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The Russians did come – but not as some in postwar Britain imagined | Ian Jack
Experience: I became a pop star overnight
South Australia and Tasmania elections – live
Counting begins in South Australia as Labor tipped for election defeat
Malaysian PM's full statement
The trauma of second-generation Holocaust survivors
Malaysian PM: Diversion of missing airliner was a 'deliberate act'
Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting must pay Fairfax journalist's legal costs
Flight MH370: Malaysians convinced missing airliner was hijacked
Northern Territory 'passing the buck' on jailed Roseanne Fulton
Tony Abbott takes a grilling from a group of high school students
Scott Morrison's policies risk excluding others from his adopted Shire
MH370 may have flown on for hours after last contact with air traffic control
Labor braced for the worst as voting begins in SA and Tasmania
Manly Sea Eagles take down South Sydney in gutsy, late come back
In the Anzac centenary, it's time to honour Australia’s forgotten soldiers
Toby Kane wins first medal for Australia at Sochi Paralympic Games
Britain to tackle big rise in Syrian refugee girls forced to marry
Syrians on Manus offered repatriation despite prospect of 'certain death'
Rwanda former spy chief jailed over genocide
Hillary Clinton healthcare memos could add to charges of political calculation
Top Democrat offers new NSA reform plan
Weatherwatch: Out of the sea come the ghosts of the dead
Florida man convicted in loud music case has sentencing delayed

The Russians did come – but not as some in postwar Britain imagined | Ian Jack

Posted: 15 Mar 2014 01:01 AM PDT

More than 300,000 Russians are believed to be now living in London, but they came with credit cards and property brochures, not Kalashnikovs

It was on a train from Bristol on an October afternoon in 1978 that Dirk Bogarde told me about the Russians: how they would come, and what he would do when they came. That was a long time ago. Leonid Brezhnev and the Communist party ruled the Soviet Union in those days, and in Jim Callaghan's Britain, our idea of bread was a slice of something spongy and flavourless that came out of a wrapper. I remember the bread because of something Bogarde had said earlier in the day at a signing session in a Bristol bookshop – he'd just published the second volume of his autobiography. The bookshop's owner had provided a plate of Mother's Pride sandwiches. "Mmmm," said Bogarde, feigning appreciation as he bit into his limp cheese-and-tomato, "you know, you simply can't find this kind of bread in France."

He lived in Provence then with his manager and partner, Anthony Forwood, and towards the end of our interview on the return journey to London, I wondered if he'd ever leave Provence and settle in England again. "Never," Bogarde said, followed by what I thought was, "Or not at least until the rushes come."

For a moment I imagined that "the rushes" might be an in-joke among film people, perhaps a slang phrase for death or the travel bug. But I'd misheard him, because he went on: "And, of course, the Russians will come sooner or later. I may be lucky. I should be in my early 60s by then [he was 57], and if I stay, my age may save me from the internment camps. Either that or I shoot the dogs and quit."

Naturally I wondered if he was teasing me, just as he'd had some fun with the bookshop owner and his sandwiches, but it became clear that he seriously believed a Soviet invasion of western Europe was imminent and inevitable. The atmosphere in Britain was just as he remembered it in the late 1930s – complacent and appeasing in the face of an obvious enemy – but at least the Channel would prolong our resistance. The Russians would reach Provence far too easily. He'd not long driven home by motorway from Vienna: "Marvellous, I thought, we've done it easily in a day. And then I thought, my God, what am I saying? If it takes us a day's driving, it will only take them a day too …" Once the dogs had been shot, he intended to make for the airport at Geneva; the road west to the Spanish border would probably be clogged by refugees. Or he might take a large white tablecloth from his farmhouse in Grasse and spread it out on the nearest beach, and hope to be spotted and taken off by landing craft.

These imaginings had a certain storybook quality. Bogarde had real experience of warfare as an intelligence officer in France soon after D-day and in the aftermath to Arnhem, but he was also a romancer and not beyond invention. (For example, the claim in his autobiography that he was among the first Allied officers to reach Belsen was discredited after his death.) In the event, the ordinary processes of life took over and the actor moved permanently to London 10 years later after his partner became terminally ill and their household in Provence was dissolved. There had been no need of Russians, who began to turn up in great numbers on the Côte d'Azur in the next century when Bogarde himself was dead.

