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Israel stops Gaza attack for three hours
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/3523?ns=guardian&pageName=World+news%3A+Israel+stops+Gaza+attack+for+three+hours&ch=World+news&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territories+%28News%29%2CGaza%2CWorld+news%2CFrance%2CEgypt+%28News%29%2CUnited+Nations+%28News%29&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CCharities&c6=Rory+McCarthy%2CMark+Tran&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143377&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=World+news&c12=Israel+and+the+Palestinian+territories&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FIsrael+and+the+Palestinian+territories" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Israel today said it had put on hold military operations in parts of Gaza for three hours to let in aid through "a humanitarian corridor", as its senior political leadership met in Tel Aviv to decide whether to expand their offensive into the built-up areas of Gaza or consider the first outlines of a ceasefire proposal.</p><p>Under international pressure as the civilian death toll rises, Israel announced a daily halt to the bombing starting 1pm local time (11GMT). The Israeli military confirmed there would be a "recess in offensive operations" during the day to allow in supplies and fuel, although live pictures on the BBC showed an Israeli helicopter raid.</p><p>Before the lull came into effect, sounds of heavy gunfire and thick plumes of smoke engulfed the Zeitoun neighbourhood east of Gaza City. Israel said it struck 40 Hamas targets during the hours of darkness and Gaza health officials said new strikes this morning killed eight people. The military has called up thousands of reserve troops that it could use to expand the Gaza offensive, supporting those troops already inside the territory. The troops could be ready for action by Friday, defence officials told the Associated Press. Israel has been criticised for killing Gaza civilians during its 12-day offensive aimed at the territory's militant Hamas rulers. Palestinian officials in Gaza said Israel had told them the three hours would allow shops to open and funerals to take place. Israeli officials said the military had recommended the corridor be set up to give Palestinians periodic access to various areas where they could stock up on vital goods.</p><p>But Christopher Gunness, an official from the UN relief agency, Unwra, told the BBC that a three-hour truce was not long enough to get aid to 750,000 people and that a permanent ceasefire was needed. Aid agencies have complained of a mounting humanitarian crisis for the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli ground forces have cut the territory in half and encircled major populated areas. A World Bank statement said there were growing signs of a severe public health crisis because of a shortage of drinking water and a growing failure of the sewage system.</p><p>Late on Tuesday France and Egypt proposed an initiative to stop the conflict in Gaza with an immediate ceasefire. Details were not released, but the plan would begin with an immediate halt to the fighting to allow in much-needed humanitarian aid followed by talks involving both Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza.</p><p>The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, will today discuss with his cabinet the proposed ceasefire as well as a plan to escalate the conflict by sending Israeli forces into the built-up areas of Gaza, despite the rapidly mounting death toll.</p><p>Israel has sent thousands of troops and tanks into the Palestinian territory, where they have been locked in heavy fighting, and is continuing with intensive artillery strikes from land and sea, as well as air strikes.</p><p>Today's meeting comes after the deadliest day of fighting yesterday, in which more than 50 Palestinian civilians were killed when Israeli forces bombed two UN schools and several houses. Among the dead was an entire family of seven young children.</p><p>Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general said he was "deeply dismayed" by the killings, which he called "totally unacceptable". The UN has demanded an impartial investigation.</p><p>More than 660 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's attack on Gaza, with nearly 3,000 wounded. A total of 10 people have died on the Israeli side. Three of them were civilians; four were Israeli soldiers mistakenly targeted by their own troops.</p><p>The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, travelled back to Egypt late yesterday to meet President Hosni Mubarak for another round of discussions, which eventually produced the initiative.</p><p>Sarkozy said he had presented the idea to Olmert. "I have good hope that the reaction of Israeli authorities will allow us to imagine an end to the operation they have undertaken in Gaza: that is, not only a ceasefire but a withdrawal."</p><p>The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said she was "pleased" at the initiative, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, gave his support. Abbas had given an emotional appeal for a ceasefire to the UN security council. "Do not let one more Palestinian mother cry for her children. Do not allow it. Put an end to the massacre of my people. Let my people live, and let my people be free," he said.</p><p>Israel has yet to respond to the proposal but has been insisting in recent days that any deal must prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza across the Egyptian border. Overnight, the Israeli military said it had struck 40 sites in Gaza, including what it said were tunnels and rocket-launching sites used by Hamas.</p><p>Israeli officials have denied there is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza despite evidence to the contrary from the UN and aid agencies.</p><p>Israel continues to ban journalists from entering Gaza to report on the killings.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/israelandthepalestinians">Israel and the Palestinian territories</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gaza">Gaza</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/france">France</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/egypt">Egypt</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/unitednations">United Nations</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/QX7XHDGP9b_L2AlARYyHTD-rKa4/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/QX7XHDGP9b_L2AlARYyHTD-rKa4/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:30:51 GMT

Gaza's day of carnage - 40 dead as Israelis bomb two UN schools
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/37011?ns=guardian&pageName=World+news%3A+Gaza%27s+day+of+carnage+-+40+dead+as+Israelis+bomb+two+UN+schools&ch=World+news&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Gaza%2CIsrael+and+the+Palestinian+territories+%28News%29%2CMiddle+East+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CUnited+Nations+%28News%29&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CCharities&c6=Chris+McGreal%2CHazem+Balousha&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143327&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=World+news&c12=Gaza&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FGaza" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Israel's assault on Gaza has exacted the bloodiest toll of civilian lives yet, when the bombing of UN schools being used as refugee centres and of housing killed more than 50 people, including an entire family of seven young children. </p><p>The UN protested at a "complete absence of accountability" for the escalating number of civilian deaths in Gaza, saying "the rule of the gun" had taken over. Doctors in Gaza said more than 40 people died, including children, in what appears to be the biggest single loss of life of the campaign when Israeli bombs hit al-Fakhora school, in Jabaliya refugee camp, while it was packed with hundreds of people who had fled the fighting.</p><p>Most of those killed were in the school playground and in the street, and the dead and injured lay in pools of blood. Pictures on Palestinian TV showed walls heavily marked by shrapnel and bloodstains, and shoes and shredded clothes scattered on the ground. Windows were blown out.</p><p>Hours before, three young men who were cousins died when the Israelis bombed Asma elementary school in Gaza City. They were among 400 people who had sought shelter there after fleeing their homes in Beit Lahiya, in northern Gaza.</p><p>Abed Sultan, 20, a student, and his cousins, Rawhi and Hussein Sultan, labourers aged 22, died. Abed Sultan's father, Samir, said the bodies were so mangled that he could not tell his son from the cousins. "We came to the school when the Israelis warned us to leave," he said. "We hoped it would be safe. We were 20 in one room. We had no electricity, no blankets, no food.</p><p>"Suddenly we heard a bomb that shook the school. Windows smashed. Children started to scream. A relative came and told me one of my sons was killed. I found my son's body with his two cousins. They were cut into pieces by the shell."</p><p>The UN was particularly incensed over targeting of the schools, because Israeli forces knew they were packed with families as they had ordered them to get out of their homes with leaflet drops and loudspeakers. It said it had identified the schools as refugee centres to the Israeli military and provided GPS coordinates.</p><p>Israel accused Hamas of using civilians as cover, and said the Islamist group could stop the assault on Gaza by ending its rocket attacks on Israel.</p><p>The Palestinian authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, last night delivered an impassioned plea to the UN security council to act immediately to stop the Israeli operation, which he described as a "catastrophe" for his people. Israel has agreed a "humanitarian corridor" to allow Palestinians to get essential goods.</p><p>The rising casualty toll, more than 640 Palestinians killed since the assault began 12 days ago, gave fresh impetus to diplomatic efforts. The White House offered its first hint of concern at Israel's actions by calling on it to avoid civilian deaths. The president-elect, Barack Obama, broke his silence by saying he was "deeply concerned" about civilian casualties on both sides. He said he would have "plenty to say" about the crisis after his swearing in.</p><p>Gordon Brown said the Middle East was facing its "darkest moment yet" but hoped a ceasefire could be arranged soon.</p><p>Explaining its attack on al-Fahora school, the Israeli military claimed that a mortar was fired from the playground, and it responded with a single shell whichkilled known Hamas fighters; the resulting explosion was compounded because Hamas "booby-trapped the school". Two Hamas militants were among the dead, both part of a rocket-launching cell.</p><p>The head of the UN Palestinian refugee agency, John Ging, said three shells landed at the perimeter of the school. "It was entirely inevitable if artillery shells landed in that area there would be a high number of casualties," he said. </p><p>He said UN staff vetted those Palestinians who sought shelter at the school. "So far we've not had violations by militants of our facilities," he said, though responding to questions he accepted there had been clashes between Hamas and the Israeli army in the area. </p><p>Earlier in the day, Ging visited Gaza's hospital and was shocked at the scale of civilian casualties. "What you have in this hospital is the consequences of political failure and the complete absence of any accountability for actions that are being taken. It's the rule of the gun now, and it has to stop," he said.</p><p>At least 12 of one family, seven children aged from one to 12, three women and two men, were killed in an air strike on their house in Gaza City. Nine others were believed trapped.</p><p>Israel continues to insist most of those killed by its forces are Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters - although its assertion it is going to extraordinary lengths to target only "terrorists" has been undermined by a tank firing on a building used by Israeli troops, killing four of them, on Monday. </p><p>Another soldier was killed yesterday as Israeli forces continued their push into Gaza City. Tanks and troops also moved on the southern town of Khan Yunis.</p><p>The invasion has yet to achieve what Israel says is its goal of stopping rocket attacks. Hamas fired more than 30 into Israel yesterday, one to within 20 miles of Tel Aviv at Gadera, wounding a baby.</p><p>The de facto Hamas prime minister in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, issued a statement from hiding, saying that the Gazans would defeat Israel. "[Israel] has failed to force the population to surrender," he said.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gaza">Gaza</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/israelandthepalestinians">Israel and the Palestinian territories</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middleeast">Middle East</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/unitednations">United Nations</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/_azvuy2tS4CdxIZFvMgXi_9gxIA/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/_azvuy2tS4CdxIZFvMgXi_9gxIA/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:19:38 GMT

