, 77, from Caernarfon, died in hospital after being hit by a falling tree in his garden on Wednesday. More than 30 people had to be rescued from a seafront restaurant in Milford on Sea, Hampshire, after wind-blown shingle shattered windows and the sea flooded in. Chief Inspector Gary Cooper, who co-ordinated the rescue, said it was probably the most difficult joint operation he had been involved in during his 28 years of policing. "The extreme weather conditions of stones being thrown from the beach with the power of the wind to smash windscreens of fire engines and military trucks was almost like they were being shot from a rifle," he said. There was disruption across Britain's road and rail networks, with hundreds of trees uprooted. Many train services were cancelled. Some 22 severe flood warnings – indicating a danger to life – were issued for coastal communities from Cornwall to Hampshire, Gloucester and the Thames Valley, where rivers remain at their highest levels for decades. Nearly 190 less serious flood warnings and 320 flood alerts were also in place on Saturday. Miliband said he was ready to work with politicians of all parties, including "green" Tories such as Zac Goldsmith, to rebuild the consensus around climate change. He announced a three-point plan to tackle the crisis, including tougher decarbonisation targets, moves to strengthen the country's resilience to floods, and a push to boost business investment in the green economy. He said that "dither and denial" would be disastrous for the country. Ed Miliband Climate change Flooding Natural disasters and extreme weather Weather Labour Toby Helm Jamie Doward theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Haunted survivors of Homs emerge from hiding as fragile truce holds Posted: 15 Feb 2014 04:06 PM PST Lyse Doucet, the BBC's chief international correspondent, has covered the operation to free starving Syrians from the besieged city. Here she describes one dramatic day in a terrifying week Six hundred days had passed under a punishing siege in the ravaged Old Quarter in Homs. It was the sixth day in a rebel-held area cut off by government troops. But a vital "humanitarian pause" to get more aid in, and bring more people out, could not and would not be rushed. Last Wednesday every minute mattered. Just past midnight, there was a rush and a roar in the dimly lit lobby of Homs's Safir hotel, situated in the relative safety of a government-controlled area. It was now the UN's field headquarters and unlikely nerve centre for implementing a temporary truce in a city that has seen some of the worst fighting in Syria's brutal war. Syrian intelligence official Deeb Zeitoun, the only brown suit in a swarm of black uniforms, swept past the scattered tables where the last stragglers lingered long into the night. Aid workers, journalists and spooks, hunched over computers, coffee and cigarettes, took note. President Bashar al-Assad's man from Damascus had arrived to ensure nothing went wrong on this day of operations. He went straight into negotiations with the UN's resident humanitarian co-ordinator, Yacoub el-Hillo and the governor of Homs, Talal al-Barazi. A few miles way, in the ruins of the Old City, rebel commanders were in contact with the UN by telephone and Skype from basement bunkers in a wasteland where not a single building still stood intact after 18 months of brutal battle. And in distant capitals many were watching to see whether this deal to rescue the most vulnerable in the Old City would be wrecked by the most powerful. "The whole world is watching and people inside are waiting," Hillo told me. "But the longer this mission goes on, the more sensitive it becomes," regretted the veteran UN official from Sudan, who has done time in many of the world's warzones but said he that he had never seen a scene as horrific as the Old City. Barazi vowed the "truce would go on for as long as necessary to ease the suffering there". A bear of a man, he was constantly on the move, his expressions changing from grimace to wide grin. The past week had been hailed as a rare glimmer of light in the midst of a dark devastating war. By Wednesday, 1,200 people had managed to escape an ancient quarter once full of life and beloved by Syrians for its welcoming cafes and atmospheric alleyways. Now it's a forbidding enclave without electricity and running water, where food is scarce, and the last functioning hospital is known as "a place to die". A deal negotiated between the UN and the warring parties was a rescue plan for women, children, the elderly, and ill. Men over the age of 15 and under the age of 55 were told that if they wanted to leave they had to send their names out first. "They were informed that once they sent their names, they would be checked and within six hours they would be told whether they were on a wanted list," explained one official. On day one of this truce, the first Syrians to timidly cross into a desolate no man's land between rebel positions and army posts came under sniper fire. On day three, hundreds of residents were transported to