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

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• Oscar Pistorius trial day three
• Clegg says Ukip MEPs lazy and ineffective in speech on Europe: Politics live blog
• EU agrees watered-down deal on aviation carbon emissions
• Ukraine crisis: Russia to hold talks with US after Putin and Obama trade accusations - live updates
• Pim and Theo: the kids' theatre show about zealots and murder
• Eyewitness: Uganda
• Eurostar passenger figures top 10 million for first time
• Oscar-winner Paolo Sorrentino to pair up with Michael Caine
• Why has the South Park: Stick of Truth game been censored in Europe?
• HSU was warned in 2008 about credit cards transactions, documents show
• Oscar Pistorius arrives for day three of murder trial – video
• Sick in Iran
• Ukraine crisis: Russia to hold talks with Nato in bid to avert war
• Pope Francis gets own celebrity fanzine Il Mio Papa | Media Monkey
• Senate inquiry to look at environmental offsets used to secure mining projects
• Victorian police sacked after social club produced racist stubby holders
• Fiji's junta chief steps down ahead of national elections
• Israeli troops shoot two Hezbollah fighters near Golan Heights, reports say
• Tony Abbott downplays lack of progress on spying code of ethics
• Russia Today presenter hits out at Moscow over Ukraine
• Qantas inquiry to investigate airline’s financial problems
• Senate votes to censure Fiona Nash after she fails to hand over document
• Ukraine has revealed the new world of western impotence | Simon Jenkins
• Addis Ababa and its hyenas have a long and peaceful history
• There's aren't enough women at the highest levels of leadership | Jane Dudman

Oscar Pistorius trial day three Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:50 AM PST Full coverage of day three of the trial of the South African athlete Oscar Pistorius for the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp Alexandra Topping

Clegg says Ukip MEPs lazy and ineffective in speech on Europe: Politics live blog Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:48 AM PST Andrew Sparrow's rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen, including David Cameron and Ed Miliband at PMQ's and Nick Clegg's speech attacking Ukip Andrew Sparrow

EU agrees watered-down deal on aviation carbon emissions Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:46 AM PST European Union reaches preliminary deal on a law that will exempt long-haul flights from paying for emissions until 2016

Ukraine crisis: Russia to hold talks with US after Putin and Obama trade accusations - live updates Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:45 AM PST Follow live coverage of events in Ukraine as Russia and the US are due to discuss the ongoing crisis after Putin and Obama traded accusations Haroon Siddique Aisha Gani

