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

Lib Dem spring conference - Clegg's speech and debate on internet surveillance: Politics live blog
Malaysia Airlines: two passengers with stolen passports under scrutiny
Malaysia Airlines: missing plane investigation widens – live
Afghan vice-president has died of natural causes, say officials
Councils given extra cash to fix potholes caused by wet winter
Nick Clegg vows to hitch Lib Dems to belief in benefits of EU membership
A Spy Among Friends review: Kim Philby's treacherous friendship with Nicholas Elliott
Libya threatens to bomb North Korean-flagged tanker if it takes oil from rebels
Womadelaide 2014: an eclectic symphony of folk, funk and home cooking – video
Tony Abbott avoids question on changes to seniors health cards
Police sins of surveillance go far beyond the Lawrences and must be exposed | Matthew Ryder
We need more immigration in Scotland | Kevin McKenna
The Spirit Level authors: why society is more unequal than ever | Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
Malcolm Turnbull indicates easing of cross-media ownership laws
My favourite work: A dozen useless actions for grieving blondes by Rosemary Laing – video
Venezuela divisions deepen as protest over food shortages is halted
Ali Abbas to launch official complaint over alleged vilification in Sydney derby
Unsound Adelaide: Gardland, James Ferraro, Emptyset, Moritz von Oswald Trio –review
Malcolm Turnbull says government's 'no' to Qantas is a message to business
Wendy Hughes, award-winning actor, remembered as one of the greats
Ilan Volkov: classical music's super collider
Top 20 movies made in and about Los Angeles – in pictures
CPAC 2014: Rand Paul wins 2016 straw poll with appeals to personal liberty
Nigeria violence: 'Our security forces area too outdated to meet these challenges'
The Invisible War review – sexual assault within the US military | Mark Kermode

Lib Dem spring conference - Clegg's speech and debate on internet surveillance: Politics live blog

Posted: 09 Mar 2014 01:43 AM PST

Andrew Sparrow's rolling coverage of the Lib Dem spring conference in York, including Nick Clegg's speech and a debate on internet surveillance

Andrew Sparrow

Malaysia Airlines: two passengers with stolen passports under scrutiny

Posted: 09 Mar 2014 01:39 AM PST

No trace of plane found and airline 'fearing the worst' as scrutiny of two passengers who travelled on stolen passports widens

Tania Branigan

Malaysia Airlines: missing plane investigation widens – live

Posted: 09 Mar 2014 01:35 AM PST

No wreckage found as search intensifies and passengers' identities under scrutiny

Michael Safi

Josh Halliday

Afghan vice-president has died of natural causes, say officials

Posted: 09 Mar 2014 01:13 AM PST

Three days of national mourning are to be held for Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, 56, formerly a feared warlord

The Afghan vice-president Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, formerly one of the country's much-feared warlords, has died of natural causes, officials say, adding that three days of national mourning will be held.

Fahim, a leader of the Tajik ethnic minority, served as senior vice-president to Hamid Karzai, who is due to step down as president at elections next month as Nato combat forces pull out of Afghanistan after 13 years of fighting the Taliban.

Fahim, 56, was accused of being a ruthless strongman who maintained his own militia forces, but he also received American support as Afghanistan sought stability after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

"With deep sadness, the 1st vice president, Marshal MQ Fahim has passed away. May his soul rest in peace," the presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi wrote on Twitter.

"The government of Afghanistan has called for a three-day national mourning, during which the national flag will be half-hoisted for his demise."

Councils given extra cash to fix potholes caused by wet winter

Posted: 09 Mar 2014 12:50 AM PST

Transport secretary announces funding after council bosses complain of 'trail of destruction' left by flooding

Councils are to get an additional £140m to fix roads damaged by England's record wettest winter, the government has announced.

The transport secretary, Patrick McLoughlin, said a fund specifically targeting the worst-hit areas would be raised by £36.5m to £80m.

All councils will also share in a £103.5 million boost to the money available for fixing potholes and other dangers facing drivers.

Town hall chiefs have demanded emergency cash to deal with a "daunting trail of destruction" to the already dilapidated network left behind by recent flooding.

Most councils are expected to receive the extra money by the end of this week in an effort to ensure works are completed before the summer holidays.

In return they will be required to publish on websites by the end of August details of how it was used.

The Department for Transport said the funds – which take the total budget to £1bn for 2013-14 – had been found through savings made elsewhere over the year.

McLoughlin said: "Having the right infrastructure in place to support businesses and hardworking people is a crucial part of our long-term economic plan.