safety across this last dangerous stretch in the UN's white armoured vehicles. A day later there was a desperate stampede as residents hurtled toward the convoy, dragging bags bulging with their most essential belongings. Then they advanced nervously on foot, sandwiched between the two lines of armoured escort vehicles. But it was the second day of this truce that loomed large. That Saturday, more than a dozen UN and Syrian Arab Red Crescent (Sarc) workers barely managed to escape from the Old City with their lives. Mortars had landed in the distance, at midday, as soon as an advance convoy moved into the rebel stronghold. At dusk, when trucks carrying food finally reached the main distribution point, the missiles killed two people instantly and injured many others. Mortar rounds and gunfire then pinned down the aid team for hours. Three tyres were blown on the armoured vehicle used by Hillo, his deputy, Matthew Hollingworth, of the UN's World Food Programme, their Syrian driver and an Arab security adviser. The UN flag that had covered the car's bonnet now lay flat across the front windscreen. Visibility was blocked except for a small hole. To get out of the vehicle to remove it meant entering the snipers' sight. "We have a choice," Hillo told his driver. "We abandon the vehicle or we drive out at 50mph." Drive out they did, in the darkness, in their eight-vehicle convoy. "I am your eyes," the security officer reassured the driver. Their crippled vehicle lumbered forward, lights full on. "Right! Left!" the security man barked from the front seat as he strained to peer through the window. Sources confirmed these attacks were the work of a local paramilitary group known as the National Defence Force determined to scupper a deal it saw as feeding and freeing their enemies. "All the devils in this crisis will always try to hinder our work," Sarc's head of operations, Khaled Erksoussi, told me on the telephone line from Damascus with a voice tinged with exhaustion and anger. There are no angels in this war, only what one aid official called "good people in a very bad situation" on both sides of a bitter divide were determined to carry on. By Wednesday, lessons had been learned. On the edge of the Old City, bundles of food and medicine were unloaded from lorries, and passed along a chain of Sarc volunteers on to two trailers. Supplies would be towed in by the UN's armoured vehicles. In the hours that followed we could hear occasional gunfire. "Are they OK?" I asked a UN official. "They're fine," he said. "They're unloading the food." Intelligence and military officials sped back and forth with the governor and his entourage. Christian clergy, black robed and white bearded, paced the dirt road, talking on mobile phones, worried expressions on their faces. "Some rebel groups inside are trying to stop members of our Christian community from leaving," George abu Zakhem, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Homs, lamented as he tried to oversee the rescue of 53 Christians still trapped inside. Sources say that a small group of fighters, angry that they had not been consulted in the negotiations, were trying to hold some people back. Then, by mid-afternoon, as the sun started sinking in the sky, the empty trailers that had carried supplies in rattled by, and the UN's armoured vehicles rolled up. This time, they had taken people out to waiting buses. Armoured vehicles shielded them from pro-government sniper fire. Three vehicles at the rear of the convoy were a defence against any moves by rebels inside the city. The heavy armoured doors then opened outside the reception centre, and so did a small window on a place left behind of untold privations. Young and old men lay bandaged on stretchers, or were eased into waiting wheelchairs. Then three buses pulled up, their curtains drawn. People trapped for nearly two years waited a moment longer while Sarc volunteers again linked arms to form a protective tunnel through the waiting crowd. When the door opened, a stream of young men leapt out, anxious to disappear from view, as they hurried into the banquet hall. Soldiers waiting nearby leaned forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of men who had taken up arms against them. A few raised their own cameras in the media scrum. Barazi raised his megaphone: "This area is for the UN and Red Crescent," he declared. "Anyone in a uniform, with weapons, should leave." A few children, with eyes that had long lost any sparkle, were the last to disembark, shepherded by anxious mothers. Inside a cavernous banquet hall with empty fountains and shimmering chandeliers, the young men gathered on one side along long wooden tables, their families on the other. They all fell upon their first proper meal for as long as they could remember. "It was very, very, very difficult life, a miserable life," one man with hollow face and shrunken shoulders told me as he sat with his wife and children, who didn't look up. "We were living on grass boiled with water." All the children around the tables were brown-faced with the layers