Pim and Theo: the kids' theatre show about zealots and murder Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:35 AM PST The controversial artist Theo van Gogh and the far-right politician Pim Fortuyn are an odd couple bound together in death in a new play for young audiences Pim and Theo are not your everyday children's theatre protagonists. Pim is Pim Fortuyn, the far-right Dutch politician assassinated in 2002 after claiming that "the Netherlands is full". Theo is the provocative Dutch artist and film-maker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in Amsterdam two years later over a short film that featured naked women painted with passages from the Koran. Rosie and Jim, they are not. Putting the pair onstage is a big risk – particularly in front of a teenage audience. Alex Byrne, artistic director of the anglo-European devised theatre company New International Encounter, is keenly aware of that. "The more I explored the subject," he says, "the less I knew what I thought about it." That's exactly what drives his work: "If I already know, then what's the point in doing it? You go on stage to find out with an audience what something might mean." Fortuyn and van Gogh were both vehemently outspoken public figures – as controversial as they were contradictory. "It's very easy to sympathise with Theo van Gogh," says Byrne. "He's an artist. He stood up for freedom of expression and the right to offend people. He offended a lot of people, did some very foolish things and was murdered in public, in a very brutal way. "On the other hand, Pim Fortuyn was, in many ways, a very unappealing man: potentially racist with a particular anti-immigration agenda, but he was also very erudite and charming with this strange dichotomy of being both very rightwing and also very openly gay and promiscuous." In NIE's piece, the two men are almost bound together in death, like two Beckett characters forced to rely on and infuriate each other for all eternity. "Pim Fortuyn, who was shot in the head, can't remember what happened to him," Byrne explains. "Theo van Gogh, who had a discourse with his killer before an explanation was pinned to his chest with a steak knife, can't forget." Both walk around with their fatal injuries on show: an indignity that makes them simultaneously clownish and unsettling. The dilemma the two men stand for is this: Does liberalism have its limits or must tolerance extend to include the intolerant? Fortuyn and Van Gogh both said no and, in doing so, spoke out against more absolutist understandings of Islam. In that, their lives (and deaths) beg another apparent paradox: Does freedom of speech encompass the right to offend? At one point, Van Gogh gives Fortuyn free rein to take the stage and say his piece. "I wanted to put some of the things that Pim Fortuyn says onstage," Byrne continues. "They're not necessarily rabidly racist statements, but they are racist." Fortuyn's speaking style was also oddly persuasive: not rabble-rousing, but subtle and self-deprecating. That combination makes the show all the more troubling and the company has already been accused by one Austrian teacher of giving Fortuyn's views an unwarranted platform. But Byrne trusts his audience – young as they are – to decide for themselves. "In political oratory, you can find yourself listening to argument and you sort of go, 'OK, I kind of align myself with that'. Then, 'Hang on, I see where this is going. No I don't.'" In some ways, Pim and Theo allows that young audience a safe space to encounter "the politics of the right and of racial identity that can," Byrne believes, "be beguiling." He points to Nigel Farage's charm, such as it is, as being based in mischievous humour and "a wink" that somehow makes politics human. Fortuyn did something similar by reflecting people's actual concerns, fracturing traditional distinctions between left- and rightwing politics. Pim and Theo leaves enough space for its audience to unpick those tangled values. It's almost forum theatre: at times questions hang in the air, seemingly awaiting an answer. Byrne never wanted to "teach or preach a position" and so much of the key factual and biographical information is built into the installation-like set, which audience members explore after the show. That's actually rather fitting. Teenagers – certainly British teenagers – are unlikely to be familiar with either Fortuyn and Van Gogh and, detached from context, both become abstracted. It cools the controversy around these men and allows us instead to think of local equivalents: Nick Griffin, Tommy Robinson, Godfrey Bloom. That makes the debate about freedom of speech and its limits particularly resonant. Byrne sees a conclusion in there: "that we should celebrate our right to say whatever we want, but we don't always have to say it. That's from Theo van Gogh's father: he says, 'I totally believed in my son's right to say what he wants, but I sometimes wish he wouldn't feel compelled to do so straight away.'" Another parallel springs to mind in Britain, from the very public nature of their respective deaths. When we learn that van Gogh's killer tried to decapitate him, it's impossible not to think of Drummer Lee Rigby. NIE were rehearsing the show at the time of his murder. It shocked them, but didn't necessarily surprise them. "We tend to believe that violence is much further from the surface than it really is," says Byrne. He points to violence – "some of it in our name" – happening overseas, though insists that it does not "ameliorate or excuse" Rigby's murderers. If there's a danger in Pim and Theo, it's that the piece doesn't represent either Fortuyn or Van Gogh's killers. Doing so leaves the two murders ambiguous. It risks making decisive action look more impactful than decisive speech and allowing those murders – both with specific motives – stand for anything and everything. "I didn't feel we owed them any right to speak," says Byrne, recognising it as a "glaring omission" that he hopes will force spectators to consider the motivations and implications of that decision. It's a rare piece of theatre that trusts teenagers to that extent. Theatre Pim Fortuyn Religion Matt Trueman 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

Eyewitness: Uganda Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:31 AM PST Photographs from the Guardian Eyewitness series

Eurostar passenger figures top 10 million for first time Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:29 AM PST Channel tunnel train company says it carried 10.1 million travellers in 2013 and saw sales revenue rise 7% to £857m Channel tunnel high-speed train company Eurostar has reached the 10 million mark for annual passengers for the first time. The company carried 10.1 million travellers in 2013 – a 2% increase on the figure for 2012. Last year was the 10th successive year in which passenger numbers have grown and the company has now carried 140 million passengers since it started in 1994. Eurostar, which runs 186mph trains between London and Paris and Brussels, also reported that its 2013 sales revenue had risen 7% to £857m, while operating profit was up 4% to £54m. Eurostar's chief executive, Nicolas Petrovic, said: "2013 has proved to be a record-breaking year for Eurostar and we are pleased with the sustainable growth in both traveller numbers and sales revenues reported today. "After a period of economic uncertainty we are now starting to see more confidence in the business market. In comparison with this time last year when the overriding sentiment was still very cautious, there are more encouraging trends and in some sectors there is clearly a greater appetite to invest and look for business." Eurostar Channel Tunnel Europe 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-winner Paolo Sorrentino to pair up with Michael Caine Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:21 AM PST Italian director who carried off best foreign statuette for The Great Beauty lines up veteran British actor for In the Future • The Great Beauty wins best foreign language film Oscar Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino is to start work on his follow-up to The Great Beauty, a film called In the Future which is due to star Michael Caine. According to Variety, In the Future is a "small, intimate film" about "friendship between two old people'", quoting an interview the Italian film-maker gave to La Reppublica. Sorrentino, who won the best foreign language film Oscar for The Great Beauty, has worked with English-speaking actors before, having cast Sean Penn in his goth-rocker road movie This Must Be the Place, which was selected for Cannes. There is no word yet as to whether In the Future contains a role for Sorrentino's regular collaborator Toni Servillo, who played the lead in The Great Beauty. • Paolo Sorrentino on The Great Beauty and why Italy must change or die Oscars 2014 Michael Caine World cinema Drama Oscars United States Andrew Pulver 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

