World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk

US bill would lower standards for collecting individuals' data
A death sentence not just for hundreds of Islamists, but Egypt's democratic future | Magdi Abdelhadi
Angela Merkel laughing with Finland's president – caption competition
The House's NSA bill could allow more spying than ever. You call this reform?
John Singleton accuses Hollywood of ignoring black directors
Bitcoin goes national with Scotcoin and Auroracoin
Supreme court to hear Obamacare contraception arguments – live
Eyewitness: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
WHO: air pollution 'is single biggest environmental health risk'
Are books really banned in prisons? | Reality Check | Juliette Jowit
US sailor shot dead aboard destroyer at Naval Station Norfolk
Sahel meningitis outbreaks linked to wind and dust levels, claim scientists
Malaysia Airlines MH370: how final flight path was tracked – video
Russia dismisses G8 snub as G7 leaders meet to discuss tactics – video
Ireland's police chief, Martin Callinan, resigns over whistleblower row
Ukrainian far-right activist shot dead by police
Extreme skydivers arrested over World Trade Center parachute jump
Suleiman Abu Ghaith prosecutors tell jurors: 'You are looking at a guilty man'
Lorna Simpson's photography: gold afros, chess players and 50s glamour
Irish police chief's resignation vindicates sacked investigative journalist
Coalition has 'blown out' debt forecasts to discredit Labor, says Chris Bowen
MH370: relatives of Chinese passengers march on Malaysian embassy in Beijing

US bill would lower standards for collecting individuals' data

Posted: 26 Mar 2014 05:47 AM PDT

Administration plan would require NSA to seek a court order to search phone records held by telecoms companies

The Obama administration is to set out how it proposes to end the mass collection of Americans' phone call data this week, as legislators in the House of Representatives prepare to unveil a bill that would significantly curtail the practice but lower the legal standards for the collection of such information.

Under plans to be put forward by the Obama administration in the next few days, the National Security Agency would end the bulk collection of telephone records, and instead would need to seek a court order to search records held by the telecommunications companies.

The phone companies would not be required to keep such records any longer than the current 18-month maximum, a significant move away from the five years during which they are currently held by NSA. It represents a significant overhaul of the secret mass collection practices of the past 13 years, exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

A separate proposal, to be published on Tuesday by the leaders of the House intelligence committee, would not necessarily require a judge's prior approval to access phone or email data.

The move represents a shift in position by two of the most stalwart congressional defenders of the practice, the committee's Republican chairman Michael Rogers of Michigan and Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland.

The bill, titled the End Bulk Collection Act of 2014 and currently circulating on Capitol Hill, would prevent the government from acquiring "records of any electronic communication without the use of specific identifiers or selection terms," some 10 months after the Guardian first exposed the bulk collection based on leaks by the whistleblower Edward Snowden.

But the bill would allow the government to collect electronic communications records based on "reasonable articulable suspicion", rather than probable cause or relevance to a terrorism investigation, from someone deemed to be an agent of a foreign power, associated with an agent of a foreign power, or "in contact with, or known to, a suspected agent of a foreign power."

A draft of the bill acquired by the Guardian proposes the acquisition of such phone or email data for up to a year and would not necessarily require prior approval by a judge. Authorisation of the collection would come jointly from the US attorney general and director of national intelligence.

The NSA or the FBI would not be able to collect the content of those communications without probable cause.

Nor does the House intelligence committee's draft bill require phone companies or any other private entity to store bulk phone records on behalf of the NSA – a proposal that has met with stiff opposition from the telecommunications companies. In essence, the draft bill gets rid of bulk collection, but makes it easier for government authorities to collect metadata on individuals inside the US suspected of involvement with a foreign power.

The House intelligence committee proposal represents competition to a different bill introduced last fall by privacy advocates in the Senate and House judiciary committees known as the USA Freedom Act. That bill, which has 163 co-sponsors in both chambers, does not lower the legal standard for data collection on US persons, and would prohibit the NSA from searching for Americans' identifying information in its foreign-oriented communications content databases, something the House intelligence bill would not.

A spokesperson for the House intelligence committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday. Rogers and Ruppersberger have scheduled a press conference on Tuesday morning to discuss what they described in a release as "Fisa improvement legislation" – a reference to the seminal Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which their bill would amend.

While a judge would not necessarily review the collection of a US individual's phone or email records ahead of time, the House intelligence committee bill would require judicial review of the collection procedures and associated privacy protections to "reasonably limit the receipt, retention, use and disclosure of communications records associated with a specific person when such records are not necessary to understand foreign intelligence information or assess the importance of such information".