of dirt and grime that comes from not having water to wash. When bright coloured balloons intended to inject some fun burst loudly nearby some children instinctively shouted: "Takbeer" – an Islamic invocation they'd learned to voice when the missiles landed close to what was left of their homes. When we approached a table of young men, we were greeted with warm smiles even as a plainclothed officer from the intelligence services leaned forward to listen to our conversation. One man bravely piped up. "I am nervous and fearful of my future," he said. "I was stuck in the Old City and haven't done my military service." When their meals finished, all the men were taken to the al Andalus school, a makeshift informal detention centre but also a shelter. Those with families all went together. As the clock struck midnight on Wednesday, UN officials were at that school along with the governor to see how the men were faring, and to send a message that the UN was watching this process carefully. Outside Syria, there was a rising hue and cry over the expected detention and mistreatment of the men. And there was anguished debate in UN circles over whether this was the kind of deal they should have be part of. Barazi kept insisting most would be freed, but some would be put on trial for "terrorism, criminal activities and sabotage". Hillo said that the next time efforts would be made to include the International Committee of the Red Cross, mandated to deal with prisoners and their rights. But he said this was a deal to save lives that "had to be done" "Wednesday," he said, "was a good day, an exemplary day." Food and medicine went in, and people safely came out. Now there is the nearly 2,000 people still stuck inside the Old City, and the rest of Syria to worry about. Syria Middle East and North Africa Lyse Doucet theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Ugandan president condemned after passing anti-gay law Posted: 15 Feb 2014 04:06 PM PST Campaigners attack Yoweri Museveni as he approves life imprisonment for 'aggravated homosexuality' Rights campaigners and health professionals have condemned Uganda's president after he said he would approve controversial anti-homosexuality laws based on the advice of "medical experts". Yoweri Museveni told members of his governing party he would sign the bill – prescribing life imprisonment for "aggravated homosexuality" – that was passed by parliament late last year, dashing activists' hopes he might veto it. Ofwono Opondo, a government spokesman, tweeted on Friday that "this comes after 14 medical experts presented a report that homosexuality is not genetic but a social behaviour". The MPs, attending a party conference chaired by Museveni, "welcomed the development as a measure to protect Ugandans from social deviants", Opondo added. When Twitter users from around the world then criticised the announcement, Opondo responded: "Hey guys supporting homosexuals take it easy Uganda is a sovereign country #you challange [sic] the law in the courts." Under existing colonial-era law in Uganda, anyone found guilty of "carnal knowledge against the order of nature" can already face sentences up to life imprisonment. But the new bill represents a dramatic broadening of penalties. It bans the promotion of homosexuality, makes it a crime punishable by prison not to report gay people to the authorities and enables life sentences to be imposed for various same-sex acts, including touching in public. When the bill was abruptly passed by MPs just before Christmas, Museveni came under pressure to ratify it both within his own party and from Christian clerics who see it as necessary to deter western homosexuals from "recruiting" Ugandan children. The president, who has been in power for 28 years, said he wanted his governing National Resistance Movement (NRM) to reach what he called a "scientifically correct" position on homosexuality. A medical report was prepared by more than a dozen scientists from Uganda's health ministry, officials said. They told Museveni that there is no gene for homosexuality and it is "not a disease but merely an abnormal behaviour which may be learned through experiences in life". Dr Richard Tushemereirwe, presidential adviser on science, said: "Homosexuality has serious public health consequences and should therefore not be tolerated". Anite Evelyn, spokesperson for the NRM conference, said: "[Museveni] declared that he would sign the bill since the question of whether one can be born a homosexual or not had been answered. The president emphasised that promoters, exhibitionists and those who practise homosexuality for mercenary reasons will not be tolerated and will therefore be dealt with harshly." The bill is popular in Uganda, one of 37 countries in Africa where homosexuality is illegal. Ugandan gay activists have accused some of their country's political and religious leaders of being influenced by American evangelicals. Frank Mugisha, who heads Sexual Minorities Uganda, said: "President Museveni knows that this bill is unconstitutional and that we shall challenge