Russia-Ukraine gas crisis intensifies as all European supplies cut off
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/40168?ns=guardian&pageName=Business%3A+Russia-Ukraine+gas+crisis+intensifies+as+all+European+supplies+are+cut+off&ch=Business&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Gas+%28business%29%2CUkraine+%28News%29%2CRussia+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CEurope+%28Business%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets&c6=David+Gow&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143402&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Business&c12=Gas&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FGas" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Gazprom, the state-owned Russian gas group, today cut off all supplies to Europe travelling through Ukrainian pipelines, intensifying the political and economic crisis that has arisen out of a payments dispute between the two countries.</p><p>Amid evidence that people in eastern Europe are being deprived of heating as the Arctic cold snap continues, Russia and Ukraine continued to blame each other for the deadlock.</p><p>Gazprom accused Ukraine of shutting down the fourth and last open pipeline crossing the country while officials at Naftogaz, Ukraine's state energy firm, simply said: "Words fail us."</p><p>The complete shutdown comes ahead of top-level talks in Moscow tomorrow between Gazprom and Naftogaz executives to resolve a pricing dispute that has arisen in each of the last four years. Ukraine, semi-bankrupt and being bailed out by the IMF and EU, is being offered natural gas at higher prices, but substantially below those charged on European markets.</p><p>The dispute, viewed by the EU as a purely commercial one until recently, threatens a fresh breakdown in relations between Brussels and Moscow, with European Commission officials warning that Russia's reputation as a reliable partner is once again at stake.</p><p>But analysts point out that, since the last serious crisis broke out in 2006, Europe has done very little to avert shortages. Instead of creating an integrated market, drawing on alternative energy supplies, countries have simply drawn up individual contracts with Gazprom, increasing dependence on Russia.</p><p>Russia supplies a quarter of Europe's gas and 80% of this transits through Ukraine. As shortages hit western Europe and intensify in the south and east, EU governments will meet on Friday to consider sharing supplies held in storage.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/gas">Gas</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ukraine">Ukraine</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/russia">Russia</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/europe">Europe</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Rzm6qnOP0YDWNg4P6pjmPUhxUK4/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Rzm6qnOP0YDWNg4P6pjmPUhxUK4/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:23:00 GMT

MI5 chief: al-Qaida threat diminished, but not yet over
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/70471?ns=guardian&pageName=UK+news%3A+MI5+chief%3A+al-Qaida+threat+diminished%2C+but+not+yet+over&ch=UK+news&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Terrorism+-+UK%2CAl-Qaida+%28News%29%2CTerrorism+-+international%2CForeign+policy%2CUK+news%2CPolitics&c5=Policy+Society%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Richard+Norton-Taylor&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143326&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=UK+news&c12=UK+security+and+terrorism&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FUK+news%2FUK+security+and+terrorism" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>The head of MI5 says today that the threat of an immediate attack in Britain by al-Qaida-inspired extremists has diminished because a string of successful prosecutions has had a "chilling" effect.</p><p>Jonathan Evans warns, however, that al-Qaida leaders still intend to mount an attack, and that there are individuals in Britain able to do so. In the first newspaper interview by a serving MI5 director general, Evans warns that:</p><p>• Israeli attacks on Gaza give extremists in Britain more ideological ammunition.</p><p>• The Afghan conflict and its outcome has a "direct impact" on UK domestic security. </p><p>• The international economic crisis could affect Britain's security.</p><p>• Dissident republican groups in Northern Ireland are a growing threat.</p><p>• Not getting access to emails and data on internet sites would be detrimental to national security.</p><p>Speaking on the centenary of the establishment of MI5, Evans said his agency believes "core-al Qaida", the leadership based on Pakistan's north-west frontier, retains a strategic interest in carrying out attacks in the UK, using British nationals or residents.</p><p>"There is a significant number of individuals in active sympathy," Evans said. He added: "They are doing things like fundraising, helping people to travel to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. Sometimes they provide equipment, support and propaganda."</p><p>However, MI5 does not believe al-Qaida has what he termed a "semi-autonomous structured hierarchy" in the UK. And: "We have probably seen fewer 'late-stage' attack plans over the last 18 months."</p><p>Evans pointed to 86 successful prosecutions in terror trials since January 2007. In more than half, the accused pleaded guilty: "That has had a chilling effect." However, while the networks might keep their heads down, they had not gone away. "There is enough intelligence to show they have the intention to mount an attack here," he said. And the period between first talk of a plot and its active planning could be just a few weeks.</p><p>Evans predicted that the Israeli invasion of Gaza would see "extremists try to radicalise individuals for their own purposes". Research had shown "no single path" on the way to violent extremism, but foreign policy was certainly one factor, along with economic, social, and personal circumstances.</p><p>Three out of four al-Qaida and Islamist-related terrorist attacks in Britain had a Pakistan link, Evans said. Potential jihadists had made their way to Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan (and now increasingly to Somalia) by circuitous routes. "There is no super highway. Lots of little lanes will get there," he said.</p><p>He played down any idea that the terrorists who attacked Mumbai in November had links to Britain. "Alarming statements" had been made, but MI5 had not found "any connections of national security significance to the UK". </p><p>Overall, Evans painted a more sanguine and less alarming picture of the terrorist threat than ministers have done of late. They and some senior Whitehall officials have suggested the threat level was close to being raised to its highest - "critical" - in recent months. Evans appeared to dismiss such a suggestion.</p><p>What MI5 was very concerned about, he said, was an "upsurge" in plots by dissident republicans with sophisticated booby-trap bombs aimed at police officers.</p><p>The London Olympic games in 2012 were a potential target but he said any real threats to the event would be more likely to come from extremists already known to MI5. rather than any dedicated team established to target the games.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/uksecurity">UK security and terrorism</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/alqaida">Al-Qaida</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/terrorism">Global terrorism</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/foreignpolicy">Foreign policy</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/IBg_d_mlJpxS_9Woj-sfefph6jY/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/IBg_d_mlJpxS_9Woj-sfefph6jY/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:17:54 GMT