"This extra money will help make a real difference to the millions of road users and local residents who rely on local roads, giving them safer and smoother journeys."

The Sunday Telegraph said its survey of councils suggested that there was a significant increase in compensation claims by drivers who hit potholes last year.

At least 40,000 sought payouts, it said, but the average amounts received fell to around a sixth of the average level in 2012.

The AA president, Edmund King, said: "Even though we haven't had the traditional ice and snow this winter, the relentless rain has taken its toll on many roads.

"Some road surfaces have been eroded away by rain and cause particular danger for those on two wheels as well as damage for those on four wheels.

"The funding is welcome but we will still be playing catch-up once this money runs out. Potholes and the cost of fuel are the top two issues for our members and both could do with extra help."

Nick Clegg vows to hitch Lib Dems to belief in benefits of EU membership

Posted: 09 Mar 2014 12:37 AM PST

In a swipe at his Tory partners, Lib Dems leader's speech stresses benefits of maintaining links with Europe

A Spy Among Friends review: Kim Philby's treacherous friendship with Nicholas Elliott

Posted: 09 Mar 2014 12:30 AM PST

Ben Macintyre's account of Kim Philby's long friendship with the MI6 spy Nicholas Elliott is a riveting read

In January 1963, two middle-aged Englishmen took tea together in the Christian quarter of Beirut. An eavesdropper might have mistaken their references to Eton, the Observer, and a nasty flu bug for genteel chit-chat. In fact, this exquisitely English encounter was the terrible end to a 30-year friendship corrupted and finally broken by the private and public betrayals of two lives devoted to espionage.

The transcript of this rendezvous is Ben Macintyre's scoop: the motor of an unputdownable postwar thriller whose every incredible detail is fact not fiction. In dramatic terms, what Macintyre calls "one of the most important conversations in the history of the cold war", bugged by MI5, marked the moment when one charming spy, Nicholas Elliott, began finally to extract a confession from another, his old friend Kim Philby.

For more than 50 years, the career of Harold Adrian Russell Philby – "Kim" to friends and family – has been the dark mirror in which we have read the bleakest episodes of Britain's postwar history. As Macintyre wisely acknowledges, Philby has inspired a voluminous bibliography that sometimes approaches literature, for instance in the novels of John le Carré.

Philby, codenamed "Sonny" by the Soviets, was the archetype of treachery. In 1951, his two co-agents, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, rumbled by the Americans, fled to the USSR. Philby's position seemed hopelessly compromised, but the establishment exonerated him. In 1955 the foreign secretary Harold Macmillan told the Commons that he had "no reason to conclude that Mr Philby has betrayed the interests of his country, or to identify him with the so-called 'third man', if indeed there was one." Soon after, "Sonny" landed a job as the Observer's Middle East correspondent. Once in Beirut, he resumed his career as a Soviet spy.

When he finally defected in 1963 – the climax to Macintyre's spellbinding narrative – the aftershocks of his ruthless treachery sent shudders through the establishment of which he had been so seamlessly a part. At first, he was – in Phillip Knightley's phrase – "the spy who betrayed a generation". Now, with most of that generation dead or in retirement, the Philby story has begun to morph into myth, slipping from history into psychodrama.

Enter Ben Macintyre, the author of Agent Zigzag and Operation Mincemeat, bestselling accounts of high-octane, covert capers from wartime Britain. Macintyre, the witty elegist of class-conscious, late-empire Britain, is the supreme pontiff of the "What larks" school of popular history. His challenge here, moving to the shady side of the post-imperial slope, is to unfold a harrowing tale while simultaneously entertaining his devoted readers with his customary galère of twits, alcoholics, transvestites, and fantasists. A Spy Among Friends, a classic spookfest, is also a brilliant reconciliation of history and entertainment.

At the heart of the Philby story, as Macintyre reports it, is a unique, and tragic, friendship between two public schoolboys, both spies. The children of cold and unreachable fathers, Elliott and Philby found in the secret world a comforting fraternity in which they could refashion their damaged selves.

Elliott, the younger man, became an MI6 high-flyer; Philby a KGB double agent. Bizarrely, each was spoken of as a possible "C", or head of the secret service. In keeping with the code of the club, they anaesthetised their lives with elaborate jokes, pink gin, and a passion for cricket. "They spoke the same language," Elliott's son told Macintyre. "Kim was as close a friend as my father ever had."

