The lesson from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill 7 Sep 2010, 3:45 pm

White House says oil has gone from Gulf of Mexico oil spill

Obama enters mid-terms campaign with $50bn infrastructure plan 6 Sep 2010, 7:15 pm

President on the road to persuade voters economy is safe in his hands, ahead of elections expected to be tough on Democrats

Barack Obama is launching a campaign to persuade American voters that the ailing US economy is safe in his hands. He unveiled a $50bn (£32bn) infrastructure package last night as the countdown began to the mid-term elections in November, in which the Democrats are expected to receive a drubbing.

The president chose the manufacturing town of Milwaukee, home of Harley-Davidson, to announce the scheme which is designed to boost jobs by investing in roads, railways and airport runways. White House officials said the package would run over six years but would be "front-loaded" so that it would jump-start the economy by putting building workers and other manual labourers back to work.

"We're going to rebuild 150,000 miles of our roads – enough to circle the world six times. We're going to lay and maintain 4,000 miles of our railways – enough to stretch coast to coast," Obama said.

The speech, made on the Labor Day holiday that honours American workers, is an indication that Obama intends to focus his efforts almost exclusively on the economy over the eight weeks that remain until the 2 November elections.

His critics – including several representatives of his own Democratic party struggling to hang on to their seats – say this is not before time, accusing the president of having dispersed his energies too widely on healthcare and foreign policy rather than concentrating on voters' fears about their livelihoods.

Obama said that Republicans were hoping Americans would forget the economic policies they put in place that led to the recession and that they had opposed nearly everything he has done to help the economy, and had proposed solutions that had only made the problem worse.

"That philosophy didn't work out so well for middle-class families all across America," Obama told a cheering crowd. "It didn't work out so well for our country. All it did was rack up record deficits and result in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

He said Republicans had consistently opposed his economic proposals and seemed to be running on a slogan of "No, we can't," playing off his 2008 presidential campaign mantra of "Yes we can."

"If I said fish live in the sea, they'd say no," Obama said.

Today marks the unofficial start of the campaign season, and there are signs of growing urgency, if not panic, in Democratic ranks. The Cook Political Report, which monitors congressional races, predicts the Republicans stand to gain at least 35 seats in the House of Representatives – within spitting distance of the 39 needed to regain control – and they are also threatening to recapture the Senate.

A recent Gallup poll gave Republicans a 10-point lead, the largest for the party ahead of the midterms since 1942 and double the advantage it held at the same time in 1994, when it snatched back Congress from Bill Clinton's Democrats.

The infrastructure plan promises to rebuild 150,000 miles of roads, restore 4,000 miles of railway and improve 150 miles of airport runway. It would also pay for the installation of a new air traffic control system and set up a permanent infrastructure bank to channel private and public money into projects.

Obama will announce further job-creating schemes tomorrow in Cleveland, Ohio, including a plan to extend tax incentives for research.

In his weekly speech at the weekend, Obama said that "to heal our economy, we need more than a healthy stock market; we need bustling main streets and a growing, thriving middle class. That's why I will keep working day by day to restore opportunity, economic security and that basic American dream for our families and future generations".

Hilda Solis, the labour secretary, told CBS yesterday that the infrastructure plans would "put construction workers, welders, electricians, back to work – folks who have been unemployed for a long time".

The problem for the Democrats is that none of these initiatives is likely to make a discernible difference before 2 November to the current unemployment rate, which last month crept up to 9.6%.

The White House may even find it impossible to get the new infrastructure scheme passed through Congress before members head back to their constituencies for the vote. Officials admitted yesterday that the first jobs that would be created under the package would not be seen until next year at the earliest.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration's $862bn stimulus package, introduced in the wake of the global economic meltdown, has largely worked its way through the system.

There is also an element of damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. While Democratic candidates complain that Obama has not focused enough on the economy, Republicans suggest he has done too much, portraying him as an insatiable spender of public money.

As an indication of the likely campaign ahead, the Drudge Report, the influential conservative website, led on Monday with the infrastructure package under a picture of Obama and the headline: "Addicted to stimulus – $50,000,000,000 more".

With Obama's presidential approval rating languishing at minus 23%, according to the Rasmussen reports, many Democratic incumbents are openly avoiding any link with him. Some are barely mentioning their Democratic credentials on campaign literature.

The Obama administration says it will avoid piling any further burden on to the national debt as a result of its new economic measures, by balancing the costs with increased tax revenue to be achieved by closing tax loopholes for oil and gas companies and multinationals.

Child poverty fight threatened by west's cost cuts, says Unicef 6 Sep 2010, 7:06 pm

Unicef millennium development goals report highlights threat of government austerity measures, food crisis and climate change

The United Nations warned today that the patchy global struggle to lift children out of poverty was being threatened by budget cuts in the west, soaring food prices and climate change.

In a report prepared for a New York summit this month to measure progress in meeting the 2015 millennium development goals, Unicef said the pressures on aid budgets would have knock-on effects in the world's poorest countries. "Fiscal constraints in industrialised economies will likely have reverberations for developing nations, particularly those dependent on external assistance," the report noted. "Fiscal retrenchment may undermine social progress, particularly if the global recovery is uneven and halting."

It added: "The austerity measures currently being introduced in some European Union countries call for sharp cuts in spending, and it is not fully clear how these reductions will affect child-related expenditures, either at home or abroad.

"The effects of fiscal reductions in donor assistance, but also in added caution on the part of developing country programmes as they, too, come under pressure for financial markets and external investors to undertake their own fiscal adjustments."

Unicef said there were four other global threats that could undermine progress: the food and financial crises; rapid urbanisation; climate change and ecosystem degradation; and escalating human crises.

"High food prices in 2008 and 2009 and falling real household incomes have reduced consumer purchasing power; poor consumers have less money to spend on food," it said.

The UN millennium development goals are eight separate targets for reducing global poverty. They include a halving of the number of people living on less than $2 (£1.30) a day, universal primary education, a two-thirds cut in deaths of children under five and a 75% reduction in maternal mortality.

Unicef said in the report that despite some impressive gains in child survival in several countries in sub-Saharan Africa between 1990 and 2008, the gap in child mortality with other regions was growing. "In 1990, a child born in sub-Saharan Africa faced a probability of dying before his or her fifth birthday that was 1.5 times higher than in South Asia, 3.5 times higher than in Latin America and the Caribbean and 18.4 times higher than in the industrialised countries. By 2008, these gaps had widened markedly, owing to faster progress elsewhere.

"Now a child born in sub-Saharan Africa faces an under-five mortality rate that is 1.9 times higher than in South Asia, 6.3 times higher than in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 24 times higher than in the industrialised nations."

Unicef said there were big disparities for children within poor countries. A child born in one of the world's poorest communities was "two times less likely to have been born to a mother who received antenatal care and three times less likely to have come into the world with a skilled attendant present". Poor children were also far less likely to be treated for pneumonia and diarrhoea, two of the biggest killers during the first five years of life.

It noted that in all developing regions, child mortality was notably higher among poor families, while children in rural areas tended to suffer more than those in urban areas. "The urban-rural divide in human development is perhaps most marked in the case of access to improved drinking water and sanitation facilities. Of the 884 million people who continue to lack access to improved drinking water sources, 84% live in rural areas."

Anthony Lake, Unicef's executive director, said there had been significant progress towards in meeting the millennium Ddevelopment goals, "but it is increasingly evident that our progress is uneven in many key areas." "In fact, compelling data suggest that in the global push to achieve the MDGs, we are leaving behind millions of the world's most disadvantaged, vulnerable and marginalised children: the children who are facing the longest odds."

In praise of… reclaiming cities | Editorial 6 Sep 2010, 7:05 pm

Clearing our cities of cars for a day can bring a breath of fresh air in more ways than one

The retreat of the car began, implausibly enough, in Bogotá in 1976, when the Colombian capital began handing over its streets to cyclists on Sundays. Six days a week the main motorways into the city are packed with traffic; on the seventh they are coned off, and filled with cycling, walking and rollerblading citizens. Now, many years after it should have done, Britain is following suit. Last Sunday an estimated 85,000 people took part in London's Sky Ride, along closed city streets, joining others in Manchester last month, Birmingham next Sunday and other towns and cities too. The draw is not just communal exercise, but a chance to see a changed city, quieter, on a human rather than a mechanical scale. Something of the same feeling follows a heavy snowfall, for a few hours before the stuff turns to unpleasant grey slush, or a big city marathon. Normal routines are disrupted; people talk; cars are held back; cities look different. There is pleasure in such unexpected shared experiences, an engagingly different taste of urban life without the need to travel away from it. Each August in Paris the expressway along the River Seine is buried beneath 1,357 tonnes of sand and handed over to the public as a beach, though the river itself is judged, sadly, too dirty for swimming. Given British summer weather, a beach might fail on the Embankment or Princes Street. But the success of Sky Ride shows people want to cycle. For a time, at least, the car does not always have to come first in the city.

Letters: Israel, Jews and the peace process 6 Sep 2010, 7:05 pm

In his analysis ('It's time to get to work': 17 years after Oslo, Clinton takes on the Middle East challenge, 3 September), Ian Black describes Netanyahu as demanding that Abbas recognise Israel "as a Jewish state".

However, according to Chris McGreal's report on the facing page ('Together we can lead people to a future that will end conflict', 3 September), what Netanyahu actually demanded from the Palestinians was recognition of "Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people". The difference is significant. Netanyahu is a Jewish prime minister, but he is certainly not the prime minister of the Jewish people, as he claims.

A state defined by ethnic religion is bad enough; but what Netanyahu's actual demand amounts to is legitimation of Zionism, and the "right" of Israel to speak and act for an alleged Jewish "nation" consisting of Jews everywhere, including the UK.

