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- Crimea votes to leave Ukraine and 'no one has complained about referendum'
- Navy Seals take over oil tanker seized by Libyan rebels
- International Feline Fair, Colombia – in pictures
- Business live: Vodafone announces £6bn Spanish cable deal
- MH370: crew of missing plane investigated for more than a week – live
- Axing the Australia Network would be a backwards step, Mark Scott says
- Sydney Water became unwitting Liberal donor, Icac inquiry hears
- Venezuela troops fire tear gas at anti-Maduro protesters
- ABC to broadcast clarification after Andrew Bolt racial abuse claim on Q&A
- Atlanta's food deserts leave its poorest citizens stranded and struggling
- Oscar Pistorius trial day 11 – live coverage
- MH370: last contact from plane made after systems shut down - live coverage
- Abbott under fire over veterans' family cuts - as it happened
- Tony Abbott defends cutting payments for veterans' children
- Foreign Office excludes public from its public records day
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- US and EU expected to announce sanctions against Russia
- CSIRO job cuts will reduce science agency by almost 10%, says union
- Europe should lead on climate change | Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu
- Britain's five richest families worth more than poorest 20%
- Insulation program for 2m homes was devised in just two days, inquiry told
- Manus inquiry judge should be disqualified, say PNG lawyers
- Pro-Russians celebrate after Crimea referendum – video
| Crimea votes to leave Ukraine and 'no one has complained about referendum' Posted: 17 Mar 2014 02:06 AM PDT  Final results say 96.8% are in favour of joining Russia as the head of the referendum commission publicly defends the process Crimea has voted to secede from Ukraine in a referendum that most of the world has condemned as illegal. Final results showed that 96.8% of voters were in favour of joining Russia, the head of the referendum election commission said on Monday. Mikhail Malyshev told a televised news conference that the commission has not registered a single complaint about the vote. Russia's lower house of parliament will pass legislation allowing Ukraine's southern Crimea region to join Russia "in the very near future", news agency Interfax cited its deputy speaker as saying on Monday morning. "Results of the referendum in Crimea clearly showed that residents of Crimea see their future only as part of Russia," Sergei Neverov was quoted as saying. As the results rolled in, they were met with neither surprise nor welcome by the west. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, told Barack Obama in a phone call on Sunday night that the referendum endorsing Crimea becoming part of Russia was legal and should be accepted, according to the Kremlin. However, Obama said the US rejected the results and warned that Washington was ready to impose sanctions on Moscow over the crisis. The White House said Obama "emphasised that Russia's actions were in violation of Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity and that, in co-ordination with our European partners, we are prepared to impose additional costs on Russia for its actions". Obama told Putin the crisis could still be resolved diplomatically, but said the Russian military would need to first stop its "incursions" into Ukraine, the White House said. Putin told Obama the vote was "fully consistent with the norms of international law and the UN charter", according to a statement on the Kremlin website. The European Union also condemned the referendum as illegal and said it is taking steps to increase sanctions against Russia. EU foreign ministers will meet on Monday to decide whether to impose asset freeze and visa sanctions and, if so, whom to target. "The referendum is illegal and illegitimate and its outcome will not be recognised," Herman Van Rompuy, president of the European council, and José Manuel Barroso, European commission president, said in a joint statement on Sunday. France and Germany echoed the statement by the British foreign secretary, William Hague, that Moscow must face "economic and political consequences". Valery Ryazantsev, head of Russia's observer mission in Crimea and a lawmaker from the upper house of the Russian parliament, said on Monday that the results were beyond dispute. He told Interfax that there were "absolutely no reasons to consider the vote results illegitimate". Earlier on Sunday, Russia and Ukraine agreed a truce in the region until Friday, Ukraine's acting defence minister announced, in a move that may ease tension between Moscow and the western-backed government in Kiev. Speaking on the sidelines of a cabinet meeting, Ukraine's acting defence minister, Ihor Tenyukh, said the deal has been struck with Russia's Black Sea fleet and the Russian defence ministry. "No measures will be taken against our military facilities in Crimea during that time," he said. "Our military sites are therefore proceeding with a replenishment of reserves." The agreement has provided some respite for Ukraine's beleaguered troops, who have been trapped on their military bases and naval ships since Russian forces began occupying the peninsula on 27 February. They have been encircled ever since, in some cases without electricity. Residents have smuggled in food to them amid a standoff with the Russian military. But there seems little doubt that Ukrainian forces will be evicted from Kremlin-controlled Crimea once the truce expires. Crimea's deputy prime minister, Rustam Temirgaliyev, said on Sunday that troops would be given safe passage and predicted that eastern Ukraine would be next to join Russia. "Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkiv have the same situation as in Crimea – 75% of people want to join Russia in eastern Ukraine," he told journalists near the parliament building in Simferopol. There was further turmoil in Donetsk when pro-Russian protesters stormed the prosecutor's office and removed the Ukrainian flag from the roof, raising a Russian flag in its place. Riot police deployed to protect the building made little effort to stop the crowd, which later dispersed. The government in Kiev has accused Moscow of deliberately stirring up tensions in the east by bringing in professional activists and provocateurs from across the border. In a series of ominous statements, Russia's foreign ministry has said it may be forced to act to "protect" ethnic Russians – an expression that appears to provide a rationale for future military incursions. Putin spent Sunday evening at the closing ceremony of the Paralympics in Sochi but was keeping an eye on the Crimea results, his spokesman said. Earlier he had expressed concern about the escalation of tensions in the south and south-eastern regions of Ukraine, Reuters reported. He blamed the febrile mood on "radical forces" acting with the "connivance of the current Kiev authorities". The Kremlin refuses to recognise Kiev's temporary government, that it says came to power on the back of a "fascist" coup. Putin telephoned the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, on Sunday and told her that the referendum in Crimea complied with international law. The Russian leader had reportedly agreed that more observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) should be deployed in east Ukraine. Existing observers were refused entry to Crimea by pro-Russian checkpoint guards. On Saturday, Russia vetoed a US-drafted motion in the UN security council in New York, which had declared the Crimea referendum invalid. China – a consistent ally of Moscow – abstained. Ukraine's acting prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, has promised to take action against separatist "ringleaders" who, he said, had compromised his country's independence "under the cover of Russian troops". He said: "We will find all of them – if it takes one year, two years – and bring them to justice. The ground will burn beneath their feet." The conflict spread from the ground to the internet, with several Nato websites targeted by hackers calling themselves CyberBerkut, after the Ukrainian riot police who were disbanded by the Kiev government. Crimean officials said their referendum website was also hacked. Pro-unity rallies took place at the Maidan in Kiev on Sunday, the scene of Ukraine's revolution that led to President Viktor Yanukovych abandoning his office and