Obama picks CNN's Sanjay Gupta as surgeon general
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/85285?ns=guardian&pageName=World+news%3A+Obama+picks+CNN%27s+Sanjay+Gupta+as+surgeon+general&ch=World+news&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Obama+White+House+%28News%29%2CBarack+Obama+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CUS+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CUS+Elections&c6=Sam+Jones&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143419&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=World+news&c12=Obama+White+House&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FObama+White+House" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Barack Obama has asked the CNN medical correspondent Dr Sanjay Gupta to join his fledgling administration as the US surgeon general, according to reports.</p><p>According to washingtonpost.com, the 39-year-old doctor is "the Obama team's first choice" to become America's most senior public health official.</p><p>Although Gupta has not commented on the matter, the Post claims that he wants the job and is undergoing final vetting. CNN has confirmed Gupta has been approached by the president-elect's transition team.</p><p>Gupta combines his TV reporting with practising neurosurgery and his duties as a professor at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. He is reported to have had a two-hour meeting with Obama last November.</p><p>The Post reported that he later met the former senator Tom Daschle, who is the president-elect's nominee for the post of health and human services secretary.</p><p>In the 1990s, Gupta served as a White House fellow, where he was a special adviser to Hillary Clinton, writing speeches and helping her devise policy.</p><p>His journalistic assignments have taken him from Iraq, where he was embedded with a navy medical unit, to Sri Lanka as it struggled to recover from the 2004 tsunami.</p><p>The University of Michigan graduate reported from New Orleans in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2003, he was named one of the "sexiest men alive" by People magazine.</p><p>The surgeon general leads the 6,000-member commissioned corps of the US Public Health Service and is the top federal government spokesman on matters of public health.</p><p>Surgeons general in the past have used the office to urge Americans to give up smoking, to fight AIDS and to tackle other high-profile healthcare issues.</p><p>In 1964, the surgeon general Dr Luther Terry issued a landmark report on dangers of smoking. Three decades later, Dr Joycelyn Elders, the first black surgeon general, was fired by then-president Bill Clinton for publicly raising the possibility of teaching masturbation skills to children to keep them from having sex.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/obama-white-house">Obama White House</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barackobama">Barack Obama</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/uIFSSrBFFj50GDLC2jaZqUQcS5Y/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/uIFSSrBFFj50GDLC2jaZqUQcS5Y/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:38:06 GMT

Cricket: ECB to make statement on Pietersen resignation reports
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/16942?ns=guardian&pageName=Sport%3A+ECB+to+make+statement+after+reports+of+Pietersen+and+Moores+%27resignations%27&ch=Sport&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Kevin+Pietersen%2CCricket%2CEngland+cricket+team%2CSport%2CAndrew+Strauss&c5=Unclassified%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CCricket&c6=Martin+Pengelly&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143396&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Sport&c12=Kevin+Pietersen&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FSport%2FKevin+Pietersen" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>The England and Wales Cricket Board will make a statement this afternoon on the future of Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores after Sky News reported that the England captain and head coach had resigned. Sky Sports News has also reported that the England batting coach, Andy Flower, has been offered the role of interim head coach for the forthcoming tour to the West Indies. Andrew Strauss has been installed as the bookies' favourite to succeed Pietersen as captain despite the lack of an official confirmation or denial.</p><p></p><p>The England and Wales Cricket Board has not confirmed that either Pietersen or Moores has stepped down. The BBC has reported that both men have left their roles and that successors are being sought, and that Pietersen will not lead the tour to the West Indies.</p><p></p><p>There had been speculation that Moores, who took over from Duncan Fletcher after the 2007 World Cup, would lose his job after he fell out with Pietersen, who has been on holiday in Africa and is due back in the UK tomorrow. News of the rift between captain and coach first emerged on New Year's Eve. On 29 December it was announced that the former captain Michael Vaughan had not been selected for the tour of the West Indies. It is believed that Pietersen had wanted Vaughan in his squad.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jan/07/kevin-pietersen-england-cricket" title="">The ECB last night held talks aimed at resolving the issue</a> and the hierarchy were again involved in meetings this morning. It has been reported that Pietersen blamed the ECB for not acting quickly enough to resolve the problem though last night's talks concluded with the board's support shifting towards Moores. The ECB was angered that Pietersen had allowed the problem to become public – the former captain referred to the situation between himself and Moores being <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jan/04/gower-england-cricket-pietersen-moores" title="">'unhealthy' in the News of the World on Sunday</a>.</p><p></p><p>England's managing director, Hugh Morris, is a friend of Moores and captained him in the 1981 England Schoolboys side. He had canvassed dressing-room opinion about the captain and found support for him not to be unanimous.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/aug/04/englandcricket.pietersen" title="">Pietersen became England captain on 4 August 2008, when Vaughan resigned and</a> had been in charge of the side for only three Test matches, including last month's 1–0 series loss in India. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/aug/12/englandvsouthafrica2008.englandcricketteam2" title="">He won his first match in charge</a>, against South Africa, the country of his birth and has an overall record of won one, drawn one, lost one. Under his captaincy England won a one-day series against South Africa but were then well beaten in the Stanford Super Series Twenty20 tournament in the West Indies and in a one-day series in India which was shortened by November's terrorist attacks in Mumbai.</p><p></p><p>England are due to fly to the West Indies on 21 January, to play four Test matches, a Twenty20 international and five one-day internationals. This summer sees Australia arrive to contest the Ashes, in which the first Test starts at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff six months from tomorrow. Pietersen was an integral part of the side which won the Ashes under Vaughan in 2005.</p><p></p><p>Pietersen's agent could not be contacted to confirm or deny the report.</p><p></p><p>Moores' record in Tests includes series defeats against South Africa and India and wins against New Zealand and West Indies.</p><p></p><p>Yesterday Kent's South African coach, Graham Ford, said that the England job "would be a fantastic challenge". He added: "After my years with Kent I've a good idea of the players and the way things operate."</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/kevin-pietersen">Kevin Pietersen</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/cricket">Cricket</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/englandcricketteam">England Cricket Team</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/andrew-strauss">Andrew Strauss</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/pfLD60JSrUA0BA23wUe83cTz0bU/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/pfLD60JSrUA0BA23wUe83cTz0bU/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:47:31 GMT