Professor Emeritus Moshé Machover

London

• I hear that the much overused expression "elephant in the room" is being applied to Hamas in the context of the new Middle East peace talks. Maybe if this particular elephant was allowed to enter the room, there would be a bit more chance of some real progress.

Owain Clarke

North Baddesley, Hampshire

• Karel De Gucht's outburst was directed not to the government of Israel, or to some people in Israel, or to some Jews, but essentially to all Jews, moderates or not, religious or lay (Anger at EU chief's Middle East outburst, 4 September) – not that this difference is relevant, but De Gucht made a point of referring to both groups explicitly. This clear manifestation of antisemitism should be condemned if expressed by any government official. It is inadmissible from someone who is a representative of the European Union. His clarifying statement is hogwash. He expressed hatred or derision of every Jew. No amount of explanation can change this. If he does not resign of his own accord, Karel De Gucht should be fired.

Professor Jacobo Bielak

Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, US

• Karel De Gucht, the European commissioner for trade, is indeed purveying blatant prejudice in his statement that Jews are incapable of "rational discussion about what is actually happening in the Middle East". Moshe Kantor, head of the European Jewish Congress, describes this statement not as anti-Jewish, but as incitement "against Jews and Israel". By thus bracketing "Jews and Israel" together, he is ignoring the views of Jews who are brave enough to speak out against Israeli actions, and is thus effectively guilty of precisely the same prejudice as that of De Gucht.

Dr Hugh Goodacre

University of Westminster

• The excellent article by Simon Jenkins on Iraq (A trillion-dollar catastrophe. Yes, Iraq was a headline war, 31 August) follows on from an equally superb article from Seumas Milne (The US isn't leaving Iraq, it's rebranding the occupation, 4 August); both consider that the Iraqi invasion has been a failure. Certainly Iraq would in all other circumstances be considered a failed state. There is though, another viewpoint that has been ignored by both journalists.  

From a geopolitical, US/British, perspective, the invasion has been an outstanding success. The threat that Iraq posed under Saddam Hussein, to Middle Eastern dominance and Israeli local hegemony, has been disposed of. A major oil country no longer threatens to price oil in euros, Israel is safer than before, US and western oil majors now dominate Iraqi oil, major bases have been established in a strategic part of the world.

If one closes one's eyes for a moment to the immense suffering that has resulted from the invasion, and the fact that Iraq as a nation state has been set back decades, and view the world from the centres of power in Washington DC – from the viewpoint of the planners, who are struggling to maintain the US as the dominant world powerhouse – the invasion has been a resounding success.

Roger van Zwanenberg

London

Letters: Bushmen concern 6 Sep 2010, 7:05 pm

We, the undersigned – all winners of the Right Livelihood award, commonly known as the "alternative Nobel prize" – are greatly concerned for the welfare of our friends and fellow laureates, the Bushmen of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Without access to water, a fundamental human right, they are struggling to sustain their way of life on their ancestral lands (Report, 23 July).

All the Bushmen want is to be able to use a borehole which they used before they were illegally evicted from their lands. To deny them this is inexcusable. 

We urge the Botswana government to allow the Bushmen access to water on their lands, and work with them to ensure a sustainable future for everyone. In the words of the Bushman spokesman Roy Sesana: "We aren't here for ourselves. We are here for each other and for the children of our grandchildren."

Ibrahim Abouleish (Egypt)

Marcos Aran, International Baby Food Action Network (Mexico)

András Biró/Hungarian Foundation for Self-Reliance (Hungary)

Carmel Budiardjo (UK)

Tony Clarke (Canada)

Erik Dammann/The Future in Our Hands (Norway)

Hans-Peter Duerr (Germany)

Samuel Epstein (USA)

Anwar Fazal (Malaysia)

Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín (Colombia)

Johan Galtung (Norway)

Wes Jackson/The Land Institute (USA)

Katarina Kruhonja (Croatia)

Ida Kuklina/The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia (Russia)

Manfred Max-Neef (Chile)

Pat Mooney (Canada)

Alice Tepper Marlin (USA)

Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Nigeria)

Nicanor Perlas (Philippines)

Raúl Montenegro (Argentina)

Juan Pablo Orrego/ Grupo de Acción por el Biobío (Chile)

Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad (India)

Right Livelihood Award Foundation (Sweden)

Mycle Schneider (France)

Suciwati, wife of late Munir (Indonesia)

Hannumappa Sudarshan, VGKK (India)

Vesna Terselic (Croatia)

Trident Ploughshares (UK)

John F. Charlewood Turner (UK)

Judit Vásárhelyi, on behalf of Duna Kör (Hungary)

Alla Yaroshinskaya (Russia)

Letter: Orange prize trouble 6 Sep 2010, 7:05 pm

Lionel Shriver's absolutely right, of course (I write a nasty book. And they want a girly cover on it, 3 September). There's no rational reason why fiction written by women shouldn't be accorded the same critical and commercial respect routinely given to fiction written by men. And I agree with her when she says: "When my novels are packaged as exclusively for women, I'm not only cut off from a vital portion of my audience but clearly labelled as an author the literary establishment is free to dismiss." Which is why it's a little unfortunate that you remind us at the foot of her article that "Lionel Shriver won the 2005 Orange prize for fiction with We Need to Talk About Kevin''. The Orange prize is a literary award open only to female writers. What's it for? If fiction written by women is every bit as vital, challenging and, well, good as fiction written by men – and it is – is the cause of female writers not hindered by the existence of an award which every year gives a prize to Best Book By a Girl?

Neil Pearson

London

Netherlands and Belgium: Low Country blues | Editorial 6 Sep 2010, 7:04 pm

Editorial: Growing nationalist movements have left both Dutch and Belgian coalition governments tied in knots

Their historic image was that of modest polities, skilled at compromise, who arranged their own affairs well and had energy and resources to spare for European and international purposes. But the Netherlands and Belgium do not even begin to conform to that model today. Both countries are locked in parallel crises, rooted precisely in a failure to compromise and also in a rejection by parts of their populations of the cosmopolitan and multicultural traditions of the Low Countries. The Netherlands has been without a proper government since February; Belgium has not had one since April.

Both political systems have been rocked by the success of forces that were not so much new in themselves but were suddenly manifest on a new scale. In Belgium the New Flemish Alliance or N-VA, Flemish nationalist and rightwing, became the largest party. It has only been in existence since 2001. In the Netherlands, the Freedom party or PVV of Geert Wilders, Dutch nationalist and anti-migrant, more than doubled its MPs to become the third largest party. Its origins go back only to 2004.

The result in both countries was the same. It was hard to create a governing coalition without including the newcomer, but it was equally hard to create one with the newcomer, because of the fundamental difference in values between the parties. In the Dutch case, the difference was most acute over the treatment of migrants and minorities. In the Belgian case, the difference was between those who wanted to preserve the state and those whose ultimate aim was to dismantle it or at least so dilute it as to make it meaningless.

So it was not altogether a surprise this weekend when Elio di Rupo, the socialist charged with trying to form a viable coalition in Belgium, confessed failure to King Albert. Nor when Geert Wilders walked out of talks on supporting the Christian Democrats and the Liberals in the Netherlands, essentially because he could not get a tight enough deal on migrants.

Both countries are faced with the problems of recession, so this is a bad moment to be treading water. Polls suggest the great majority of Belgians wish their country to continue, while the Dutch do not want theirs in limbo because of arguments over migrants. Europe has begun to notice that it has a pair of timebombs on its doorstep. Compromise is necessary, especially since observers believe that new elections would produce an equally intractable and essentially similar political arithmetic. The hope must be that public pressure from the voters whose choices created these farcical situations may help to resolve them as they become more and more impatient with their dithering political leaders.

Sinn Féin 'heavily involved' in push for Eta ceasefire, says Gerry Adams 6 Sep 2010, 5:28 pm

Writing in the Guardian, Gerry Adams says his party held a series of meetings with Basque separatists

Sinn Féin's leader, Gerry Adams, said today his party had been heavily involved in pushing the Basque separatist group Eta towards calling a ceasefire at the weekend.

As the Spanish government ruled out negotiations and claimed Eta had announced the ceasefire because it was now too weak to carry out terrorist attacks, Adams, writing in the Guardian today, said the move had been the result of months of talks among Basque separatists.

"This dialogue also involved senior Sinn Féin representatives, including myself," he said. "Sometimes the discussions were held in the Basque country, sometimes in Belfast and on a number of occasions in recent years Sinn Féin representatives travelled to Geneva for meetings with Basque representatives." It was not clear whether the meetings were with members of Eta, or only with other radical separatist groups from the Basque country.

Eta had responded by calling a ceasefire that, Adams hoped, would be grasped by the Spanish government as an opportunity to start a peace process that might follow some of the principles used in Ulster.

The Sinn Féin leader's words contrasted, however, with the reaction of prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's government in Madrid, which said it would not talk to Eta.

"Eta kills in order to impose itself, that means one cannot [have] dialogue," said the interior minister, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. "The word truce, as the idea of a limited peace to open a process of dialogue, is dead."

Zapatero's government last tried negotiating with Eta when it called a ceasefire four years ago. That truce ended nine months later when a bomb at Madrid's Barajas airport killed two people. Rubalcaba agreed that Eta had effectively been observing a ceasefire for months, but said this was because it wanted to reorganise and escape intense police pressure in Spain and parts of Europe.

"What they do not say is that they decided to stop months ago because they were so weak," he said. "Eta has stopped because it cannot do anything, and also in order to rebuild itself."

