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- Barack Obama criticises Vladimir Putin over Ukraine and Syria crises – video
- Battle lines redrawn and protestors killed in Kiev as European leaders descend
- Perth festival 2014: Thursday 20 February – live!
- Why can't Iran and Israel be friends?
- Pakistan urged to release British man sentenced to death for blasphemy
- Shakespeare and Homer: rebooting the classics for today
- Julian Knight law sets a dangerous precedent, says law president
- Coles defends 'baked today' tag for bread partially baked, then frozen
- Wire: we play what we feel like playing
- Joe Hockey warns global economic recovery not yet out of the woods
- Denmark's ritual slaughter ban says more about human hypocrisy than animal welfare | Andrew Brown
- Perth's best small bars
- NBN rollout priorities and web speed blackspots unveiled by Turnbull
- WhatsApp deal - Facebook snaps up messaging service in their largest acquisition
- EU and US consider sanctions against Ukraine as death toll reaches 26
- Stamps price to rise to 70 cents, Australia Post announces
- Pakistan launches air strikes on Taliban
- Taronga zoo puts down world’s only captive leopard seal
- Climate change deniers have grasped that markets can't fix the climate | Seumas Milne
- Letizia Battaglia's best photograph: mafia murder victims in Palermo
- Burundi's child sex slaves: 'I feel like I have been used and tossed away'
- UK floods flush out silt plumes into the sea – big picture
- Cameroon Republic still in honeymoon stage: from the archive, 20 February 1962
- Cities in motion: why Mumbai's new air terminal has gone off the rails
- Mumbai's two Chhatrapati Shivaji terminals - in pictures
| Barack Obama criticises Vladimir Putin over Ukraine and Syria crises – video Posted: 20 Feb 2014 01:37 AM PST The US president says he and the Russian president disagree about the fundamental rights of those suffering violence in Ukraine and Syria       |
| Battle lines redrawn and protestors killed in Kiev as European leaders descend Posted: 20 Feb 2014 01:37 AM PST Follow live updates as renewed clashes in Kiev's Independence Square       |
| Perth festival 2014: Thursday 20 February – live! Posted: 20 Feb 2014 01:29 AM PST Join us in Western Australia as we get the lowdown on the writers' festival, take a tour of Perth in 10 songs, go to the circus and interview post-punk legends Wire       |
| Why can't Iran and Israel be friends? Posted: 20 Feb 2014 01:18 AM PST Small gestures could make a big difference, with adversaries having many shared interests in the region - analysis  |
| Pakistan urged to release British man sentenced to death for blasphemy Posted: 20 Feb 2014 12:46 AM PST  Letter signed by UK politicians and academics asks for release of Mohammed Asghar so he can receive mental health treatment A group of politicians and academics have called for the release of a British man sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy, so that he can receive mental health treatment. In an open letter published in the Independent, the group raised concerns about Mohammed Asghar's wellbeing and asked the president of Pakistan to intervene. Asghar was arrested in 2010 in Rawalpindi, near Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, for claiming to be the prophet Muhammad. His family says he suffers from mental illness and was treated for paranoid schizophrenia in Edinburgh before returning to Pakistan in 2010. He was convicted last month and his family immediately launched a campaign for him to be released from custody in order to receive medical help. His lawyers said he appeared "pale, dehydrated, shaking and barely lucid" during a recent visit, prompting fears his condition had seriously deteriorated. Signatories to the open letter include the shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan, Scottish human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar, academics from the Muslim Institute, the Islamic Society of Britain and a host of charities. The letter is addressed to Pakistan's president, Mamnoon Hussain. It reads: "Like so many British Pakistanis, Mr Asghar was a successful businessman and pillar of the community who lived for many years in the UK where, through a lifetime of hard work, he helped promote the bonds of friendship and understanding between his native and adopted countries. "We the undersigned are concerned that his recovery from illness is impossible whilst he remains detained at Adiala jail, where his lawyers fear he is in danger of taking his own life. "We respectfully urge you to consider using your discretionary powers as president to pardon Mr Asghar and to allow him to be released from jail so that he can receive his treatment and be reunited with his loving family." The blasphemy complaint was brought against Asghar by a tenant with whom he was having a dispute. His family have appealed to the UK government to do everything it can to make sure he is safe. In a statement released through Reprieve earlier this month his relatives said: "As a result of a property dispute with one of his tenants, my father was jailed pending a trial. "The dates kept being moved forward so that by the time the trial concluded he had already been in horrific jail conditions, sharing a cell with several other men for three years. "Throughout this time he had minimum access to medication that might have helped his mental illness for three years. "We are really upset and concerned that they will never release him and that he will die in jail." A petition on change.org, addressed to the prime minister, David Cameron, and Scotland's first minister, Alex Salmond, is calling Mr Asghar's release. It currently has over 28,000 signatures. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it has continuously made representations to the Pakistan government on behalf of Asghar and would continue to do so. The Scottish government said it was in touch with the Foreign Office about the case. 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  |
| Shakespeare and Homer: rebooting the classics for today Posted: 20 Feb 2014 12:44 AM PST Directors are tearing apart Shakespeare and Homer to find truths that still feel shocking and fresh       |
| Julian Knight law sets a dangerous precedent, says law president Posted: 20 Feb 2014 12:28 AM PST Law to keep Victoria's worst mass murderer in jail represents 'undeniable breakdown in the separation of powers' says law institute chief       |
| Coles defends 'baked today' tag for bread partially baked, then frozen Posted: 20 Feb 2014 12:16 AM PST Federal court told 'baked today, sold today' implies bread has the 'smells and flavour of freshly baked bread'       |
| Wire: we play what we feel like playing Posted: 20 Feb 2014 12:15 AM PST Formed at the height of punk in the UK, the band were a huge influence on the music that followed. Now they're back in Australia to play some new material       |
| Joe Hockey warns global economic recovery not yet out of the woods Posted: 20 Feb 2014 12:10 AM PST Australian treasurer sounds a sombre note ahead of this weekend's G20 meeting in Sydney  |
| Denmark's ritual slaughter ban says more about human hypocrisy than animal welfare | Andrew Brown Posted: 20 Feb 2014 12:00 AM PST  To complain about the halal or kosher slaughter of battery chickens or factory farmed veal is a truly monstrous absurdity "Animal welfare takes precedence over religion" declared Denmark's ministry of agriculture when a ban on ritual slaughter came into effect this week. There were immediate accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia from Jews and Muslims, even though both communities are still free to import meat killed by their preferred methods, and even though no animals have in fact been slaughtered without pre-stunning in Denmark for the past 10 years. These disputes may indeed cast some light on our attitudes towards outsider communities – I remember concerns about halal slaughter being expressed in Bradford in 1984 as part of an early row about Muslim integration and lack of integration. But what is really remarkable is the light that they don't cast on animal cruelty for secular reasons. It seems to me obvious that the slaughter of animals at the end of their lives is of far less ethical importance than the way they are treated beforehand. The cruelties of factory farming extend over an animal's whole lifetime whereas the cruelty of ritual slaughter lasts minutes at most. To complain about the halal slaughter of battery chickens or factory farmed veal is a truly monstrous absurdity. In a Danish context this is particularly obvious. The pig farming industry there, whose products are devoured by almost everyone in Europe who isn't an observant Jew of Muslim, is a monstrous engine of quotidian suffering, despite the pre-slaughter stunning. The new agriculture minister, Dan Jørgensen, has pointed out that 25,000 piglets a day die in Danish factory farms – they never even make it to the slaughterhouse; that half of the sows have open sores and 95% have their tails docked, a cruel (and under EU regulations, illegal) practice that is needed to stop them chewing and biting one another's tails in their concrete sheds. This sort of cruelty is justified because it makes money for pig farmers, and saves it for consumers. There is no religious angle involved and few people see it as any serious ethical problem. I personally try to avoid chicken, pork and salmon in cheap food, from green motives and from a distaste for animal suffering but I am aware that this in one of the eccentricities that solvency permits. There are two further ironies about the Danish case. The first is that the country was last week the focus of international indignation for slaughtering a giraffe, entirely humanely, and then using its corpse first to teach biology and then to feed lions, who must have had a treat. It is impossible to fault any of this behaviour on utilitarian grounds, or even, I think, on humane ones if we are going to have zoos at all. Certainly Marius the unhappy giraffe lived a short life infinitely better and more interesting than any of the six million pigs born and slaughtered in Denmark every year. The second is that Jørgensen, who has formalised the ban on ritual slaughter (something inherited from his predecessors), is actually a notable enemy of factory farming. In a series of articles and speeches he has announced that Danish factory farming must clean up its act, and that the present situation is unendurable. He at least understands the potential hypocrisy of attacking only the cruelty around an animal's death and not that surrounding its life. I suspect that there is some real substance behind the Muslim complaints that a ban on halal slaughter is motivated as much by the wish to cause fundamentalists suffering as to spare it to animals. But that tells us much more about human beings than about animal rights. The first principle of serious ethical reason is surely "It isn't different when we do it" but at the same time it is an axiom of moral sentiment that it's different when other people do it. 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       |
| Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:46 PM PST The Guardian seeks out some of the city's favourite drinking spots       |
| NBN rollout priorities and web speed blackspots unveiled by Turnbull Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:44 PM PST My Broadband website enables speed and quality to be compared, as minister reveals plan to tackle the least well served       |
| WhatsApp deal - Facebook snaps up messaging service in their largest acquisition Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:40 PM PST Massive purchase is Facebook's largest ever and comes after Google reportedly made $1bn offer for the company last year       |
| EU and US consider sanctions against Ukraine as death toll reaches 26 Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:32 PM PST Obama administration has package of punitive action ready as European leaders 'shocked into action' by events of recent days       |
| Stamps price to rise to 70 cents, Australia Post announces Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:29 PM PST Go-ahead given for 10-cent increase but concession card holders will be able to buy stamps for 60 cents until 2017       |
| Pakistan launches air strikes on Taliban Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:22 PM PST Attacks said to have killed 15 comes after peace talks faltered and Taliban announced it had executed 23 Pakistani soldiers       |
| Taronga zoo puts down world’s only captive leopard seal Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:12 PM PST Zoo's 'heartbreaking' decision to euthanase seven-year-old Antarctic seal named Casey followed a prolonged illness       |
| Climate change deniers have grasped that markets can't fix the climate | Seumas Milne Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST  The refusal to accept global warming is driven by corporate interests and the fear of what it will cost to try to stop it It's an unmistakable taste of things to come. The floods that have deluged Britain may be small beer on a global scale. Compared with the cyclone that killed thousands in the Philippines last autumn, the deadly inundations in Brazil or the destruction of agricultural land and hunger in Africa, the south of England has got off lightly. But the message has started to get through. This is exactly the kind of disaster predicted to become ever more frequent and extreme as greenhouse gas-driven climate change heats up the planet at a potentially catastrophic rate. And it's exposed the David Cameron who wanted to "get rid of all the green crap" and who slashed flood defence spending by £100m a year as weak and reckless to his own supporters. Of course there have been plenty of floods in the past, and it's impossible to identify any particular weather event as directly caused by global warming. But as the Met Office's chief scientist Julia Slingo put it, "all the evidence suggests that climate change has a role to play in it". With 4% more moisture over the oceans than in the 1970s and sea levels rising, how could it be otherwise? If it weren't for the misery for the people at the sharp end, you might even imagine there was some divine justice in the fact that the areas hit hardest, from the Somerset Levels to the Thames valley are all Tory heartlands. It's the same with the shale gas fracking plans the government is so keen on: the fossil fuel drilling and mining so long kept away from the affluent is now turning up on their Sussex doorstep. How do the locals feel that their government cut flood defences for the areas now swimming in water in the name of austerity, while one in four environment agency staff is being axed and the environment secretary, Owen Paterson, slashed his department's budget for adaptation to global warming by 40%? Not too impressed, to judge by the polling. But then, paradoxically, Paterson is in fact a climate change denier in what was supposed to be "the greenest government ever", a man who refused to accept a briefing from the chief scientific adviser at the energy and climate change department, reckons there are benefits to global warming and thinks "we should just accept that the climate has been changing for centuries". Of course he's not alone among Conservatives in being what one of his cabinet colleagues called "climate stupid". The basic physics may be unanswerable, 97% of climate scientists agree that carbon emissions are dangerously heating up the planet, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warn it's 