This relationship scaled Olympic heights of denial. Elliott said of his friend that "he did not strike me as a political animal". Such skewed intuition would come as no surprise to John le Carré, whose enthralling Afterword is one of the special pleasures of A Spy Among Friends. He remembers Elliott, who interviewed him for a job in the secret state, as a character from PG Wodehouse, "a quiet smile on his face, and the elbow cocked for the martini glass". Philby would not have had to work too hard to conceal his secret life from this Old Etonian bloodhound.

Astonishingly, Elliott never discovered that Philby had married an Austrian communist spy, or that his friend was a "penetration agent" for the KGB. Most dreadful of all, at the human level, he never knew that everything he confided to Philby in the bars of London's clubland, went straight back to Sonny's spymasters in Moscow. Part of the archetypal grip this story holds for the reader is as a case study in the existential truth that, in human relations, the Other is never really knowable. For both, the mask became indistinguishable from reality.

There are many deeper Philby-Elliott mysteries, judiciously anatomised by Macintyre. Why, for instance, did Philby resume his career as a spy once he had been set up in Beirut as the Observer's Middle East correspondent? The answer goes to the marrow of this astounding story.

For Philby, as much as Elliott, the secret life had become an addiction, a game of Russian roulette. With his friend Graham Greene, he could never wean himself from the thrill of risk, and like Macbeth became "in blood stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o'er".

Back home, the mole-hunters nailed Philby's lies. Finally, the evidence was incontrovertible. In a cruel twist, MI5 decided that only one man could confront Philby. His best friend was sent to Beirut to extract the all-important confession. "I rather thought it would be you," said Philby, when Elliott turned up.

"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend," declared EM Forster, in a famous credo, "I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." Elliott's interrogation led inexorably to Philby's precipitate defection. In that high noon among the teacups, each sacrificed everything: friendship, country and future. A Spy Among Friends is not just an elegy, it is an unforgettable requiem.

Robert McCrum

Libya threatens to bomb North Korean-flagged tanker if it takes oil from rebels

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 11:39 PM PST

Prime minister warns of an 'environmental disaster' if tanker leaves rebel-held port of Es Sider with oil cargo

Womadelaide 2014: an eclectic symphony of folk, funk and home cooking – video

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 10:57 PM PST

Join Alfred Hickling and Bill Code as they make their way through the trees of the Womadelaide festival site in South Australia, crossing paths with English folk star Sam Lee and Japanese funk machines Osaka Monaurail. Plus, hear music from Aussie-Papuan Melanesian beats outfit Airleke, and catch Arrested Development getting their raps on in the festival's Taste the World kitchen

Bill Code

Alfred Hickling

Tony Abbott avoids question on changes to seniors health cards

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 10:21 PM PST

Commission of audit believed to have recommended tightening eligibility rules

Daniel Hurst

Police sins of surveillance go far beyond the Lawrences and must be exposed | Matthew Ryder

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 10:20 PM PST

The overdue inquiry into undercover policing owes much to people power and journalism and little to the courts

The announcement last week that there will be a public inquiry into undercover policing would have been unthinkable until very recently. The orthodox view is that in order to preserve the efficacy of secret surveillance, it must be kept hidden from public scrutiny at all times. But the home secretary has rightly recognised that in many ways that orthodoxy is now unsustainable.

In numerous cases – including the most infamous police investigation of recent times, the Stephen Lawrence murder – there appears to have been improper use of undercover officers, lacking proper oversight. The system is not working and needs fundamental correction. A judge-led public inquiry is the beginning of that process.

What is striking is that we have reached this point not so much through the legal process, but despite it. What we have learned is largely a result of the victims of undercover policing and a police whistleblower being willing to give their accounts publicly and journalists giving them the platform to do so.

It was through publishing their stories, rather than the cases going through the courts, that we discovered details of the activity that many police officers probably expected would remain hidden for ever. That, as well as the inclusive approach of the Lawrence family who always emphasised that their concerns went beyond the facts of their own case, is how the call to hold a public inquiry eventually became irresistible.

The difficulty in using legal processes to disclose undercover police wrongdoing was clear from an early stage. In July 2011, the court of appeal quashed the convictions of 20 environmental campaigners in connection with a protest at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. The Crown Prosecution Service should have disclosed, prior to their trial, that an undercover officer named Mark Kennedy was involved. But it was the campaigners themselves who eventually uncovered him.