He claimed the ceasefire announcement was also an attempt by Eta to keep control over the increasingly tired and fractious radical Basque separatist groups that have traditionally backed a terrorism campaign that has claimed more than 800 lives over four decades.

These are the same groups, headed by former leaders of the banned Batasuna separatist party, that Sinn Féin has been helping.

"The aim is to try to cover up their weakness," said Rubalcaba. "Because if Eta is weak those groups in the separatist worldwho are rebellious against them grow in strength."

One of Eta's founders, Julen de Madariaga, said that the group's current weakness was more the result of a loss of support among ordinary Basques than due to police action.

"The main reason for Eta's weakness is that over the past 12 to 15 years the people who used to support it have abandoned it," Madariaga, who distanced himself from the group's tactics years ago, told the Guardian by telephone. He said the decision by leaders of the banned Batasuna party to stop bowing to Eta's line and to push for peace was more than overdue."It was time that Batasuna made things clear to Eta and took charge of itself," he said.

Analysts pointed to a double bind for Eta as it was squeezed by police on one side and by its own supporters on the other.

"The ceasefire statement aims to give political meaning to a strategic rest decreed by Eta's leaders six months ago in order to reorganise internally to cope with police pressure," wrote Florencio Dominguez, an Eta expert, in La Vanguardia newspaper.

Dominguez pointed to the arrest in February of Ibon Gojeaskoetxea, a senior Eta commander, as a key moment. That arrest was hailed as the fifth time in two years that police had detained the person directly in charge of Eta's handful of remaining armed units.

At the same time, police had prevented new units from being formed in several parts of Spain, and discovered Eta's latest bombmaking laboratory. It had also dismantled its new bases in Portugal, to where Eta had hoped to move its support infrastructure that historically had been based in France.

It was in February, too, that Batasuna leaders won the support of thousands of local activists for a proposal for a new process of talks over the future of the Basque country that would require Eta to give up violence.

"Sunday's statement did not come out of the blue," said Adams. "I believe it has the potential to bring about a permanent end to the conflict with the Spanish state."

Eta's ceasefire is a political shift | Gerry Adams 6 Sep 2010, 5:27 pm

The Basque group, drawing on the Irish experience, has committed to the democratic process. Spain must recognise that

The announcement of a ceasefire by Eta on Sunday was the culmination of years of debate, discussion and strategising among Basque activists. It is a significant development and a genuine attempt to contribute to a resolution of the conflict. I believe it has the potential to bring about a permanent end to the conflict with the Spanish state.

This dialogue also involved senior Sinn Féin representatives, including myself. Sometimes the discussions were held in the Basque country, sometimes in Belfast, and on a number of occasions in recent years Sinn Féin representatives travelled to Geneva for meetings with Basque representatives. Many in the Basque country look to the Irish peace process for inspiration, and much of what has been attempted there in the last decade has been modelled on our experience.

Given the experience of the 2006 cessation – which ended in mutual recrimination in after only nine months – there will be those on both the Basque and Spanish sides who will be sceptical and cautious. But caution should not be allowed to encourage preconditions to dialogue. Caution should not be allowed to block progress.

In the Irish peace process we saw how games of scrabble were played around the use and interpretation of certain words, and some of these became preconditions which were then used to delay progress.

To succeed, a credible process between the Basque people and the Spanish state has to respect democratic mandates. The electorate has the right to choose the party it wants to represent it, and this decision should be accepted and respected by the Spanish government.

Toward the end of last year and into this year an impressive internal process of strategy formulation took place among Basque parties, trade unionists and political activists. This involved thousands of activists. The debate was about agreeing a new political approach.

In February a conference of the Abertzale Left, which includes the banned Basque party Batasuna, agreed a new, broad-front approach. This, too, draws heavily from the Irish experience.

The new strategy commits Basque participants to "exclusively political and democratic means" and seeks to achieve political change "in a complete absence of violence and without interference" and "conducted in accordance with the Mitchell Principles". The strategy finds its echo in the weekend statement by Eta.

In its video message Eta confirmed "its commitment to finding a democratic solution to the conflict. In its commitment to a democratic process to decide freely and democratically our future, through dialogue and negotiations, Eta is prepared today as yesterday to agree to the minimum democratic conditions necessary to put in motion a democratic process, if the Spanish government is willing.

"We also convey this to the international community and call on it to respond to Eta's will and commitment in order to participate in the building of a durable, just and democratic resolution to the centuries-long political struggle."

Of significance is the fact that Abertzale Left in its response to the Eta statement is describing that initiative as a "unilateral and unconditional cessation of military operations indefinitely". It also speaks of its recognition that it should continue to develop initiatives, making "commitments and compromising" in order to make progress.

The Abertzale Left position would suggest that the Basque parties understand the need to build on this initiative. There is also a heavy responsibility on the Spanish government to grasp this opportunity for peace and progress. It needs to be farsighted, to think strategically and to ignore those voices that seek a resolution in terms of victory and defeat.

The international community, too, has a role to play, just as it did in the Irish peace process and is currently doing in the negotiations on the Middle East which commenced last week.

There are dangers ahead. No conflict resolution process can be risk-free for its participants. But the benefits of succeeding far outweigh the dangers of failure.

Iran accused by UN watchdog of hampering nuclear inspections 6 Sep 2010, 4:41 pm

IAEA report repeatedly complains about failure of Iran to respond to inspectors' requests for information

The United Nations' nuclear watchdog today accused Iran of hampering inspections of the country's nuclear programme, banning some inspectors and breaking UN seals on its uranium stockpile.

In its quarterly report on Iran's programme, the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly complained of Iran's failure to respond to its inspectors' requests for information about its plans and activities. In particular, the report said that Tehran's repeated objections to the accreditation of UN inspectors "hampers the inspection process and detracts from the agency's ability" to monitor Iran's nuclear work, which is already the subject of several UN resolutions and international sanctions.

The IAEA noted that Iran had the right to block inspectors on some criteria – several countries vet inspectors on the basis of nationality for example – but objected strongly to an Iranian claim that two recently-blocked inspectors had made "false and wrong statements" in an earlier report. The report was about the removal of sensitive laboratory equipment under IAEA surveillance, which can be used for separating uranium or plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.

The IAEA said it had "full confidence in the professionalism and impartiality of the inspectors concerned, as it has in all of its inspectors".

The UN agency also pointed out that some of its seals on Iran's stockpile of low enriched uranium (LEU) had been broken. The seals are intended to ensure that Iran is not diverting LEU and secretly enriching it further to weapons-grade purity. Iran told the IAEA the seals had been broken accidently, but the agency said it would have to verify in a stocktaking exercise due next month whether any nuclear material had been diverted.

A source with knowledge of the agency's Iran file said: "Seals are there for containment. Once one seal is broken there is no containment."

A series of UN resolutions has demanded Iran cease the enrichment of uranium, on the grounds that it can be used in weapons as well as power plants. Iran insists that its programme is for entirely peaceful purposes, and claims it has a right to enrich its own uranium for that programme. Iran has now amassed 2.8 tonnes of LEU, although it does not appear to have increased the rate of enrichment. It is also continuing to build up a stockpile of uranium enriched to a higher level of purity, also in defiance of UN resolutions, which it says is required for a medical research reactor in Tehran.

David Albright, a former nuclear inspector, who is now head of the Institute for Science and International Security said: "We have to worry now whether the Iranians are weakening safeguards to the point that if they do 'break out' [try to build a bomb covertly], if won't be noticed for a longer period of time."

Substance abuse, not mental illness, causes violent crime 6 Sep 2010, 4:09 pm

Study finds people with drink or drug addictions have similar rates of violent crimes whether or not they have a mental illness

Illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are not the reason why violent crimes are committed by mental health patients, a study showed today.

An exhaustive study which tracked more than 8,000 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and another 3,700 identified as having bipolar disorder over three decades in Sweden found that the abuse of illegal drugs and alcohol caused mentally ill people to perpetrate crimes of murder, manslaughter and sexual violence.

Dr Seena Fazel, a clinical senior lecturer in forensic psychiatry and consultant forensic psychiatrist at the University of Oxford, said: "The relationship between violent crime and serious mental illness can be explained by alcohol and substance abuse. If you take away the substance abuse, the contribution of the illness itself is minimal."

The academic said that all over Europe patients had been reinstitutionalised because of "this view that people with mental illness are a high risk … there's a lot of stigma". He said a solution would be to tackle drug and alcohol abuse across the whole population.

Dr Fazel added: "It's probably more dangerous walking outside a pub on a late night than walking outside a hospital where patients have been released."

He said rates of violent crime among people who were mentally ill and abused substances were no different from those among other people who abused substances.

People with mental illnesses who abuse substances have violent crime rates which are six to seven times higher than the general population – as do people with no mental health issues who have similar drink or drugs problems.

Dr Fazel said data also showed that those who were mentally ill but did not abuse substances were only at "minimally increased risk" of committing violent crime.

Around 0.9% to 1% of the general population suffers from bipolar disorder while 0.4% to 0.5% have schizophrenia.

Research has shown that around 20% of people with bipolar disorder abuse alcohol and drugs compared with about 2% of the general population. Dr Fazel said that one reason for this might be that substance abuse was "genetically programmed" into patients.

"We are looking at two reasons why this figure is higher. One is whether patients attempt to self-medicate with substance abuse. The other is that there is a possibility of genetic predisposition towards substance abuse given that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder both have an element of genetic predisposition."

Soldiers killed in Afghanistan named by MoD 6 Sep 2010, 4:07 pm

Captain Andrew Griffiths and Lance Corporal Joe Pool died after attacks by insurgents in south of country

A British soldier who died on Sunday after an explosion in southern Afghanistan was the son of the colonel of his regiment, the Ministry of Defence said last night.