A telecom or internet service provider could challenge the collection order before the secret Fisa court under the House intelligence committee proposal. The court would also have latitude to reject challenges "that are not warranted by existing law or consists of a frivolous argument for extending, modifying or reversing existing law or for establishing a new law", and to impose contempt of court penalties for noncompliant companies.

The attorney general and the director of national intelligence would have to "assess compliance with the selection and the civil liberties and privacy protection procedures" associated with the collection every six months, and submit those assessments to the Fisa court and the intelligence and judiciary committees of the House and Senate.

Additionally, and in keeping with an October proposal from Senate intelligence committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein of California, the House intelligence committee proposal would permit the NSA to continue surveillance for 72 hours on a suspected foreigner's communications content if that person enters the US.

The House intelligence committee proposal contains provisions embraced by critics of widespread NSA surveillance. It would create a privacy advocate before the Fisa çourt; mandate additional declassification of Fisa court rulings; require the Senate to confirm the NSA director and inspector general.

It also requires annual disclosure of the number of times "in which the contents of a communication of a United States person was acquired under this Act when the acquisition authorized by this Act that resulted in the collection of such contents could not reasonably have been anticipated to capture such contents."

But in a sign of the continuing contentiousness on Capitol Hill over changes to NSA surveillance, James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and co-author of the USA Freedom Act, preemptively rejected the House intelligence committee proposal, calling it "a convoluted bill that accepts the administration's deliberate misinterpretations of the law.

"It limits, but does not end, bulk collection. Provisions included in the draft fall well short of the safeguards in the USA Freedom Act and do not strike the proper balance between privacy and security," Sensenbrenner said in a statement late on Monday.

On Friday, the Obama administration and the intelligence agencies will face the expiration of a Fisa court order for bulk domestic phone records collection. That expiration represents a deadline imposed by Obama in January for his administration to come to reach consensus on the specific contours of post-NSA phone metadata collection.

According to a New York Times report late on Monday, Obama will propose ending bulk phone data collection and replacing it with individualised orders for telecom firms to provide phone records up to two "hops" – or degrees of separation – from a phone number suspected of wrongdoing. The effort goes further towards the position favoured by privacy advocates than Obama proposed in January. Obama will request the Fisa court approve the current bulk collection program for a final 90-day renewal as he attempts to implement the new plan.

A senior White House official cited a January speech by Obama in which he announced some limits on NSA surveillance. The official told the Guardian: "In the coming days, after concluding ongoing consultations with Congress, including the intelligence and judiciary committees, will put forward a sound approach to ensuring the government no longer collects or holds this data, but still ensures that the government has access to the information it needs to meet the national security needs his team has identified.

"Until Congress passes new authorizing legislation, the president has directed his administration to renew the current program, as modified substantially by the president in his January speech."

Spencer Ackerman

A death sentence not just for hundreds of Islamists, but Egypt's democratic future | Magdi Abdelhadi

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:20 AM PDT

The judiciary's role in the sentencing of almost 530 Muslim Brotherhood supporters could destroy faith in the electoral process

Ever since the interim government in Egypt declared war on the Muslim Brotherhood and designated it a terrorist organisation, it has pursued a course of action that has swelled the ranks of the government's detractors, even among those who are sympathetic to its declared objective of suppressing the Islamist group.

The sentencing to death yesterday of more than 500 Brotherhood supporters on charges related to the violence that followed the overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi in July last year belongs to that class of action: preposterously self-defeating.

The hardliners in the government clearly think overwhelming force is the answer. The security crackdown has severely undermined the Brotherhood's ability to mobilise and stage big street protests. Those who think this way are undoubtedly encouraged by the conduct of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in the Ukraine crisis, and the apparent failure of the west to stand up to him. These hawks dismiss any international response to the action of the police or the judiciary as of little consequence.

There's already been a barrage of criticism both inside Egypt and abroad. The procedure itself lacked basic standards of fairness. Many are ridiculing a legal system that allows for a mockery of justice on this scale to take place. The trial lasted two days, and more than half the defendants are on the run.

This is not the first time the Egyptian judiciary has attracted widespread condemnation. Last November a court in Alexandria gave 21 Islamist women and teenagers jail sentences of up to 12 years for taking part in a pro-Brotherhood protest that turned violent. The disproportionate punishment produced a howl of protest. The sentences were later commuted on appeal, and the women were released.

The Egyptian judiciary has a mixed record. It has, for example, given Hosni Mubarak a life sentence, which he's appealed against. He is currently being retried. But none of the police or military accused of killing protesters since the uprising that toppled him in 2011 have been found guilty.