M&S axes up to 1,230 jobs and shuts 27 stores
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/22732?ns=guardian&pageName=Business%3A+M%26amp%3BS+axes+up+to+1%2C230+jobs&ch=Business&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Marks+and+Spencer+Group+%28Business%29%2CRetail+industry+%28Business%29%2CHigh+street+retailers%2CBusiness%2CRecession+%28UK%29%2CJobs%2CUK+news&c5=Fashion+and+Beauty%2CCredit+Crunch%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBusiness+Markets&c6=Graeme+Wearden%2CJulia+Kollewe&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143378&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Business&c12=Marks+%26+Spencer&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FBusiness%2FMarks+%26+Spencer" width="1" height="1" /></div><p><strong></strong><strong></p><p></strong>Marks & Spencer is axing up to 1,230 jobs and shutting 27 stores after suffering its worst sales performance for a decade.</p><p>The high-street retailer said this morning it would shut 25 "under-performing" Simply Food outlets, out of a total of 350, and two main stores. This will cost the jobs of up to 780 staff and a further 450 jobs will be cut at its head office. M&S employs about 70,000 people worldwide.</p><p>This morning's Christmas trading statement showed that UK like-for-like sales fell by 7.1% in the 12 weeks to 27 December, worse than rivals such as <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/06/debenhams-retail" title="">Debenhams</a> and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/06/john-lewis-christmas-sales" title="">John Lewis</a>. Clothing and food sales were the worst hit, with total clothing sales 8.9% down and food 5.2% lower.</p><p>The company will also cap employees' annual increases in pensionable pay to 1%, a blow to the 21,000 people on its final-salary pension scheme.</p><p>Sir Stuart Rose, executive chairman, said the cutbacks, which he described as "good housekeeping" that would save up to £200m, were necessary to help M&S ride out the UK slump, with the chancellor, Alistair Darling, warning this morning that Britain was "far from through" a recession.</p><p>Rose said: "This is not low-hanging fruit. It's not going to be an easy exercise as we go into the consultation. Every company has to cut its costs according to its means. We've had to take a tough decision. It will affect some people and I very much regret that."</p><p>He played down the prospect of further store closures and job losses, saying: "You can never say never in the current environment."</p><p>Trade unions have already vowed to fight M&S if it tries to implement mass redundancies.</p><p>Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union, said: "M&S have been planning this mass sacking for some time and managers have in many cases selected who is going. This is against the law and ignores the employment rights of their staff. M&S must now enter into 90-day consultation with their employees before selecting those to be made redundant.</p><p>"M&S employees selected for redundancy before the end of the consultation period will have an automatic case for unfair selection for redundancy at an employment tribunal."</p><p>Tony Goode, a GMB member and whistleblower who was sacked for publishing details of M&S's cuts in redundancy payouts, said: "Frankly, I am surprised that M&S have taken so long to announce these redundancies after slashing the redundancy terms for its staff in September last year."</p><p>Rose denied there was any link between the job cuts and the changes to the company's redundancy pay.</p><p>M&S shares jumped more than 6% this morning, trading up 15.25p at 254p, as the City welcomed the cutbacks.</p><p>Philip Dorgan at Panmure Gordon described the measures as the "biggest cost-saving programme that we have ever seen". He said: "This cost reduction gives M&S an enormous war chest to survive the recession."</p><p>Freddie George at Seymour Pierce upgraded his recommendation on M&S shares from sell to hold, but also downgraded his profit forecasts and predicted that the dividend would be halved to 11.25p.</p><p>"The cost initiatives are to be applauded," said KBC analyst John Stevenson. But he expects the consensus forecast in the City for 2008-09 profits to fall from about £620m towards his estimate of £595m and next year could be even worse. "With the pressure on gross margin we've got, and given the sales outlook, we still expect profits to be falling next year."</p><p>Rose denied the trading update was a profits warning. "If it was, we would have had to say something earlier," he said, adding that he was leaving it up to City analysts to crunch the numbers. "Inevitably, profits will drop this year as they will at other retailers, but we are a profitable business," he added.</p><p>Ian Dyson, M&S finance director, said there was no change in the group's dividend policy "at this stage". Many in the City are expecting a dividend cut when the board makes a decision in May.</p><p>M&S admitted that its gross retail margin for this financial year will be 1.75 percentage points below last year – worse than its previous guidance of a one-point fall – with discounting and lower food prices hitting its profitability. The retailer launched two <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/nov/20/marksspencer-retail" title="">20%-off, one-day sales</a> to pull in customers in the run-up to Christmas.</p><p>Rose said the company decided to do the spectaculars after a "pretty difficult October and November and it worked well for us".</p><p>"Did we have to kick-start the customer into Christmas? Yes. Has it cost us a bit? Yes. Would I do it again? Yes."</p><p>He rejected suggestions that M&S has a real problem on its hands as customers trade down to cheaper food elsewhere, and said people were still looking for quality food. "We sold a turkey every four seconds at Christmas. One in five customers had something on their table from M&S," he said.</p><p>Analysts were sceptical about the prospects for the food business. "Our base case has been for some time that food is structurally challenged," Dorgan said. "It has lost its competitive edge, it is too small, its prices are too high, its supply chain is not reactive enough, and its stores are in the wrong place."</p><p>Rose, who was criticised for taking on the executive chairmanship last spring, shrugged off suggestions that he should consider his own position. "This is a plane flying into a storm ... You would wait for the plane to have landed first [before changing the pilot]."</p><p>He was in typically upbeat mood despite the sales slide, saying the group had overall held market share and that 56 million people passed through M&S's doors in the last 10 days before Christmas, buying 130m items.</p><p>After a host of business failures, including well-known names such as Woolworths, and more to come, the high street will look different this year.</p><p>However, Rose said: "The high street is not dead. I've always said retailing is the second-oldest profession in the world. The strong will continue to be there, we will continue to be there, shops will continue to be there."</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marksspencer">Marks & Spencer</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/retail">Retail industry</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/highstreetretailers">High street retailers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/recession">Recession</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/pvjsFbSUnRZcIBiFg76hcZxm3kE/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/pvjsFbSUnRZcIBiFg76hcZxm3kE/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:34:59 GMT

Stonewall survey shows banks and police among most gay-friendly employers
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/68981?ns=guardian&pageName=Society%3A+Banks+and+police+among+most+gay-friendly+employers%3Cbr+%2F%3E&ch=Society&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Equality+%28Society%29%2CSociety%2CGay+rights+%28News%29%2CWork+and+careers%2CMoney%2CDiscrimination+at+work%2CUK+news&c5=Society+Weekly%2CPersonal+Finance%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CCommunities+Society&c6=Mary+O%27Hara&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1142926&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Society&c12=Equality&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FSociety%2FEquality" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>The police service, banks and management consultants top the league table of gay-friendly employers in Britain, outperforming the public sector, the media and education, according to the latest workplace equality index.</p><p>High street and investment banks fared particularly well, with Lloyds TSB rising from sixth in the 2008 table to take the number one slot this year, and Goldman Sachs winning 11th place. Three police services featured in the top 10 including Hampshire constabulary in second place and Kent police at fourth, while 17 forces were listed in the top 100. The metropolitan police came in at number 43.</p><p>Professional services companies also performed impressively with KPMG, Ernst and Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers all making the top 25.</p><p>Now in its fifth year, the index from campaigning group Stonewall tracks the impact of workplace culture on gay, lesbian and bisexual employees. It has quickly become a key baromoter of diversity practices.</p><p>The 2009 index, which also included a survey of more than 7,000 gay and lesbian employees, had a record 371 entries across 23 sectors. This is more than double the number of submissions in the 2005 launch year. Some sectors, such as law and housing, have improved markedly year on year.</p><p>Organisations which apply to be inlcuded on the index are examined on the success of their diversity policies and the extent to which they encourage job applications from lesbian and gay workers. Stonewall also surveys gay employees on whether their workplace experiences match up to the claims made by employers.</p><p>As well as shining a spotlight on the top performing organisations, the index also notes those sectors such as media, retail, construction and the NHS that consistently fail to make the grade, shown by their absence or low rankings.</p><p>"There are sectors such as the police which perform exceptionally well in the index but then there are sectors such as construction and media which don't," David Shields, director of Stonewall's Workplace Programmes said. "But it can take a few years from when an organisation decides to improve in this area to begin to see some results. We are always working with organisations in [under-represented] sectors such as the NHS, retail and the media to help them improve."</p><p>The country's single largest employer, the NHS, was notable for its absence in the upper reaches of the index. Only one NHS trust, Tower Hamlets, was among the best, ranked at 58.</p><p>The public sector's performance was shored up by local authorities with 49 entries submitted, the largest tranche from a single sector. Fourteen councils made the top 100 with three reaching the top 10, including Brighton and Hove which took third place. Three of the 20 fire services that entered also made the top 100, while the Home Office wmade the top 20.</p><p>The voluntary sector did not feature strongly, although last year's overall winner, the crime charity Nacro, remained in the top 10. The media industry, which might have been expected to perform better, has consistently failed to make an impression on the index. Only five media companies entered this year and just one, Time Warner, made it into the top 100, in 90th place.</p><p>According to Shields, it can be difficult to pinpoint why some sectors far outstrip others. The strides made by so many police forces may be part of "a broader effort to effect cultural change" he suggested, adding that complacency may have something to do with why media companies barely feature.</p><p>"I think for banks, for example, there is a real emphasis on the bottom line and they are recognising that fair employment practices directly impact on performance. I wonder if with the education or media sectors they believe they are already good and don't feel the need to measure it."</p><p>Fiona Cannon, head of equality and diversity at Lloyds TSB, said good diversity policies "simply make good business sense".</p><p>"I think the financial services sector is good at recognising this. At Lloyds we have worked hard and it's wonderful that it's paying off."</p><p>Gavin Wills, managing director for corporate services and real estate at Goldman Sachs, said the Stonewall index had provided considerable impetus for many organisations within the investment banking sector. "The index has been a phenomenal success for Stonewall over the years. You start getting employers who you never would have dreamed were supportive of lesbian, gay and bisexual professionals competing to get on to it."</p><p>Chief executive of Stonewall, Ben Summerskill, said the bar was set even higher for the 2009 index than in previous years, with additional proof of long-term effectiveness required from entrants. "To make the top 100 this year, employers had to demonstrate that equality and diversity were not optional extras but core values. Ninety seven percent of the top 100 had an organisation-wide equality and diversity strategy which links LGB equality into wider organisational aims. "</p><p>• More at <a href="http://www.stonewall.org.uk/" title="">www.stonewall.org.uk</a></p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/equality">Equality</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gayrights">Gay rights</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/workandcareers">Work & careers</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/discriminationatwork">Discrimination at work</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/CgNQFZtDOdzO1y9itK1d2Q_VJfU/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/CgNQFZtDOdzO1y9itK1d2Q_VJfU/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:08:32 GMT