Why has the South Park: Stick of Truth game been censored in Europe? Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:21 AM PST Several scenes have been cut from the forthcoming game – even though it has an 18 certificate. By Toby Moses Toby Moses

HSU was warned in 2008 about credit cards transactions, documents show Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:14 AM PST A cache of previously confidential source documents relating to Craig Thomson and the HSU have been released by the Senate Daniel Hurst

Oscar Pistorius arrives for day three of murder trial – video Posted: 05 Mar 2014 01:04 AM PST Athlete Oscar Pistorius arrives at court in Pretoria on the third day of his trial for the murder in February 2013 of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp

Sick in Iran Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:56 AM PST A family in Tehran grapples with a father's cancer

Ukraine crisis: Russia to hold talks with Nato in bid to avert war Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:56 AM PST US secretary of state John Kerry to meet Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov as Europe discusses possible sanctions The US and Russia are to hold talks on easing east-west tensions over Ukraine as the west steps up efforts to persuade Moscow to pull its forces back to base in Crimea and avert the risk of a war. The US secretary of state, John Kerry, and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, will meet face-to-face for the first time since the crisis escalated, after a conference in Paris attended by all five permanent members of the UN security council. Nato and Russia will hold parallel talks in Brussels amid concerns that a standoff between Russian and Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea could still spark violence, or that Moscow could also intervene in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said European Union leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday could decide on sanctions against Russia if there is no "de-escalation" by then. "We're working on it," Fabius told the BFM television network ahead of a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart. "There is no military solution." President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday defended Russia's actions in Crimea, a strategic Black Sea peninsula that is part of Ukraine but used to be Russian territory, and said he would use force only as a last resort. His comments eased market fears of a war over the former Soviet republic. But Russian forces remain in control of the region and Putin gave no sign of pulling servicemen – based in Crimea as part of the Black Sea fleet – back to base. "What he wants above all is a new empire, like the USSR but called Russia," former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko told France's Europe 1 radio. In Washington, President Barack Obama acknowledged that Russia had legitimate interests in Ukraine but said that did not give Putin the right to intervene militarily. "President Putin seems to have a different set of lawyers making a different set of interpretations," Obama said. "But I don't think that's fooling anybody." A senior administration official said Obama spoke to the German chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday and discussed a potential resolution to the crisis. The Russian-speaking German leader has good relations with the German-speaking Putin, and Berlin is Russia's biggest economic partner. The official said Obama, in his phone call with Putin last Saturday, had discussed what officials called an "off-ramp" to the crisis in which Russia would pull its forces in Crimea back to their bases and allow international monitors to ensure that the rights of ethnic Russians are protected. The US president will stay away from a G8 summit scheduled for Sochi, Russia, in June unless there is a Russian reversal in the Ukraine crisis, the official added. At his first news conference since the crisis began, Putin said on Tuesday that Russia reserved the right to use all options to protect compatriots who were living in "terror" in Ukraine but that force was not needed for now. His comments, coupled with the end of Russian war games near Ukraine's borders, lifted Russian bonds and stock markets around the world after a panic selloff on Monday. In comments ridiculed by US officials, Putin denied Russian armed forces were directly engaged in the bloodless seizure of Crimea, claiming that the uniformed troops without national insignia were "local self-defence forces". The French president, Françcois Hollande, became the latest western leader to raise the possibility of sanctions if Putin does not step back and accept mediation. He set out a tougher public line than Merkel, who has avoided talk of sanctions so far. "The role of France alongside Europe … is to exert all necessary pressure, including a possible imposition of sanctions, to push for dialogue and seek a political solution to this crisis." Hollande told an annual dinner of France's Jewish community leaders late on Tuesday. Putin earlier said western sanctions under consideration against Russia would be counter-productive. A senior US official said Washington was ready to impose them in days rather than weeks. The Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, said after speaking to Obama at the weekend that the G7 group of leading industrialised nations were considering meeting in the near future, a move that would pointedly exclude Russia. The G7 became the G8 in 1998 when Russia was formally included. Kerry, on his first visit to Kiev since the overthrow of Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovich, accused Moscow of seeking a pretext to invade more of the country. He said the US was not seeking a confrontation and would prefer to see the situation managed through international institutions such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Yanukovich was expected to meet Lavrov, Hollande and the British foreign secretary, William Hague, on the sidelines of a Paris conference on Lebanon, before holding private talks with the Russian minister later in the day in the French capital. Ukraine's acting foreign minister, Andriy Deshchitsia, was also in Paris for talks with French officials and Kerry. It was not clear if he too would meet Lavrov. No major incidents were reported in Crimea overnight. But in a sign of the fragility of the situation, a Russian soldier on Tuesday fired three volleys of shots over the heads of unarmed Ukrainian servicemen who marched bearing the Ukrainian flag towards their aircraft at a military airfield surrounded by Russian troops at Belbek, near Sevastopol. After a standoff in which the two commanders shouted at each other and Russian soldiers levelled rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers at the Ukrainians, the incident was defused and the Ukrainians eventually dispersed. No one was hurt. The Ukrainian border guard service said Russian navy ships had blocked both ends of the Kerch Strait between Crimea and Russia, but Ukraine's infrastructure ministry said the 2.7-mile (4.5-km) wide waterway was still open for civilian shipping. Ukraine Russia Europe Obama administration Vladimir Putin US foreign policy United Nations United States 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