The CPS did not contest the appeals but the campaigners felt the information they had been given about Kennedy's true involvement and who had supervised him to spy on them was still inadequate. They asked the court of appeal to require the CPS to explain further. The court declined to do so, not least because the Independent Police Complaints Commission and others were conducting reviews at that time. The court hoped those reviews would provide sufficient answers. The campaigners were less optimistic and, as it turned out, most of their questions remained even after the reviews were complete.

Shortly afterwards, a number of people who had been subjected to undercover police surveillance considered civil legal claims. Some of those seeking legal redress were women who had been in relationships with undercover officers and had children the officers had abandoned.

But their claims faced immediate legal obstacles. In particular, the police asserted that their claims should be heard in the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, a special court that usually sits in secret and for which there is almost no legal aid and no compensation for legal costs. The legal process seemed to make it exceptionally difficult for them to obtain the answers they sought, and the women were only partly successful in resisting their claims going to the IPT.

The frustrations of the legal process were also compounded by the rigid operation of a police policy known as NCND ("neither confirm nor deny"). NCND is well recognised by both civil and criminal courts as an important measure to preserve the security of operations. But it is a policy, not a rule. When it is applied too rigidly, it can produce surreal results. For example, many women were told that the police would "neither confirm nor deny" whether the men with whom they had long-term relationships had been undercover officers, even though for many of the women it was already perfectly clear. Even now, the police are still attempting to strike out some of the women's claims based, in part, on the importance of preserving NCND. For many of the women, the legal process seems bizarre.

In another example of NCND, the campaigner John Jordan recently sought to overturn his conviction for assaulting a police officer at a demonstration in 1996. He believed that a man who took part in the demonstration with him was in fact an undercover police officer named Jim Boyling. Boyling had even appeared in court, alongside Jordan, under the assumed name of "Jim Sutton". In trying to appeal against his conviction, Jordan wanted to know what had really happened in his case. But although the CPS agreed not to contest Mr Jordan's appeal, they refused to explain why.

And while the police confirmed that Boyling had been a police officer, they would "neither confirm nor deny" whether he was an undercover police officer. From Mr Jordan's viewpoint, NCND was almost Python-esque: were they suggesting that Boyling had been pretending to be "Sutton" in his "spare time"? The appeal court is expected to rule soon on whether it has the power to require the CPS or the police to disclose more to Mr Jordan.

In contrast to the lack of information emerging from the legal process, a revealing discussion was going on outside the courts. Journalists at the Observer and the Guardian had been writing about the activities of undercover officers since 2010.

Last summer, the Guardian's Rob Evans and Paul Lewis published a book based on their sources, Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police, which set out a detailed account of undercover police activity going back several decades. At around the same time, Paul Lewis presented a Dispatches programme that aired allegations by the former undercover officer and whistleblower, Peter Francis. Among his revelations, he described how the Lawrence family had been subjected to undercover surveillance when they were grieving the loss of their son and campaigning for an investigation into his murder.

Within weeks, politicians and police officers at the very highest level were involved and the sequence of events that has led directly to this public inquiry had started. Since 2011, approximately 50 people have had their convictions quashed because of undercover police activity that was not disclosed at their trials. The courts have been unequivocal in their criticism of the failure to disclose the roles of those officers. But it is important to remember that legal, regulatory and political processes initially failed to provide full answers for the victims of undercover policing, including the Lawrence family.

Hopefully, this new public inquiry will have the opportunity to correct years of failings. But politicians and lawyers should keep in mind how we reached this point. When it comes to calling state misconduct to account, we should not underestimate the value of the fourth estate and its importance to the functioning of our democracy.

@rydermc

Matthew Ryder QC is a barrister at Matrix Chambers

Matthew Ryder

We need more immigration in Scotland | Kevin McKenna

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 09:45 PM PST

Scotland's complacent belief that it doesn't have a racial problem has been blown apart this year

The most uplifting and affirmative action I've seen this year occurred in distressing circumstances in Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street. The event was filmed by BBC Scotland for their series, The Street, chronicling the reality of life on Scotland's liveliest boulevard. In it we see Melo, a young African street musician, being racially abused by two white thugs. After one of the men approached him for the purposes of calling him a "black bastard", this is what we subsequently heard:

"What about the fucking British or the homeless? You are taking the fucking piss. You are milking our country for thousands, ya fucking black bastard.

"How much do you make sitting here busking every fucking day? You're making thousands. I pay taxes every fucking month; hundreds of pounds to keep you in the fucking country.

"You are a black bastard, admit it."