fleeing to Russia last month. Some of those who attended were Crimeans who opposed secession and said they had left the peninsula in recent days amid threats and pressure. Antonina Danchuk, 30, who lived in Simferopol until two years ago and studied Greek and English at its university, described the referendum as a "fake". "It's illegal," she said. "My Crimean friends who are there are afraid to go out and build their own Maidan. They're not voting. People with Russian passports are being allowed to vote." Danchuk said she was not opposed to Russia, but to Putin and his expansionist policies. "I'm ethnic Russian. But I feel my nationality is Ukrainian. We've stayed in Ukraine for 22 years. We want Putin to leave us alone. We don't want Crimea to be a part of Russia." Danchuk's mother Larissa, 62, arrived in Kiev on Saturday from Crimea's regional capital, Simferopol, travelling by train. She said she had taken part in anti-secession rallies dressed in the Ukrainian national colours of blue and yellow. She had also taken food to trapped Ukrainian sailors. "We were protesting outside Simferopol theatre when two cars pulled up. Men with guns got out. They told me: 'If you want to stay alive, clear off.' Of course I left. A similar thing happened two days ago at another demonstration next to the [Taras] Shevchenko statue. A man – not local – came up and said: 'What are you doing? Where are your papers?'" Larissa said she was born in Russia's far east but had lived in Crimea for 37 years. "The whole referendum is taking place at the point of a Kalashnikov. It's improper, and organised by Moscow." She said she did not know how long she would stay out of Crimea but said she wanted to return for her grandson's impending birthday. Danchuck, her husband Taras and their one-year-old son Lyubomyr had driven to the Maidan in a black saloon car decorated with anti-Putin slogans. One read: "Crimea=Ukraine". Another described the Russian leader as an "executioner". Lyubomyr sat placidly in his pushchair, wearing a yellow and blue scarf, above a sign that read: "Putin is a poo." Meanwhile, Dave Young, a British expatriate who has lived in Kiev for nine years, turned up at the Maidan on Sunday waving a Union flag with the words: "Ukraine-Great Britain". Young said he was unimpressed by David Cameron's handling of the Ukraine crisis. "His response has been limp and apathetic. He's seemed more concerned with protecting the interests of the City than doing what is right." Young said he feared the crisis in Ukraine raised profound questions for Europe and its values. He said: "There is a fundamental argument here about the right of a country to decide its future. God knows how long Russia has been planning this action but it's clear they don't want Ukraine to stand as an independent nation. "The whole of Europe needs to realise this is a pivotal point. After here, what next? If this state falls, where next?" 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       |
| Navy Seals take over oil tanker seized by Libyan rebels Posted: 17 Mar 2014 02:04 AM PDT  US forces off coast of Cyprus board Morning Glory tanker which had been loaded with 234,000 barrels of crude oil US Navy Seals have boarded and taken control of a tanker near Cyprus that had loaded crude oil at a port held by rebels in eastern Libya, the Pentagon says. No one was hurt "when US forces, at the request of both the Libyan and Cypriot governments, boarded and took control of the commercial tanker Morning Glory, a stateless vessel seized earlier this month by three armed Libyans", the Pentagon press secretary, Rear Admiral John Kirby, said in a statement. The operation was approved by Barack Obama and was conducted just after 2am GMT on Monday "in international waters south-east of Cyprus". The tanker had a North Korean flag but Pyongyang has denied any responsibility for the tanker, which was carrying oil owned by the Libyan government's National Oil Company. "The ship and its cargo were illicitly obtained from the Libyan port of As-Sidra," the Pentagon statement read. The tanker would soon be en route to a port in Libya with a team of US sailors on board. The Morning Glory, which departed from the eastern Libyan port of Al-Sidra – controlled by rebels seeking autonomy from the authorities in Tripoli – is reported to have loaded at least 234,000 barrels of crude oil. The ship was operated by an Egypt-based company that was allowed to temporarily use the North Korean flag under a contract with Pyongyang, North Korean state news agency KCNA said. Pyongyang had "cancelled and deleted" the ship's North Korean registry, as it violated its law "on the registry of ships and the contract that prohibited it from transporting contraband cargo". As such, the ship had nothing to do with North Korea, which "has no responsibility whatsoever as regards the ship", KCNA said. 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       |
| International Feline Fair, Colombia – in pictures Posted: 17 Mar 2014 02:00 AM PDT Cool cats on show at event in Medellin       |
| Business live: Vodafone announces £6bn Spanish cable deal Posted: 17 Mar 2014 01:58 AM PDT UK telecoms firm buys Spain's Ono for €7.2bn as markets fall on concerns about western response to Crimea vote       |
| MH370: crew of missing plane investigated for more than a week – live Posted: 17 Mar 2014 01:58 AM PDT Follow live updates as the mystery deepens into the disappearance more than a week ago of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 carrying 239 people       |
| Axing the Australia Network would be a backwards step, Mark Scott says Posted: 17 Mar 2014 01:51 AM PDT ABC managing director says keeping the public broadcaster in charge of the overseas network is in Australia's best interests       |
| Sydney Water became unwitting Liberal donor, Icac inquiry hears Posted: 17 Mar 2014 01:45 AM PDT Former NSW Labor ministers Joe Tripodi and Tony Kelly allegedly attempted to trick colleagues with a fake cabinet document to secure a multimillion dollar business deal       |
| Venezuela troops fire tear gas at anti-Maduro protesters Posted: 17 Mar 2014 01:42 AM PDT  Army clears Caracas of demonstrators protesting against crime, food shortages and presence of Cuban advisers in government Venezuelan troops have stormed a Caracas square to evict protesters who turned it into a stronghold during six weeks of demonstrations against President Nicolas Maduro. National Guard soldiers fired tear gas and turned water cannons on hundreds of demonstrators who hurled rocks and petrol bombs before abandoning Plaza Altamira, in affluent east Caracas, which has been the scene of daily clashes. Soldiers rode into the square on motorbikes and rounded up about a dozen demonstrators, witnesses said. One flashed a "V" for victory as he was driven away while another shouted for help. The troops then began demolishing protesters' barricades, apparently carrying out Maduro's vow to retake the square. "We are going to carry on liberating spaces taken by the protesters," the 51-year-old successor to late leader Hugo Chávez said in a speech at a pro-government rally in Caracas on Sunday. Militant opposition leaders and students have been urging Venezuelans on to the streets to protest against issues ranging from crime and shortages of goods to the presence of Cuban advisers in Venezuela's army and other state institutions. Earlier on Sunday, thousands marched towards the Carlota military airbase in the latest demonstration against the socialist government. The protests began in early February. "I spend five or six hours in a queue just to buy two packets of flour or two bottles of cooking oil," said pensioner Pedro Perez, 64, who took part in the opposition rally. "Also, I'm protesting over insecurity and the lies this government tells Venezuelans, bringing Cuban soldiers here … This is an ungovernable country, we can't carry on like this." In another day of rallies around the country, thousands of government supporters marched peacefully in Caracas to praise the government's food welfare policies. "We are going to strengthen the brotherhood between the Venezuelan and Cuban peoples," Maduro told the rally in response to the opposition march's anti-Cuba slogans. Venezuela supplies more than 100,000 barrels a day of oil to Cuba, for which it is partly paid by the presence of more than 30,000 medics, sports trainers and others from the Communist-ruled Caribbean island. Outside