Commuters struggle as southern England temperatures fall to -12C
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/89094?ns=guardian&pageName=UK+news%3A+Commuters+struggle+as+temperatures+fall+to+-12C&ch=UK+news&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Weather+UK+%28News%29%2CUK+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Sam+Jones&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143401&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=UK+news&c12=Weather&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FUK+news%2FWeather" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Commuters across England are facing another trying day following the coldest night of the freezing spell, which saw temperatures in parts of southern England plunge to nearly -12C (10.4F).</p><p>The coldest areas were Benson in Oxfordshire and Chesham in Buckinghamshire, where the mercury dropped to almost -12C, while <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/07/arctic-weather-uk" title="">other parts of the south fared little better</a>, recording temperatures of -9C and -10C.</p><p>Snow flurries have moved south from Yorkshire and the Humber and are likely to cause another day of wintry chaos for travellers, with icy road warnings in force for north-west England, Yorkshire and Humber and the Midlands.</p><p>Daytime temperatures are expected to creep up a couple of degrees to a maximum of 5C today, with the northern half of Britain faring better than the rest. But the UK will have to wait until the weekend before average temperatures creep above freezing.</p><p>Nikki Berry, a forecaster for MeteoGroup UK, the weather division of the Press Association, said: "There is quite a bit more cloud around which will help raise temperatures.</p><p>"Generally, the northern half of the UK is looking much warmer, 1C to 3C minimum.</p><p>"In the south we will still be looking at -1C to -4C overnight, which is not as cold as it has been."</p><p>Yesterday, tens of thousands of motorists were left stranded on a record day for car breakdowns as temperatures in parts of the country dropped to as low as -11C (12.2F).</p><p>The AA and RAC said the situation was the worst for five years; they dealt with an estimated 50,000 call-outs over two days.</p><p>Among the victims of perilous driving conditions was a woman cyclist who was seriously injured when she was run over by a Land Rover that skidded on ice in Clevedon, Somerset.</p><p>In Dorset, a man escaped injury after his BMW 325 convertible spun off the road and hit a telegraph pole near Bournemouth international airport.</p><p>In Devon and Cornwall, police warned drivers to delay journeys after seven crashes, including two multi-car collisions.</p><p>High numbers of breakdowns were recorded in the Bristol, Bournemouth, London and Birmingham areas.</p><p>The problems ushered in by the cold weather are not confined to the roads. Welsh Water apologised to customers in the Rhondda Fach area of south Wales who may experience problems with their water supply as a result of the cold snap, and pensioners have been advised to take extra precautions to make sure they keep warm.</p><p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/weather/2009/jan/07/cold-weather-britain" title="">The elderly and vulnerable are receiving a £25-a-week heating bill subsidy</a> from the government to help them through the freezing snap. The payout – which is triggered when an area's average temperature falls to 0C or below for seven consecutive days – has so far cost more than £100m.</p><p>The freeze sparked calls from Macmillan Cancer Support on the government to extend winter fuel payments to cancer patients.</p><p>For some people, though, the harsh weather has its own unusual rewards: in central London shivering tourists saw the fountains in Trafalgar Square freeze.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/weather">Weather</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ckpm4zSEOlBPJpDjn85b0S4N870/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/ckpm4zSEOlBPJpDjn85b0S4N870/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:24:34 GMT

UK councils attacked for issuing 1.2 million local tax court orders
Liberal democrats attack 'heavyhanded' treatment by UK councils over local tax debts <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/dRDAd5YyfqJDFgQRpME6iDL07xs/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/dRDAd5YyfqJDFgQRpME6iDL07xs/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:24:06 GMT

Capsized sailor rescued by Vendée race rival
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/27979?ns=guardian&pageName=Sport%3A+Capsized+sailor+rescued+by+Vend%26eacute%3Be+race+rival&ch=Sport&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Sailing+%28Sport%29%2CFrance%2CWorld+news%2CSport&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2COutdoor+and+Active&c6=Jenny+Percival%2CStephen+Bates&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143299&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Sport&c12=Sailing&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FSport%2FSailing" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>A French sailor whose yacht capsized in the South Pacific during the Vend&eacute;e Globe solo round-the-world race was rescued last night by his friend, a fellow competitor, after he was trapped inside the hull of his upturned boat in heavy seas for 16 hours.</p><p>Jean Le Cam, 49, was helped to escape by Vincent Riou, who, with a third competitor, Frenchman Armel Le Cl&eacute;ac'h, had diverted to help him after hearing his distress call. Le Cam's 60-foot boat VM Mat&eacute;riaux capsized after losing its keel 200 miles west off Cape Horn. </p><p>A rescue operation by the Chilean navy and emergency services, which had dispatched a tug with divers and a helicopter, had been launched but would not have arrived before this morning. A tanker had also been standing by to assist.</p><p>Riou, on board his yacht PRB, was able to get alongside the wreck and could hear his friend's shouts, though in heavy seas and with winds at 25 knots it took over three hours for Le Cam to climb out of his vessel, whose emergency hatch was submerged, and get aboard the other boat, which itself sustained damage in the rescue. </p><p>A race spokesman said: "Jean Le Cam has been rescued safe and sound. A full-scale rescue operation was in place ... but in the end it was Vincent Riou who recovered [his] fellow skipper and friend. Riou circled repeatedly to retrieve the skipper from the water and on the fourth attempt he successfully rescued Le Cam.</p><p>"Le Cam appears to be unhurt as Riou reported that both skippers worked on deck to stabilise PRB's mast."</p><p>The yachtsman sent a distress call from his boat at 12.26am yesterday as he prepared to navigate around the southern tip of South America. About nine hours later a Chilean spotter plane said it had found the yacht. Philippe de Villiers, the race president, said Le Cam had been speaking to another sailor by phone when there was a sudden loud noise and he said: "My boat is capsizing." </p><p>His phone went dead shortly after midnight and a distress beacon was activated at 1.40am. At the time of his disappearance, Le Cam was third in the 26,000-mile race, which started last November. He came second when the quadrennial race was last run, in 2005.</p><p>Thirty competitors started the race, including seven Britons, but more than half have dropped out, with one sailor having to be rescued in the Southern Ocean after breaking his leg. Two competitors have died in previous races.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/sailing">Sailing</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/france">France</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Q40TarI70EQ9dX8wo3u4k0Yjil4/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Q40TarI70EQ9dX8wo3u4k0Yjil4/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:26:55 GMT

Three charged with murder over Sheffield house fire deaths
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/37336?ns=guardian&pageName=UK+news%3A+Three+charged+with+murder+over+Sheffield+house+fire+deaths&ch=UK+news&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Crime+-+UK+%28News%29%2CUK+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Sam+Jones&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143398&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=UK+news&c12=Crime&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FUK+news%2FCrime" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Three people including two teenage boys will appear before magistrates this morning charged with murder over a house fire that killed three men in Sheffield last week.</p><p>Trevor Richardson, 37, Kane McTell, 53, and Barry Nicholson, 67, died after the blaze in Albert Road, Heeley, Sheffield, on Friday night.</p><p>A fourth person remains in hospital in a critical but stable condition.</p><p>A spokeswoman for South Yorkshire police said Michelle Lamb, 35, from Sheffield, was last night charged with murder along with two boys, aged 14 and 17, who cannot be named for legal reasons.</p><p>The fire started downstairs in the mid-terraced home and it was well ablaze by the time fire crews arrived.</p><p>Neighbours reported seeing two people jump through windows to escape, while firefighters in breathing apparatus pulled two others out.</p><p>Two of the men died at the scene, while two other people were taken to hospital, where one of them died on Sunday from his injuries.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/ukcrime">Crime</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/YO3yJ8XJt5dC9mhnAdu36N9oO90/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/YO3yJ8XJt5dC9mhnAdu36N9oO90/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 09:08:57 GMT