He died in 1999 at his flat in Chelsea, and I thought of him this week when I read Tina Brown's remark that "if Putin is so worried about Russian minority populations, why hasn't he invaded Kensington and Chelsea?" More than 300,000 Russians are believed to live in London now, but none of them got here as Bogarde and many others imagined they might – armed with Kalashnikovs and a plan of Highgate Cemetery showing Marx's tomb (rather than with credit cards and property brochures for Highgate villas). Once again, the future has turned up not quite as it was advertised.

The treachery of journalists

The American writer and journalist Joe McGinniss, who died this week, wrote several TV series and books, including his insider account of Richard Nixon's 1968 presidential campaign, The Selling of the President, which deepened the country's sceptical view of political conduct. But perhaps the sentence he'll be best remembered for is not one he wrote, but one he inspired: "Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible." It begins Janet Malcolm's book, The Journalist and the Murderer, and its sentiment has been strongly contested since it was first published in the New Yorker in 1989.

"Morally indefensible" is a fierce and untenable phrase for most of the traffic that flows through the pages of a respectable newspaper – the reporting of share prices, political speeches and airline disasters – but this everyday aspect of journalism wasn't what Malcolm had in mind. What concerned her was what she was brilliant at herself: the extended inquiry into an event or question that depended on the journalist befriending their human subject – befriending and then, to a greater or lesser extent, betraying them by publishing a story that refused to confirm the subjects' idea of themselves. (Stories never do.) McGinniss had gone much further down this road than most by pretending to believe in the innocence of an army doctor, Jeffrey MacDonald, who was on trial for the murder of his wife and two daughters, long after he was convinced of his guilt. He needed MacDonald to go on trusting him and confiding in him so that he could produce a book. When it appeared, the murderer sued him for fraud and breach of contract.

Malcolm's examination of the case is a wonderful disquisition on journalistic behaviour – I'd rank it with Waugh's Scoop and Frayn's Towards the End of the Morning as one of the three best books on the subject. "Journalists justify their treachery in various ways according to their temperaments," Malcolm writes. "The more pompous talk about freedom of speech and 'the public's right to know'; the least talented talk about Art; the seemliest murmur about earning a living." It may not be entirely true, but it's always worth remembering.

Metropolitan irritants

The confusion between the words "nation", "country" and "state" has become acute at the BBC, with alienating effects in the three parts of the United Kingdom that aren't England. This week, in his documentary on the growing economic gap between London and the rest of the UK, Evan Davis used the "country" and "Britain" as interchangeable descriptions, though the programme didn't venture north of Hebden Bridge or west of Wallasey. When a drugs company moved offices from Cheshire to Cambridge, Davis described it as "moving from one end of the country to another", which is a limited view of English, let alone British, geography. And there was the continuing problem of our old friend, "the North", which always refers to the north of England and never the north of Britain. Davis comes from Dorking, where everything north of Oxford Circus assumes a hazy dimension, but editors at the BBC should know better. On the "national" News at Ten the other night, England's football match with Denmark was described in detail while we were told only that Scotland's team had won away, without giving the score. The combined effect of these and other metropolitan irritants suggests that the BBC is quietly but effectively campaigning for a Yes victory in the referendum.

Ian Jack

Experience: I became a pop star overnight

Posted: 15 Mar 2014 01:00 AM PDT

'The next morning I found out my song had gone to number one, beating Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Katy Perry'

I spent 15 years trying to make it in the music industry. As a teenager, I'd work any odd job to afford time in a recording studio. I knocked on managers' doors and sent out demo after demo, but I got nowhere. In 2007, aged 22, I was doing a clerical job in a hospital when I wrote a song called This Is My Dream. It was a defiant song about never giving up. I just let out all of my frustrations at the keyboard.

Over the next five years, the music career never materialised and I pretty much stopped. Then, in 2012, I uploaded This Is My Dream to a music-sharing website called ReverbNation. I just wanted someone to notice my music.

Later that year, I received an email out of the blue from Universal Music in Hong Kong, requesting a licence for the song. A new TV network called Hong Kong Television (HKTV) was being launched and they had chosen my song from the millions on the site for a theme tune for one of their shows. I was amazed. I negotiated a contract for $5,000 for the use of the song and signed up straight away. My first record deal had appeared out of nowhere. I was pretty excited, but didn't think anything more would come of it, so I focused on my job editing a website.

But there was a glitch. Last October, the Hong Kong government refused the television station's licence. There was a series of protests from the public, who felt it was a sign of social injustice. Tens of thousands of people gathered outside government headquarters and HKTV set up a stage there. And they made my song the anthem of the protests. I watched on YouTube as my song was being played to a huge crowd of people. It was amazing.