Captain Andrew Griffiths, 25, was one of two soldiers who died on Sunday to be named. Griffiths died at Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham after being seriously wounded in an explosion in southern Nahr-e-Saraj last month. He was from the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment. His father, a brigadier, is honorary colonel of the regiment.

He was serving as part of a Royal Gurkha Rifles battlegroup, and was wounded while preventing insurgents from disrupting the building of a road. "His loss is a bitter blow but his bravery and selfless commitment to his men and the mission will never be forgotten", the MoD said.

Lance Corporal Joe Pool, 26, from the Royal Scots Borderers, 1st Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland, was killed on Sunday by a rocket-propelled grenade during a fire fight in Nad-e Ali district of Helmand province.

Pool, from Greenock, was the latest in an increasing number of British soldiers being killed by small arms, indicating insurgents are again changing their tactics.

Insurgents are becoming increasingly confident in their ability to fire in close proximity at patrols rather than rely, as they have in the past, mainly on hidden improvised explosive devices, military sources say.

Insurgents switched to IEDs from gun battles four years ago when they realised that they could not win against the British soldiers' firepower.

Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Herbert, commander of the Royal Scots Borderers, said yesterday that Pool "died a soldier's death, in close combat, bravely and tenaciously taking the fight to the insurgents, and in doing so helping to protect the people of Afghanistan from a barbaric enemy".

Pool's fiancee, Lynsey, described him as a "loving fiance and wonderful dad of two boys aged seven and two. He was much loved and he will be missed by all his family and friends."

So far 89 British troops have been killed in Helmand province this year, compared to 108 in 2009. Between 1 July and 15 August this year, 36 were seriously injured, according to the MoD's latest official figures.

ENRC's stake in disputed DRC mine is a minefield 6 Sep 2010, 4:01 pm

Quantum Minerals claim of illegal seizure is still under arbitration – FTSE 100 company ENRC needs to look to its reputation
• Mining companies clash over Congo copper mine

Canadian copper group First Quantum Minerals claims some of its assets in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) were illegally seized last year by the government. International arbitration proceedings continue. A fortnight ago, Kazakh-based Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) bought a stake in one of the disputed mines and says its lawyers demonstrated that it was free to do so.

An everyday tale of mining in central Africa? Yes – but with a twist. ENRC is a member of the FTSE 100 index and boasts the considerable figure of Sir Richard Sykes, former chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, as its senior independent director. If ENRC has been dealing in stolen property, which is the gist of First Quantum's allegation, that would be an extraordinary state of affairs.

ENRC yesterday repeated its view that "any dispute that First Quantum has is with the appropriate authorities in the DRC", a statement that is correct as matters stand since First Quantum has not issued proceedings against ENRC and is merely considering doing so.

The affair will become fascinating if the Canadians make good on their threat. Until such a moment, Sykes and ENRC can probably afford to stick to their legalistic line. But they would well be advised to go further and say something about the character of their company. Everybody knows mining in Africa is a game for grown-ups. But in the FTSE 100 club, reputation also matters.

Oil industry regulation: scepticism over new sheriff in the wild wild west 6 Sep 2010, 3:47 pm

Industry experts fear that many of Obama's changes in wake of Gulf oil spill will be no more than cosmetic

Oil industry executives in the US call the Gulf of Mexico the "wild wild west", a place where regulations are rarely enforced and offshore operators can do what they want. Barack Obama has promised to tighten regulations to prevent a repeat of the Gulf disaster but many within the industry are sceptical that much will really change.

A failure of regulation is as much the cause of the disaster as the actions of BP and the other companies involved on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded in April. The evidence that has emerged so far from the US congressional investigations reveals countless instances of standard safety procedures being ignored. It transpires that the federal regulator, the Minerals Management Service, wasn't so much asleep at the wheel but abdicated itself entirely of any responsibility for making sure offshore operators complied with the law.

Staff allowed operators to fill in and sign off safety audits of their offshore operations that the regulator was supposed to carry out itself. Among Houston-based insurers, BP had a reputation for being the riskiest operator and for pushing its subcontractors the hardest, industry sources have told the Guardian. But it would never have been allowed to carry on like this had the regulatory sytem not failed.

Reining in the industry will be no easy feat. Big Oil – like much of the American South where it is based – is fiercely resistant to what it perceives as interference from the federal government. In New Orleans in June, a judge ruled in favour of a group of oil services companies that had appealed against the moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed by the White House following the disaster. The judge agreed that the ban risked causing more economic damage to the region. In the end the ban still stood, but Obama was given a bloody nose and reminded that the oil industry was not about to turn the other cheek.

Industry experts fear that many of the changes will be no more than cosmetic. Obama is planning to break up the MMS to prevent conflicts of interest arising in the future, and has already changed its name. He has also promised to end the revolving-door practice of staff finding well-paid jobs as lobbyists for the industry when they leave the regulator.

Mike Sawyer, a Houston-based oil industry engineer, is not hopeful that the new regulator will be any more effective than its predecessor. "You have the same guys from the agency now working for the new regulator. All that's happened is the pack has been reshuffled. If you put a dress on a pig it's still a pig," he says. Without a massive increase in funding, it's hard to see how any regulator can closely monitor hundreds of offshore operators, many of whom are drilling in water thousands of feet deep using increasingly sophisticated technology. "Anytime that someone from MMS or any other government regulator goes out to one of the rigs or refineries, the engineers run circles around them on knowledge – as a regulator you can't see everything," Sawyer adds.

The oil industry is notorious for wielding influence in the corridors of power in Washington to protect its interests. According to a political watchdog, the Centre for Responsive Politics, companies contributed more than $35m to federal political candidates and parties ahead of the 2008 election. One source recalls trying to drum up interest in Washington about a lawsuit being filed against a major oil company in the Gulf. "Each time we visited, the politicians would say 'oh, that company has just been here'. They were always one step ahead of us. No-one was interested in what we had to say."

The oil industry has a powerful card to play with the politicians: energy security. Domestic oil production, most of which comes from the Gulf, reduces US dependence on foreign imports. Companies have already threatened to take their rigs elsewhere if new safety regulations make drilling too expensive.

BP's public relations line is that it will take responsibility for cleaning up the Gulf and making those affected by the disaster "whole" again. But privately its lawyers will fight tooth and nail to limit the amount of fines and compensation it must pay out. BP is still in dispute with another regulator, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha), over the explosion at its Texas City refinery back in 2005 that killed 15 workers. Osha had originally fined BP $87m for not implementing hundreds of required safety improvements at the refinery. BP appealed and recently negotiated an out-of-court settlement over some of the charges, but will continue to contest the rest. It knows its negotiating position is stronger now because public – and political – interest has moved on.

Brent Coon, a lawyer who represented one of the victims of the explosion who successfully sued BP, says he fears a similar scenario could occur in the Gulf now that BP has finally sealed the well for good. "The public is not thinking too closely now about what happens when the media and the cameras leave but when that happens, the people of the Gulf will be left to their own devices."

BP, battered but still standing, faces up to its post-oil spill future 6 Sep 2010, 3:27 pm

What executives are labelling 'Future BP' will be a much smaller company shorn of much of its presence around the world

BP is still standing, but the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has changed the company forever. It could have been far worse.

In June, some City analysts doubted whether BP could survive the crisis. Shares had plunged by more than half. Within the space of a few weeks, the official estimate of the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf had increased from 5,000 barrels to anywhere between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day. The company's repeated attempts to stop the flow had failed and August – the earliest the first relief well could be drilled – seemed a lifetime away.

The chief executive, Tony Hayward – who has since resigned – and BP's chairman were summoned to meet Barack Obama at the White House. They were forced to scrap plans to pay shareholders a dividend and instead to set aside $20bn to pay damages to those affected.

While the battle to stop the leak is over, the legal battle is only just beginning. BP will fight tooth and nail against accusations that it was grossly negligent. If the charge stands, it faces fines of up to $21bn. BP wouldn't be able to pass off other costs, such as the clean-up and damages, to its partners. With investigations by the Department of Justice, among others, only just beginning, US lawyers say it will take years to decide who was to blame for the accident – and the full level of BP's liabilities.

The company is already selling $30bn worth of assets to meet its costs from the spill so far. What executives are labelling "Future BP" will be a much smaller company shorn of much of its presence around the world. If investigations decide it has been grossly negligent, many more asset sales will be necessary.

BP argues that whatever happens, it is in the US's interests that it survives so it can meet all its liabilities. But it may be some time before it can afford to resume paying bumper dividends, which normally make up more than one-tenth of all payouts by UK companies.

Mining companies clash over Congo copper mine 6 Sep 2010, 3:14 pm

First Quantum writes to UK authorities over ENRC's acquisition of Kolwezi copper mine

A row between two mining companies over a multimillion-pound copper mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has escalated after one of the firms wrote to the UK regulator alleging that shareholders have been misled over the affair.

First Quantum, a Canadian company whose copper mine has been seized by the DRC government, has written to the UK regulator. It alleges that ENRC, the FTSE 100-listed rival which now owns a large stake in the mine, misled investors over the acquisition.

The Guardian has seen a letter written last month by First Quantum to the UK Listing Authority, part of the FSA, shortly after ENRC announced the deal.

The letter alleges that ENRC broke stock exchange disclosure rules by not detailing to shareholders the legal action against the DRC government by First Quantum to try to win back the mine. A spokeswoman for the FSA declined tonight to say whether it was investigating.

ENRC said that the international arbitration process over the dispute was already in the public domain and that it had carried out full disclosure before announcing the deal. It added: "The licence was withdrawn by the DRC in August of 2009, and the court of appeal has confirmed that the withdrawal was lawful. Any dispute that First Quantum has is with the appropriate authorities in the DRC."