Caracas, opposition party Popular Will said members of the armed forces had beaten several politicians who were trying to visit imprisoned protest leader Leopoldo Lopez at the Ramo Verde jail about an hour from the capital. Lopez, who heads the Popular Will party, was arrested last month on charges of fomenting violence. In a handwritten interview with pro-opposition newspaper El Universal, Lopez, 42, said he had developed a strict regime of exercise, studies and writing from his prison cell. "I try to be disciplined because I'm aware that in jail, the main tools of my struggle are my mind and spirit," he said. Despite the turbulence in Caracas and other cities around Venezuela, Maduro seems in little danger of being toppled by a "Venezuelan spring". The armed forces seem firmly behind him, the numbers of protesters are far fewer than a wave of demonstrations against f Chávez a decade ago, and opposition leaders are divided over the wisdom of street tactics. However, Maduro has come under pressure from foreign governments and rights groups over excessive use of force from his security forces. Twenty-one officers have been arrested for brutality allegations. A prominent local pollster and analyst, Luis Vicente Leon, said on Sunday that both the government and the opposition's approval ratings had suffered from the recent troubles. "Many people have asked 'who's winning?' My answer is: 'no one,'" Leon wrote in a local newspaper, saying the social and economic crisis had hit Maduro's popularity while the opposition's credibility was also suffering. Leon referred to data that he said proved that, but did not give numbers. Most pollsters are preferring to keep findings private at the moment due to the tense political situation. 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       |
| ABC to broadcast clarification after Andrew Bolt racial abuse claim on Q&A Posted: 17 Mar 2014 01:01 AM PDT ABC to broadcast clarification after Indigenous academic Marcia Langton steps away from some of her claims about Bolt       |
| Atlanta's food deserts leave its poorest citizens stranded and struggling Posted: 17 Mar 2014 01:00 AM PDT  It seems unthinkable but in a major US city, thousands cannot get to places where fresh, affordable food is available In most of the world's densely packed urban areas, you can pick up fresh produce at a stall on the way home from work or buy bread, meat and staples at the cornershop across the street. But in sprawling metro Atlanta, where the model is megamarkets surrounded by mega parking lots, few of us have the option of a quick dash to the store. When you're trying to figure out what to fix your young children for dinner and you realise you need milk and eggs and a bag of salad greens and chicken breasts, and you have no choice but to load everyone in the minivan and drive five miles through traffic to get to the store, you're feeling the impact of US development patterns that have made Atlanta the third-worst urban food desert in the country (behind only New Orleans and Chicago). Living in a food desert doesn't just make it tough to get your daily servings of fruit and vegetables. A 2011 Food Trust geographic analysis of income, access to grocery stores and morbidity rates concluded that people who live in metropolitan Atlanta food deserts are more likely to die from nutrition-related sicknesses like diabetes and heart disease. In Atlanta, the ninth-biggest metropolis of the world's richest country, thousands of people can't get fresh food, and some are getting sick as a result. Which raises a simple question: why can we build multimillion-dollar highway systems and multibillion-dollar stadiums, but not more grocery stores? If we can build a museum dedicated to a soft drink and one that celebrates college football and another that trumpets civil rights, can't we help our neighbours with what seems to be a most essential and basic right: putting an affordable and healthy dinner on the table? When you talk about Atlanta's food deserts, you have to talk about the three themes entwined in every civic issue in this region: race, class and sprawl. The fact is, food deserts are more prevalent in non-white neighbourhoods. In poor communities, food is more expensive and there are fewer healthy options. Ironically, much of the local produce prized by the city's finest chefs is grown in urban farms in poor neighbourhoods – produce that is often trucked across town to farmers markets in wealthier enclaves. But of all the factors that contribute to Atlanta's food-desert problem, none is more important than transportation. Our low population density combined with a lack of comprehensive public transit means many people simply cannot get to places where fresh food is available. So many people, so few storesAtlanta's west side, with its stark contrasts of wealth and poverty, is a microcosm of the region's food desert dilemma. The communities near the Georgia Dome, home of the Atlanta Falcons NFL team, are served by one supermarket (Walmart), one well stocked small store (Shoppers Supermarket), and at least 60 convenience stores that carry little but packaged snacks. When it moved into Vine City a year ago, Walmart retrofitted and expanded space that had been left vacant when a Publix supermarket moved out of the neighborhood in 2009. Walmart created a scaled-down version of its suburban supercentres – 75,000 sq ft versus 200,000; 13 checkout lanes versus 30. Ivory Young, who has represented the Vine City area on the Atlanta city council since 2001, said that after Publix decamped, the city approached Walmart and the retailer initially said no. She said: "But they did their own analysis and came to find they were wrong; the community would support it." More than 30,000 people shop here weekly, and while they buy paper towels and bleach and other household products, the store's biggest category is groceries. The top sellers: tilapia, bananas, strawberries (when they're in season) and chicken leg quarters. The Vine City Walmart is located on Martin Luther King Jr Drive, two blocks from the King family's former redbrick home at 234 Sunset Avenue. When they moved there in the mid-1960s, it was easy to shop for groceries; even though Atlanta's sprawl to the suburbs had started, most people still lived in town and walked to well-stocked corner stores or shopped at small groceries near bus routes. (Not that the area didn't have its problems. In 1966, King and Ralph David Abernathy joined protests that highlighted the living conditions in Vine City: rat-infested houses owned by slumlords, boarded storefronts, no parks or playgrounds.) But over the past half century, most of Vine City's minimarkets have scaled back or shuttered completely. They lost customers with the flight of middle-class Atlantans – white and black – to the suburbs. Consolidation in the industry meant suppliers began servicing just big suburban chain stores. But one throwback remains: Shoppers Supermarket, tucked into Simpson Plaza, a 1963 shopping centre that is a five-minute walk from the Kings' former home. From the outside, Shoppers Supermarket does not appear particularly promising. Day in and out, men cluster on the sidewalk in front of the laundry next door, smoking and tossing dice. The storefront is dingy, the sign askew, the doors barricaded by thick burglar bars. But inside, the cases are stocked with fresh meat, fruits, and vegetables, a rare sight among corner stores, where refrigeration units are barren or used to store nonperishables. (I visited one store in Summerhill where produce coolers held hair weaves.) Cassandra Norris has worked here since 1983 and has been store manager for two decades, a steady presence through three ownership changes (the present owners, Joo Ho and Sunhwa Song, bought Simpson Plaza in 1995 for $465,000). Norris grew up a few blocks away, graduated from Booker T Washington High School in 1978, and has watched generations of families buy groceries. "We stock things to make the older people happy," she said, gesturing toward a meat case that holds smoked meats and ham hocks ($1.49 or 89p a pound). "The younger people are the ground beef generation." Norris said she strives to keep prices as low as possible. She drives Mrs Song's van to the state farmers' market at Forest Park to pick up all those fresh fruits and vegetables and cut out delivery fees. "I just put it all in the boss lady's van," she said. Crunching the figuresHard data