Billionaire Adolf Merckle left 'broken' by credit crunch kills himself
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/99010?ns=guardian&pageName=World+news%3A+German+billionaire+left+%27broken%27+by+financial+crisis+kills+himself&ch=World+news&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Germany%2CEntrepreneurs+%28Business%29%2CPharmaceuticals+industry+%28Business%29%2CCredit+crunch+%28Business%29%2CWorld+news&c5=Credit+Crunch%2CBusiness+Markets%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Kate+Connolly&c7=2009_01_06&c8=1143216&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=World+news&c12=Germany&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FGermany" width="1" height="1" /></div><p><strong></strong>A German billionaire industrialist plagued by financial mayhem and ­struggling to ­rescue his business empire has killed ­himself, his family announced today.</p><p>Adolf Merckle, who was Germany's fifth richest man and the world's 98th richest, reportedly died on railway tracks close to his family villa in Blaubeuern, near Ulm in south-west Germany, after being struck by a train on Monday night.</p><p>In an emotional statement his family said the 74-year-old had been "broken" by the financial crisis.</p><p>"The desperate situation of his companies caused by the financial crisis and the uncertainties of the last few weeks along with his powerlessness to act, broke the passionate family entrepreneur and he ended his life," the statement said.</p><p>Merckle, whose companies employed 100,000 people across Europe, had been in the headlines frequently over the past weeks after he made wrong-way bets on shares in Volkswagen. His family lost hundreds of millions of euros, including €400m (£200m) on Volkswagen shares alone. It is not known how much of his personal fortune, which was estimated at 12.8bn in March 2008 by Forbes, had been lost.</p><p>Merckle, whose companies included cement maker Heidelberger Cement, the pharmaceutical maker Ratiopharm and Phoenix, a drugs wholesaler, had been in talks with banks for weeks in the hope of renegotiating the loans.</p><p>Shares in all his companies dropped as the news of his death reached the markets.</p><p>According to reports in the German media, he left a suicide note in which he apologised to his family, but offered no concrete reasons or motives. Prosecutors said they did not believe anyone else was involved in his death.</p><p>A railway worker found the businessman's body on the track 300 metres from the family home, and his family confirmed the identity of the body. As a matter of course DNA tests would be carried out on his remains this next week, the police said.</p><p>Merckle was born in Dresden in 1934 into a family of entrepreneurs and built on the family fortune by developing his grandfather's chemical company into the country's largest pharmaceutical wholesaler. He also developed other arms of the family business empire, including a ski lift business. He trained as a lawyer but spent most of his working life as an investor. He was married to Ruth Holland, who was born into the Ulm cement dynasty Schwenk/Schleicher.</p><p>Like many German industrialists Merckle, who was a keen skier and mountain climber, kept a low profile and was little known to all but business insiders until the recent scandal to have hit his business empire. He had honorary doctorates from several German universities and was awarded the Order of the Federal Republic of Germany, First Class, in 2005.</p><p>Among the many properties he owned was a castle near Rostock in northern Germany which hosted the participants of the G8 Summit in the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm in 2007.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/germany">Germany</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/entrepreneurs">Entrepreneurs</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/pharmaceuticals">Pharmaceuticals industry</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/creditcrunch">Credit crunch</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/-L63wDsEeYrNLTessZaWlhImeEo/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/-L63wDsEeYrNLTessZaWlhImeEo/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:40:15 GMT

Church grabs chance to attack birth control pill
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/47781?ns=guardian&pageName=World+news%3A+Church+grabs+chance+to+attack+birth+control+pill&ch=World+news&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Catholicism+%28News%29%2CReligion+%28News%29%2CWomen+and+women%27s+interests%2CHealth+%28Society%29%2CSociety%2CWorld+news&c5=Society+Weekly%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CWomen%2CHealth+Society&c6=Kate+Connolly%2CJohn+Hooper&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143277&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=World+news&c12=Catholicism&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FCatholicism" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Roman Catholic leaders have pounced on a "confession" by one of the inventors of the birth control pill who has said the contraceptive he helped create was responsible for a "demographic catastrophe".</p><p>In an article published by the Vatican this week, the head of the world's Roman Catholic doctors broadened the attack on the pill, claiming it had also brought "devastating ecological effects" by releasing into the environment "tons of hormones" that had impaired male fertility.</p><p>The assault began with a personal commentary in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard by 85-year-old Carl Djerassi. The Austrian chemist was one of three whose formulation of the synthetic progestogen Norethisterone marked a key step towards the earliest oral contraceptive pill.</p><p>Djerassi outlined the "horror scenario" that occurred because of the population imbalance, for which his invention was partly to blame. He said that in most of Europe there was now "no connection at all between sexuality and reproduction". He said: "This divide in Catholic Austria, a country which has on average 1.4 children per family, is now complete."</p><p>He described families who had decided against reproduction as "wanting to enjoy their schnitzels while leaving the rest of the world to get on with it".</p><p>The fall in the birth rate, he said, was an "epidemic" far worse - but given less attention - than obesity. Young Austrians, he said, were committing national suicide if they failed to procreate. And if it were not possible to reverse the population decline they would have to understand the necessity of an "intelligent immigration policy".</p><p>The head of Austria's Catholics, Cardinal Christoph Sch&ouml;nborn, told an interviewer that the Vatican had forecast 40 years ago that the pill would lead to a dramatic fall in the birth rate in the west. "Somebody above suspicion like Carl Djerassi ... is saying that each family has to produce three children to maintain population levels, but we're far away from that."</p><p>Sch&ouml;nborn told Austrian TV that when he first read Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical condemning artificial contraception he viewed it negatively as a "cold shower". But he said he had altered his views as, over time, it had proved "prophetic".</p><p>Writing for the Vatican daily, L'Osservatore Romano, the president of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, Jos&eacute; Mar&iacute;a Sim&oacute;n, said research from his association also showed the pill "worked in many cases with a genuinely ... abortive effect". </p><p>Angelo Bonelli, of the Italian Green party, said it was the first he had heard of a link between the pill and environmental pollution. The worst of poisons were to be found in the water supply. "It strikes me as idiosyncratic to be worried about this." </p><p>A leading gynaecologist and member of the New York Academy of Science, professor Gian Benedetto Melis, called Sim&oacute;n's claims "science fiction", saying that the pill blocked ovulation only.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/catholicism">Catholicism</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/religion">Religion</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/women">Women</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/health">Health</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/uk4T18V49VmV_M7eqlF5KSgBj1U/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/uk4T18V49VmV_M7eqlF5KSgBj1U/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:20:04 GMT

Tech Weekly podcast: Macworld 2009 review
A new 17 inch MacBook Pro, software updates, and DRM free tracks on iTunes - all launched at Macworld 2009. Bobbie Johnson and guests review the announcements and ask Mac fans what they think <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/arZqKIEctiIPkf8mP0XqoIARAbU/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/arZqKIEctiIPkf8mP0XqoIARAbU/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:56:39 GMT

Video: Aid worker in Gaza
Hatem Al Shurrab, describes what it is like to be an aid worker with the British-based charity Islamic Relief Worldwide in Gaza <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/7fzhAcpUGjO8KUwXnj0XxxsZ5Kc/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/7fzhAcpUGjO8KUwXnj0XxxsZ5Kc/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:01:08 GMT

Guardian Daily podcast: New MI5 chief speaks; plus efforts to end Gaza violence
<p>The new head of MI5, Jonathan Evans, has been outlining his assessment of the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/07/terrorism-trials-mi5">terror threat to Britain</a>. Security editor <strong>Richard Norton-Taylor</strong> has the details.</p><p>Middle East editor <strong>Ian Black</strong> looks at diplomatic efforts to <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-obama">end Israel's bombardment of Gaza</a>. </p><p>Russian energy giant <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/gas-russia-ukraine-europe">Gasprom has cut its flow of gas to European countries</a>. Moscow correspondent <strong>Luke Harding</strong> explains how Russia's row with Ukraine has affected the EU's gas supply.</p><p>We hear from campaigners including <strong>Richard Dawkins</strong> at the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/atheist-bus-campaign-nationwide">launch of the Atheist Bus Campaign</a>. Supporters raised £140,000 which will be spent on posters featuring slogans doubting the existence of God.</p><p>And as <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/gallery/2009/jan/05/weather?picture=341416524">temperatures plunge across the UK</a>, <strong>Steven Morris</strong> reports from one of the coldest parts of the country - Somerset.</p><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/wuFD45dHWsCyFvNff2ppCeoiHwI/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/wuFD45dHWsCyFvNff2ppCeoiHwI/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 07:05:24 GMT