95% likely that most of the temperature rise since 1950 is due to greenhouse gases and deforestation, the risk of a global temperature rise tipping above 1.5–2C be catastrophic for humanity. But the climate flat-earthers are having none of it. As a result, what should be a pressing debate about how to head off global calamity has been reframed in the media as a discussion about whether industrial-driven climate change is in fact taking place at all – as if it were a matter of opinion rather than science. The impact of this phoney controversy during an economic crisis has been dramatic: in the US, the proportion of the population accepting burning fossil fuels drives climate change dropped from 71% to 44% between 2007 and 2011. In Britain, the numbers who believe the climate isn't changing at all rose from 4% to 19% between 2005 and 2013 (though the floods seem to be correcting that). The problem is at its worst in the Anglo-Saxon world – which has also historically made the largest contribution to pumping carbon into the atmosphere. Take Australia, which is afflicted by longer and hotter heatwaves, drought and bushfires. Nevertheless, its rightwing prime minister Tony Abbott dismisses any link with climate change, which he described as crap, and has repealed a carbon tax on the country's 300 biggest polluters. The move was hailed by his political soulmate, the Canadian prime minister and tar sands champion Stephen Harper, as an important message to the world. And in the US, climate change denial now has the Republican party in its grip. What lies behind the political right's growing refusal to accept the overwhelming scientific consensus? There's certainly a strong tendency, especially in the US, for conservative white men to refuse to accept climate change is caused by human beings. But there shouldn't be any inherent reason why people who believe in social hierarchies, individualism and inequality should care less about the threat of floods, drought, starvation and mass migrations than anyone else. After all, rightwing people have children too. Part of the answer is in the influence of some of the most powerful corporate interests in the world: the oil, gas and mining companies that have strained every nerve to head off the threat of effective action to halt the growth of carbon emissions, buying legislators, government ministers, scientists and thinktanks in the process. In the US, hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate and billionaires' cash (including from the oil and gas brothers Koch) has been used to rubbish climate change science. That is also happening on a smaller scale elsewhere, including Britain. But climate change denial is also about ideology. Many deniers have come to the conclusion that climate change is some kind of leftwing conspiracy – because the scale of the international public intervention necessary to cut carbon emissions in the time demanded by the science simply cannot be accommodated within the market-first, private enterprise framework they revere. As Joseph Bast, the president of the conservative US Heartland Institute told the writer and campaigner Naomi Klein: for the left, climate change is "the perfect thing", a justification for doing everything it "wanted to do anyway". When it comes to the incompatibility of effective action of averting climate disaster with their own neoliberal ideology, the deniers are absolutely right. In the words of Nicholas Stern's 2006 report, climate change is "the greatest market failure the world has ever seen". The intervention, regulation, taxation, social ownership, redistribution and global co-operation needed to slash carbon emissions and build a sustainable economy for the future is clearly incompatible with a broken economic model based on untrammelled self-interest and the corporate free-for-all that created the crisis in the first place. Given the scale of the threat, the choice for the rest of us could not be more obvious. Twitter: @SeumasMilne 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       |
| Letizia Battaglia's best photograph: mafia murder victims in Palermo Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST  'The prostitute in the chair broke the mafia's code of honour. Her body was now at everyone's mercy' When I took this photograph, I was a young and lively woman, strong in my ideals and beliefs. I photographed Palermo day and night for an anti-fascist communist paper, taking pictures of everything I saw: wealth, deprivation, children, as well as mafia violence. Palermo, the capital of Sicily, was a relatively calm place in the 1970s – until the mafiosi from Corleone, the town in the hills to the south, moved their drugs-related businesses into the city. The mafia committed this crime. They murdered Nerina, a young prostitute who had started drug-dealing independently from the mafia cartel, and her two male friends. Allegedly, she had disobeyed the mafia's code of honour. Naturally, the killers were never found. It was 1982, and I entered this little room in Palermo against the will of the police. They did not want me – a photographer and a woman – at the crime scene. When I realised there was a woman among the victims, I started shaking. More