Given this record, most observers will conclude that the verdict is political, designed to send a message to the Brotherhood and its backers abroad – in Cairo this usually means Turkey and Qatar, which have made no secret of their unwavering support for the Brotherhood– that the Egyptian state is still in no mood to compromise with the Islamists: surrender or annihilation.

But coming down with a sledgehammer on anything that moves makes the government look more like a raging bull than a confident operator playing by the rules. It also adds to perceptions of the Brotherhood in the outside world as clear victims, despite the fact that government action against the Islamists still enjoys broad support in Egypt itself.

Within days the electoral commission is expected to issue a timetable for the presidential election. Given that it is the judiciary that will be supervising the election, anything that undermines its independence will cast a long shadow over the electoral process. The credibility of the transition will be called into question if the judiciary is seen to act at the behest of those who hold power.

Yesterday's verdict comes at a critical moment in Egypt's muddled transition from authoritarian rule to what many still hope, despite all the disturbing signs, will be an elected and representative government. Many others remain sceptical, though. Sentencing almost 530 suspects to death en masse will most probably strengthen the scepticism of those who believe Egypt is heading towards anything but democracy and rule of law.

Magdi Abdelhadi

Angela Merkel laughing with Finland's president – caption competition

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:17 AM PDT

Sauli Niinistö, lightens the mood at the final day of nuclear talks in the Hague – but what has he written on his notepad that the German chancellor found so funny?

The House's NSA bill could allow more spying than ever. You call this reform?

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:07 AM PDT

Trevor Timm: Congress' serial fabricator has the audacity to call his new law the 'End Bulk Collection Act'. Obama's proposal isn't much better

Trevor Timm

John Singleton accuses Hollywood of ignoring black directors

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:06 AM PDT

Boyz N The Hood director says black culture depicted on film has been 'homogenised'

• 12 Years a Slave 'could be a game changer for black directors'

The Oscar-nominated director of Boyz N the Hood, John Singleton, has accused Hollywood of failing to help black film-makers make their way in the industry.

Speaking to students at Loyola Marymount university in LA as part of The Hollywood Masters interview series, 46-year-old Singleton said studios were happy to cover stories with an African American theme but did not see why they should find black directors to take charge of them. "They want black people [to be] what they want them to be. And nobody is man enough to go and say that," he said. "They want black people to be who they want them to be, as opposed to what they are. The black films now — so-called black films now — they're great. They're great films. But they're just product.

"They're not moving the bar forward creatively … When you try to make it homogenised, when you try to make it appeal to everybody, then you don't have anything that's special."

Singleton, who became the youngest ever best director Oscar nominee for 1991's Boyz N The Hood, said modern Hollywood liberals were not the same as those who helped him get his foot on the ladder. "They feel that they're not racist," he said. "They grew up with hip-hop, so [they] can't be racist. 'I like Jay Z, but that don't mean I got to give you a job.'"

Singleton recalled the struggle made by a former Columbia Pictures producer to get that debut – a stark urban drama starring Ice Cube, Cuba Gooding Jr, Morris Chestnut and Laurence Fishburne – into cinemas when he was just 24. "Stephanie Allain kicked and screamed to get Boyz N The Hood made," he said. "Those people don't exist any more, whether they're black, white or whatever."

Reading on mobile? Click here to watch

The film-maker is set to direct a high-profile biopic of the rapper Tupac Shakur for his next feature. He said the hip-hop icon's death in 1996 had profoundly affected his attitude towards life.

"It set my life on a whole other trajectory," Singleton told his audience. "I went and left the country for about a month. I just couldn't cope … I felt, the danger ain't sexy any more. I got to change it up, not necessarily just as a film-maker, but just as a person, and kind of grow up."

• Why black British directors and actors leave the UK for Hollywood

Ben Child

Bitcoin goes national with Scotcoin and Auroracoin

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:04 AM PDT

Are hyper-national currencies the future of the bitcoin movement?

Alex Hern

Supreme court to hear Obamacare contraception arguments – live

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 06:00 AM PDT

Religious business owners say providing healthcare plans that offer emergency contraceptives would violate their religious principles. Follow the latest here

Jim Newell

Eyewitness: Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 05:55 AM PDT

Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series

WHO: air pollution 'is single biggest environmental health risk'

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 05:51 AM PDT

New figures link indoor and outdoor air pollution to around 7 millon deaths a year – more than double previous estimates

Air pollution has become the world's single biggest environmental health risk, linked to around 7 million – or nearly one in eight deaths in 2012 – according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The new figures are more than double previous estimates and suggest that outdoor pollution from traffic fumes and coal-burning, and indoor pollution from wood and coal stoves, kills more people than smoking, road deaths and diabetes combined.