After three days of protests, I was contacted by HKTV who asked if I'd like to go to Hong Kong to perform. They flew me out there the next day. I was welcomed like a celebrity – everyone I met thought I was a big name in England. I had to break the news to them that, no, I wasn't a pop star.

I'd never performed the song live, and hadn't been on stage for years, but I was running on so much adrenaline that there wasn't time to be petrified. When it was my time to go on, there were huge cheers and all I could see was a sea of lights – there were 30,000 people out there, all with their mobile phones in the air, going as far back as I could see. I was lost in the moment. It's only when I look back at the footage that I realise what was going on around me. It was the opportunity I had been waiting for my entire life.

Singing was fantastic, but it passed in a blur. Immediately after coming off stage, I wanted to do it again. I did an encore with the people from HKTV.

Afterwards, I had photographers and journalists battling to interview me and hundreds of people queued to have their photograph taken with me. My face ached from smiling. My Facebook likes went up from 73 to more than 6,000 in one day. I was on an enormous high, but going from performing for thousands to being on my own in a hotel room was a very strange feeling. I didn't sleep at all.

The next morning, my face was all over the papers and I found out my song had gone to number one in the iTunes chart in Hong Kong, beating Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Katy Perry. I felt like I was in a waking dream.

I flew home two days later and the next day went into work as usual. I'm fairly quiet, and while my colleagues knew why I was in Hong Kong, they didn't know the scale of it. I showed a couple of them the videos on YouTube and they were amazed to see me, a pretty unassuming guy from the office, singing to thousands of screaming people.

Life can surprise you. I had knocked on doors for years, yet my moment came when the opportunity called me. It has reinspired my passion for music and I am heading back to Hong Kong soon to do my first live concert. Hopefully the ball will keep rolling. After all those odd jobs and weekends spent in recording studios, this has made it all worthwhile.

• As told to Anna Dubuis

Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@theguardian.com

South Australia and Tasmania elections – live

Posted: 15 Mar 2014 12:57 AM PDT

South Australia and Tasmania have gone to the polls on Saturday, with Labor governments in both states facing a tough battle to hang onto power. Join our live blog for updates as they happen.

Oliver Milman

Counting begins in South Australia as Labor tipped for election defeat

Posted: 15 Mar 2014 12:49 AM PDT

Scrutiny to fall on key marginal seats of Bright, Hartley, Newland, Elder and Ashford, where Labor has a lead of less than 3%

Malcolm Sutton

Malaysian PM's full statement

Posted: 15 Mar 2014 12:26 AM PDT

Read Najib Razak's dramatic full statement

The trauma of second-generation Holocaust survivors

Posted: 15 Mar 2014 12:15 AM PDT

Rita Goldberg's mother was a Holocaust survivor whose epic escapes from the Nazis were worthy of a film script. But like many children of camp survivors, Rita has also been affected profoundly by her experience

The children of people who lived through the Holocaust – mostly Jewish – are known as second-generation survivors. In recent years, large numbers of these middle-aged men and women have been trying to make sense of their backgrounds, which have sometimes been obscured, especially where their parents have been unable to talk about their experiences. In Rita Goldberg, a teacher of comparative literature at Harvard University, they have found a new voice to cheer their quest.

At a recent London reading of her mother's biography, Motherland, Rita, 44, was unprepared for the strength of the audience response. "I was startled by it and am beginning to see how many of my generation were defined by their parents' history, even though they did not live through it."

The need for the children of survivors to understand the origins of their own demons, is, she believes, fuelling research into their traumatic family histories. "People came up to me in tears – and recognition. I met the daughter of a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, whose father refused ever to talk about it and insisted she had no right to ask questions. He said it was nonsense that she should have a part of his history, since his life and hers were separate. It was his way of coping with the past."

One can understand both views. Despite the horrific nature of the survivors' wartime experiences, it is surely unreasonable to expect their children not to delve into that past, especially when it is declared taboo. Yet how justifiable is it for the postwar generation to claim, like Goldberg, that their parents' history also belongs to them?

Those questions lie at the heart of Goldberg's history of her German-born mother, Hilde Jacobsthal – now 89 and diagnosed with Alzheimer's – and its lasting influence on herself and her two younger sisters, whose own experiences inform part of the memoir. Much of the material comes from her youngest sister Dottie's recorded interviews with their mother about her early life, which Goldberg describes as: "A huge effort, emotional and difficult for us all."

It was especially difficult for their middle sister, Susie, who perceived her parents' past as dominating their lives; she refused initially to discuss the transcribed tapes.