than usual, I mean. I was overcome by nausea and could hardly stand. I only had a few seconds to take a couple of pictures: there were men shouting at me to work fast. It isn't easy to be a good photographer when you're faced with the corpses of people who were alive and kicking only minutes before. In those situations, I would often get all the technical things wrong. But I did my job, I photographed, trying to keep the image in focus and the exposure correct. Since Nerina, who is slumped in the armchair, had been the main target, I found myself thinking about her. In that small room, her still body was at everybody's mercy, more objectified than ever. My contact with her lasted only a few moments and was filtered through the lens of a cheap camera. But I saw her alone, lost in an eternity of silence. In that short time, I started to love her. I find women beautiful and courageous, and I love photographing them. They hold so many dreams inside themselves. The mafia, however, were mad, ignorant, cruel and hungry for power. They brought Palermo to the brink of civil war and soon corrupted a good number of politicians, bourgeoisie and aristocracy. They used public money to build awful developments in the suburbs, speculating and investing only for the sake of their own profit. Green areas disappeared, and the beauty of the city was destroyed. Drugs – heroin in particular – annihilated an entire generation. I witnessed a neverending cycle of violence and murder. I photographed Corleonesi when they were brought to trial. And I photographed them when they were lying dead. The situation today is even more complex and saddening. The mafia no longer kill judges, police officers and anti-mafia activists. Because many "friends of the mafia" have been democratically elected, they now directly manage public affairs, government, and institutions. The repercussions are visible everywhere. Many magistrates who have worked against this system have been jailed, and honest prosecutors have been threatened – in the same way my dear friends Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were, before their assassinations in 1992. In 1985, I became a politician, hoping to take on the mafia. I lasted 10 years. In retrospect, I only wasted time I could have dedicated to photography. CVBorn: Palermo, 1935. Studied: "With nuns at the Sacro Cuore school, Palermo, where the Sicilian aristocracy sent their children. It was all good manners and hypocrisy. I am a self-taught photographer." Influences: "Diane Arbus and Gilles Peress." High point:"When the police searched my archive and found I had accidentally photographed the Italian PM Giulio Andreotti with the mafioso Nino Salvo. It was an essential piece of evidence linking him with the mafia." Low point: "Working as a politician." Top tip: "Have no vanity." 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       |
| Burundi's child sex slaves: 'I feel like I have been used and tossed away' Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST  Child intermediaries working for pimps recruit young girls who are then either forced into prostitution or sold abroad Pamela comes from an affluent family and was doing well in one of Bujumbura's best-performing high schools – until two years ago, when she became a sex slave. She recalls befriending a group of girls when she was 14, who at first proposed she join them when they went out. The trips led to dates with older men who would pick up the bill, initially without asking for anything in return. One night she was taken to a house in Kiriri, a smart residential district in Bujumbura, Burundi's capital, where she was held for three months under the supervision of men in police uniform. "When a client came, if you didn't want to go with him they would slap you and whip the soles of your feet," Pamela says, her voice trembling. She was freed in a police raid after her mother reported her missing. "Such places exist in every part of town. You just have to open your eyes to see them," says Florence Boivin-Roumestan, who leads Justice and Equity, a Canadian NGO that has exposed the vast scale of sex trafficking in the small central African nation. "After months of investigations, we're seeing that human trafficking and sex trafficking in particular exists in Burundi on a scale no one would have imagined." Victims include girls from poor rural backgrounds and those brought up in middle-class families in the capital. In a months-long investigation, Justice and Equity found that young girls were being recruited across the country and either forced into prostitution or sold abroad. "You find girls of nine or 10, but most of them are in the 13, 14, 15 age range," Boivin-Roumestan says. The trafficking takes different forms. In Bujumbura, it is girls from well-off families who are targeted in the best schools. Fellow pupils of both sexes are recruited by pimps to play the role of intermediaries. They gradually gain the confidence of the victims, who eventually end up in brothels. Keza, who comes from a poor district in the capital, says she was locked up and used as a sex slave by a senior intelligence officer for several months when she was 15. "He threatened me and he threatened my parents," she