confirms my observation that Norris runs the best-stocked little store in the area. Stephen Barrett wrote his Georgia State University master's thesis on the availability of fresh or local produce in Vine City and English Avenue. He used an iPhone app to track shelf stock and logged 311 miles by bike as he visited 20 stores. Barrett's findings are dispiriting: half of the stores he surveyed carried zero produce. Of the other 10, most stocked only one or two types of fruit – usually apples or bananas, placed up at the cash register along with lottery tickets and cigarettes. Shoppers Supermarket, however, stocked 17 types of vegetables and eight kinds of fruit; the only nearby store with greater selection was Walmart (97 varieties of vegetable, 45 types of fruit). If Shoppers is the best-case scenario for corner stores, a mile down the road, Simpson Food Mart represents the norm. A neatly painted sign touts eggs, milk, groceries and sandwiches. Inside, however, the tiny store smells like smoke and echoes with the electronic clank of four video slot machines that occupy about a third of the floor space. On one of my visits there, the four black stools in front of the machines were occupied by players, while a handful of observers squeezed behind them. The gaming area might have once held a dairy case; now the few pints of milk and cartons of eggs are stored in minifridges on a counter that also holds wrapped sandwiches. "We don't stock any fruit or vegetables," the clerk told me when I asked if he had any apples. The closest thing resembling produce I could find in the store was a pint of Tropicana apple juice. Obesity rates in food desertsOne of the paradoxes of food deserts is that the people living in them often have the highest rates of obesity – and its associated illnesses. A 2009 study in the journal Pediatrics showed that children who live in neighbourhoods with lots of corner stores consume more calories and are more likely to be obese than children who live in neighborhoods with supermarkets. When King and Abernathy railed against poverty in the 1960s, many poor people were malnourished and severely underweight. Today they are still malnourished – but overweight. A decade ago, Charles Moore, an Emory and Grady physician, analysed his patient files and found that his worst cases came from one zip code: 30314, home to Vine City and English Avenue.Moore realised that diet contributed to his patients' health problems and began to write "food prescriptions", advocating healthier eating and preventive care. In 2005 he founded the Healing Community Centre, now a full-service clinic on Martin Luther King Jr Drive. "Instead of talking about a food desert, the better term is really 'food swamp'. There is an abundance of food, but it's not healthy or varied," Kwabena Nkromo told me. Nkromo runs a programme called Atlanta Food & Farm, which aims to connect local growers, store owners and poor neighborhoods. "It's not a lack of food; it's a lack of good food," he said. Nkromo studied agriculture and economic development at Tuskegee and Clemson; he presumed that he'd work on famine relief in Africa or some other developing region of the world. He did not imagine that he'd be working on urban farm policies in the American south. Nkromo's work underscores another paradox of food deserts, this one particular to Atlanta. While the south and west sides of the city contain some of the neighborhoods most starved for healthy foods, they also are home to at least a dozen urban agricultural businesses – Patchwork City Farms and Atwood Community Gardens, for instance. There's a higher density of farms and gardens in this section of metro Atlanta – an arc across the south and west sides that has been dubbed the "fertile crescent" – than elsewhere, but many of them export their produce to other parts of town. With the aim of keeping more of that locally grown food closer to home and using urban farms as catalysts for other economic development, Nkromo is organising a project, also called the Fertile Crescent. One of the group's pilot projects has been training teens and young adults at a west side shelter called City of Refuge to grow and harvest kale. The trendy green is slated to be processed into Queen of Kale chips – snacks sold online and in places such as the Johns Creek Whole Foods market. The economics of colourPreviously, when the west side farms have tried to sell to their neighbours, there were "socioeconomic, cultural, and racial barriers", wrote Barrett. He surveyed 11 sites in the area and found that only one had tried to sell produce to local stores. When it came to selling directly, some farmers and garden operators seemed confounded, for example, that locals didn't subscribe to their CSA (community supported agriculture) plans. But a CSA at Patchwork City Farms costs $450 (£270) for 18 weeks; at a weekly cost of $25, that CSA subscription would eat up most of the total allowance for a Georgia resident on food stamps – about $34 a week. Another farm operated a full season before grasping that the reason its neighbours wouldn't come to its onsite market was that they could only get there by foot. Walking a mile to market isn't an obstacle; trekking home with a 5lb melon is. The growers' disingenuousness was matched by suspicion on the part of locals. Some see the farms as signs of gentrification, literal landgrabbing efforts by middle class – often white – interlopers. The community garden at Lindsay Street Baptist church in English Avenue is funded by a group of donors, mostly from Buckhead, who also volunteer to plant and harvest produce. Once, when the donors arrived at the church, they were greeted by a picketer holding a sign that read, "Go home, colonialists!" While the encounter was distressing, Lindsay Street pastor the Rev Anthony Motley said the incident underscored the need for communication and co-operation: "It's only going to happen with a real coalition – across class and colour and the rest – creating something together." Focusing on groceries alone will never solve deep-rooted problems, Motley said. "Food is important, but what's more important is the issue of employment. We can't create a sustainable society when we are just feeding folks. People want to feed the hungry but don't want to ask why they are hungry." Forging a consistent and logical strategy from many disparate efforts is the goal of a project called the Georgia Food Oasis. Its members include the Atlanta Community Food Bank, the American Heart Association, Georgia Organics, and the Blank Foundation. The group has a lofty goal: eradicating food deserts across the state. It's starting with a pilot, the Westside Food Oasis. Cicely Garrett is the food bank's point of contact at the food oasis; last autumn she was appointed to the newly created and curiously titled position of food systems innovation manager. She said: "Being able to feed yourself and your family should not be a privilege in this country." The pilot will test ideas such as mobile farm trucks, incentives for convenience stores to stock fresh foods, urban farms and wellness education. Solving the problem of our food deserts requires addressing transit and income inequality – people need to get to stores and they need to have money to buy food. Those are intractable, systemic challenges. But when it comes to the third piece of the puzzle, simply making healthy food itself more readily available, there are examples worth replicating. National retailers can change the way they operate and take a chance, as Walmart did in Vine City. The full version of this article appeared in Atlanta magazine in March 2014. Find further reading, maps, charts and other data at atlantamagazine.com. For more photographs by Audra Melton go to audramelton.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  |
| Oscar Pistorius trial day 11 – live coverage Posted: 17 Mar 2014 12:41 AM PDT Live updates from David Smith as trial of Olympic and Paralympic athlete for the killing of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp enters its third week       |
| MH370: last contact from plane made after systems shut down - live coverage Posted: 17 Mar 2014 12:39 AM PDT Suspicions continue that missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 may have been hijacked, after it's revealed the final message from the cockpit, "all right, good night," was sent after the first of two communications systems was disabled       |