One of the white gargoyles then attempts to assault him. Melo, though, was having none of it and began rebuking his assailants while defending himself with a small trolley he had been using as a prop. Melo, who looks like a chap with substantial reserves of character and courage, decides he might as well go down fighting. "Get away from me," he tells them. "Any more and I will batter you both to the floor." It's thought that Melo had come to live in Glasgow after fleeing from the civil war in Angola, his home country.

For generations now, we Scots have congratulated ourselves that we don't have a racial problem on anything like the scale that exists in parts of England. It's a complacent attitude and one that has been blown apart since the start of this year. For there have been several other incidents reported in the press and television that have been as sickening as the attack on Melo. Two weeks ago a 17-year-old schoolboy making his debut in senior football had to be substituted when he became distressed at the abuse he was receiving from some supporters of Peterhead FC in the north east of Scotland.

On another occasion, Humza Yousaf, a young Asian MSP at Holyrood was subjected, in daylight, to a violent and racist tirade while selling the Big Issue. He had agreed to do this to raise awareness of issues surrounding homeless people in Scotland.

Few would suggest that these incidents mean that Scotland suddenly has a problem with racism. Yet we ought also to acknowledge that for each of these that were reported and recorded there will be dozens more that go unchronicled. Nor would it be wise to oversimplify the reasons why we are witnessing these bubbles on the surface of the cesspit. Yet it seems to me to be inescapable that some of these reasons are similar to those that we encounter when trying to explain the relatively sudden rise of a party like Ukip in Britain.

This is a party which, in the absence of any coherent economic, social or cultural policy, has become a significant power in England and Wales on the back of one of the most wicked deceptions ever practised on our southern neighbours: that immigration is intrinsically bad, that indolent people from "undesirable" countries (eastern Europe and most of Africa) are taking white Anglo-Saxon jobs, and that they are placing an unsustainable burden on the NHS and our system of benefits.

This has combined with a rise in anti-Muslim sentiment fuelled by tragic events such as the slaying of Private Lee Rigby. Rapidly, it seems, a residual fear and distrust of Islam, which had always lurked on the periphery of what we could call outright racism, has entered the mainstream. And it has done so as large elements of British society have begun to express themselves in distorted and strident militarism. In this, the humble poppy has also become a casualty. Once it was a silent and lovely memoriam to noble sacrifice, now it is used by our political and military elite to engender a sense of triumphalism. Not to be seen sporting a poppy in the month of November is to risk being accused of treason.

Much of this may be justified when Britain is facing mortal peril. But, in the absence of such, too many of us begin to look for an enemy within. Those who are other and different and puzzling become easy targets, especially those who are foolish enough to look content and prosperous. How dare they?

And now it seems that some of the tendrils of this creeping disease have reached Scotland. Well, we had better start to look aboot us, because these have the capacity to poison us. And we had better also start being loud and aggressive with the opposite message: Scotland needs more immigration. If we still think that old age deserves choice and quality of life then some facts must be faced. Britain has an ageing population and Scotland's is ageing more rapidly than that of the rest of the UK. We need another one million immigrants in this country paying taxes and national insurance as well as purchasing goods and services. This they tend to do and they tend not to get as sick and depressed as the rest of us. Happily, the SNP is the world's only nationalist party which actually welcomes immigration. The Scottish Labour party, when it governed, enshrined this, too.

It's good to walk down the streets of your city and behold the sights and sounds and smells of different people from far away countries. How can that ever be bad?

In England in the 16th century, in a time considered to be more inhumane and uncivilised, the words of William Shakespeare (from Sir Thomas More) resonate still:

"Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,

Their babies at the backs, and their poor luggage

Plodding to th' ports and coast for transportation[...]

Should so much come too short of your great trespass

As but to banish you: whither would you go?

What country, by the nature of your error,

Should give you harbour?[...]

Why you must needs be strangers. Would you be pleased

To find a nation of such barbarous temper

That breaking out into hideous violence

Would not afford you an abode on earth,

Whet their detested knives against your throats,

Spurn you like dogs[? ...]

[...] This is the strangers' case

And this your mountainish inhumanity."

Kevin McKenna

The Spirit Level authors: why society is more unequal than ever | Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 09:30 PM PST

Five years after The Spirit Level, authors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argue that research backs up their views on the iniquity of inequality

A lot has happened in the five years since we published our book, The Spirit Level. New Labour were still perhaps too relaxed about people becoming "filthy rich". And there was an assumption that inequality mattered only if it increased poverty, and that for most people "real" poverty was a thing of the past.

But so much has changed. In the aftermath of the financial crash and the emergence of Occupy, there has been a resurgence of interest in inequality. Around 80% of Britons now think the income gap is too large, and the message has been taken up by world leaders.