Around 80% of the 3.7 million deaths from outdoor pollution came as a result of stroke and heart disease, 11% from lung diseases and 6% from cancers. The vast majority were in Asia, with 180,000 in the Americas and Europe combined, said the WHO.

Indoor air pollution led to 4.3 million deaths, of which 34% were caused by strokes, 26% heart diseases and 12% respiratory disease in children. Only 19,000 of these deaths were in rich countries, with the vast majority being in low- and middle-income countries. Because many people are exposed to both indoor and outdoor air pollution, the WHO said deaths attributed to the two sources cannot be added together.

"The risks from air pollution are now far greater than previously thought or understood, particularly for heart disease and strokes," said Maria Neira, director of WHO's department for public health, environmental and social determinants of health. "Few risks have a greater impact on global health today than air pollution; the evidence signals the need for concerted action to clean up the air we all breathe."

South-east Asia, said the WHO, is now the most polluted region in the world, with 3.3 million deaths linked to indoor air pollution and 2.6 million deaths related to outdoor air pollution. This reflects the explosive growth of cities and industrial development in China and India, as well as continuing deep poverty in rural areas.

The new estimates are based not on an significant increase in pollution, but on improved knowledge of the links between air pollutants and heart diseases and cancers, in addition to known links with respiratory diseases. A 2008 WHO report estimated that outdoor pollution led to about 1.3 million deaths, while about 1.9 million people were killed by indoor pollution. A Lancet study last year suggested that the surge in car use in south and east Asia killed 2.1 million people prematurely in 2010. Last year, WHO's cancer agency classified air pollution as a carcinogen, linking dirty air to lung and bladder cancer.

"Cleaning up the air we breathe prevents non-communicable diseases as well as reduces disease risks among women and vulnerable groups, including children and the elderly," said Dr Flavia Bustreo, WHO assistant director general of family, women and children's health. "Poor women and children pay a heavy price from indoor air pollution since they spend more time at home breathing in smoke and soot from leaky coal and wood cook stoves."

Martin Williams, professor of air quality at the environmental research group, King's College London, said: "This is an important study, and although the majority of attributable deaths occur in south-east Asia and the western Pacific, air pollution impacts on mortality and health are still a significant public health problem in Europe, including the UK."

Air pollution is increasingly linked with ill health and deaths in rich countries as traffic emissions rise. In the US, air pollution causes about 200,000 early deaths a year, with emissions from cars and trucks causing 53,000 and power generation 52,000, according to MIT's environment laboratory. California suffers most from air pollution, with 21,000 early deaths.

In Europe, poor air quality is the top environmental cause of premature deaths in the EU, causing more than 100,000 premature deaths a year and costing from £300bn-£800bn a year in extra health costs, said Janez Potočnik, the EU environment commissioner.

Air pollution causes 29,000 early deaths a year in the UK and similar numbers in France and Germany.

John Vidal

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

Are books really banned in prisons? | Reality Check | Juliette Jowit

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 05:48 AM PDT

Prisoners have been stopped from receiving books as parcels: how restricted will inmates' reading habits become, is there really a list of banned titles, and what is on it?

Juliette Jowit

US sailor shot dead aboard destroyer at Naval Station Norfolk

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 05:45 AM PDT

Operations back to normal at world's largest naval base after security forces killed single civilian suspect

Spencer Ackerman

Sahel meningitis outbreaks linked to wind and dust levels, claim scientists

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 05:35 AM PDT

Researchers collaborate with health officials to plan vaccination campaigns after discovering how to predict seasonal outbreaks

Scientists may soon be able to forecast disease outbreaks in sub-Saharan African's "meningitis belt" using weather data. The forecasts could be used to plan early vaccination drives aimed at preventing or limiting casualties.

In the "meningitis belt" of sub-Saharan Africa, which stretches across the Sahel from Senegal to Ethiopia, major epidemics of lethal meningitis are routine. A devastating 1996-97 outbreak killed about 25,000 people.

An effective new vaccine has driven a decrease in meningitis, but the standard procedure in the region has been to carry out vaccination drives and antibiotic treatment of the disease in districts already suffering outbreaks. In some cases, help arrives too late to make a significant impact, health officials say.

In the near future, though, scientists might be able to use climate factors such as wind and dust conditions to forecast these epidemics and develop earlier vaccination strategies to prevent or limit casualties.