Pope Francis gets own celebrity fanzine Il Mio Papa | Media Monkey Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:55 AM PST Silvio Berlusconi's media empire has taken a surprising new direction with the launch of its latest magazine. Best known for celebrity titles full of paparazzi pictures, Il Mio Papa – My Pope in Italian – will be devoted entirely to Pope Francis. Scheduled for a print run of 3m for the launch issue, the target circulation is said to be 500,000. The Times reports that those devoted half a million readers will be treated to regular features like Saint of the Week, in-depth articles such as how the Pope missed a Rome seminary because he had a touch of flu and interviews with pilgrims in St Peter's Square. Magazines Newspapers & magazines Pope Francis Silvio Berlusconi Monkey 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

Senate inquiry to look at environmental offsets used to secure mining projects Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:52 AM PST Greens criticise offsets as 'magic pudding calculations' and claim requirements made in approvals stage are rarely enforced Michael Safi

Victorian police sacked after social club produced racist stubby holders Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:46 AM PST Thirteen officers faced disciplinary action after investigation into conduct at police station in Melbourne suburb of Sunshine

Fiji's junta chief steps down ahead of national elections Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:44 AM PST Commodore Voreqe 'Frank' Bainimarama resigns as military commander-in-chief in order to stand for presidency The leader of Fiji's military junta officially resigned his position in the armed forces on Wednesday before national elections he is widely expected to win. Commodore Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama, who took power in a bloodless 2006 coup, announced earlier this year that he would resign as commander-in-chief in order to stand for the presidency in elections slated for September. Ceremonies were being held in the capital, Suva, to commemorate the end of his nearly four-decade military career and the transfer of command to land force commander, Brigadier Mosese Tikoitoga, Australian and Fijian media reported. The Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, praised the announcement. Bishop visited Fiji last month and has made a thawing of icy relations between the two neighbours a priority. Australia and New Zealand are Fiji's biggest aid donors. "This is the latest in a series of positive developments in Fiji's election preparations, and its return to parliamentary democracy," Bishop said in a statement. Fiji has suffered four coups and a bloody military mutiny since 1987, mainly as a result of tension between the majority indigenous Fijian population and an economically powerful, ethnic Indian minority. Australia and New Zealand imposed tough sanctions on the regime in the wake of the 2006 coup, which contributed to a sharp deterioration of relations. Fiji's military government has been criticised by the UN high commissioner for human rights and activist groups for widespread media censorship and allegations of human rights abuses, including torture. Bainimarama, who imposed emergency laws in 2009 prohibiting protests and censoring the media, promised in 2012 to begin talks on a constitution to replace one annulled in 2009. However, police seized and destroyed hundreds of copies of the draft constitution, which had angered senior military officers by curbing the military's interference in politics, sparking criticism from Australia and New Zealand. Fiji Asia Pacific 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