According to Barack Obama, income inequality is the "defining challenge of our times", while Pope Francis states that "inequality is the roots of social ills".

The unexpected success of The Spirit Level owes more to luck than judgment. Although serious non-fiction books rarely sell well, for a week or so we even outsold Jeremy Clarkson. We now feel a bit like the dog being wagged by its tail: in the past five years, we've given over 700 seminars and conference lectures. We've talked to academics, religious groups, thinktanks of both right and left, and to international agencies such as the UN, WHO, OECD, EU and ILO.

The truth is that human beings have deep-seated psychological responses to inequality and social hierarchy. The tendency to equate outward wealth with inner worth means that inequality colours our social perceptions. It invokes feelings of superiority and inferiority, dominance and subordination – which affect the way we relate to and treat each other.

As we looked at the data, it became clear that, as well as health and violence, almost all the problems that are more common at the bottom of the social ladder are more common in more unequal societies – including mental illness, drug addiction, obesity, loss of community life, imprisonment, unequal opportunities and poorer wellbeing for children. The effects of inequality are not confined to the poor. A growing body of research shows that inequality damages the social fabric of the whole society. When he found how far up the income scale the health effects of inequality went, Harvard professor Ichiro Kawachi, one of the foremost researchers in this field, described inequality as a social pollutant. The health and social problems we looked at are between twice and 10 times as common in more unequal societies. The differences are so large because inequality affects such a large proportion of the population.

To the political defenders of inequality, the idea that too much inequality was an obstacle to a better society was a monstrous suggestion. They accused us of conjuring up the evidence with smoke and mirrors.

But since our book, research confirming both the basic pattern and the social mechanisms has mushroomed. It's not just rich countries or US states where greater equality is beneficial, it is also important in poorer countries. Even the more equal provinces of China do better than the less equal ones.

Most important has been the rapid accumulation of evidence confirming the psychosocial processes through which inequality gets under the skin. When we were writing, evidence of causality often relied on psychological experiments that showed how extraordinarily sensitive people are to being looked down on and regarded as inferior.

They demonstrated that social relationships, insecurities about social status and how others see us have powerful effects on stress, cognitive performance and the emotions. Almost absent were studies explicitly linking income inequality to these psychological states in whole societies. But new studies have now filled that gap. That inequality damages family life is shown by higher rates of child abuse, and increased status competition is likely to explain the higher rates of bullying confirmed in schools in more unequal countries.

We showed that mental illnesses are more prevalent in more unequal societies: this has now been confirmed by more specific studies of depression and schizophrenia, as well as by evidence that your income ranking is a better predictor of developing illness than your absolute income.

Strengthening community life is hampered by the difficulty of breaking the ice between people, but greater inequality amplifies the impression that some people are worth so much more than others, making us all more anxious about how we are seen and judged. Some are so overcome by lack of confidence that social contact becomes an ordeal. Others try instead to enhance self-presentation and how they appear to others. US data also show that narcissism increased in line with inequality. The economic effects of inequality have also gained more attention. Research has shown that greater inequality leads to shorter spells of economic expansion and more frequent and severe boom-and-bust cycles that make economies more vulnerable to crisis. The International Monetary Fund suggests that reducing inequality and bolstering longer-term economic growth may be "two sides of the same coin". And development experts point out how inequality compromises poverty reduction.

Lastly, inequality is being taken up as an important environmental issue; because it drives status competition, it intensifies consumerism and adds to personal debt.

In Britain, one of the few signs of real progress are the fairness commissions set up by local government in many cities to recommend ways of reducing inequalities. Partly as a result, many local authorities and companies now pay the living wage. But the coalition government has failed to reverse the continuing tendency for the richest 1% to get richer faster than the rest of society. The Equality Trust calculates that the richest 100 people in Britain now have as much wealth as the poorest 30% of households. The top-to-bottom pay ratios of around 300:1 in the FTSE 100 companies is not diminishing.

It is hard to think of a more powerful way of telling people at the bottom that they are almost worthless than to pay them one-third of one percent of what the CEO in the same company gets. Politicians must recognise that reducing inequality is about improving the psychosocial wellbeing of the whole society.