New research carried out in Niger by the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society found that measured levels of wind and dust can be used to predict some of the annual variability in meningitis outbreaks, at both national and district levels.

"We've known that the disease is associated to climate and environmental issues for a long time, because it's very seasonal," said Carlos Pérez García-Pando, one of the report's lead authors.

The challenge, he said, was to figure out which climate factors were important in order to better equip public health decision-makers to act.

"The idea was to try to use models and observations from satellites and all kinds of data on potential (climate-related) parameters that might be affecting the disease, and try to use that information to provide advance warning," Pérez said.

What the group of researchers found was a particularly close correlation between wind and dust levels and meningitis outbreaks.

Madeleine Thomson, another researcher involved in the project, called the strength of the relationship astonishing.

"A lot of experts have known for a long time that environment is important, but not how important," she said.

The research on meningitis follows similar work with malaria, connecting climate factors to the mosquito-borne disease.

Thomson explained that the differences between the two diseases made them well-suited for comparative studies.

"We had some experience working on malaria, and chose to work on meningitis, because it's an important disease, particularly for the Sahel region in Africa, and it's a dry season disease, instead of a wet season disease … So it allowed us to explore some of the challenges of dealing with a different type of the disease, but again with environmental and climate factors."

"What we've learned is that yes, this approach can be applied to climate sensitive diseases, writ large," she said.

The researchers said their work was designed to help health officials make effective decisions about meningitis vaccination campaigns. "We have been collaborating very closely with decision makers," added Pérez.

The next steps are to expand the research outside of Niger and build models for other parts of the affected region, he said.

"What we've created is a useful tool that can help decision makers to think, organise, distribute medicine, and make their decisions more in advance," Pérez said.

Malaysia Airlines MH370: how final flight path was tracked – video

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 05:22 AM PDT

British satellite company Inmarsat's Chris McLaughlin explains how scientists were able to work out the final flight path of the missing plane

Russia dismisses G8 snub as G7 leaders meet to discuss tactics – video

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 05:16 AM PDT

Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, responds to the announcement by G8 leaders that they have suspended their 16-year collaboration with Russia

Ireland's police chief, Martin Callinan, resigns over whistleblower row

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 05:14 AM PDT

Garda commissioner was criticised over handling of allegations that officers wiped penalty points of well-connected people

Ireland's top police officer resigned on Tuesday following criticism of his handling of information from whistleblowers.

Martin Callinan announced he was standing down as head of the Garda Síochána after a controversy over driver penalty points.

Two whistleblowers have made repeated allegations that fellow Garda officers routinely wiped penalty points for road traffic breaches for well-connected people.

Callinan came under sustained criticism over his handling of the affair and even faced demands from Ireland's deputy prime minister, Eamon Gilmore, to withdraw remarks he made about the whistleblowers.

The issue has caused rifts within the Fine Gael-Labour ruling coalition in Dublin as the justice minister, Alan Shatter, fought a rearguard campaign to defend Callinan from his critics.

Two months ago Callinan caused outrage when he described the actions of the two whistleblowing Garda officers as disgusting during a hearing by an Irish parliamentary committee into the affair.

Henry McDonald

Ukrainian far-right activist shot dead by police

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 05:13 AM PDT

Officials say Oleksander Muzychko, whose Right Sector group played key role in ousting president, opened fire on officers first

A prominent Ukrainian far-right activist, part of a hardline nationalist movement that played a leading role in the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych, has been shot dead by police.

The interior ministry said officers from the Sokol special unit had killed Oleksander Muzychko, also known as Sashko Bily, as he tried to escape from a cafe in the western Ukrainian region of Rivne on Monday night.

"At the moment of arrest, at shouts of 'Stop! Police!', Muzychko fled, jumping through a window and opened fire," the first deputy interior minister, Volodymyr Yevdokimov, told a news conference in Kiev. The officers returned fire, killing Muzychko, he said.

Muzychko was a member of the hardline Right Sector and the group's co-ordinator for western Ukraine, the country's nationalist heartland bordering the EU. Police said he was wanted for hooliganism and an attack on a local prosecutor.

Russia, which cited the likes of Right Sector as justification for its move to annex Crimea and protect the peninsula's ethnic Russian majority from Ukrainian "fascists", said this month that Muzychko was under investigation for fighting alongside rebels in Chechnya in the 1990s.

Contradicting the police account, the independent MP Oleksander Doniy said on his Facebook page that Muzychko had been executed. Muzychko had previously said he feared the police would kill him.

"Two vehicles cut off his car. He was dragged out and put in one of them. Then he was thrown on the ground, hands cuffed behind his back, two shots to the heart," Doniy wrote, without saying where he got his information.