Goldberg admits she wrote the book partly to confront her own demons. "I'm not sure it helped, but I never wanted to remove or exorcise these ghosts. They belong to me. I only wanted to examine and understand my relationship to them."

The narrative of her mother's many near miss escapes from the Gestapo, reads like a film script. The Jacobsthal family left Germany for Holland in 1929 for economic reasons. In Amsterdam, they became close friends of Otto Frank and his daughters. Margot Frank and Hilde, both 12, were classmates and close friends: Margot's sister, eight year-old Anne, often tagged along, eager to join in. When the Franks disappeared overnight after Germany occupied Holland in 1940, Hilde's family assumed they had fled to Switzerland. Only after the war did Hilde learn that they had been hiding nearby.

Trained as a nurse in 1941, Hilde worked in a creche, the uniform protecting her from danger to some extent. Even at 16, she possessed an "almost comic" self-confidence. Once, hiding with a non-Jewish family, the Gestapo knocked at the door: Hilde put on her uniform and remonstrated with them for forgetting that the flat was in quarantine following a reported case of diphtheria.

Working opposite a theatre used by the Germans as a round-up centre for Jewish deportees, Hilde rescued some people, grabbing and steering them through the streets to the nearest underground station where they vanished into the crowd. She even pulled her parents off a deportation truck several times. But one day, Hilde got back after work to find that their home had been looted. The door bore a Nazi seal and her parents had been deported. She never saw them again.

Her brother, Jo, working with the Belgian underground, smuggled Hilde into Belgium where she remained a fugitive for 18 months. This, too, was touch and go. Forced to swim half a mile across the river Maas into Belgium, balancing her clothes on her head and supporting her brother, paralysed by cramp, she outwitted the German border patrol's dogs and searchlights.

Staying one step ahead of the Nazis, she frequently changed her appearance, name, nationality, language, religion and age, using false papers supplied by the resistance. She became, says Goldberg, "an experienced escape artist", fleeing unsafe lodgings and Nazi sympathisers, squeezing out of attic windows, running across rooftops at night, hiding beneath stores of hay and vegetables in farmers' trucks under the noses of the Germans. Fluent in German, Dutch, French and English, and blessed like her brother with fearlessness and a quick wit, she convincingly swapped one identity for another, becoming a blonde 24-year-old member of the Dutch Reformed Church one week, a devout French-speaking Catholic the next, attending Sunday mass and saying the rosary with the other women.

Goldberg believes that the innocent young Hilde Jacobsthal was lost for ever at that point. "The culmination of intense emotion and physical strain became the foundation of a new personality in my mother."

That personality was energetic, cheerful and outgoing, but Goldberg sensed her mother's capacity for joy hid a wound too deep to heal. "Learning to build a wall and compartmentalise pain and conflict helped her to survive but created a remoteness that distanced her, even from us. She buried a part of herself so deep it remains impenetrable."

Goldberg at one stage went through periods of depression, consumed by "a vague gloom, like some sort of auto-immune disorder". As the eldest child, she felt the pressure to be responsible and protective towards her mother. "The history was a crushing burden and has to some extent paralysed me."

The origins of that burden are self-evident. Her mother returned to nursing after the war and joined the British Red Cross in April 1945. Intent on finding her parents, she volunteered to work in Bergen-Belsen.

When she arrived at the liberated camp, 13,000 decomposing corpses were unburied; 60,000 inmates, barely alive, were dying at the rate of 400-1,000 a day. After begging to be allowed to look for her parents, Goldberg was the only woman permitted to enter the notorious "Horror Camp One".

Separating the living from the dead and dying, she searched faces distorted by pain and emaciation, unable to discern any remnant of human personality. Her worst fear was of not being able to recognise her parents if she found them.

Finding out that they, as well as Margot and Anne Frank and Mrs Frank, had been murdered, she knew she had lost everything: her parents, name, language, country, home and official identity.

Belsen became her home for two years. Joining the American Joint Distribution Committee, she dressed in a US uniform and oversaw the rehabilitation of survivors, including the immigration of 70 Hungarian children to Palestine. As Belsen became the largest displaced persons camp in Europe, some semblance of a community miraculously evolved: there were dances, theatre performances; exiles fell in love, got married, had children, held religious services. Hilde's good looks and vitality attracted many boyfriends and in 1946 she met her future husband, Swiss-born Dr Max Goldberg, Belsen's public health officer. In 1950, Max and Hilde emigrated to the US with 10-month-old Rita.