Richard Wilkinson

Kate Pickett

Malcolm Turnbull indicates easing of cross-media ownership laws

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 09:01 PM PST

The internet and other sources have changed the news and entertainment landscape, communications minister says

Daniel Hurst

My favourite work: A dozen useless actions for grieving blondes by Rosemary Laing – video

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 08:47 PM PST

Curator of the 2014 Adelaide Biennial, Nick Mitzevich, explains why Rosemary Laing's 'A dozen useless actions for grieving blondes' is amongst his favourite works at this year's 'Dark Heart' exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia

Venezuela divisions deepen as protest over food shortages is halted

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 08:38 PM PST

National Guardsmen prevent 'empty pots' march from reaching food ministry as Maduro government denounces US

Ali Abbas to launch official complaint over alleged vilification in Sydney derby

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 08:01 PM PST

Former Iraqi refugee says his 'religion and culture' were attacked during Sydney FC's fiery match against Western Sydney

Michael Safi

Unsound Adelaide: Gardland, James Ferraro, Emptyset, Moritz von Oswald Trio –review

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 07:10 PM PST

A mix of Afrobeat and minimal techno is the highlight of a night on the wilder shores of electronic music, writes Alex Needham

Alex Needham

Malcolm Turnbull says government's 'no' to Qantas is a message to business

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 06:05 PM PST

Companies are now becoming aware the era of writing out cheques and providing guarantees is over, minister says

Wendy Hughes, award-winning actor, remembered as one of the greats

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 05:14 PM PST

The performer was one of the most prolific and important actors on stage and in television and film in Australia

Ilan Volkov: classical music's super collider

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 05:07 PM PST

The conductor's Tectonic festival pits the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra against solo electronic improvisors, heavy metal guitarists, and a legend from the Fluxus movement

Alex Needham

Top 20 movies made in and about Los Angeles – in pictures

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 04:39 PM PST

The 2014 LA film festival will celebrate the city's movie culture by featuring films set in Los Angeles, so here we showcase some of their options, from Sunset Boulevard to The Fast and Furious, via Crocodile Dundee and Little Miss Sunshine

CPAC 2014: Rand Paul wins 2016 straw poll with appeals to personal liberty

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 04:14 PM PST

• Kentucky senator wins second straight presidential poll
• Sarah Palin closes event with joke-filled speech

For a second consecutive year, Senator Rand Paul won the Conservative Political Action Conference's straw poll for 2016 presidential candidates. It wasn't even close.

Paul finished ahead of Texas Senator Ted Cruz by a 20% margin, winning 31% of the 2,459 votes cast. Retired neurosurgeon Dr Ben Carson finished third with 9%. The New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, who wasn't invited to speak last year for supposed heresies to the conversative movement, came in fourth with 8%.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, second with 23% last year, finished far back at 6% after a year in which his work on comprehensive immigration reform alienated many conservatives.

Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, once again capitalized on a strong conference representation from student organizations and the libertarian faithful who in years past came to boost his father, former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul. Unlike his father, however, the younger Paul is considered a viable candidate when the 2016 primary season begins – not just a protest figure.

Paul's victory cannot just be pinned to the typically libertarian-skewed audience, though. Certain libertarian beliefs that only a few years ago would have been considered fringe by the mainstream party are now open to discussion.

The conference featured several healthy debates about appropriating traditionally liberal ideas: criminal justice reform and the elimination of mandatory minimum prison sentences; marijuana legalization and a pullback on the 40-year-old war on drugs; and reform of the national security state's surveillance apparatus.

Even as recently as the George W Bush administration, Republicans who espoused these ideas would have been labeled soft on crime, stoners or enablers of terrorism, respectively. By this year, they had the backing of high-profile conservative figures like Texas Governor Rick Perry, anti-tax enforcer Grover Norquist and, of course, Senator Paul.

The reformers pushing for these ideas did so under the mantle of expanding personal liberty and shrinking the size of government. Expanding personal liberty, in all its forms, was at the heart of Paul's standing-room-only speech on Friday afternoon.

Paul took on the CPAC crowd's two great enemies in equal doses: the Democratic party and the Republican establishment.

"I don't question President Obama's motives," he said in lambasting the administration's regulatory policies and defense of a robust surveillance state, "but history will remember his timid defense of liberty."

In perhaps the biggest applause line of the conference, Paul declared: "If you have a cell phone, you are under surveillance. I believe what you do on your cell phone is none of their damn business."

As for fellow members of his party, Paul advised discretion in selecting candidates. "You might think I'm talking about electing Republicans; I'm not," he said. "I'm talking about electing friends of liberty."

The straw poll results were announced at the end of a mostly quiet last day at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, a few miles outside Washington.