Last month ENRC paid $175m (£113m) for mining assets in the DRC, including a majority stake in the Kolwezi mine.

The revelation will bring further pressure to bear on ENRC. The Guardian has also learned that First Quantum will launch its own legal action this week against its rival, probably in the British Virgin Islands. It will seek to secure damages of about $2.5bn, the estimated value of the lost assets and money spent developing the Kolwezi mine.

ENRC bought the stake in the disputed assets via a holding company incorporated there by Dan Gertler, an Israeli mining entrepreneur with strong links to the Kinshasa government.

ENRC has a stellar cast of City grandees as non-executive directors, including Sir Richard Sykes, formerly chairman of GlaxoSmithKline, who is deputy chairman.

First Quantum is already pursuing the matter in the international court of arbitration in Paris. The DRC last month seized First Quantum's other operation, Frontier, the largest copper mine in the country.

The DRC government claims that it removed the licences because First Quantum refused to renegotiate the terms of the contract, alleging "unreasonable behaviour" in three years of negotiations. In an increasingly bitter row, the government also alleges unspecified misconduct by First Quantum executives.

First Quantum president Clive Newall said: "They are making weightless and scurrilous accusations against the management. We would be delighted to have an independent review. It's extraordinary that ENRC's non-executives would put their names to this."

Vladimir Putin hints at another long stint as president 6 Sep 2010, 3:08 pm

Russian PM says he's 'still deciding' whether to run in 2012, as he draws comparison with long-serving Roosevelt

Vladimir Putin, Russia's combative and increasingly confident prime minister, today made clear he was here to stay and the world would have to come to terms with his authoritarian system of government which stifled political dissent.

Drawing an ominous comparison with the US president Franklin Roosevelt, Putin claimed he had not yet decided whether to run in Russia's 2012 presidential election, but suggested that a further long stint in office was entirely possible.

Speaking before the Valdai discussion club, a group of experts on Russia, Putin said that he would decide whether to stand closer to the event.

Neither he nor Russia's existing president, Dmitry Medvedev, would act against Russia's constitution, he added. Putin said he would continue to "share power" with Medvedev and they would work together until the next election.

"We have not decided what will be the best for Russia," Putin said, speaking at his residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Putin's latest comments failed to clarify whether – as most experts now assume – he will elbow Medvedev aside during the presidential poll in spring 2012.

But they come against what looks suspiciously like a re-election campaign that has seen Putin take command of Russia's forest fire crisis over the summer and embark on a media-friendly road trip across the Far East in a bright – if somewhat breakdown-prone – yellow Lada. Today Putin suggested there was nothing wrong with presidents who spent several decades in office, citing the example of Roosevelt, who clocked up a record stint in the White House. "Roosevelt was elected four times in accordance with the US constitution," Putin pointed out.

Under Russia's constitution Putin was obliged to step down as president in 2008 after two presidential terms. He then became prime minister. But there is nothing to stop him serving two more terms – now extended to six years – raising the prospect that he could still be running Russia in 2024.

In reality, Putin has remained Russia's supreme political arbiter, ranging well beyond his domestic prime ministerial brief. Today Putin praised the US president, Barack Obama, as "sincere". The improvement in US-Russian relations has been one of the few real foreign policy achievements of Obama's presidency.

But Putin was scathing about opposition protesters, who have been holding meetings both in Russia and abroad – including in London last week – on the 31st of each month. Picking up from an interview with Kommersant newspaper, when he said demonstrators deserved a "whack on the bonce", Putin dismissed those rallying as a marginal force.

He said everybody had a right to express their views, but added that some people deliberately provoked a police beating to capture the media's attention. "Some people want to be beaten by truncheons. They lack patience. They hold private ambitions," Putin said, adding: "Those groups are behaving in such a way that they are not a political force in the country."

Putin also defended Russia's strong vertical political system and his contentious decision in 2005 to abolish gubernatorial elections. The Kremlin now handpicks governors.

MPs to question BP rig operator amid fears of similar disaster in North Sea 6 Sep 2010, 3:03 pm

Head of Transocean, which operated destroyed Deepwater Horizon oil rig, to be asked about safety and deepwater drilling

British politicians will challenge the UK head of Transocean, the operator of the destroyed Deepwater Horizon rig, tomorrow over whether the Gulf of Mexico disaster could be repeated in the North Sea.

In the first televised hearing of an investigation by MPs into what lessons can be learnt from the disaster, Paul King, Transocean's managing director, and other oil industry executives will be questioned about the North Sea safety regime, particularly for deepwater drilling.

Transocean has a sizeable presence in the North Sea, with more rigs operating than in the Gulf, although they are mostly at shallower depths.

Led by committee chairman Tim Yeo, a former Conservative environment minister, the MPs will ask how many rigs operate with only one set of "blind shear rams" inside their blowout preventer, the last line of defence against a major spill.

The Deepwater Horizon's single pair of shear rams, which are supposed to cut through the pipe to close off the well in the event of a blow-out, failed to activate.

Transocean's new rigs are built so that they can accommodate two sets of blind shear rams, which make such a catastrophic failure less likely. But UK regulations do not require operators to use blowout preventers with two pairs of blind shear rams. A spokesman for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said yesterday that the rules were "goal-setting and not prescriptive".

In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster US politicians have called for the use of double rams to be obligatory.

Members of the House of Commons energy and climate change committee will also ask whether undersea robots would be able to remotely activate a blowout preventer in the event that it failed to shut down a blown well.

BP tried repeatedly to do this in the Gulf without success, leading to the worst oil spill in US history.

Transocean's record has come under closer scrutiny following a report by the HSE, revealed in the Guardian this week, which said that the company's organisational culture was based on blame and intolerance. It also said instances of unacceptable behaviour by offshore management were raised with HSE inspectors by Transocean staff on more than one North Sea rig visited. These included bullying, aggression, harassment, humiliation and intimidation, and were "causing some individuals to exhibit symptoms of work-related stress, with potential safety implications", the HSE said.

Malcolm Webb, chief executive of trade body Oil & Gas UK, as well as the head of a new oil response industry body, will also be questioned. Webb is expected to mount a robust defence of the North Sea safety regime and reject calls for the UK to issue a moratorium on new drilling, as the US has done, until the causes of the Gulf disaster are known.

The British government recently closed bidding for the 26th licensing round to drill in new areas of the North Sea, which was one of the most hotly contested for some time. The round includes new blocks for the west of Shetland, one of the last frontiers of the North Sea which contains more than a fifth of Britain's remaining oil and gas reserves, most of it in deepwater and rough seas. BP is one of the companies thought to be keen to start drilling in unexplored waters.

Webb will also reject suggestions – first made by Europe's energy commissioner in July – for offshore drilling to be governed by European-wide, rather than national, legislation. The committee will also raise concerns that the moratorium in the US and Norway could result in more deepwater activity in the UK.

Charles Hendry, the UK energy minister, will appear before the committee at a later hearing. He has insisted that the existing North Sea safety regime is adequate, following a brief review immediately after the Gulf disaster. One improvement already announced is a plan to increase the number of government inspectors for the 300 rigs and platforms in the UK North Sea from six to nine.

Eta's ceasefire statement decoded 6 Sep 2010, 3:00 pm

We explain the meaning of the group's outfits, flags and symbolism

Eta can hardly be accused of being a victim of fashion. Its spokespeople have been wearing exactly the same outfits for years – black jersey, gloves and beret, and a shiny, silky face mask with eye holes. One of the great virtues of the look is that it is unisex. Women and men are indistinguishable until they open their mouths. For Sunday's ceasefire announcement, the speaking was done by the person in the centre (a woman), while the others limited themselves to occasional fidgeting and a stirring fist-raised salute at the end.

In any case, the outfits and the stage-managing of their videos are easily decoded:

1 The face mask The soft masks with eyeholes are not as rugged as the pipe-and-balaclava combination favoured by Zapatista Subcomandante Marcos in Chiapas, Mexico, but they are at least a change from the highwayman's hankie or keffiyeh favoured by other self-proclaimed revolutionaries. The police wear balaclavas in the Basque country – and Eta do not identify with them.

2 The beret We may associate them with cycling French onion salesmen, but the beret really started as a Basque shepherd's hat. Thanks to Che Guevara they are now also a revolutionary symbol.

3 The ikurriña, or flag of the Basque Country Invented by the father of Basque nationalism, Sabino Arana, at the end of the 19th century. He used the Union Flag as his model. Critics claim that the fact that he had to invent a flag is proof that the Basque country has never really been a separate state.

4 The red flag of Navarre Eta believes that Navarre, now one of Spain's 17 autonomous regions and previously a medieval kingdom that covered much of the Basque-speaking lands in Spain and France, should form part of the Basque Country. Most people in Navarre disagree.

5 The black eagle of King Sancho The eagle on the yellow flag symbolizes the kingdom of Navarre at the height of its glory some eight centuries ago.

6 The axe and snake The axe stands for armed struggle. The snake is, depending on who you speak to, either watchfulness or politics. The "bietan jarrai" slogan can be roughly translated as "go forward both ways". The phrase is given various interpretations, including that Eta will pursue both violent and political routes to independence.

Pass notes No 2,841: Julia Stuart 6 Sep 2010, 3:00 pm

You may not have heard of this British novelist, but Barack Obama has taken her latest book on holiday with him

Age: Early 40s.

Appearance: Surprisingly happy for a novelist.

That's one hell of a grin. Has she just signed a multimillion-pound rights deal? Not that we know of.

Or won a pointless but lucrative literary prize? That neither.

Hmm. So why should we care about some la-di-da bookworm? Because she has been endorsed by the most powerful man in the world.