| Abbott under fire over veterans' family cuts - as it happened Posted: 17 Mar 2014 12:38 AM PDT A Chinese delegation will meet Tony Abbott on Australia's free trade agreement while his government announces a parliamentary inquiry into Chinese investment in the housing market. Red tape tops government agenda as March in March comes to Canberra. Follow it live...       |
| Tony Abbott defends cutting payments for veterans' children Posted: 17 Mar 2014 12:19 AM PDT PM called 'callous and hard-hearted' for removing $211.60-a-year bonus as part of the mining tax repeal package       |
| Foreign Office excludes public from its public records day Posted: 17 Mar 2014 12:00 AM PDT  Historians invited but media and public barred from event explaining how millions of records will be put into public domain The UK Foreign Office is holding a conference to explain how it will finally place into the public domain millions of public records that it has unlawfully held for decades – but is refusing to allow members of the public to attend. Selected historians and archivists have been invited to the event on 9 May, known as Records Day, but the FCO has said it will not admit the public or media. Meanwhile, a basic inventory of the 1.2m files that have been posted on a government website has been altered, with all references to the cold war spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean having disappeared. An earlier version of the inventory made clear that the withheld files on the two men took up more than 4 metres of shelving. The FCO has denied that references to the spies, who passed thousands of confidential documents to the Soviet Union during the cold war, had been removed to deter requests under the Freedom of Information Act. The FCO is trying to find a way to transfer at least 600,000 files containing millions of papers that the department withheld from the National Archive at Kew in breach of the Public Records Act's 30-year rule. The files are held at Hanslope Park, a high-security compound in Buckinghamshire that the FCO shares with MI5 and MI6. In 2011, the FCO admitted it had withheld 1,500 files about colonial Kenya from the high court during a court case brought by a group of elderly Kenyans who claimed damages for the mistreatment they suffered while imprisoned during the 1950 Mau Mau insurgency. Initially, the department denied 1,500 files existed, but changed its mind when confronted with evidence in court. After the papers were handed over, the government expressed "sincere regret" and paid £13.9m in compensation to more than 5,000 prison survivors. It then said there were 8,800 colonial era files at Hanslope Park. It later emerged there were as many as 20,000 colonial-era files. There are thought to be more than 500,000 other files at Hanslope Park that the FCO will not release, although some date back to 1852. Historians and campaigners for greater transparency have said the way in which the FCO has kept the files secret is a scandal. A number, such as Richard Drayton, Rhodes professor of imperial history at King's College London, have said that reform of the Public Records Act is overdue. Tony Badger, a history professor at the University of Cambridge who is overseeing the transfer of the files to the National Archives at Kew on behalf of the FCO, said that while some of the files contained papers of little or no value, others were "extraordinarily valuable" and should be made publicly available as soon as possible. The director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, Maurice Frankel, said: "People will understand that the Foreign Office can't fix this problem overnight. But they have got to do this openly. They may not be able to get themselves out of this mess without a very large amount of work, but that doesn't mean that they should be solely responsible for choosing what to prioritise for transfer to the National Archives. There has to be involvement of people who may in practice try to make use of these files, and that includes members of the public." The FCO has never fully explained how such an enormous collection of files came to be hidden from view, leading to suspicions that it was attempting to conceal material that could damage diplomatic relations, fuel litigation or that was simply embarrassing. FCO minister David Lidington told MPs his department was meeting its legal obligations over the handling of public records with "maximum transparency". However, he has said he will not answer questions about the affair from the media. "The proposed records day is not a media briefing, therefore journalists will not be invited," a spokesman from the FCO said when the Guardian asked if it could attend the conference. The FCO invited historians to another record day in May last year, to discuss the colonial era papers. Again, members of the public were not admitted. The department's record-keepers used the occasion to criticise media reporting of the affair, but failed to disclose that they were holding a further 1.2m files at Hanslope Park. 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       This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| The top 30 young people in digital media: Nos 10-1 Posted: 17 Mar 2014 12:00 AM PDT  The Guardian's 10 trainee digital journalists invited Alex Hern and Matt Andrews from the Guardian, and BuzzFeed's editorial director Jack Shepherd to help choose the most exciting people under 30 in digital media. Here's their top 10 10. Cara Ellison (@Carachan1)Age: 28. Originally from Aberdeen, Ellison became a full-time writer last year. She started her career as a games tester on Grand Theft Auto IV and worked at Gamestation before the retail chain's closure. Her industry insight makes her a compelling video-game journalist, yet she writes about the subject in a way that even non-gamers can understand. No surprise that she's built an impressive following in a male-dominated industry that's worth an annual £540m to the UK economy. 9. Jerome Jarre (@jeromejarre)Age: 23. In case you didn't know, Vine is a mobile app owned by Twitter that allows you to create six-second looping videos. Jarre is not only one of the world's most famous Vine stars, but he also owns the talent agency (GrapeStory) which represents 19 other stars. The French-born business-school dropout is famous for accosting strangers in the street, attempting to dance with them, serenading them and, sometimes, even playing with their beards – all in six seconds. His catchphrase: "I love life like crazy." 8. Hannah Hart (@harto)Age: 27. Hart, sometimes known as Harto, is most famous for her YouTube series My Drunk Kitchen, in which she attempts to cook something while getting increasingly intoxicated. She's adored by her million subscribers on YouTube for many reasons, but one of them is how candidly (and hilariously) she has talked about her experience of coming out. From a conservative family, Hart jokes that before she came out she was the most homophobic person she knew. We love her for her honesty. 7. Mosa'ab Elshamy (@mosaaberizing)Age: 23. Mosa'ab Elshamy's photograph of two Mohamed Morsi supporters carrying the body of man who had been shot in the head was among the most powerful of the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath. His repertoire ranges from current affairs to in-depth socio-economic and cultural photostories and his work has already been seen in Time magazine, the Economist, Foreign Policy magazine and al-Jazeera English. In 2013, Time named the picture as one of its 10 best photos of the year. At 23, Mosa'ab is well placed to document Middle Eastern society – where around 60% of the population is under 30. 6. Jim Waterson (@jimwaterson)Age: 24. When BuzzFeed UK launched last year, many said its brand of "content creation" wouldn't suit the UK's media landscape. Particularly perplexing was how the website would approach its relatively new political offering. Waterson has proved himself a master at combining BuzzFeed-style viral lols with the sometimes dry, grey-suited world of Westminster politics. His best work includes 25 people who are really confused as to why Grant Shapps follows them on Twitter and 21 pictures of politicians in wellies staring at floods. And in the run-up to the 2015 general election, BuzzFeed UK content will be clogging up our newsfeeds even more. 5. Hannah Wolfe (@ErisDS)Age: 28. Blogging has transformed journalism, but mainstream blogging software hasn't changed much in the past decade. John O'Nolan, the 26-year-old former deputy head of the WordPress user interface team, saw that the most popular blogging platforms had become better suited to website-building than to quick, easy publishing. He enlisted Wolfe to help him build a free, opensource platform that didn't let anything get in the way of writing. The whole team at Ghost deserves to be in this list, but as one of the few female developers making waves out there, Wolfe is in our top 10. 