Yanukovych triggered peaceful street protests in late November by making a U-turn away from the EU and towards closer ties with Russia. Right Sector raised the protests to a new level in January by attacking police vehicles with petrol bombs and bricks. It provided much of the muscle as clashes with police grew more serious.

Yanukovych fled in February after two days of gun battles between police and protesters in which 95 people were killed.

The Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh has said he plans to run for president in elections on 25 May, but he is a rank outsider.

Extreme skydivers arrested over World Trade Center parachute jump

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 05:12 AM PDT

Trio and alleged accomplice facing charges over September 30 leap, raising questions over security at tallest US skyscraper

Suleiman Abu Ghaith prosecutors tell jurors: 'You are looking at a guilty man'

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 04:57 AM PDT

Jury hears closing arguments in trial of Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, charged with providing material support to al-Qaida

Lorna Simpson's photography: gold afros, chess players and 50s glamour

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 04:53 AM PDT

The US artist's long overdue retrospective at Baltic in Gateshead makes viewers question everything they see with its interrogations of race, identity and memory

When she was 12, Lorna Simpson took part in a dance peformance at the Lincoln Centre in New York, dressed in a gold body suit and matching shoes. It was, she has recalled, "like performing from a black hole – I knew immediately it was not for me."

What perturbed Simpson as she danced was the feeling that she would much rather be in the audience watching the spectacle. When her parents showed her some indistinct snapshots of her performance, that feeling was only heightened. "I don't know if that was the moment I felt a need to recapture 'the moment'," she later said, linking her disappointment to a "curiousity about photography". But that was the last time she danced.

The conceptual thrust to Simpson's photographic art is perhaps best described by the title of her first exhibition in 1985: Gestures/Reenactments. An intriguing new show at the Baltic in Gateshead – Simpson's first and long overdue European retrospective – shows how the Brooklyn-based artist asks us to doubt and question everything we see.

Simpson, who has also been nominated for this year's Deutsche Börse photography prize, uses still images often accompanied by texts, film and drawing. It's up to the viewer to make connections in her open-ended narratives. Those connections often have to do with race, identity and memory – but nothing is overloaded. Instead, the works often have a pared-down quality and odd blankness – where a single object, a hairstyle or a wig, can come to represent a whole index of possible meanings or readings.

That blankness is resonant in an early work called Waterbearer, in which a black woman in a white shift dress pours water from two receptacles, one metallic and the other plastic. It echoes a gesture familiar from classical art, except that the woman's back is turned so we do not see her face. She is, as the critic Hilton Als noted in the Village Voice in 1990, not an icon, but a presence – "the negro presence in the history of art, rarely acknowledged, rarely felt".

Beneath the photograph a text reads: "She saw him disappear by the river. They asked her to tell what happened, only to discount her memory." These are the words of Phillis Wheatley – a slave who became a poet, and the first black women to publish a book in America – conjuring up a memory of her birthplace in Senegambia. In this context, the words become loaded, suggesting an entire oral history in which memory is all and yet, against the weight of written history, nothing.

The centrepiece of this show, which occupies two floors of the Baltic but only skims the breadth and depth of Simpson's 30-odd years of work, is a vast two-screen film piece entitled Momentum (2010). Here, the memory of that dance performance from her childhood is transformed into something more playful and questioning. Almost seven minutes long, the performance is mirrored on the screens and begins before the actual dancing, with the dancers standing still. Everyone has gold skin and hair as well as a gold costume, so the film seems both mundane – the dancers wait, pirouette, stand still, look bored – and yet imbued with a Hollywood musical unrealness. Again, there is an odd flatness to proceedings, as if the memory of her initial disappointment is the key emotional determinant here.

I found myself studying faces and gestures – that word again – as I waited for a moment of revelation that never quite materialised. Instead, the dancers twirl and stop, twirl and stop, some more graceful than others, some utterly absorbed, some less so. What you are seeing is the mechanics of performance: the waiting, the doing, the redoing, all made new by an artist's – rather than an artistic director's – wilfully undramatic choreography.

The show's curator insists this is a retrospective based on "turning points" in Simpson's oeuvre, so it is interesting to see what she does with found photography, currently one of the key (and near-exhausted) tropes of art photography. In her wall piece, 1957-2009, she uses a cache of black-and-white images acquired on eBay of a young woman – and occasionally a man – posing as if for a 1950s magazine shoot.