Harbin Ice and Snow Festival
The Harbin Ice and Snow Festival in Harbin, northeastern China's Heilongjiang province <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/rQTZxXtKl2ouUJwPWoM3YW8C0mw/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/rQTZxXtKl2ouUJwPWoM3YW8C0mw/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:30:50 GMT

Video: Obama: We must act swiftly on economy
President-elect warns US economy moving from bad to worse and stresses need for action <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/W6yp8pwIRnntxUW2V7G0g2AASDk/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/W6yp8pwIRnntxUW2V7G0g2AASDk/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:13:16 GMT

Tottenham come back from behind to put themselves on verge of Wembley return
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/88236?ns=guardian&pageName=Football%3A+Transformed+Tottenham+put+themselves+on+verge+of+Wembley+return&ch=Football&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Carling+Cup%2CTottenham+Hotspur+%28Football%29%2CBurnley+%28Football%29%2CHarry+Redknapp%2CFootball%2CSport%2CGuardian%2CWigan+Athletic+%28Football%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CPremier+League&c6=Kevin+McCarra&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143331&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Football&c12=Carling+Cup&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FFootball%2FCarling+Cup" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>The day may come when upheaval is no longer the natural state of Tottenham Hotspur but neutrals will miss the volatility. Even the club's supporters would have a twinge of nostalgia for chaos as invigorating as this, particularly since Tottenham Hotspur are virtually guaranteed their chance to retain the Carling Cup at Wembley.</p><p>Burnley must have been as unsuspecting as everyone else when they led 1-0 at the interval. A 4-1 deficit for the return leg at Turf Moor in a fortnight was inconceivable then. The ultimate role reversal reflected the impact that the Tottenham manager, Harry Redknapp, had when he delivered a splenetic address at the interval.</p><p>David Bentley was uneasy on the left and also turned out to have been unwell. His replacement by Jamie O'Hara gave the side natural width on that flank for the second half. The substitute even scored on his own account. It is true that Burnley can reproach themselves for all but one of the goals they conceded but the collapse reflected the shock experienced when they were suddenly put under pressure by a Tottenham team that had previously been incapable of aggression.</p><p>The initial passivity had been an incitement to the visitors. Burnley, with no anxieties to burden them, had a spring in their step then. Their previous triumphs over Fulham, Chelsea and Arsenal this season seemed fully explicable. It was ­Tottenham, and in particular their left-back Gareth Bale, who were weighed down by care, when Chris Eagles darted inside him before placing the low cross that allowed Martin Paterson an elementary finish in the 15th minute.</p><p>The returning Jermain Defoe had emerged beforehand to be feted by the White Hart Lane crowd. Those spectators then spent 45 minutes or so wishing that they could have hailed him on the pitch instead. Afterwards Redknapp still had a residual anger about the sluggishness of the display at the start.</p><p>The trouble for the Tottenham manager was also associated with the open nature of the game. Ledley King, as is regularly the case, was resting his bad knee with a view to playing in the Premier League on Sunday but the central defence still did not look as if it had got used to operating without him.</p><p>After 24 minutes Robbie Blake was heading fractionally wide from another Eagles delivery. Burnley had to cope with an additional disappointment when Joey Gudjonsson's injury after half an hour saw the introduction of Kevin McDonald, whose two goals in the previous round had eliminated Arsenal. The Burnley supporters, forgivably, had no inkling of the sorrow to come and were soon chanting, "Are you Chelsea in disguise?" It was a means of reliving improbable triumph at Stamford Bridge while simultaneously mocking the opposition here.</p><p>There was no sign before the interval that Tottenham would silence those visitors. Aaron Lennon, whose crossing has been more telling of late, disappeared back into his former aimlessness and Spurs were also undermined by profligacy. Jonathan Woodgate nodded down a Bentley corner but Roman Pavlyuchenko mishit his shot. Much as Redknapp seems to delight in the transfer market, he would still have been disturbed to see so many of his staff looking like candidates for replacement.</p><p>It took O'Hara to remind him that those already on the books have their uses. His immediate contribution made Burnley reel for the first time. His deep corner evaded Clarke Carlisle and was piloted into the net by Michael Dawson's splendid header. An individual error permitted Tottenham's next goal, but that slip also reflected the panic being experienced. Pavlyuchenko drove into the penalty area and the ball broke from the head of Luka Modric before dropping to O'Hara. Brian Jensen should have saved the midfielder's drive but let it squirm past him.</p><p>There was a higher tempo to Tottenham's play and Burnley, for a while, could have felt only bewilderment and some nostalgia for the comfort enjoyed in the opening 45 minutes. For a few moments hints of revival were sighted when, for example, Blake put a curler narrowly off target and, soon after, the Spurs goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes and his defence had a few chaotic moments.</p><p>All the same Burnley's deficiencies were illustrated. Following Bale's pass in the 65th minute, Pavlyuchenko slipped past Carlisle as if barely conscious of the centre-back before placing his shot into the net with ease. It was nearly comic to witness such svelte confidence in a footballer who had been so inept at the beginning of the evening.</p><p>When a side's form veers so wildly, their opponents are at risk of being taken by surprise. The visitors were at the mercy of misfortune as well. After 67 minutes, O'Hara's inswinging free-kick from the right was headed past his own keeper by Michael Duff.</p><p>Having seemed so menacing initially, Burnley had become a danger purely to themselves.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/carlingcup">Carling Cup</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/tottenham-hotspur">Tottenham Hotspur</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/burnley">Burnley</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/harry-redknapp">Harry Redknapp</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/wiganathletic">Wigan Athletic</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Zhtr7f5Lkt17lYLSKPFrciCeXiQ/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/Zhtr7f5Lkt17lYLSKPFrciCeXiQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:30:24 GMT

Ricky Hatton set to fight Manny Pacquiao in May
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/20614?ns=guardian&pageName=Sport%3A+Hatton+set+to+fight+Pacquiao+in+May&ch=Sport&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Boxing%2CSport%2CRicky+Hatton+%28Sport%29%2CGuardian&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=John+Rawling&c7=2009_01_06&c8=1143204&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Sport&c12=Boxing&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FSport%2FBoxing" width="1" height="1" /></div><p><strong></strong><strong></p><p></strong>A deal is close to completion that will see Ricky Hatton fight the Filipino superstar Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas on 2 May. Talks were continuing today aimed at securing a site to stage the contest with the MGM Grand and Planet Hollywood casinos both prepared to pay multi­million-dollar fees to the promoters.</p><p>Pacquiao has become one of the sport's hottest properties with his brilliant win over Oscar De La Hoya, while Hatton remains hugely popular, not least with casinos who can be guaranteed to have their business boosted by the thousands of fans who will travel in support of the hero. The winner of such a high-profile contest would be likely to entice the undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr, –conqueror of Hatton in 2007, out of retirement for another lucrative superfight.</p><p>Even allowing for the economic downturn, which has had major repercussions for the Las Vegas gaming industry, it is estimated that Pacquiao-Hatton could generate around $20m (£13.4m) for each fighter. Not only would there be a guaranteed sell-out crowd at either the MGM Grand Garden or the Thomas and Mack Center, which will be the venue if Planet Hollywood wins the right to host the fight, but there would also be huge revenue to be made from television sales.</p><p>Although all Hatton's major fights have been televised in Britain by Sky, with his most recent contests shown as pay-per-view attractions with Sky Box Office, they will face serious competition for British rights from Setanta Sports, who recently signed a deal with Bob Arum, Pacquiao's promoter, to show all his Top Rank promotions.</p><p>Similarly in the United States Arum is testing the market to see if the cable network Showtime might be prepared to outbid boxing's major player HBO, with the support of its free-to-air parent company CBS.</p><p>Hatton's promoters Golden Boy have already verbally acquiesced in the face of Arum's insistence that the fight should be in the US rather than an open-air venue in the UK, such as Wembley Stadium, which would have been Hatton's preference. Arum, 77, has been the dominant force in forging the deals surrounding the fight.</p><p>Hatton, 30, is currently fulfilling a series of speaking engagements and is planning a cruise with friends and family before going into a likely 12-week training camp for the contest, which is to be made at Hatton's normal 10-stone fighting weight, the light-welterweight division limit, even though Pacquiao beat De La Hoya at welterweight.</p><p>Floyd Mayweather Sr, Hatton's trainer, has said he believes Hatton's strength will help him to a stoppage victory. But the bookies disagree, having installed Pacquiao as the 2-1-on favourite, with Hatton quoted at 6-4 against.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/boxing">Boxing</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/rickyhatton">Ricky Hatton</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/SNk2I2TgPEtJNS6RdX7N1IsalDg/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/SNk2I2TgPEtJNS6RdX7N1IsalDg/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:12:19 GMT