For the Goldbergs, staying silent about the past was never an option. As a confident extrovert and mimic, Hilde thrived on storytelling. As Goldberg observes: "Her history has what Joseph Conrad called glamour, a hypnotic magic that has transfixed succeeding generations as well as her own. Adventure, danger and strong personalities – this is the tale listeners want to hear. My sisters and I began to think that our parents' self-confidence extended to a kind of bragging about their past, and often about us as well, as if we were golden examples of their successful survival. This may be true of other children of charismatic parents."

The spotlight fell on them for other reasons. After the war, Hilde was reunited with Otto Frank, who regarded her as his surrogate daughter. To Hilde, Otto was like a father, and he became Rita's godfather and legal guardian of Hilde's daughters.

The Goldberg daughters felt that they could never do as much with their lives as their parents had. "We were measured against our grandparents' martyrdom on the one hand and our parents' exceptional courage on the other. And we failed abjectly to live up to that sublime standard."

Goldberg believes she lacks the qualities necessary for survival, a conviction that has influenced everything she has done. It was also difficult for the three sisters to handle their teenage moods. "We were ashamed even to acknowledge anger or anxiety. Those emotions felt somehow unworthy."

Ultimately, writing her mother's story turned out to be liberating for Goldman. "By narrating her story, I have found my voice. It is helping all of us move forward."

• Rita Goldman will read at Waterstones, Hampstead, London NW3, at 7pm on 18 March

Malaysian PM: Diversion of missing airliner was a 'deliberate act'

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 11:59 PM PDT

Malaysian PM says search will be extended across vast area from central Asia to southern ocean after new satellite data became available

Kate Hodal

Gina Rinehart's Hancock Prospecting must pay Fairfax journalist's legal costs

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 10:49 PM PDT

Fairfax Media's major shareholder lost her bid to force senior writer Adele Ferguson to reveal her sources

Flight MH370: Malaysians convinced missing airliner was hijacked

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 10:04 PM PDT

People with extensive flight experience switched off controls and diverted plane, anonymous official says, as hunt goes on

Tania Branigan

Kate Hodal

Gwyn Topham

Northern Territory 'passing the buck' on jailed Roseanne Fulton

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 09:23 PM PDT

Government accused of "passing the buck" on care of mentally impaired woman, in jail despite no conviction

Tony Abbott takes a grilling from a group of high school students

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 09:05 PM PDT

The carbon tax, gay marriage, asylum seekers and gender equity were the zingers thrown at the prime minister after he invited questions

Scott Morrison's policies risk excluding others from his adopted Shire

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 08:20 PM PDT

When he boasts that voters back his boats scheme, the minister should remember that he was once an outsider in the area himself

Paul Farrell

MH370 may have flown on for hours after last contact with air traffic control

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 07:57 PM PDT

US official says pattern of transmissions sent from jet after it dropped off radar implied human intervention or 'act of piracy'

The search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was focused on the Bay of Bengal early on Saturday after satellite data showed that the aircraft could have flown on for hours and US officials confirmed they had directed surveillance aircraft to patrol the area for debris.

There were reports that Malaysian military radar indicated the plane made at least two distinct changes of course after apparently turning back from its route towards Beijing. US officials indicated that they believed the plane had crashed in the Indian Ocean and said that an aerial search of the area would begin on Saturday. Malaysian officials said they were investigating the possibility that the plane's communications systems had been deliberately shut down.

A week after the the aircraft vanished, there was still no trace of it, despite a huge international search involving 13 countries. The strongest indication that the plane had flown on for hours came from Inmarsat, a British-based provider of satellite equipment, which said it had continued to receive "pings" from the aircraft well after its last contact with air traffic control.

There were competing theories about why and how the plane might have changed course. The three main possibilities under consideration, according to a variety of US officials quoted by a range of media outlets, were air piracy, hijacking or pilot suicide. The investigation appeared to be moving away from the initial working explanation for the plane's disappearance, that it had suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure over the Gulf of Thailand on its route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

If the missing airliner crashed in the Indian Ocean, which plunges to depths of 7,000m (23,000ft), it would mean a significant escalation in scale of the challenge facing investigators. Any debris could have been swept far from the original crash site.

The US navy confirmed to the Guardian that it had deployed a P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft to scour the Bay of Bengal for debris. A spokesman said it would search a "much larger area .... the southern portion of the Bay of Bengal and the northern portion of the Indian Ocean".