Placing herself in the images, dressed and posing like the woman and sometimes the man, she is again drawing attention to uses of gesture. If the couple are attuned to the gestures required of the glamour magazines of their time, she in turn is attuned to the even more self-concious gestures of conceptual art, which often mimic these original poses. In the process, what once seemed gauche, even innocent, becomes highly stylised and knowing.

A more recent video work called Chess (2013), which unfolds in a dark room, leads on directly from 1957-2009. On two adjacent projections, Simpson plays the male and female characters in a game of chess, each character refracted in a five-way mirror. On the opposite screen, the musician Jason Moran plays himself playing the piece he composed for the installation – one screen shows his right hand playing, the other his left.

The room really does become a hall of mirrors; nothing is what it seems. First up, the male and female characters play not against each other but against themselves. As you watch, they age before your eyes. Here, performance and narrative are fractured and endlessly repeated in a way that is almost overwhelming to the viewer. As with all of her work, you are placed in a position of constantly questioning what you are witnessing, both as a sensory experience and as a piece of art loaded with meanings.

Speaking of her work in 2009, and in particular of Waterbearer, Simpson said: "I didn't want anyone to have a chance to look at anything in those images except maybe their own convictions." Her art, then, is a mirror that casts an often oblique reflection and, as such, works much like memory itself.

Sean O'Hagan

Irish police chief's resignation vindicates sacked investigative journalist

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 04:25 AM PDT

Today's resignation of Ireland's police chief, Martin Callinan, is a vindication of the reporting of Gemma O'Doherty, a journalist fired by the Irish Independent for her pursuit of the story that has led to his departure.

As I reported in September last year, O'Doherty was made compulsorily redundant by the paper after door-stepping Callinan, the Garda commissioner.

She was following up a tip that penalty points had been wiped from Callinan's driving record. It came against the background of allegations by police whistleblowers that hundreds of people had also had penalty points removed from their licences.

But Stephen Rae, editor-in-chief of the Dublin-based Independent titles (and a former editor of the Garda Review magazine), was furious with O'Doherty. He called her a "rogue reporter" for approaching Callinan without permission.

Although her story was eventually run in "sanitised" form, she was informed that she was to be made redundant. She had been with the paper for 18 years and was regarded as one of its finest investigative journalists.

Last month, O'Doherty launched a defamation action against Rae and the Irish Independent, which is owned by Independent News & Media, seeking aggravated and exemplary damages.

Her lawyer, Paul Tweed, said it was the first of three legal actions. She will also take her case to Ireland's employment appeals tribunal and the personal injuries assessment board.

Tweed said O'Doherty was "devastated" by the way she has been treated by the Irish Independent after "doing her job to the same high standards that in the past had earned her unequivocal praise".

In September last year, the London-based Irish Post revealed that a car registered to Rae had had penalty points wiped in 2009.

In fact, the Irish Post is one of the very few newspapers to have reported the details of O'Doherty's firing. Ireland's domestic mainstream newspapers and its major broadcaster, RTÉ, ignored the story.

Callinan last week told a Dublin parliamentary committee that the claims about penalty points deductions by the whistleblowers - Sergeant Maurice McCabe and the now-retired John Wilson - were "disgusting".

But a report by the independent Garda Inspectorate considered McCabe's information to be "credible" and found that there were consistent and widespread breaches of policy by those charged with administering the penalty points system.

Comment: A journalist was interrupted in her duty to inform the public about a scandal involving a state's police force. Isn't that the whole point of our journalistic mission? Should she have been fired for that?

In the light of today's developments and the report by the independent Garda Inspectorate, it is surely time for Stephen Rae to consider his position and for Independent News & Media to consider reinstating O'Doherty. At the very least, Rae's links with Callinan and the Gardai require internal and external investigation.

Sources: BBC/Irish Post/Sunday Times/Irish Independent

Roy Greenslade

Coalition has 'blown out' debt forecasts to discredit Labor, says Chris Bowen

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 04:01 AM PDT

Opposition cites independent analysis showing gross debt in 2023-24 would be about $270bn less than predicted in outlook

Daniel Hurst

MH370: relatives of Chinese passengers march on Malaysian embassy in Beijing

Posted: 25 Mar 2014 03:45 AM PDT

Family members demand answers after more than two weeks of confusing and sometimes contradictory briefings by authorities

MH370: follow the latest developments live

Family members of passengers on board flight MH370 have marched on the Malaysian embassy in Beijing demanding answers, after authorities said they had concluded the missing plane crashed in the remote Indian Ocean with the loss of all 239 people on board.

More than two weeks of confusing and sometimes contradictory briefings have left relatives of more than 150 Chinese citizens on board deeply suspicious about the search and investigation.