Simon Cowell? The other one. Stuart's novel The Tower, The Zoo and The Tortoise was the only non-American book that Barack Obama took on holiday with him last month.

Oh, that most powerful man. Has anyone else been reading it? Enough people to send it into the top 25 of the New York Times hardback fiction bestsellers list. Not bad for a woman whom The Australian called a "flop novelist".

So what's it about? A tower, a zoo and a tortoise, of course. The tower is the Tower of London, the zoo is the royal menagerie and the tortoise is the 180-year-old Mrs Cooke. Looking after her is a Beefeater whose wife works in London Underground's lost property office. Three years ago they lost their son. "The cuteness sometimes comes across a little thick," says Publishers Weekly, but "the love story is adorable". In Britain, the book is called Balthazar Jones and the Tower of London Zoo.

Has Stuart written anything else? Her first novel, The Matchmaker of Périgord, was the story of a French provincial barber forced to try a new career. Joanne "Chocolat" Harris called it a "hilarious romp".

Is she a particularly slow typist, or has she been doing something else with her life? She used to write for newspapers, and spent eight years with a little-known publication called the Independent. She grew up in the West Midlands, and has spent time in France, Spain and Bahrain, but now lives in Egypt.

Do say: "If it's good enough for the President . . ."

Don't say: "I thought he only read the Qur'an."

The last papal visit to Britain 6 Sep 2010, 3:00 pm

Pope John Paul II travelled to the UK for a six-day tour in 1982

(image/jpeg)

South Africa's forgotten bushmen fight for recognition 6 Sep 2010, 2:56 pm

Khoisan, southern Africa's first inhabitants, seek legal redress for 'injustices' and demand land rights as well as cultural protection

The first inhabitants of southern Africa are taking the government of South Africa to court for "cultural genocide and discrimination". The Khoisan – comprising pastoral Khoikhoi and hunter-gatherer San, or Bushmen – claim they were dispossessed by colonialism and still lack recognition by the democratic government.

Now the Khoi and Boesman national assembly has lodged a case against the South African government at the country's equality court. Zenzile Khoisan, a spokesman for the national assembly, said they would seek a "proper and sustainable constitutional accommodation" and "a recognition of the damage caused by colonialism, apartheid and the current government for the continued assault on our rights to cultural identity".

On Saturday a group of Khoisan marched on the parliament building in Cape Town to demand their rights as the indigenous people of South Africa.

They called for the Company's Garden, South Africa's oldest public garden which is popular with tourists, to be renamed the Khoi Boesman [Bushman] Gogosoa Gardens in honour of one of its chiefs. The Khoisan have lived at the southern tip of Africa for thousands of years. They lost their water and land when Dutch settlers arrived in what is now Cape Town.

Members of the Khoisan argue they have been overlooked by land restitution policies which tend to focus on the more recent injustices of racial apartheid.

Zenzile Khoisan said: "In South Africa at the present time we are not recognised as a people. There are 11 official languages and none of them is ours."

The group has issued a memo for President Jacob Zuma with a list of eight demands including full recognition of its traditional leaders.

The memo also calls for "full linguistic recognition of all our indigenous Khoi and Boesman languages and the capacity to develop and proliferate these among our people" and "a full review of all land-rights claims submitted by our people and the proper and sustainable implementation of all agreements relating to settled claims".

There are further demands for "recognition of all our indigenous knowledge systems and the protection of all our intellectual property including medicinal remedies derived from plants such as hoodia" – an attempt to ensure the Khoisan benefit from commercial exploitation of their traditions.

It adds: "We demand the full and official recognition of the Khoi and Boesman national assembly as our organ of self-determination … We demand recognition and control of our heritage."

The Khoisan emergency action committee argues that the 1913 natives land act, which enforced territorial segregation between black and white people, is an inadequate starting point for land claimants because it ignores their earlier dispossession.

Zenzile Khoisan added: "In 1913 most of our land had already been usurped by various entities including the colonial authorities. Under the land restitution act it is impossible for us to claim because we were the first in opposition of colonialism."

The group also protests against being described as "coloured", a persistent term in South Africa that refers to mixed-race people, often Afrikaans-speakers in the Western Cape and Northern Cape provinces. Zenzile Khoisan estimates that around 80% of the 4 million-strong "coloured" population have a link to the Khoisan.

Land claims are nothing new in South Africa and the full implications of a successful Khoisan claim remain uncertain.

ProfBen Smith, director of the Rock Art Research Institute at Wits University, said: "We have a big restitution process and the Khoisan have to take their place with everyone else.

"Not all the land is going to be given back because it's not practical."

Ireland's finance minister tries to calm fears over Anglo Irish Bank 6 Sep 2010, 2:37 pm

Brian Lenihan dismisses talk that €25bn cost of toxic bank could bankrupt Ireland and says no 'magic resurrection' for economy

Ireland's finance minister, Brian Lenihan, was in Brussels tonight in an effort to clinch a deal over the toxic Anglo Irish Bank while trying to calm financial markets' fears that the government bailout could bankrupt the country.

After "constructive" talks with the EU competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia today he heads into a conference of European finance ministers tomorrow aware that Ireland's financial system has come under intense scrutiny from the financial markets.

In a rare interview on the subject of the bank, Lenihan said he was confident that the €25bn (£21bn) already pumped into the bank could be absorbed by the public purse.

"Yes, the costs are annoying, infuriating, but they are manageable," Lenihan told the national broadcaster RTÉ before flying to Brussels.

The minister also spoke about the cancer that has prevented him from taking on a more public role, saying treatment had stopped in June and he was not in any "present danger".

The future of Anglo Irish has dominated the news agenda in Ireland for the past two weeks, culminating in the revelation last week that the bank lost more than €8bn in the first six months of the year. There have been increasing fears that the Irish economy cannot withstand such huge debts.

Credit default swaps on Irish government debt, which measure the cost of insuring the bonds against default, have risen in the past fortnight after the country was downgraded by the ratings agency Standard & Poor's. S&P cut Ireland's long-term rating by one notch to AA- on fears of a far higher bill for supporting the banking sector and assigned a negative outlook, meaning another cut is more likely than not in the next one or two years.

But Lenihan insisted that the one-time Celtic Tiger would not be broken by the bank. "I was a bit concerned at the suggestion that a lot of public opinion believe that Anglo Irish will bankrupt the country," he said. "That's simply not the case."

He said there were no "magic" solutions and if people wanted a quick fix – such as closing the bank – the country's economy would be frozen for years to come.

The government's proposals for restructuring the bank have been with the EU for some time and Brussels is due to make its decision in the next two or three weeks.

One option, favoured by the bank's management, is the creation of a good bank and a bad bank to carry all the impaired property loans. The other, which Lenihan hinted was the preferred option, was to wind it down over 10-12 years. He denied that the markets did not have confidence in the government's ability to repay its debt and said they were simply looking for certainty over the future of Anglo.

He said there were no easy fixes with "the size of the bust in Ireland".

"We will not be distracted by those who suggest that there is some kind of quick fix where you can bust the country and magically stage a resurrection," he said.

"There is no economy in the world that has done that. It has been tried in various Latin American countries and it has led to a deep freeze for a long number of years in any country where it was attempted."

BP spill: White House says oil has gone, but Gulf's fishermen are not so sure 6 Sep 2010, 2:33 pm

Counsellors and lawyers are busier than seafarers in Louisiana, as some experts warn that fishing industry will never recover

High tide, and the remains of a late summer storm, and it is hard to tell on this strip of land between the Mississippi and the marsh where land ends and water begins. It was here – in the most southerly reaches of Louisiana on terrain that is slowly sliding into the sea – that oil from BP's Macondo well first started coming ashore, about a week after the 20 April explosion on the Deepwater Horizon. Eleven men were killed when the drilling platform blew up.

And it is here where local people will take the most convincing that the worst of the oil spill is behind them and that recovery is under way.

Barack Obama's point man on the spill, the US Coast Guard's former commander, Thad Allen, said at the weekend that the well no longer posed any threat to the Gulf. Crews will begin the last few remaining operations needed to abandon the well this week.

People here live and die by the water. On a fine day the docks in Venice empty out, with seaworthy boats and able-bodied crew off to look for oil contamination, at sea and in the marsh grass.

No one, it seems, believes the assurances from the White House or government scientists that the oil is largely gone. And no one really believes BP when oil company executives say they will stay in Louisiana for the long haul.

They have seen one exodus already, just before Tropical Storm Bonnie blew through, about a week after the well was capped in mid-July. BP evacuated work crews and boats; many have not returned.

"Oh, the oil's out there," said a captain of one of the air boats chewing through the marsh. When the water is clear the oil pops out like a giant black teardrop. He said the air boats were carrying away up to 3,000 white plastic trash bags of oiled sand from a nearby section of marsh each day. "We'll be here for at least a year – if they still want us, that is."

The autumn shrimping season opened on schedule on 16 August and the authorities have steadily been opening up more of the Gulf for fishing. About 83% of US waters in the Gulf are now open for fishing. The first tests on shrimp, swordfish and tuna hauled out of the Gulf showed no traces of oil.

But Acy Cooper, who wears a shrimpers' white rubber boots even on days when he is not fishing, is possessed by a powerful sense of dread. How can we know for sure that the shrimp is safe from crude or its toxic components? He has seen oil in certain shrimping areas.

"We are only going to get one shot at this. If we don't do it right, we are going to be in big trouble if any tainted shrimp gets on the market," he said. "We don't want to get anything on the market that is going to kill us in the long run."

Not even the most stringent testing can ensure that fishermen stay out of oiled waters – not when some fishermen have been out of work since late April. "Some people are so hungry they are going to do what they can to survive," Cooper said.