By Saturday, most of the potential 2016 presidential candidates had spoken. Among the bigger draws were retiring Representative Michele Bachmann, the colorful, controversial Minnesotan delivering her last address as a member of Congress, and Carson, who in the past year has become a major draw on the right for his outspoken beliefs on social issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and the Affordable Care Act.

The doctor has a penchant for incendiary comparisons of these policies to slavery, bestiality, the Nazis, and so forth. His speech on Saturday was well received, if a touch defensive in its repeated condemnations of the "PC police".

The night closed with the former Alaska governor and 2008 vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, whom the CPAC crowd always loves – especially when they're certain that she won't bother running for office anymore.

She's a natural, if peculiar, entertainer for these high-paying customers. The stunts this year included a play on Dr Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham ("I do not like this Uncle Sam, I do not like this healthcare scam/I do not like these dirty crooks or how they lie and cook the books"); a line about how you "can't make a phone call without Michelle Obama knowing this is the third time this week you've dialed Pizza Hut delivery"; referring to MSNBC as "MSLSD"; and making fun of Secretary of State John Kerry's face.

Jim Newell

Nigeria violence: 'Our security forces area too outdated to meet these challenges'

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 04:06 PM PST

Three leading Nigerian commentators give their views on the insurgency

Theophilus Ilevbare

Public affairs commentator, writing in the Nigerian Daily Post

"The surging violence by the shadowy sect, Boko Haram, has continued to inundate us even if some no longer shudder at screaming headlines of dozens whose throats have been slit. The vicious group has shown no sign of slowing down, with a string of co-ordinated attacks.

"It is incomprehensible that terrorist attacks in villages and towns last for hours without security intervention. The escalation of violence between January and February alone has claimed over 650 lives. The Nigerian military still has a lot to prove that it is capable of putting down the insurrection.

"The military's symmetric approach to an asymmetric counter-terrorism battle in states under emergency has failed. The spate of almost daily attacks on hapless civilians underscores this point. These mindless killings from highly networked, richly financed groups waging insurgent war often from within civilian population use both traditional and modern weapons.

"Their tactics can best be quelled by military operations backed by the most advanced technology. The structure and design of Nigeria's national security is too outdated to meet challenges."

Daya Oluyemi-Kusa

Expert in conflict prevention and resolution in Abuja

"The African method of raising children should be returned to: 'It takes one person to give birth to a child, but it takes a village to raise a child.' Programmes should be put in place for socialisation of children and youths to return to family values.

"The long-term implication of this is that such children would no longer be available as suicide bombers. Since it is in the hearts of men and women that violence begins, it follows that it is also in their hearts that peace through tolerance should begin.

"The criminalisation of the Nigerian state undermines counter-terror efforts. We note the growing nexus between organised crime syndicates and radical Islamist groups like Boko Haram and Ansaru. Terrorists are exploiting the phenomenon of the criminalisation of the state to expand their influence.

"Preachers in all religions – Christianity, Islam and traditional African religion – should be licensed. They should have a code of conduct, such that if any one of them is flouting any item in the code, the licence should be withdrawn. This would curb the rise of radical preaching in any religion."

Retired Major-General Adamu Ibrahim

Former general commanding 81 Division of the Nigerian Army, writing in the Nation

"Troops deployed to fight Boko Haram are only trained for conventional wars, not the urban guerrilla war where the enemies hit and run. In a conventional war, you know the enemies and their location, so you can direct heavy artillery and air attacks to shed or crush them before [a ground attack].

"Our troops don't know the enemies' sanctuaries; air surveillance jets cannot locate them; if you feel they are there and you attempt to bomb them, you end up killing innocent people.

"The whole thing boils down to training. The soldiers may have the necessary – and expensive – equipment, but they don't have the skills to handle it."

The Invisible War review – sexual assault within the US military | Mark Kermode

Posted: 08 Mar 2014 04:05 PM PST

Mark Kermode: Kirby Dick's Oscar-nominated documentary presents a harrowing picture of systematic abuse

Kirby Dick's typically insightful and compassionate documentary presents a harrowing picture of an epidemic of sexual assault and rape within the US military.

First-hand testimony of survivors, many of whom tell alarmingly similar stories, paints a picture of systematic abuse within an institution that tolerates, fosters and indeed protects sexual predators on a massive scale. First released in 2012 and nominated for best documentary at the 2013 Academy awards, this shocking film now ends with an updated coda, which declares that recorded sexual assault in the military has increased by 35% since 2011, making its message even more timely and urgent.

Rating: 4/5

Mark Kermode