The well co-ordinated protest followed Monday night's announcement by the Malaysian prime minister and Malaysia Airlines that all evidence suggested the plane had crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.

The Malaysia Airlines group chief executive officer, Ahmad Jauhari Yahya, told reporters on Tuesday: "My heart breaks to think of the unimaginable pain suffered by all the families. There are no words which can ease that pain. Everyone in the Malaysia Airlines family is praying for the 239 souls on MH370 and for their loved ones on this dark day."

Asked whether he would resign, he said it was a personal question that he would consider later.

Some family members have said they cannot accept the conclusion until they see physical evidence of a crash. But on Tuesday gale force winds and heavy rains forced Australian authorities overseeing the search to call off their efforts.

On Tuesday about 200 people marched from the Beijing hotel where were staying to the Malaysian embassy, wearing T-shirts reading "pray for MH370" and carrying printed signs saying "Tell us the truth" and "MH370, don't let us wait too long!"

The mood was sombre and mostly quiet as the crowd made its way along the main road, although periodically they chanted slogans including "The Malaysian government cheated us."

Steve Wang, who said he had a family member on the plane, accused Malaysian officials of not respecting the families. He said the relatives had marched to the embassy after they were told the ambassador would meet them at the hotel but failed to appear.

Several of the protesters threw bottles of water towards the building as they chanted for diplomats to come out and take their statement, calling them "beasts". They were bussed back to the hotel to meet the ambassador after a two-hour protest.

Chinese authorities – which normally crack down on street protests – facilitated the march, closing off to traffic the main road taken by protesters. Despite heavy security, they allowed them to protest outside the embassy for two hours.

Many of the families learned the news they had dreaded via a text message warning them: "We have to assume beyond all reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost and none of those on board survived."

At a news conference in Kuala Lumpur, airline officials defended sending a text message as a last resort to ensure that family members did not hear the news first from media if they could not be reached by a phone call or in person.

But the fact the message was sent in English only and that the families gathered in Beijing were not briefed en masse added to the anger of relatives.

Chinese state media said a senior member of the state council was on his way to meet family members on Tuesday – the first senior official to do so since the plane vanished. High-ranking leaders – often the premier or the president himself – are usually quick to make consolation visits to those involved in high-profile tragedies.

Malaysian authorities have said they believe the diversion of the plane – less than an hour after take-off from Kuala Lumpur on 8 March – was deliberate. But while investigators are looking into possibilities including hijacking and sabotage, they have not ruled out other explanations such as technical problems.

The communications systems stopped working or were shut off at around the time it turned west, away from its course to Beijing, and recrossed the Malay peninsula.

Experts say there is little hope of learning how and why the Beijing-bound flight diverted from its route and ended in the ocean unless the wreckage can be found.

"This is a mystery and until we recover and positively identify a piece of debris everything is virtually speculation," the Australian defence minister, David Johnston, told reporters at the RAAF Pearce air base north of Perth on Tuesday.

He added: "The challenge of flying to such a remote region and conducting search operations cannot be overstated. With eight hours of flying to and from the search region, the fleet of P3 Orion aircraft and other military aircraft have only a precious few hours to scour the search tracks they have been given."

Air Marshal Mark Binskin warned: "We're not searching for a needle in the haystack, we're searching for where the haystack is."

The Chinese government has already promised to dispatch more vessels to the remote search zone – around 2,500km (1,500 miles) south-west of Perth – to assist the operation.

A government source told Reuters that Malaysia would lead the investigation, but hoped other countries, especially Australia, would play a major role.

Final confirmation of the disaster came after 17 days and was based on unprecedented analysis of "ping" signals sent to a satellite as the plane continued flying after disappearing from radar when its main locating beacons stopped operating and it veered off course between Malaysia and Vietnam.

The Chinese deputy foreign minister, Xie Hangsheng, has demanded Malaysia hand over all relevant satellite analysis showing how it reached its conclusion about the aircraft's fate.

As the search for wreckage continues a race is under way to find the black box recorders from the plane. The cockpit voice recorder and a data recorder emit a high-pitched ping underwater for at least 30 days after a crash.

The Australian and US navies are sending equipment to the search area to hunt for the signals – the Americans dispatching a "towed pinger locator", a cylindrical microphone that is towed behind a ship in a grid pattern and can detect a signal up to two miles away. The Australian navy said it was deploying vessels equipped with acoustic detectors capable of picking up the audible beacon.

"We've got to get lucky," said John Goglia, a former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board. "It's a race to get to the area in time to catch the black box pinger while it's still working."

Tania Branigan

Paul Farrell