A total of 57 ships, 48 aircraft and 13 nations are taking part in the search and rescue mission. The USS Kidd, a guided missile destroyer that has been searching the Strait of Malacca, was moving further west, preparing to search the Andaman Sea and the Bay of Bengal. A P-3C Orion completed an aerial search of the north-west section of the Strait of Malacca "where it flew approximately 1,000 miles west with nothing significant to report", according to the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

India has sent ships, planes and helicopters based on the remote and mostly uninhabited archipelago of the Andaman and Nicobar islands, where the Bay of Bengal meets the Andaman Sea.

In a further indication that the plane was under piloted control, the New York Times reported that Malaysian military radar data showed the jet climbed to 45,000ft, above the approved altitude limit for a Boeing 777-200, soon after its last known position, after making a turn to the west. It said there were indications that MH370 descended to 23,000ft on the approach to Penang, one of Malaysia's largest and most densely populated islands. Then came another turn, this time north-west on a trajectory that took it over the Strait of Malacca and out towards the Indian Ocean.

The Inmarsat signals, described as a series of hourly pings to a satellite, also indicated the plane had continued to fly beyond its last known point of contact. The Inmarsat signals do not transmit location but can indicate a position and distance relative to the satellite, which could give a guide to a rough direction of travel over several hours. David Coiley, vice-president of aviation at Inmarsat, told the Guardian that the receipt of such pings indicate "that the satellite communications are functioning".

The Wall Street Journal quoted US officials who said these signals persisted for another four to five hours. Reuters said the data led US officials to believe the plane crashed in the Indian Ocean.

The last known position of MH370 was at 1.21am on Saturday 8 March, at 35,000ft roughly 90 miles off the east coast of Malaysia as the plane, with 239 people on board, made its way towards Vietnam en route to Beijing.

According to two US officials who spoke to ABC News, the Boeing 777's data reporting system was shut down at 1.07am, while the transponder – which sends back information to civilian radar regarding performance, location and altitude – was turned off at 1.21am. That led investigators to believe the systems had been switched off on purpose.

Experts say that only an experienced pilot would have been known how to turn off all the communications equipment and fly the plane in such a way as to minimise the chance of detection.

Scott Shankland, an American Airlines pilot who spent several years as a co-pilot on Boeing 777s, told the Associated Press that a captain would know how to disable radios and the plane's other tracking systems. But a hijacker, even one trained to fly a plane, "would probably be hunting and pecking quite a while 'Do I pull this switch? Do I pull that?' You could disable a great deal" of the tracking equipment, "but possibly not all of it."

The White House refused to comment on suggestions that US officials believe there may have been "an act of piracy". Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said: "This is a difficult and unusual situation and we are working hard in close collaboration with the Malaysian government to investigate a number of possible scenarios for what happened to the flight.

He added: "Unfortunately, definitive conclusions still cannot be drawn at this time. I don't have conclusive answers. I don't think anyone has."

Sources told Reuters that the flight path of an unidentified aircraft, believed by investigators to have been the MH370 jet, followed a route with specific navigational waypoints, west towards the Andaman Islands after it last made contact with air traffic control.

If the aircraft picked up on the military radar is the missing jet, the data suggests it veered dramatically and deliberately westwards, heading north-east of Indonesia's Aceh province towards a navigational waypoint used for carriers headed towards the Middle East. Malaysian military officials have previously confirmed that an aircraft that could have been MH370 was last seen on military radar at 2.15am some 200 miles off Malaysia's west coast.

Most of the disclosures on the nature of the search have come from anonymous US sources briefed by officials assisting the Malaysian investigation. Under international protocols, the country where the missing aircraft was registered must lead the investigation.

Malaysian police have spent the past week investigating whether any personal or psychological problems affecting the crew or passengers may have had a role in the jet's disappearance, in addition to mechanical failure, hijacking or sabotage. Friday's revelations that the plane may have flown towards the Andaman Islands are the first real indication of a sinister cause.

At a press conference on Friday, Malaysia's defence and acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said said there were four or five possibilities as to why the plane's communications systems may have been turned off. "It could have been done intentionally, it could be done under duress, it could have been done because of an explosion," he said. "That's why I don't want to go into the realm of speculation. We are looking at all the possibilities."

Hishammuddin confirmed that the plane's passengers and crew were being looked into and added: "If investigation requires searching the pilots' homes, it will be done."

Aviation experts from the UK – in addition to a team from Rolls-Royce, which manufactured the 777's engines – were due to arrive in Malaysia on Friday night to help with the investigation, said the civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman.

A Chinese government spokesman would not be drawn on whether China believed the plane had flown for several hours or whether it had asked the US about the reports. He added that China had asked Chinese commercial vessels to take note of any floating objects which might be connected to the missing flight. A subsequent comment suggested this applied to vessels in the Strait of Malacca.

The Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported on Friday evening that search vessel Haixun 31, which had been at work in the Gulf of Thailand, was heading to the Strait of Malacca to continue work there.

Additional reporting by Spencer Ackerman in Washington

Kate Hodal

Tania Branigan

Gwyn Topham

Labor braced for the worst as voting begins in SA and Tasmania

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 07:17 PM PDT

Voting is under way in both states with Liberals hoping to claim full set of governments outside ACT

Manly Sea Eagles take down South Sydney in gutsy, late come back

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 06:29 PM PDT

Sea Eagles show the Rabbitohs they are a force to be reckoned with, despite swag of injuries

In the Anzac centenary, it's time to honour Australia’s forgotten soldiers

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 06:01 PM PDT

Those who survived the first world war only to come home to damaged or shortened lives are no less a part of Australia's war history than soldiers officially killed on the battlefield

Paul Daley

Toby Kane wins first medal for Australia at Sochi Paralympic Games

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 05:32 PM PDT

Bronze in the super giant speed slalom race seals one-legged alpine skier's stellar athletic career

Britain to tackle big rise in Syrian refugee girls forced to marry

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 05:25 PM PDT

Unicef figures show one in five girls, some under 10, forced to marry by parents to protect against sexual violence

Britain is to take the lead in tackling the rise in the number of Syrian refugee girls below the age of 16 forced into early marriage by destitute parents, many of whom believe it provides the best hope of protection against sexual violence.

David Cameron is to host a Girls' Summit after figures from Unicef showed one in five Syrian refugee girls, some as young as nine, are being forced to marry early after the intensification of the conflict, compared with one in eight a year ago.

Justine Greening, the international development secretary, said Britain would ask its international partners for financial help to provide "safe spaces" for women and girls who have suffered sexual abuse. As a first step, the government is to provide £6m to Doctors of the World, as part of a £36m package for Syria, to help the charity to provide specialist care for victims of sexual and gender-based violence.

Greening said: "We need to directly support the girls and families by providing safe spaces for women and girls, making sure that for those who are suffering sexual violence and abuse that they are getting support and medical attention."

In a Guardian interview to mark the third anniversary of the Syrian conflict, Greening said many girls never see their family again after they are married.

The international development secretary, who has just returned from the UN in New York, where she has been laying the groundwork for the summit in London, said: "One of the unwritten stories of the Syrian crisis is the impact it has had on young and adolescent girls, many of whom have been married off often for economic reasons. Today 20% of Syrian girls are now married by the time they reach the age of 16 which is a shocking statistic.

"Many of them are married to men that they have no knowledge of at all, who may literally be turning up to find a bride. That may be the last they see of their family – they are often taken entirely away from their family, away from the camp, even out of Lebanon or Jordan. It is a terrible situation."

Greening said economic pressures mainly explained the early forced marriages. "It is very hard for Syrian refugee men to get jobs. So they have resorted to various ways to try and manage their family circumstances. The prospect of being able to get a so-called 'bride price' for your daughter whilst also reducing the number of mouths you have to feed in your family by one – for many families it is an almost impossible choice they face but it is one they face. It is awful. It is a terrible, terrible situation these girls find themselves in. It is bad enough as a child being affected by the refugee crisis in Syria, it is bad enough being out of school. But to lose not only your education but the chance for education in the future, the chance for an employment opportunity is a horrible, horrible fate for these girls."

Britain will use the summit to encourage partners to cut the economic incentive for the marriages by funding programmes to provide skills for jobless male refugees. She said: "It means stepping up the work we are all doing on livelihoods so we provide more ability for people in these camps to be able to earn a paid living. There is quite a vibrant economy in the camps but we need to use more of the skills the refugees have in vocational areas, like plumbing or carpentry, to provide more vocational education for young boys who are at risk of radicalisation if we don't find more compelling opportunities for them."

Nicholas Watt

Patrick Wintour

Syrians on Manus offered repatriation despite prospect of 'certain death'

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 05:24 PM PDT

Exclusive: Human Rights Watch says sending asylum seekers back to Syria would be a breach of international law

Oliver Laughland

Rwanda former spy chief jailed over genocide

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 04:28 PM PDT

Simbikangwa sentenced to 25 years by French court for his part in 1994 genocide that left 800,000 people dead

A French court has sentenced a wheelchair-using former Rwandan soldier to 25 years in prison for his part in the 1994 genocide that left about 800,000 people dead.