says, adding that she no longer wishes to see her family after the ordeal. "I filed a formal complaint against him and he received several summons, but he has never shown up. The case has gone nowhere." Khadija, 15, a Muslim girl from a poor rural family, remains traumatised by her year-long ordeal, during which she was lured to the Gulf. "Some people came to see my parents and said they had well-paid domestic work for me in Oman," she says, staring at her feet. "In fact, I worked 16 hours a day, every day. I slept on the floor and I was never paid anything … Whenever my back was turned they would come up from behind and try to lift up my dress." Eventually she escaped and was able to return home. "I came back with just the clothes I had on my back and the plastic slippers I had on my feet," she says. The three girls have been placed with families who work with Justice and Equity. Boivin-Roumestan says it is difficult to establish exactly how many children are affected. In Rumonge, for example, a small lakeside town south of Bujumbura, the investigation found that of the 50 adult sex workers questioned, half had been forced into the trade while they were underage. President Pierre Nkurunziza has vowed a crackdown. "Things are changing. My budget has been increased, focal points are being set up in every province. Today something is being done," says Christine Sabiyumva, head of Burundi's youth brigade. She says she has known how serious the problem is for years, but fought a lonely battle, mainly because she had no budget and because police chiefs were not interested. Trafficking networks have been dismantled in several towns and some brothels have been raided and closed in the past two months. "Arrests are made every day. We have meetings with ministers, generals, churches, youth groups and lawyers who all want to end this traffic," Boivin-Roumestan says. "But everything needs to be done. It'll take some time to end." For some of the victims it is too little, too late. "I'm angry, very angry. I feel like I've been used and tossed away," says Pamela, who is too scared to return to her family. "I want those who are responsible for what happened to me to be punished." Her pimp was arrested after she was freed, but he has since been released. Pamela plans to go back to school and later pursue a law degree so she can "help other girls who suffer what I suffered". 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 floods flush out silt plumes into the sea – big picture Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST Plumes of silt from estuaries in England and Wales captured in a satellite image on 16 February       |
| Cameroon Republic still in honeymoon stage: from the archive, 20 February 1962 Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST  The unification of French-speaking Cameroun with the former British-administered Southern Cameroons is a 'unique experience' in Africa, but it is a federation of unequal parts Yaoundé (Cameroun), February. The Germans, before the First World War, knew what they were doing when they built a summer station in the rolling hills, and the French confirmed it as the capital of their part of the former German colony of Kamerun when they were given its administration. Today Yaoundé is an "up-and-down" little town of pleasant villas and clean-looking huts. A corner of the local market calls itself "chic de Paris," and in many of the shops you will be served by French "petits-blancs." In the upper reaches of government there is no shortage of French "technical advisers" paid directly from Paris. French influence remains all pervading, and indeed without French financial assistance the country would be rolling deep in bankruptcy. Yet, for two years now, Yaoundé has been the capital of an independent state; and since last October it has been the centre of what the country's leaders rightly describe as a "unique experience" in Africa - the unification of French-speaking Cameroun with the former British-administered Southern Cameroons. Cameroun today is a federation of two unequal parts: the physically much bigger and more than three times as heavily populated "Eastern Cameroon" state (formerly French) and the small Western state (formerly British-administered). It is, said one of the Ministers in Yaoundé, as if one under-developed state had taken under its charge a second, even less developed state. Western Cameroons always has been a poor relation. The country has poor communications and little has been done to develop its resources. Reunification with the rest of the Cameroons was the result partly of disenchantment with Britain, and more lately Nigeria, but mainly of a great sentimental urge to reunite a country which had been split up by the Colonial Powers. Now the marriage has been effected, but much will have to be done if enduring links are to be cemented. For the moment the union is still in the honeymoon period, and strains and stresses are only barely apparent. In the Federal Government, which at present has a modest 12 Ministers, three are from Western Cameroon. Only one is a full Minister - Mr Muna, who is in charge of Posts and Telecommunications - and two are mere assistant Ministers. But even this, they