4. Sorted Food (@sortedfood)Age: 26-27. OK, we're cheating a bit here – there are four of them (Barry, Ben, Jamie and Mike) and all they pretty much do is cook on YouTube but it really works. The Sorted Food YouTube channel promises a mix of "food, recipes, videos and banter" and they have more subscribers than Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay combined: just over 700,000. They're followed by Barack Obama and David Cameron on Twitter and their recipes range from microwave chocolate cake in a mug to healthy midweek dinners. They are inspiring their young audience to think more about what they eat. 3. Dina Toki-O (@dinatokio)Age: 24. Half-British and half-Egyptian, Dina Torkia (her real name) was raised in Cardiff and has made her name as a fashion video blogger, designer and hijab-wearing style icon. Her Instagram account has nearly 181,000 followers and she has a truly international fanbase – from Indonesia to Canada to Dubai. She's one of the few people talking about fashion for Muslim women – from hijab tutorials to burkini reviews. She is currently working on a range of ready-to-wear designs, which – she has promised her fans – will be launched soon. Needless to say, she rocks the hijab with style. 2. Jamal Edwards (@jamaledwards)Age: 23. It all started with the Christmas gift of a video camera when he was 15. Eight years later, Edwards is worth an estimated £8m. His YouTube channel, SBTV, which stands for Smokey Barz, made its name with films of performances by rappers and MCs in London's grime scene. The company, which started in his bedroom on a west London council estate, now employs 12 people and has branched out into different genres – a music video they made for squeaky-clean singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran has had nearly 8m hits. 1. Farea Al-Muslimi (@almuslimi)Age: 24. A surprising choice, perhaps. He doesn't have hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, or a blockbuster YouTube channel and million-dollar sponsorship deal. He doesn't even have a good internet connection. But the work of journalist, youth activist and anti-drone campaigner Farea al-Muslimi has taken him on quite a journey. This farmer's son from the poor Yemeni village of Wessab was invited to appear before a US senate judiciary committee in April last year. Six days before he was due to speak, his village was hit by a US drone. He subsequently gave a moving first-hand account of the suffering, arguing that the drone strikes were counter-productive in turning people away from the US and towards the insurgents. "What our violent militants had failed to achieve, one drone strike accomplished in an instant," he told the senators. Video of his testimony was shared widely on social media. With the help of a US State Department scholarship, he spent a year at a US high school improving his English, before studying public policy at the American University of Beirut. "I don't know if I got into journalism, or if journalism got into me," he says. Farea started his media life as a local journalist on Yemeni papers, before working as a "fixer" – an assistant and translator for foreign journalists. He was frustrated with the lack of Yemeni voices talking about the country to an international audience. "What is written about Yemen isn't accurate," he says. "I decided to channel my frustration and I started to write." He wants to improve the representation of Yemen's rural population. "If you talk to people in the capital city about the problems faced by those in remote towns, it's like you're talking about people in another country," he says. "It's ironic that it was more possible for me to deliver my voice to the parliament of another country than to the parliament of my own." Perhaps surprisingly, he is somewhat sceptical about the power of social media, stressing that the platforms sites such as Twitter provide are largely meaningful only if you speak English and, more importantly, if you have access to the internet. In his home village of Wessab, there isn't even electricity. He says he owes his precocious success to so many people – including those who taught him English and awarded his scholarship money. Nonetheless, Al-Muslimi is the ultimate example of what it's possible to do if you have an internet connection and a story to tell. 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       |
| Niger food crisis scheme seeks local solutions to recurring cycle of hunger Posted: 17 Mar 2014 12:00 AM PDT  By engaging communities and co-ordinating agency efforts, Niger hopes to end its perennial battle against food shortage Last month, Valerie Amos, the UN's humanitarian chief, called for an extra $2bn (£1.25bn) from donors to combat another looming food crisis in the Sahel. The story is familiar: a poor rainy season and harvest in 2013 and a population struggling to recover from the last crisis, in 2012. Niger is again at the epicentre, with a 343,000 ton food deficit; at least 1.2 million people are at risk of hunger in the months ahead. However, this year Niger is hoping to stop the hunger from becoming a national calamity. Measures are being put in place to head off the worst of the "lean season", the period from June to September when farmers exhaust their stocks while waiting for the new rainy season, when they can begin planting. A new initiative, "communes de convergence" (coming together in local municipalities), aims to put communities at the heart of the response to shortages, and to co-ordinate the efforts of relief and development agencies with those of the government. "We can't just keep going on having crises every few years," says Amadou Diallo, Niger's high commissioner for the 3N initiative (Nigeriens Feed Nigeriens). "We need to move on from waiting till the situation gets really bad and then asking for food handouts". In Koroma village in the Dogo region, south-east of Zinder, the focus of the communes de convergence programme is clearing dead vegetation from the bottom of a local lake to help prevent future flooding of prime arable land. Once removed, the vegetation is burned and composted to make fertiliser and animal feed. The programme seems to have been welcomed by the local community, not least because it is providing employment for young men. About 100 turned up to work when I visited. Traditionally, these young men would be leaving around this time of year to look for work in neighbouring Nigeria, but the World Food Programme is paying 25,000 CFA a month ($52) as part of a cash-for-work scheme to clear the lake. The local NGOs implementing the project say the aim is to reclaim about 65 hectares of arable land over the next five months. "I have to go into the water with a knife and pair of gloves to cut the roots of the plants. I get really wet and muddy but I don't mind because this is good work," says Abdusalam Sani, wiping the mud away from his face and shaking himself dry. "I know that the water destroys the areas we can cultivate, and I can even catch some fish while I'm doing it". Diallo says that time and again consultations with communities have identified frustrations that the majority of the country's farming is still entirely reliant on the rains. Even in a good year it only rains for about three months, meaning that, after the harvest in October and November, much of the land lies unused until the next planting season. "We have been overrun with requests for irrigation systems including digging wells and installing motorised pumps," he says. Although the idea of co-ordinating the activities of UN agencies and NGOs may seem simple, what's being rolled out in 35 Nigerien municipalities, including the eastern Zinder region, is essentially a pilot for international agencies. It is hoped that, if the idea takes off, it can be expanded to cover all of Niger's 266 municipalities. The concept challenges the assumption, evident in the approach to previous hunger crises in the Sahel, that an initial emergency response – handing out food and providing nutritional support to mothers and children – should be followed by a suitable "recovery" period, after which emergency should give way to development with the promotion of better agricultural practices, livelihoods and education. The 3N initiative and the communes de convergence idea are responses to the need for a more holistic approach, recognising the very real possibility that unpredictable rainy seasons and harvests may well become the norm in years to come. "Our research shows that it can take up to three years for people to fully recover from a crisis," says Benoit Thiry, WFP country director, who acknowledges that three droughts across the Sahel in less than eight years have severely tested people's coping mechanisms. "We have to act now to make sure that gains we've made in recent years are not lost, so that people have alternatives to just borrowing money again to get themselves through the next crisis". 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       |