Pascal Simbikangwa, 54, a former intelligence chief and captain of his country's presidential guard, was convicted of complicity in genocide and in crimes against humanity.

After a six week trial, the jury took 12 hours to deliver its verdicts against Simbikangwa, who was described as being steeped in "extremist Hutu ideology". He had denied the charges and claimed he was the victim of "a witch hunt".

Simbikangwa was left paraplegic in 1986 after a car accident. He is the first Rwandan to be put on trial in France, which, two decades on, has been accused of being slow over bringing those accused of the massacre to justice.

The prosecution described him as a "genocide denier" and claimed he helped supply arms to ethnic Hutu militia who set up and controlled road blo cks around the Rwandan capital, Kigali, in 1994. He was also accused of giving detailed instructions as to which Tutsi families to kill and how.

Simbikangwa was one of the main shareholders in Free Radio-Television des Milles Collines, nicknamed Radio Machete for its role in exhorting Hutus to attack Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

It was the deliberate shooting down of a plane carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira as it prepared to land in Kigali that sparked the genocide. The majority of victims, slaughtered between April 7 and July 17, 1994, were killed with machetes. Simbikangwa was arrested in 2008 on the French Indian Ocean island of Mayotte, where he was living under a false identity, and flown to France the following year.

He has been in prison since and France has repeatedly refused requests from the Rwandan authorities to extradite him.

Investigators claim the former Rwandan intelligence chief was close to the government of Habyarimana, a Hutu and reportedly one of his distant cousins .

The accusations against Simbikangwa, who was said to have been in the "first circle" of Hutu power at the time, include drawing up lists of political opponents to be killed with details of how they should be murdered. France's failure to act to stop the genocide and attitude since has poisoned the relationship between Paris and Kigali, which had enjoyed close diplomatic relations and a shared language for 20 years.

Rwanda accused France of training and arming Hutu forces, then turning a blind eye to members of the genocidal regime allegedly implicated in the massacre who had fled to France. France was also accused of protecting the perpetrators as they disappeared to the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo through a "humanitarian" operation called Turquoise.

Diplomatic ties were broken in 2006 after a French judge accused Rwandan president Paul Kagame, a Tutsi who commanded the rebel forces that ended the genocide, of sparking the slaughter. In 2010 Kagame took Rwanda into the Commonwealth of Nations, signalling a definitive rupture with France.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy tried to patch up relations, admitting France had committed "serious errors of judgment" and suffered "a form of blindness". However, he stopped short of the apology demanded by Rwanda.

During his trial, Simbikangwa insisted he had not seen a single murdered person during the 100-day period in which the genocide took place.

Simbikangwa's lawyer, Fabrice Epstein, said the judgment was political and added that he and his client were considering an appeal.

Kim Willsher

Hillary Clinton healthcare memos could add to charges of political calculation

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 03:21 PM PDT

Adviser in February 1993 memos on healthcare-reform push said: 'We want to give the impression of hearing everyone out'

Jon Swaine

Top Democrat offers new NSA reform plan

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 02:43 PM PDT

Top Democrat on House intelligence committee says details are still being worked on but proposal would end bulk collection

Spencer Ackerman

Weatherwatch: Out of the sea come the ghosts of the dead

Posted: 14 Mar 2014 02:30 PM PDT

DH Lawrence has been driven to Bognor Regis. "It was strange at Bognor – a white, vague, powerful sea, with long waves falling heavily, with a crash of frosty white out of the pearly whiteness of the day, of the wide sea. And the small boats that were out in the distance heaved, and seemed to glisten shadowily. Strange the sea was, so strong. I saw a soldier on the pier, with only one leg. He was young and handsome; and strangely self-conscious and slightly ostentatious: but confused. As yet he does not realise anything, he is still in shock," Lawrence reports in a note dated March 1915, to Lady Ottoline Morrell in D H Lawrence: Selected Letters (Penguin 1950). The murderous war on the Western Front is much on his mind.

"It seemed to me anything might have come out of that white, silent, opalescent sea; and the great icy shocks of foam were strange. I felt as if legions were marching in the mist. I cannot tell you why, but I am afraid. I am afraid of the ghosts of the dead. They seem to come marching home in legions over the white, silent sea, breaking in on us with a roar and a white iciness. Perhaps this is why I feel so afraid. I don't know. But the land beyond looked warm, with a warm blue sky, very homely, and over the sea legions of white ghosts tramping. I was on the pier. So they are making a Coalition government. I cannot tell you how icy cold my heart is with fear. It is as if we are all going to die."

Tim Radford