Israeli troops shoot two Hezbollah fighters near Golan Heights, reports say Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:21 AM PST Army spokeswoman says men were trying to plant bomb and were part of Lebanese militia Israeli troops shot two Hezbollah fighters who tried to plant a bomb near the fence between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Syrian-held territory on Wednesday, the army said. An army spokeswoman said Israeli intelligence had identified the men as members of Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia helping the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, fight a civil war. She had no immediate word on their condition. Hezbollah – an Iranian-backed Shia group whose politicians sit in the Beirut government – fought Israel to a standstill in the 2006 Lebanon war. Both sides have built up strength since but have largely avoided direct confrontation. Last week, however, Hezbollah accused Israel of bombing one of its bases near the Lebanon-Syria border and threatened to retaliate. Israel did not confirm carrying out the air strike, in keeping with its official silence on at least three such attacks in the last year targeting suspected Hezbollah-bound weapons convoys from Syria. It said it would hold Beirut responsible for any Hezbollah reprisals from Lebanese turf. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war and annexed it in a move not recognised internationally. The strategic plateau has seen occasional spillover violence from the Syrian civil war, and Israel has accused Hezbollah of setting up positions on the other side of the boundary fence. Israel Hezbollah Middle East and North Africa Syria theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Tony Abbott downplays lack of progress on spying code of ethics Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:08 AM PST PM says government seeks agreement with Indonesia 'as quickly as possible' after Tanya Plibersek raises issue Daniel Hurst

Russia Today presenter hits out at Moscow over Ukraine Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:07 AM PST Abby Martin, American anchor on Russian state TV channel, to be sent to Crimea after criticising military intervention An American anchor on Russian state television has delivered an emotional rebuke of Moscow's intervention in Ukraine and criticised the media's biased news coverage. Russia Today responded by saying it was sending Abby Martin to Crimea so she could learn more about the situation. Martin, a Washington-based journalist with the English-language channel, wrapped up her show on Tuesday by saying "what Russia did is wrong" and that military intervention was never the answer. "I can't say enough how strongly I am against any state intervention in a sovereign nation's affairs," she said at the end of the show, Breaking the Set. "What Russia did is wrong," she said. "Military intervention is never the answer, and I will not sit here and apologise or defend military aggression. "Furthermore, the coverage I have seen of Ukraine has been truly disappointing from all sides of the media spectrum and rife with disinformation," Martin said, before saying goodbye and marching off the set. Russia Today's coverage of the Ukrainian crisis has followed the Kremlin's line, devoting broadcasts to "hammer-wielding nationalists" in Kiev and calling the soldiers occupying Crimea "self-defence forces" despite evidence they are Russian troops. Martin's colleagues in Russia were apparently caught off-guard by her comments. One, Darya Pushkova, tweeted that she should do her show "out of what she calls are occupied territories and see for herself". "That's exactly right," the RT editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, wrote in response. Russia Today later released an official statement. "Contrary to the popular opinion, RT doesn't beat its journalists into submission, and they are free to express their own opinions, not just in private but on the air. This is the case with Abby's commentary on the Ukraine," it said. "We respect her views, and the views of all our journalists, presenters and programme hosts, and there will be absolutely no reprimands made against Ms Martin. "In her comment Ms Martin also noted that she does not possess a deep knowledge of reality of the situation in Crimea. As such we'll be sending her to Crimea to give her an opportunity to make up her own mind from the epicentre of the story." Martin, responding on Twitter to coverage of her remarks and messages of support, said: "I am not going to Crimea despite the statement RT has made." Russia Europe Ukraine Television industry 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

Qantas inquiry to investigate airline’s financial problems Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:04 AM PST Senate committee likely to consider what initiatives should be taken by the Abbott government to support aviation jobs in Australia Daniel Hurst

Senate votes to censure Fiona Nash after she fails to hand over document Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:00 AM PST Assistant health minister refuses to produce letter that she claims shows how ex-staffer would avoid conflicts of interest Bridie Jabour