Already the local economy is being transformed. On noticeboards, cards for mental health services and lawyers offering to sue BP are tacked on top of advertisements for fishing guides. It is getting harder to find a market for fish.

The other day George Barisich, the head of the United Commercial Fishermen's Alliance, had to drive all the way into Mississippi before he could find a processor who wanted his shrimp. He said he was reduced to selling for just $1.40 (90p) per pound.

Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency have been on local radio shows, such as Talk of the Bayou, trying to persuade fishermen like Cooper they have nothing to fear.

"So far we haven't seen a bit of evidence the oil is getting real deep in the marsh," said Jacqueline Michel, a NOAA biochemist.

Only 22 of the 2,000 water samples taken from the Gulf contained traces of oil, and none has permeated deep into the wetlands, which are breeding grounds for shrimp.

The callers were not buying it, and neither was Cooper. He worries that the last few months may have ruined the fisherman's life for some.

Although local people complain that BP gave too many jobs to outsiders rather than locals for cleanup work, some taken on have become used to earning good money – even when they were waiting around at the marina – on the oil company's "vessels of opportunity" programme for the cleanup.

Cooper is worried they may give up on shrimping, now that it's such an uncertain occupation.

"We are on the verge of losing this industry," he said. "The chain is broken with the vessels of opportunity."

For Al Sunseri that chain stretches back to 1876 when his family set up the P&J Oyster Company on the edges of New Orleans' French quarter.

He still turns up for work at 4.30am, but there are no workers shucking oysters on the loading dock. Eleven people have been let go.

Premium oysters are a vanishing commodity. Those oysters not killed by the oil were finished off by the Louisiana government's decision to flood the Gulf with fresh water to try to keep the oil offshore.

Sunseri now occupies his time taking orders on a clipboard, trying to mollify the desperate chefs who are his main customer base. He is running dangerously low on shucked oysters.

He asks callers if they could get by with a smaller order. "I am just going to have to tell people I don't have them and that is not something that I am used to doing," he said.

The shortage has pushed the price of oysters in the shell up 40% since the spill. That is too rich in the depths of a recession – even for a luxury product. Sunseri also worries that what oysters he can find are of variable quality.

"I know they say about 40% of the oyster growing area is open but as far as productive areas, it is maybe about 15%," he said. "We don't have babies, and we don't have the market-sized ones."

He moves over to a tabletop display of oyster shells. Those that are being harvested are about half normal size. "These would ordinarily not be harvested for another year," he said.

"They really should be in there developing. The few little oysters that I am selling right now are really inferior."

Even industry cheerleader Mike Voisin, who chairs the Louisiana Oyster Task Force, admits it will be three years before the oyster beds resettle. Until then, he says, the harvest will probably fall to half of the usual 113,000 tonne annual take.

The timespan is depressing for Sunseri. He said he is telling his children: "Your daddy does not care if this business fizzles away. Don't feel the burden of carrying this on."

For Ryan Lambert, who once counted himself the biggest fishing charter operator around Venice, such acceptance is unthinkable. He is much too angry to be resigned.

The spill left him with a calendar showing week after week of cancelled bookings, gutting a business that once brought in $1.3m a year.

By BP's reckoning though, his losses were just $66,000. Lambert is furious. He said he has paid his accountant hundreds of dollars to meet BP's demands for documentation. "I shouldn't have to fight for the money that is owed me," he said. "I am not the bad guy here. They are the ones who ruined it for me, not vice versa. For me to have to fight for them to pay me for what they did makes me sick."

He is also worried sick that the fish will start disappearing, as they did in the years after the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, and that his business will be dealt a slow, painful death.

He built his company from scratch, starting from his love of bass fishing; now his clients troop into his fishing lodge from all across the country. He rebuilt once before, after Hurricane Katrina. He is not sure he can do it again, or wait for the Gulf to make a full recovery.

"I am 52 years old. I can't wait 20 years for them to clean things up."

He feels certain BP will pull out much sooner. "The well will be stopped, and then they will hang around until the oil stops coming up on the beaches, and then they will be gone," he said.

"Anything they don't clean will be left to me and the microbes and Mother Nature until all of a sudden we won't be America's best fishery any more.

"This will be history some day, and I will still have that problem."

Voices on the ground

'On television they are saying all the time that there is no oil. What BP did is that they succeeded in buying off the White House and Congress and most of the senators, and now they are buying off the networks'

Dean Blanchard, shrimp magnate

'The oil is still very in the coastal areas, it's still coming up along the beaches, and it's in the bottom offshore as well as in the bays and estuaries. A lot needs to be addressed before BP says it has all been attended to'

Wilma Subra, chemist

'The only silver lining that is going to come out of this is that the goverment and the country are going to understand the importance of the Gulf'

George Barisich, president, United Commercial Fishermen's Association

'Ironically, this catastrophe may in the end run have more impact on oil leasing programmes than on the Gulf of Mexico ... We recognise now that we have something much more like a nuclear reactor on our hands than a wood-burning stove and that is an awreness that is new to the federal government, new ot the public, and new to Congress'

Oliver Houck, environmental law professor at Tulane University

South African unions suspend public sector strike 6 Sep 2010, 2:23 pm

Relief for hospitals and schools as staff go back to work, but unions say their demands have still not been met

Nurses, teachers and other public servants in South Africa will return to work tomorrow after union leaders agreed to suspend a crippling four-week national strike.

But the unions warned that they will resume mass action if a suitable pay deal is not struck in the next 21 days.

The halt will come as a relief to beleaguered hospitals and schools, and to President Jacob Zuma, who has seen his former union allies turn against him.

In a joint statement today, more than 20 unions portrayed the move as a victory, saying the government had raised its 5.2% wage increase to 7.5%. The unions have been holding out for 8.6%.

They said: "Labour has decided to suspend the strike and this does not mean we have accepted the state offer."

But there were hopes that public services would return to normal from tomorrow. Chris Klopper of the Independent Labour Caucus said today: "We expect workers to go back to work immediately, and that means tomorrow."

Thobile Ntola, president of the South African Democratic Teachers Union, told a gathering of his members: "There comes a time in any strike in which we must weigh our options."

He said it was the government, not the workers, that had caused the strike. He criticised Zuma for travelling overseas instead of showing leadership: "What has the president done? He has left the country and gone to China."

He also said Cabinet ministers and top officials should forgo their own pay raises. "Our demands are genuine," he said. "The inequalities in this country are very vast, and they need to be closed."

The strike involving 1.3 million public sector workers has dragged on for three weeks, testing public sympathy. Volunteers and army medics have been called in to help at hospitals, and some patients have been moved to private medical facilities.

School pupils in their final year are worried they will not be able to sit final exams on time. Judges have told jailed suspects their pleas for bail cannot be heard for want of interpreters and other court staff.

Police have used rubber bullets and water cannon to disperse protesters who sought to block hospitals and hundreds of people have been arrested.

South African media have reported numerous acts of violence against health and education staff who insist on going to work.

A nurse suffered burns when her house in Soweto was petrol bombed, according to the Sowetan newspaper today.

Another had serious head and neck injuries after reportedly being been beaten by striking workers at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital in Soweto on Friday.

A day earlier another nurse was stabbed at a hospital in Pietermaritzburg. There were also reports of a nurse being abducted and held for several hours before being released unharmed.

Government officials have said the state cannot afford the offer they have already put on the table and there is no more room in the budget to increase its offer, which would swell state spending by about 1%.

Economists estimate that the labour action is costing the economy about 1bn rand (£90m) a day.

The SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry has warned that the strike was wiping out the economic gains of hosting a successful football World Cup.

It has also put a strain on the historic alliance between the African National Congress and the labour movement, which helped propel Zuma into office. Some have expressed disappointment at Zuma's failure to reward them and speculated that he could be vulnerable to a leadership challenge.

Africa's most powerful economy has been hit by two other labour stoppages. About 70,000 workers at petrol stations, garages and auto dealerships walked off the job last Wednesday, seeking 20% wage increases.

The National Union of Mineworkers said more than 8,000 workers seeking 15% increases at Northam Platinum began a work stoppage today.

Iran steps up campaign against activists and lawyers 6 Sep 2010, 2:19 pm

Women's rights activist goes on trial accused of 'waging war against God', as lawyer for another activist is arrested

Iran has launched a fresh crackdown on human rights activists by arresting an outspoken Iranian lawyer and charging a young activist with "waging war against God", a crime punishable by death in Iranian law.

On Saturday Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has represented several political activists and protesters arrested in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election last summer, was arrested and charged with "propaganda against the regime" and "acting against national security".

Her husband, Reza Khandan, said Sotoudeh was recently warned by Iranian intelligence officials that she would be arrested if she continued to represent Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace prize laureate and human rights activist who left Iran a day before the election. Ebadi's Tehran office was ransacked and her belongings confiscated last year.

Ebadi, who now lives in London, said Sotoudeh had been representing her in three cases, including one against the government newspaper Keyhan, which recently called Carla Bruni-Sarkozy "a prostitute" over her support for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to death after being convicted of adultery.

Ebadi said the latest moves were intended to send a message to human rights activists that "they have to pay a high price if they want to pursue their work in the country".

Shiva Nazar Ahari, a 26-year-old women's rights activist and a speaker for Iran's Committee of Human Rights Reporters, was put on trial on Saturday amid fears that she faces execution if convicted. The verdict is expected shortly. Her lawyer, Mohammad Sharif, said the charges against his client were based on the "false" allegation that she was linked to People's Mujahideen of Iran, an exiled Iranian opposition groupShe has denied the accusation.