seem to feel, is proportionately far more than the Nigerian federation would have given them. So far, Mr Muna and his two colleagues in Yaoundé worry little over their language difficulties - pidgin English is their only direct way of communicating with Ministers and even their own officials - and do not seem to feel that they are being sucked into what is, to them, an entirely alien, French-type of administration. In Buea, the mountain capital of Western Cameroon, the honeymoon is already at a slightly less rosy stage. Mr Foncha, the Western Cameroon leader, seems to have assumed that federation would still leave him to run his part of the country in his own way. In fact, the Federal Constitution, even in the present transitory phase, gives the Federal Government preponderant power. The fact that Mr Foncha is at present Federal Vice-President as well as state Premier gives him little say in Federal affairs. The whole tendency, in spite of lip-service about comparing the two systems and taking what is best out of each, is to adapt the whole Federation to the French system. The political picture at Yaoundé has long been confused. President Ahidjo, who comes from the North, is the product of political compromise, still working against heavy odds to win a genuine popular backing. He certainly hopes to remain at the helm and win the Federal Presidential elections in 1964. But Mr Foncha himself may try to win the Presidency. If he does so - and when he begins to show his hand - then the honeymoon will be over, and Cameroun will continue to be one of the most complex political pockets in Africa. 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       |
| Cities in motion: why Mumbai's new air terminal has gone off the rails Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST  Sharing the name Chhatrapati Shivaji, the airport and train terminus have much in common: both were once the future The long-awaited airport terminal at Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji airport finally opened its aerobridges and check-in counters to passengers this month. In the buildup, any number of journalists had been led on tours through the new facility, and I'd absorbed their reports with a mixture of awe and amusement. The new terminal – the T2 – has 5,000 square metres of landscaping, I learned, and 21,000 square metres of retail space for luxury shops. Some reports also noted that the terminal, which will serve about 40 million passengers each year, will have access to 101 toilet blocks. In Mumbai, nativists have ensured that almost every new building is named after the 17th-century warrior-king Shivaji, and as I read about the splendours of the new terminal at Chhatrapati Shivaji, I couldn't help thinking about another Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus across town – a hyperkinetic railway station that used to be known as the Victoria terminus. That terminus is used by 3.75 million people every day, which means it gets as many visitors in 11 days as the terminal at the airport terminal has in a year. But the rail travellers only have access to 83 toilets and urinals – not toilet complexes like the air passengers have, but 83 individual toilets. When it was opened more than a century ago, however, the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway terminus, which bears an uncanny resemblance to London's St Pancras, was the T2 of its time. It featured state-of-the-art everything, even state-of-the-art art. Its impressive stone façade is alive with sculptures of gargoyles and squirrels and flying birds that were executed under the guidance of Lockwood Kipling, the principal of the JJ School of Art down the road (his son, Rudyard, would grow up to become poet laureate of the empire). The new terminal at Mumbai's airport also features a profusion of artworks. Press reports say that more than 7,000 exhibits have been assembled, some by contemporary artists and others from across the ages, reaching back to the 6th century. In fact, the airport website describes the T2 display as "India's largest public art programme". The curator of the collection, Rajeev Sethi, told The New York Times: "The concept of art in public space is a very serious issue because art cannot shrivel up and shrink into investment portfolios or disappear into godowns [warehouses] or galleries. It has to be in the public domain." The difference between the two terminuses demonstrates just what's going wrong with Mumbai. After two decades of economic liberalisation, its middle class has been so brainwashed into believing privatisation is the solution for all their problems that the city seems to have forgotten what public actually means. Richer residents are quite willing to accept the idea that an art exhibition can be public even if, as a friend noted, it can accessed only by people who have bought an international air ticket. This attitude will surely have a profound effect on Mumbai's politics in the near future. The middle-class aspiration for exclusivity is a jarring disjuncture with the mythology and history of a city that lives the best part of its life in full view of its neighbours, with one of the highest population densities in the world (it packs 