Ukraine has revealed the new world of western impotence | Simon Jenkins Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:00 AM PST Behind the self-righteous bluster on Russia, all our leaders can do to punish Putin is cancel summits, school places and shopping trips I am starting to lose this one. How dare anyone excuse a great power hurling brute force against a small one, justifying it with some nonsense about extremists and a "responsibility to protect". There should be no place for such cynical bullying in a 21st-century world order. And for what? So a leader with a virility complex can play to his domestic gallery. The whole thing is utterly unacceptable. There must be costs and consequences. But enough of Iraq. What of Ukraine? We can only gasp at the hypocrisy of a British foreign secretary and an American secretary of state lecturing Russia from a Kiev street corner on the evil of invading small countries. Did no ghost of Iraq or Afghanistan, of Kosovo or Libya, hover over their shoulders? To be sure there are motes in Vladimir Putin's eye, but they are nothing as to the beams in the eyes of Washington and London. The occupation of Crimea is a village fete compared with shock and awe over Baghdad and Belgrade and the killing fields of Falluja and Helmand. As the western powers repatriate their blood-stained legions, surely a twinge of humility is in order. Apparently not. The west is now chanting psalms of self-righteousness. David Cameron agrees with Barack Obama that Crimea is "completely unacceptable". John Kerry calls the occupation "an incredible act of aggression ... on a trumped-up pretext". To the Republican senator John McCain, "allowing" Russia to take Crimea makes him "remember the 1930s when Hitler took the Sudetenland". The catchphrase for this crisis has become "costs and consequences". Obama threatens them, Cameron threatens them. The Commons Ukraine committee chairman, John Whittingdale, wants them "to send a very strong message" to Putin to "return to the table". Nick Clegg froths over them from his armchair. He is "absolutely not ruling out now the kind of options we will look at in order to make it very clear to Putin that there will be very real consequences". Wow. The only costs and consequences on which anyone can agree is to cancel a G-something summit in a luxury hotel somewhere, and to ban oligarchs from shopping at Harrods and sending their sons to Eton. We might also keep our royals from their Paralympics. To this has the mighty British empire fallen. For all its armies, fleets and nuclear warheads, it can punish Russia's bear with nothing more terrifying than Harrods, Eton and the royal family. Putin must be rolling on the floor with laughter. The truth is that western diplomacy has no language for the new impotence. It used to get its way by "drawing red lines" and threatening actual violence. So ineptly have post-cold war politicians deployed this threat, so exorbitant has been the cost, that enemies have come to treat it as bluff. Iran and Syria are the most recent examples. By the time Cameron tried to threaten Damascus with bombs, the British parliament had had enough. If Syria could call Cameron's bluff, how much more likely would Russia be to do so? What has been encouraging about the Ukraine crisis so far has been the unusual emergence of a "case to be made" on both sides. For once we have seen a "revolution" with some balanced coverage. The BBC's Newsnight investigated the "fascist coup" in Kiev thesis, and found some truth in it. The legitimacy of Viktor Yanukovych as elected leader was contrasted with his manifest flaws, as was the motley character of the Maidan crowd. We know of the divided loyalties of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. In the past week I have read more than I dreamed possible of the vexed history of Crimea, of Ukraine's role in Russian identity, and of Putin's complex relationship with Russian pride and paranoia. I have seen Moscow's re-occupation of Crimea as both understandable and illegitimate. Its legal crudity – without even awaiting a local referendum – compares with the political crudity of Nato's attempted encirclement. This is a theatre on whose stage the fidgeting warmongers of London and Washington fear to tread. Even when McCain crassly compares Putin to Hitler, he nervously adds that he is against military action. The west can huff and puff, but dare not bomb. In a Pavlovian trance that requires "something to be done", it cannot think what that might be. Democratic leaders usually find foreign affairs easy. They can relax into grandstanding, machismo and cliche, with little downside. Regular foreign trips (Cameron is addicted to them) offer a break, a stroll up a red carpet, and relief from the pestilential press. Ukraine has changed that. It is proving fiendishly difficult for compulsive interveners. Nothing seems fit for purpose. Every threat sounds empty. But at least pragmatism is starting to break through. On Monday the Foreign Office indicated as much in its new, exotic form of press release: a document revealed to photographers on a Downing Street pavement. This indicated how far the government has moved since its Iran belligerence. While William Hague was playing to the Kiev gallery, his officials were studiously analysing the content of "costs and consequences". They concluded there should be no military contingencies or economic sanctions on Russia, or at least none that might hurt the City of London. There should be financial relief for the new regime in Kiev, but for Russia merely the usual waffle about missions and all-party talks. As with China over Tibet, London knows it is dealing with a big, rich beast, not a small, poor one. It deals with care. I find this encouraging. Britain is still searching for a new metaphor for "punching below its weight". Its leaders may invite Kipling's ridicule for "killing Kruger with your mouth", but behind the verbal bluster they seem to recognise the inanity of the Foreign Office's "department of meaningless gestures". They may yet move towards Germany's department of sensible and measured response. Angela Merkel is not hollering about costs and consequences. Why waste her breath? When I was visiting Russia in 2006 I asked a diplomat how Moscow would react to Britain's current invasion of Helmand in Afghanistan. He smiled and said: "Don't worry. We won't boycott your Olympics." He had the measure of Britain's foreign policy at the time. Today's Russia knows what it wants while Britain is playing games. If hypocrisy is now cover for realpolitik, that is good. Less good is that we have to learn it from Vladimir Putin. Ukraine Russia Vladimir Putin David Cameron Europe United States Simon Jenkins 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