Shadi Sadr, an award-winning human rights lawyer who was forced to leave Iran after the election, said the state was intent on silencing opposition. "In the absence of the media in Iran, lawyers and human rights activist have become the only reliable source of information for everybody and the recent pressure is a clear signal that Iran wants to silence this only existing source," she said. The charge of "waging war against God" – muharebeh – was originally intended to be used against armed gangs and pirates, not human rights activists, she said.

Amnesty International urged Iranian authorities to release both women. "The arrest and trial of human rights activists and lawyers – many of them women – on vaguely worded allegations is about the security forces perpetuating the climate of crisis that followed the 2009 presidential election, the outcome of which was disputed, and provides a pretext for the now year-long campaign targeting human rights groups, activists and lawyers," a statement said.

It continued: "It is a coincidence that one [Nasrin Sotoudeh] was held and the other [Shiva Nazar Ahari] tried on Saturday; it is not a coincidence that both were women; or that both were human rights activists and that they face analogous allegations."

Nazar Ahari and Sotoudeh were both members of an Iranian women's rights movement, the One Million Signature Campaign, aimed at collecting signatures from Iranians opposed to the country's discriminatory laws against women.

'Cannibal cafe' in Berlin a vegetarian campaign hoax 6 Sep 2010, 2:13 pm

German Vegetarian Society says Flime restaurant was ruse to illustrate damage done by over-consumption of meat

It boasted that it would introduce a new dining movement to Germany, called for diners to donate body parts to be incorporated into the dishes, and even advertised for a surgeon to perform the amputations.

But Flime, the Berlin restaurant which was nicknamed the "Cannibal Cafe" and was due to open in Berlin today has – perhaps not surprisingly – been exposed as a fake.

Flime stands for Fleisch Isst Menschen, or Meat Eats People, and has been revealed as the idea of the German Vegetarian Society (Vebu) as a rather obscure way to bring consumers' attention to the evils of meat-eating.

The only trouble is that the publicity sparked by the high-profile promotion for the hoax restaurant has far outweighed the attention paid to today's press conference at which Vebu announced it was all a ruse to illustrate a serious point.

"Vebu wants to draw attention to all of us who are affected by the worldwide consumption of meat," the society said in a statement. It pointed out that every 3.6 seconds somebody dies in the world due to undernourishment, while the majority of grain production is used for the feeding of farm animals. "Nobody really thinks about those facts in their day-to-day routine. Because of that it was necessary to call this creative campaign into action," said Sebastian Zösch of Vebu at a Berlin press conference.

Vebu added that livestock farming "produces more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector" and that water consumption could be cut drastically if people gave up eating meat, due to the large quanties of it that are used in meat production.

Last month the Guardian reported that the campaign for the restaurant which was in newspapers, online, on TV and radio, had provoked angry reactions from Berlin residents, many of whom were reminded of the case of the German cannibal Armin Meiwes who was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering and consuming Berlin technician Bernd Brandes in 2001.

The supposed restaurant owners claimed their cuisine was inspired by the indigenous Brazilian Waricaca tribe, famous for once practicing the ritual of "compassionate cannibalism", in which parts of the corpse of a loved one were consumed as a way of coping with death.

Archbishop of Southwark to meet anti-pope protesters 6 Sep 2010, 2:05 pm

Peter Smith to tell campaigners to show respect to Catholics celebrating Pope Benedict XVI's visit to London

An archbishop is to meet leading campaigners against the pope this week to tell them to "show respect" to Catholics celebrating his visit to London.

Scotland Yard has brokered the meeting between the Archbishop of Southwark, Peter Smith, a senior figure in the Catholic church, and the organisers of a campaign against Pope Benedict XVI's visit.

Smith said today he had no intention of infringing the rights of those intending to protest against the papal visit. But he said he planned to use the encounter to encourage them not to become overly confrontational.

"I've always said, thank God in this country we have free speech," he said. "They are perfectly entitled to protest. What I would ask of all of them is to do so in a dignified way, which does not disrupt the joy of the Catholic community in welcoming the pope. I hope they would show respect to those of us who do have [religious] convictions."

Smith denied that he requested the meeting. But a Metropolitan police memorandum seen by the Guardian states that the request came from Smith.

"At the request of Archbishop Smith, the Metropolitan Police Service will provide a room for the meeting between members of the Protest the Pope Movement and the Roman Catholic Church," sergeant Nicholas Williams, the Met's head of the Communities Together Strategic Engagement Team, said in a letter to protesters.

"Can I stress this is not a Metropolitan Police meeting. We are simply acting as the 'middle man' in order to bring you and the Roman Catholic Church together for a discussion."

High-profile members of the campaign group Protest the Pope, an umbrella group of organisations opposing the visit, will meet Smith on Wednesday. They have planned a march on 18 September to coincide with his visit to the capital, which will culminate in a vigil in Hyde Park.

Organisers meeting Smith include the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, Andrew Copson, the chief executive of the British Humanist Association, and Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society. He said he would not be "lectured" by the archbishop. "There is a defensive tone in what [Smith] is saying," he said. "It is an indication of the church's fear that something will happen to bring the pope into disrepute. I think something should happen to embarrass the pope into, for example, confronting the child abuse scandal. We're not going to be kind to the Pope because he does not deserve to be respected."

Although there is a rainbow coalition of groups opposing the papal visit, they have agreed a strategy that will focus on the stories of sexual abuse survivors.

Organisers are planning to to fly abuse survivors into London from across the world for a press conference on 15 September, the eve of the visit.

They include Mark Fabbro, an Australian who says he was sadistically raped by a priest at a Jesuit school in Melbourne in 1971, when he was 11. Also planning to speak is Sue Cox, who recently broke a 50-year silence over the sexual abuse she endured from a priest, detailing her trauma in a public letter to the Archbishop of Westminster.

"As an abused child, I knew nothing of 'orders' or 'dioceses' or anything hierarchical – all I knew was that a priest, of the kind I had been brought up to revere, seriously sexually abused me when I was 10 years old, on the eve of my confirmation, then raped me when I was 13, in my own bedroom in my own home," she wrote.

"I can hardly believe," she added, "that the church is so stupid that it cannot see that there is a real opportunity here to show some of the compassion and humility that it preaches so fervently."

Austrian kidnap victim Natascha Kampusch tried to slit wrists with a needle 6 Sep 2010, 9:13 am

Kidnapped Austrian schoolgirl Natascha Kampusch's autobiography reveals details of her 3,096 days in captivity

Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian woman who was kidnapped and held captive for more than eight years, has told of how she tried to kill herself after being beaten up to 200 times a week by her captor.

In her forthcoming autobiography Kampusch, 22, said Wolfgang Priklopil called her "my slave" and demanded she perform household tasks semi-naked after he kidnapped her as a 10-year-old in 1998.

Kampusch escaped from Priklopil's house in August 2006 and became a talk show host in Austria less than two years later, although a year ago she spoke of having almost reverted back to the life she had as a prisoner – suffering from anxiety attacks and spending most of her time in her Vienna flat.

Priklopil killed himself hours after Kampusch managed to escape while he was cleaning his car.

In her autobiography, 3,096 Days, which is being serialised in the Daily Mail, Kampusch told of how she was bundled into a van by Priklopil on 2 March 1998.

"Everything happened very fast. At the very moment I lowered my eyes and started walking past, he grabbed me by the waist and threw me through the open door of his van," Kampusch writes.

"Did I scream? I don't think so. Yet everything inside me was one single scream. It pushed upwards and became lodged far down in my throat."

Kampusch says during the early days of her captivity she was treated well by Priklopil, but in the book she reveals for the first time the violence to which she was later subjected. She talks of how after she reached puberty around the age of 12 her captor "started treating me as if I were dirty and disgusting", and would kick her in the shins or punch her when she walked past him.

"He also subjected me to minor sexual assaults as part of my daily harassment," she writes.

Priklopil began allowing her upstairs to do housework from the age of 14, Kampusch says, but she would be subjected to beatings if her work was deemed to be of poor quality.

"He hated it when the pain made me cry," Kampusch remembers. Priklopil would push her head underwater in the sink and throttle her when she sobbed.

In the extracts published today, Kampusch insists Priklopil's relationship with her "wasn't about sex" – although she says he would tie her to him and force them to share a bed.

"When I was 14, I spent the night above ground for the first time. I lay stiff with fright on his bed as he lay down next to me and tied my wrists to his with plastic cuffs.

"But when he manacled me to him on those many nights, it wasn't about sex. The man who'd beat me and locked me in the cellar had something else in mind: he simply wanted something to cuddle."

Priklopil also insisted that Kampusch shave off her hair, and used food deprivation to keep her under his control, she writes. The book also reveals that she was "never fully clothed" while working in the house – a strategy Kampusch says was designed to prevent her from running away.

"Usually, I wore just a cap and knickers – though when he eventually started letting me work in his garden, it was always without my knickers," she writes.

After two years of regular beatings, Kampusch "began a kind of passive resistance", punching herself in the face before Priklopil was able to. When she reached 15, the beatings became even more frequent: "… repeated punches to my head that made me nauseous, sometimes more than 200 blows to my body in a week", Kampusch writes.

The 22-year-old also documents her attempts to kill herself, saying the efforts provoked fear in her captor. Kampusch attempted to strangle herself with items of clothing, slit her wrists with a needle and later lit a fire in the cellar, but said "the will to survive kicked in".

The book also tells of how Priklopil manipulated her psychologically, potentially hinting at why she did not attempt to escape earlier.

"He told me my parents had refused to pay a ransom," she writes. "'Your parents don't love you at all … they don't want you back … they're happy to be rid of you.'"

"These statements were like acid. Systematically, he was undermining my belief in my family."