| AMA gives wind farms clean bill of health and attacks 'misinformation' Posted: 16 Mar 2014 11:42 PM PDT Individuals living near wind farms who experience adverse health may do so as a consequence of 'heightened anxiety'  |
| US and EU expected to announce sanctions against Russia Posted: 16 Mar 2014 11:37 PM PDT Measures could include visa bans and potential asset freezes in wake of Crimean vote to rejoin Russia       |
| CSIRO job cuts will reduce science agency by almost 10%, says union Posted: 16 Mar 2014 11:31 PM PDT Staff association's Sam Popovski says, 'If this continues the organisation can't do the science and research it has done'       |
| Europe should lead on climate change | Mary Robinson and Desmond Tutu Posted: 16 Mar 2014 11:00 PM PDT  We must leave a clean climate legacy – the fate of the world today and its future hinges on the leadership we show now From recent flash floods in Britain and France to summer wildfires across southern Europe, the impacts of climate change are here, on Europe's doorstep. Europeans are worried. In recent weeks, devastating winds and floods throughout western Europe raised further concern about extreme weather events, but it's the big picture that alarms the population at large: in a future defined by our success or failure to tackle climate change, are today's leaders ready to act? Nine in 10 European citizens now consider climate change a "serious problem", a Eurobarometer poll revealed this month. This week, European heads of state have an opportunity to address their concerns when they meet to discuss a package of new climate-related measures and targets for 2030. It is one of the first in a delicate sequence of international events and summits over the next two years, concluding with a major conference in Paris, in December 2015. What happens in Brussels this week could have life-or-death repercussions for millions of people now and billions more in the future. Climate change is a slow, grinding crisis but urgent action is needed to defuse it. The EU has often been the driver of the world's ambition – morally, politically, economically – in tackling climate change. There have been setbacks, but its overall record is a model to others on the world stage. Its leadership has created the space for other blocs, such as the world's least developed countries, to make themselves heard. And this week, Europe cannot falter. The targets decided now will set the terms for further negotiations. Europe must seize the opportunity to act now and create momentum towards a robust, universal, fair and legally binding agreement in Paris in next year. The implications of climate change are vast and complex, but two things are clear. If the EU agrees a package this week, it will have a chance to lead discussions at a major summit convened by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon in New York this September. And if Europe does not lead, who will? The signals are that the other great powers may not be ready to speak out. This risks leaving many of the more vulnerable – and more outspoken – small islands, least developed and Latin American countries without an ally. And the target itself should be ambitious enough to be meaningful. The European commission's current proposal of a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 on 1990 levels is not enough to guarantee Europe's status as a leader in climate negotiations – or to meet its own objective of reducing its carbon emissions by 95% in 2050. With clear, strong policy signals and targets, European businesses can boost their competitiveness. The United States and China are also making progress in adapting their economies to meet climate targets, and Europe is losing ground. Those two countries now lead the world in wind power capacity, and are catching up with Germany and Italy, the world leaders in solar energy. European businesses must be given the conditions to compete or may lose their edge completely. We aren't naïve. We know it is complicated to negotiate an agreement among 28 countries. But as Elders, we believe leaders' decisions must be accountable to moral imperatives. Addressing climate change is also a matter of justice. If we are to be true to our commitment to human rights, then rich nations owe a fair and honest deal to the world's most vulnerable regions. The people on the frontline of climate change have often done the least to cause it. This means reducing the suffering of those worst affected and acting now to avoid further suffering in the future. It also means sharing technology, funds and solutions to help vulnerable countries and communities to engage fully in the transition to a low-carbon world. As the cradle of the industrial revolution, Europe created our carbon-heavy world and must lead the world into its next, low-carbon, safer and more caring chapter. As Elders, representing different parts of the world and a shared moral compass, we would like to encourage and support leaders in the EU to act in the interests of their own citizens and the citizens of the world. Strong action on climate change in Europe will help EU members to maintain their competitive edge and be ahead of the curve in the transition to low-carbon development. It will also help the countries and communities least responsible for the causes of climate change to make their voices heard in partnership with a strong ally; an ally that acknowledges and acts on their responsibility for carbon emissions. Current and future generations, our grandchildren and great grandchildren, need the world to act decisively now to avoid dangerous climate change. The EU is well-placed to create the positive momentum needed to enable others to act. Tackling climate change is in Europe's economic interest. It is also a chance to display leadership at its finest. • Former Irish president Mary Robinson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu are members of The Elders, a group of independent leaders working for peace, justice and human rights worldwide. 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  |
| Britain's five richest families worth more than poorest 20% Posted: 16 Mar 2014 11:00 PM PDT  Oxfam report reveals scale of inequality in UK as charity appeals to chancellor over tax The scale of Britain's growing inequality is revealed today by a report from a leading charity showing that the country's five richest families now own more wealth than the poorest 20% of the population. Oxfam urged the chancellor George Osborne to use Wednesday's budget to make a fresh assault on tax avoidance and introduce a living wage in a report highlighting how a handful of the super-rich, headed by the Duke of Westminster, have more money and financial assets than 12.6 million Britons put together. The development charity, which has opened UK programmes to tackle poverty, said the government should explore the possibility of a wealth tax after revealing how income gains and the benefits of rising asset prices had disproportionately helped those at the top. Although Labour is seeking to make living standards central to the political debate in the run-up to next year's general election, Osborne is determined not to abandon the deficit-reduction strategy that has been in place since 2010. But he is likely to announce a fresh crackdown on tax avoidance and measures aimed at overseas owners of high-value London property in order to pay for modest