Addis Ababa and its hyenas have a long and peaceful history Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:00 AM PST Reports of attacks on humans are creating an unfair image of these 'beasts', says a long-term resident of the Ethiopian capital The two hyenas moved into the middle of the backstreet that led to my house – between me and my front gate. I froze like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights: I was on foot, alone, and it was close to midnight on a rainy night in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's ramshackle capital where I'd recently moved. Nobody was at hand to help or tell me what to do. I was very scared. This all happened a stone's throw from Bole Avenue, the city's commercial hub. Every day, I'd walk to work across fields dotted with cows accompanied by frog song. And this was the heart of the capital city, in the year 2002. I had, however, moved to the city just as it was on the cusp of radical change: globalisation had reached the country, and Chinese funds too. The fields I used to walk through next to the airport are today occupied by luxury hotels. This pulsating metropolis of five million people now has a ring road, high rises and malls, and the city is fast losing its patchwork of gardens, streams and village neighbourhoods – and also its hyenas. But back in the early 2000s, it often seemed to me that Addis had perfectly applied Alphonse Allais's tongue-in-cheek answer to urban woes: build a city in the countryside. Hyenas have always featured prominently in the life of Addis Ababa – and Ethiopia. Contrary to many countries where the beasts are reviled and feared, in Ethiopia there is a long tradition of people and hyenas living side-by-side in harmony. This was brought home to me when I read a recent BBC article saying that hyenas were "out of control" in the Ethiopian capital (up to a 1,000 of them are "running amok" here, apparently), possessing a bite "stronger that a white shark" (quite true) and gobbling up vagrants' and rough sleepers' toes and fingers (a preference for finger food, it seems). A few voices pointed out the benefits of their increased presence, as "they eat up dangerous stray dogs and are a free clean-up service". But overall – following the news of a baby being snatched straight from its mother's arms – it was a familiar story of the fear of the beast: the wolf baying at the gates of Paris or London in the middle ages, snatching enfants or infants from their cradles. But the story of Addis Ababa and Ethiopia's long coexistence with hyenas is a more nuanced affair. I would argue there are fewer hyenas in the city itself, and more of the beasts on the periphery. Fewer in the city because ringroads, fast cars and a blanket of cement and urbanisation have erased a lot of the "wild" urban areas. More in the periphery because Addis Ababa has grown so tremendously in the last few years. People are moving into what were sparsely populated areas, and the increasing wellbeing and economic growth in Ethiopia has led to a tremendous increase in the number of domestic animals being slaughtered, with bones – and all sorts of other solid wastes – being dumped on the outskirts of the capital: more food for scavengers. Far from its drought-prone image, booming Ethiopia has the largest cattle numbers in Africa – and a lot of that cattle finishes on the plates of Addis Ababa's new middle classes. After moving to the city, I ran a horse trekking outfit a few miles from the capital. I can safely say that Ethiopia and the outskirts of Addis have some of the highest concentrations of hyena in the world. When we put down an old horse in the bottom of the field next to the stables, around 30 hyenas turned up at dusk. In the morning, you would have been hard-pressed to find a single horse hair … that old white-shark bite again. Yet when we walked down to the village through the forest in the evening, and sometimes found ourselves surrounded by hyenas, a quick "shoo!" and these not-so-terrifying beasts would scamper. In the Entoto Hills, the resting grounds of most of the hyena packs these days, there are hundreds of shepherd children out every day of the year, on their own, without even a dog for protection. The only proven casualty I've heard of in 12 years was a drunken man who was hit by a car – and abandoned unconscious in a pool of blood. In the eastern Ethiopian city of Harrar, I stood with a hyena on either side and looked on in wonder as their "minder" called them in turn by name, and fed them tidbits from a stick he clenched between his own teeth. A cat looked on through all this, patiently waiting its share of offal. It too had a hyena on either side and seemed unfazed. In Addis, I have now moved to the top of the city, where the city blends into the Entoto Hills' forest. Most nights I can hear the hyenas as I lie in bed, chuckling and snorting – along with the sound of orthodox church sermons and the muezzins' call to prayer, they form a reassuring aural backdrop to everyday life. Are hyenas tremendous predators? Yes. Are they dangerous? Yes, in certain circumstances; you should certainly not treat them lightly. Do they attack or maim people in Addis Ababa? No, or extremely rarely so – there are certainly less incidents than those involving dogs. Even in Harrar, where hyena are often practically domesticated, cases of attacks on people are just about unheard of. There again, efforts are now being made to better control solid wastes in the capital, and prevent people from slaughtering their own animals. Paradoxically, if this clean-up is too efficient, suddenly removing vast amounts of the waste that has fed a large increase in hyena numbers around the capital, it could have dangerous consequences. Another complicating factor is that the once-barren hills around the capital, first planted with eucalyptus, are now being reforested with local indigenous tree species. I have seen Menelik bushbuck, klipspringer, African bush pig, warthog and serval cat in these richer, more diverse woods. (Leopard is also present, though rarely seen – a leopard neatly slaughtered a sheep right next to our stables last year, in broad daylight.) How this will affect the hyena population remains to be seen – hyenas, far from being just scavengers, can be very efficient hunters too. But are there currently 1,000 hyenas running amok in Addis Ababa? I don't think so. Alphonse Allais's answer to urban woes may no longer be the best fit as the city grows and grows – but I'll miss the hyenas when they blend back into the woods and out of the streets. I came across two of them a couple of weeks ago as I walked the last stretch of road from the Iyesus church up to my house – and I felt right at home. I had learned not to see myself as a rabbit anymore – and I knew the hyenas didn't see me that way either. Yves Marie Stranger blogs at uthiopia.com Ethiopia Africa Animals Yves Maria Stranger 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