it after he signs it, although I still think he will not sign this particular bill the way it is. But his political remarks about signing will only increase violence and hatred towards LGBT persons in Uganda." The findings by Museveni's medical experts were disputed in an open letter by more than 50 of the world's top public health scientists and researchers. "Homosexuality is not a pathology, an abnormality, a mental disorder or an illness: It is a variant of sexual behaviour found in people around the world," they wrote. "Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are normal." They warned that the laws could undermine the fight against HIV by driving these groups away from public health services because of "fear of arrest, intimidation, violence and discrimination". Robyn Lieberman of the watchdog group Human Rights First said: "There should be no doubt that Museveni's latest words on the subject have been influenced by the reaction to similar legislation in Nigeria, Russia and elsewhere." Uganda Gay rights Africa Sexuality David Smith theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

UK warned that aid to Vietnam inadvertently supports death penalty Posted: 15 Feb 2014 04:05 PM PST Charities link British funding for UN anti-heroin initiatives with executions for drug-smuggling in the country The UK's decision to send millions of pounds in aid to Vietnam has been called into question after the country confirmed that it is to execute 30 heroin smugglers. Since Vietnam said in January that it will execute 21 men and nine women, human rights groups have urged governments around the world to ensure aid is not used to help the country arrest drug traffickers, given that they can face the death penalty. No country is more vocal than the UK in opposing the death penalty, but there are concerns that by funding counter-narcotics programmes, it is indirectly supporting execution of smugglers. There was outrage two years ago when the Observer reported on the UK's role in funding Iran's counter-narcotics programme, which has seen thousands of drug traffickers arrested and hundreds executed. Now questions are being asked about the UK's donations to Vietnam made via the UN, which funds initiatives to combat the country's long-standing heroin smuggling problem. Pressure groups fear the use of capital punishment in Vietnam is arbitrary and that death sentences are often passed when the accused has had inadequate legal representation. Many of those executed are "mules" coerced into smuggling by gangs. Since 2008, the Department for International Development has contributed $10m to the country via a $90m programme called One UN Fund II. Much of the money paid into the fund is unallocated, allowing Vietnamese authorities to decide how it is spent. Among the agencies receiving the One Fund aid money is UNODC, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, which has been allocated around $4m for 2012-17. UNODC says a key measure of whether the funding has had any impact will be seen in "the number of drug traffickers arrested, prosecuted and convicted". In a letter to the UN last week, three charities said: "This strategy places UNODC's work in direct connection to the application of the death penalty."Reprieve, Harm Reduction International (HRI) and World Coalition Against the Death Penalty – . "The UNODC strategy, while risky from a human rights perspective, fails to include any international human rights law within its legal framework. It contains no human rights risk assessment. This again raises the concern that UN programmes are assisting in operations that lead to the death penalty for those prosecuted, with no accountability mechanisms in place to ensure this is prevented and to react decisively when it occurs." The charities stressed that they believed foreign aid was essential for helping countries such as Vietnam develop. However, they said it should not been funnelled into tackling drug smuggling. "The UN seeks unrestricted funding for its work in Vietnam, and governments trust them with it," said Damon Barrett, HRI's deputy director. "Mostly this is a good idea. But the drug enforcement component is far too close to human rights abuses and UNODC has shown an unwillingness to deal with that." The human rights groups have demanded to know what measures have been put in place to "ensure that UN drug enforcement assistance in Vietnam does not assist in the arrests of those that will later face the death penalty", and whether the organisation will "agree to a freeze on drug enforcement assistance until such time as a moratorium on executions is in place." There is considerable secrecy around the death penalty in Vietnam. However, the Vietnamese government admitted in a 2003 submission to the UN Human Rights Committee that "over the last years, the death penalty has been mostly given to persons engaged in drug trafficking". Vietnam Capital punishment Asia Pacific Drugs trade Drugs Jamie Doward theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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