22,937 people into each square kilometre, compared to 5,285 people in London). The size of the average Mumbai family is 4.5 people, and the average home size is 10 square metres, so some of their most private moments transpire in the midst of a crowd. Much of Mumbai's easy urbanity has been forged in the sweaty confines of its public transport system, by far the most extensive in India. In its compartments, people of different castes and communities are forced to share benches and be wedged together in positions of daring intimacy. This is only to be expected when 5,000 commuters are stuffed into trains built to carry 1,800 – a density that the authorities describe as the "super-dense crushload". The commonplace negotiations of the commute – such as the convention of allowing a fourth traveller to sit on a bench built for three, but only on one buttock – force an acknowledgement of other people's needs that characterises Mumbai life. The Mumbai commute, in addition to being compacted, is very long – for some, it could involve a journey of two hours each way. This has given rise to the institution of "train friends", people who travel in a group in the same section of the same compartment every morning, sharing stories of their triumphs and disappointments and even celebrating their birthdays by bringing in sweets for their companions. Despite the enormous effort they sometimes entail, the accommodations of the commute are barely perceptible to the outsider. Because of the unavoidable press of bodies at peak hours, women travel in separate carriages – but every so often, couples who cannot bear to be parted or a clueless out-of-town pair will blunder into the "general compartment". When this happens, the other men will strain to provide the woman a millimetre or two of space around her, creating a cocoon in which she is magically insulated from the accidental nudge of limbs and torsos. This isn't to suggest that life on the rails is all smiles and sunshine. As is to be expected on a long, sweaty journey, arguments do break out, mostly over trivial matters involving the placement of a limb or a bag in awkward proximity to a fellow passenger's face. But these exchanges rarely culminate in fisticuffs. The crowd around the belligerents can be counted on to defuse the tension quickly, usually with the remark, "These things happen. You have to adjust". Sadly, though, the spirit of compromise so evident on the trains is evaporating on the streets outside. To watch Mumbai traffic in motion is to see the ferocious sense of entitlement in which India's moneyed classes have wrapped themselves. Mumbai's vehicles refuse to give way to ambulances, and honk furiously at old people and schoolchildren trying to cross the street. They never stops at zebra crossings, frequently jump red lights, and routinely come down the wrong way on no-entry streets. Because an estimated 60% of cars are driven by chauffers, more than in most other parts of the world, car owners have the fig-leaf of pretending that they aren't responsible for transgressions they actually encourage. And this sense of self-importance is pandered to by the government's budgetary allocations. Though the vast majority of Mumbai residents use the overburdened public transport system to get around, a disproportionate amount of development money has been poured into road projects. The city has built approximately 60 flyovers and elevated roadways in recent years – facilities that have paradoxically made the congestion on the roads far worse. As incomes expand, traffic is growing at a rate of 9% a year, with an estimated 450 new vehicles being added to Mumbai's narrow streets every day. As a result, peak-hour traffic crawls ahead at an average of 10kmh – less than half the speed clocked by winners of the city's annual marathon. It merely proves the adage so beloved of planners around the world: "Building more roads to prevent traffic congestion is like a fat man loosening his belt to prevent obesity." The imbalance so apparent between Mumbai's transport system and its airport seem sure to polarise political attitudes in the city even more sharply. The city's middle classes have become so enamoured of their privatised comforts, they are forgetting that great cities get their reputation not from the access-restricted pleasures they afford the few, but the public amenities that are available to all. The chasm between the elite and the working classes has long been the playground for populist politicians, here and elsewhere. But over the last few years, such divisions in Mumbai have literally been reinforced by concrete. Unless this changes, my city will lose the common ground on which to make common cause. Naresh Fernandes is the editor of the blog Scroll.in. His most recent book is City Adrift: A Short Biography of Bombay. He also writes about Bombay's rich history of jazz at tajmahalfoxtrot.com 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       |
| Mumbai's two Chhatrapati Shivaji terminals - in pictures Posted: 19 Feb 2014 11:00 PM PST The long-awaited T2 at the airport finally opens and contrasts with its namesake, the busiest railway station in Inidia       |
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