There's aren't enough women at the highest levels of leadership | Jane Dudman Posted: 05 Mar 2014 12:00 AM PST Ahead of International Women's Day we should recognise that much more needs to be done to increase the number of women in top public sector jobs Work is love made visible, wrote Kahlil Gibran. It's a fair bet that the Lebanese poet didn't expect his words to be a clarion call for 21st-century feminism, or that they could be applied to public managers. Gibran's epithet is one of many quotations on the Guardian Witness website, where people are sharing good advice for the women in their life ahead of International Women's Day on Saturday. It's great that women are now more visible at the highest levels of leadership in British public life. But the stark reality is that in both the public and private sectors, women are still under-represented in the highest echelons of leadership. The public and third sectors may be ahead of the private sector in having more female leaders, but the numbers are still painfully low at the most senior levels. With the appointment last November of Alison Saunders as director of public prosecutions and in October of Sharon White as second permanent secretary in the Treasury, women now hold 10 of the 37 most senior positions in Whitehall. That's 27% - just over a quarter. That is similar to the statistics in England's councils, where 28% of chief executives are women. But the figures for local politicians are much worse – a mere 12.3% of council leaders in England are women. In Westminster, 22% of MPs are female, while Holyrood is doing better, with women making up 35% of its MSPs. There is still a long way to go until women have equal representation in parliament and local politics. Polly Toynbee has pointed out the shocking roll call of senior women being ejected from important public bodies, including the departure of Dame Liz Forgan from the Arts Council, Dame Suzi Leather from the Charity Commission and, most recently, Lisa Jardine from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The picture is similarly depressing when it comes to political and public leadership around the world. There are a few very high-profile women leaders in politics and public life – Germany's Angela Merkel, Christine Lagarde at the International Monetary Fund and Janet Yellan at the US Federal Reserve – but otherwise the figures are dismal. The global average of women parliamentarians, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, is 21.3%. There is only one parliament in the world where female MPs are in the majority. Following the traumatic events in Rwanda in 1994, and a number of initiatives – including a quota system that stipulates at least 30% of women on all decision-making bodies – the country has seen a remarkable rise in the number of women in positions of power. After the country's elections in 2013, 64% of representatives in the Rwanda parliament are women. In Canada, 45% of public leaders are women, according to an index compiled by consultancy EY. But in India, the world's largest democracy, only 7.7% of public sector leaders are women. Worse still is the news from Japan, the world's third-largest economy. The country recently saw the number of women leaders rise to what it describes as "a record high". Great, you might think. Around 30% perhaps? Alas, no – that "record high" is 3.3%. Natalie Campbell, founder and director of social innovation consultancy A Very Good Company, recently wrote that it is not enough for the public sector to simply say it is doing better than the private sector. "Given the talent that is staring you in the face, I expect to see better representation of women in leadership roles sooner rather than later," wrote Campbell, herself a former fellow on the prestigious Clore Social Leadership Programme. Last week saw the 40th anniversary dinner of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives. The number of senior women in the room was striking. We should celebrate such success this weekend. But there is still a long, long way to go to find the methods that will persuade more women that running the country's public services really can be love made visible. Public sector careers Women Gender Jane Dudman theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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