tax cuts for working families. The early stages of the UK's most severe post-war recession saw a fall in inequality as the least well-off were shielded by tax credits and benefits. But the trend has been reversed in recent years as a result of falling real wages, the rising cost of food and fuel, and by the exclusion of most poor families from home and share ownership. In a report, a Tale of Two Britains, Oxfam said the poorest 20% in the UK had wealth totalling £28.1bn – an average of £2,230 each. The latest rich list from Forbes magazine showed that the five top UK entries – the family of the Duke of Westminster, David and Simon Reuben, the Hinduja brothers, the Cadogan family, and Sports Direct retail boss Mike Ashley – between them had property, savings and other assets worth £28.2bn. The most affluent family in Britain, headed by Major General Gerald Grosvenor, owns 77 hectares (190 acres) of prime real estate in Belgravia, London, and has been a beneficiary of the foreign money flooding in to the capital's soaring property market in recent years. Oxfam said Grosvenor and his family had more wealth (£7.9bn) than the poorest 10% of the UK population (£7.8bn). Oxfam's director of campaigns and policy, Ben Phillips, said: "Britain is becoming a deeply divided nation, with a wealthy elite who are seeing their incomes spiral up, while millions of families are struggling to make ends meet. "It's deeply worrying that these extreme levels of wealth inequality exist in Britain today, where just a handful of people have more money than millions struggling to survive on the breadline." The UK study follows an Oxfam report earlier this year which found that the wealth of 85 global billionaires is equivalent to that of half the world's population – or 3.5 billion people. The pope and Barack Obama have made tackling inequality a top priority for 2014, while the International Monetary Fund has warned that the growing divide between the haves and have-nots is leading to slower global growth. Oxfam said the wealth gap in the UK was becoming more entrenched as a result of the ability of the better off to capture the lion's share of the proceeds of growth. Since the mid-1990s, the incomes of the top 0.1% have grown by £461 a week or £24,000 a year. By contrast, the bottom 90% have seen a real terms increase of only £2.82 a week or £147 a year. The charity said the trends in income had been made even more adverse by increases in the cost of living over the past decade. "Since 2003 the majority of the British public (95%) have seen a 12% real terms drop in their disposable income after housing costs, while the richest 5% of the population have seen their disposable income increase." Osborne will this week announce details of the government's new cap on the welfare budget and has indicated that he wants up to £12bn a year cut from the benefits bill in order to limit the impact of future rounds of austerity on Whitehall departments. Oxfam said that for the first time more working households were in poverty than non-working ones, and predicted that the number of children living below the poverty line could increase by 800,000 by 2020. It said cuts to social security and public services were meshing with falling real incomes and a rising cost of living to create a "deeply damaging situation" in which millions were struggling to get by. The charity said that starting with this week's budget, the government should balance its books by raising revenues from those that could afford it – "by clamping down on companies and individuals who avoid paying their fair share of tax and starting to explore greater taxation of extreme wealth". The IMF recently released research showing that the ever-greater concentration of wealth and income hindered growth and said redistribution would not just reduce inequality but would be economically beneficial. "On average, across countries and over time, the things that governments have typically done to redistribute do not seem to have led to bad growth outcomes, unless they were extreme", the IMF said in a research paper. "And the resulting narrowing of inequality helped support faster and more durable growth, apart from ethical, political or broader social considerations." Phillips said: "Increasing inequality is a sign of economic failure rather than success. It's far from inevitable – a result of political choices that can be reversed. It's time for our leaders to stand up and be counted on this issue."
Landed gentry to self-made millionairesDuke of Westminster (Wealth: £7.9bn) Gerald Grosvenor and his family owe the bulk of their wealth to owning 77 hectares (190 acres) of Mayfair and Belgravia, adjacent to Buckingham Palace and prime London real estate. As the value of land rockets in the capital so too does the personal wealth of Grosvenor, formally the sixth Duke of Westminster and one of seven god parents to the new royal baby, Prince George. The family also own 39,000 hectares in Scotland and 13,000 hectares in Spain, while their privately owned Grosvenor Estate property group has $20bn (£12bn) worth of assets under management including the Liverpool One shopping mall, according to leading US business magazine Forbes. Reuben brothers (£6.9bn) Simon and David Reuben made their early money out of metals. Born in India but brought up in London, they started in local scrap metal but branched out into trading tin and aluminium. Their biggest break was to move into Russia just after the break-up of the Soviet Union, buying up half the country's aluminium production facilities and befriending Oleg Deripaska, the oligarch associate of Nat Rothschild and Peter Mandelson. The Reuben brothers are still involved in mining and metals but control a widely diversified business empire that includes property, 850 British pubs, and luxury yacht-maker Kristal Waters. They are also donors to the Conservative party. Hinduja brothers (£6bn) Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja co-chair the Hinduja Group, a multinational conglomerate with a presence in 37 countries and businesses ranging from trucks and lubricants to banking and healthcare. They began their careers working in their father's textile and trading businesses in Mumbai and Tehran, Iran but soon branched out by buying truck maker, Ashok Leyland from British Leyland and Gulf Oil from Chevron in the 1980s, while establishing banks in Switzerland and India in the 1990s. The family's London home is a mansion on Carlton House Terrace, overlooking St James Park and just along fromclose to Buckingham Palace, which is potentially worth £300m. They have links with the Labour party. Cadogan family (£4bn) The wealth of the Cadogans family is built on 90 acres36 hectares of property and land in Chelsea and Knightsbridge, west London. Eton-educated Charles is the eighth Earl of Cadogan and ran the family business, Cadogan Estates, until 2012 when he handed it over to his son Edward, Viscount Chelsea. Charles, who is a first cousin to the Aga Khan, started in the Coldstream Guards before going into the City. He was briefly chairman of Chelsea Football Club in the early 1980s and his family motto is: "He who envies is the lesser man." Mike Ashley (£3.3bn) Ashley owns Newcastle United football club and became a billionaire through his Sports Direct discount clothing chain which he started after leaving school. He was the sole owner of the fast growing business, which snapped up brands such as Dunlop, Slazenger, Karrimor and Lonsdale, until it floated on the stock market in 2007. He now owns 62%. Ashley is a regular visitor to London's swankiest casinos but is famously publicity-averse. 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  |
| Insulation program for 2m homes was devised in just two days, inquiry told Posted: 16 Mar 2014 10:50 PM PDT Mary Wiley-Smith tells how she and another staffer worked over 2009 Australia Day long weekend to cost and assess the scheme  |
| Manus inquiry judge should be disqualified, say PNG lawyers Posted: 16 Mar 2014 10:49 PM PDT Application for disqualification filed on grounds of bias and previous court appearances regarding detention centre  |
| Pro-Russians celebrate after Crimea referendum – video Posted: 16 Mar 2014 10:36 PM PDT Pro-Russian Crimeans celebrate in the streets of Sevastopol and other cities after people overwhelmingly voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia  |
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