Tech Weekly podcast: Macworld 2009 review
A new 17 inch MacBook Pro, software updates, and DRM free tracks on iTunes - all launched at Macworld 2009. Bobbie Johnson and guests review the announcements and ask Mac fans what they think <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/arZqKIEctiIPkf8mP0XqoIARAbU/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/arZqKIEctiIPkf8mP0XqoIARAbU/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:56:39 GMT

Leo Hickman on the carbon cost of armed conflict
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/15510?ns=guardian&pageName=Environment%3A+The+carbon+cost+of+armed+conflict&ch=Environment&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Carbon+footprints+%28Environment%29%2CCarbon+emissions+%28Environment%29%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CDefence+policy%2CPolitics%2CUK+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CPolicy+Society%2CClimate+Change%2CEthical+Living&c6=Leo+Hickman&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1142854&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Environment&c12=blog&c13=&c14=Ethical+Living+blog&h2=GU%2FEnvironment%2Fblog%2FEthical+Living+blog" width="1" height="1" /></div><p><br />I recently stumbled upon a request sent to the Ministry of Defence last May asking what volume of greenhouse gas emissions the UK forces are responsible for each year. After struggling to find the response published online, I emailed the MoD to ask it to send over the figures. It duly did, and <a href="http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/FreedomOfInformation/DisclosureLog/SearchDisclosureLog/TotalVolumeOfGreenhouseGassesUsedByUkArmedForces.htm">the figures</a> were not wholly surprising: </p><blockquote><p>"For 2005-06, the latest year for which we have collated the total figures, it is estimated that MoD emitted nearly 5.5m tonnes of CO2, which amounts approximately to 1% of the UK's total emissions … The figures above do not include emissions directly resulting from UK operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Based upon the available data for quantities of aviation and ground fuel supplied in these operational theatres, it is estimated that the average annual CO2 emissions directly attributable to the deployment of British military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq currently total approximately 250,000 tonnes and 200,000 tonnes respectively."</p></blockquote><p>A week or so later I was then sent another email alerting me to the fact that the MoD had just published its "<a href="http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/CorporatePublications/HealthandSafetyPublications/SSDCD/SustainableDevelopmentStrategyReportsAndActionPlans.htm">Sustainable Development Report and Action Plan</a>" in addition to its "<a href="http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/CorporatePublications/HealthandSafetyPublications/SSDCD/SustainableDevelopmentPolicy/ClimateChangeStrategy.htm">Climate Change Strategy</a>". </p><p>I know that everyone now feels the need to publish a climate change strategy, but it hadn't really occurred to me that the nation's military machine would be too concerned about such things beyond the need to adapt their operations as changes to the climate occur.</p><p>I suppose we should welcome the fact that it says it is trying to reduce its emissions, but it provokes a wider question about just how much pollution the world's numerous military forces emit. We primarily concentrate, rightly so, on the human cost of conflict and war – this week more than ever – but it is certainly sobering to dwell on the environmental cost, too. For example, <a href="http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid56.php">Amory Lovins</a>, the director of the Rocky Mountain Institute and world-renowned energy consultant, estimates that the Pentagon is the "<a href="http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2007/07/26/lovins/">world's biggest single buyer of oil</a>". </p><p>What price peace, indeed.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbonfootprints">Carbon footprints</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/carbonemissions">Carbon emissions</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climatechange">Climate change</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/defence">Defence policy</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/CvLSko8ZuXqzL76G2quHAI09nLs/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/CvLSko8ZuXqzL76G2quHAI09nLs/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:21:36 GMT

Video: All aboard the Atheist Bus Campaign
<p>Ariane Sherine explains where the idea for the Atheist Bus Campaign came from and Polly Toynbee talks to Richard Dawkins about the word 'probably'</p><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/PEuVKdo3BYJPNInIsqAZlUwsbPE/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/PEuVKdo3BYJPNInIsqAZlUwsbPE/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:14:21 GMT

Video: Penelope Cruz and Josh Brolin at the New York Critics Circle awards
The big winner of the evening was Milk, which won best supporting actor for Brolin, best actor for Sean Penn and best picture <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iVIKR6h_keiZksaf0EN114HamQQ/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/iVIKR6h_keiZksaf0EN114HamQQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:37:57 GMT

Lucy Mangan bids farewell to a ER, the show that revolutionalised TV drama
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/99600?ns=guardian&pageName=Culture%3A+Emergency%21+ER%27s+dying&ch=Culture&c3=The+Guardian&c4=Television+%28Culture%29%2CCulture+section%2CTelevision+industry+%28Media%29%2CMedia&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CMedia+Weekly%2CTelevision+Media&c6=Lucy+Mangan&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143298&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Culture&c12=Television&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FCulture%2FTelevision" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>There is just time to gather round the screen and pay your last respects. After 15 years and more MIs, EKGs, tox screens and central line insertions than it is possible to count, the nonpareil of medical dramas is about to leave us. It will be a sad parting.</p><p>In the early 90s, the cop show was king. Hill Street Blues had captured the nation's attention in the previous decade and spawned countless imitators. The best of them - Homicide: Life On the Streets and NYPD Blue - dominated the networks' schedules, imaginations and commissions. The medical drama was all but dead. </p><p>Then on September 1994 the two-hour pilot episode of ER, written by blockbuster novelist and former medical student Michael Crichton (who died last year) and co-produced by Steven Spielberg's company Amblin, hit our screens and suddenly, like a mighty defibrillator, reanimated the genre's moribund form. It won eight Emmys in its first year and quickly became the most successful hospital drama in the world, both in terms of viewing figures and in setting new narrative and visual standards for television drama. It took the multiple storylines and kinetic camerawork on Homicide and NYPD Blue, shot them full of steroids, adrenaline, amphetamines and sent them whizzing exhilaratingly past us on a weekly basis. The thumping music segued into the percussive bleeps, clangs and clashes of the modern American emergency room. Sirens wailed and ambulances disgorged their bleeding, broken cargo into the care of the waiting staff of the teaching hospital in Chicago. Medical equipment bristled in the background and in the foreground Steadicams tracked trollies carrying at least a dozen gunshot/stroke/heart attack/assault/cancer victims per episode down corridors, in and out of operating rooms as doctors shouted impenetrable diagnoses and instruction over them. An hour of ER contained 700-800 edits - twice as many as a standard hour of television - and was described by one critic at the time as "channel surfing without pressing the button". It was dizzying, disorientating and utterly addictive from the off.</p><p>Apart from the unprecedented speed with which scenes whipped past (even NYPD Blue suddenly started looking like The Potter's Wheel), the unapologetic embrace of jargon commanded most of the attention at first. Gradually, hapless lay viewers such as me began to decipher the code, just as we had slowly got to grips with Detective Sipowicz's "perps" and "skells". A "perfed appy" was a burst appendix. The "PID shuffle" was the unique gait of a prostitute with another bout of pelvic inflammatory disease. Although I'm not going to tell you how long it took me to realise that what I was hearing as "pull socks" was not a command to denude a patient's extremities but "pulse ox", a request for a device to measure a patient's blood oxygen levels and a much more sensible option in the circumstances. </p><p>Now, after 14 series, I daresay the committed ER fan could walk into any county hospital and confidently order a tox screen, CBC, chem-7 and cross-table C-spine with the best of them, prepare a thoracotomy tray and even, if pressed, remedy a pleural infusion for at least as long as it takes to get the unfortunate infusee up to the OR. Actor Alex Kingston, who played the (terribly) British surgeon Elizabeth Corday for eight seasons of the show and is returning for the 15th, recalls that when she first started she did not know what she was saying. "Not at all. But when you hear it daily and have real doctors on hand to make sense of your lines and procedures for you, it gets easier. Quite often you could kid yourself you were doing it properly, especially as everything on set was real. All the machines worked. The only difference was that with blood that was actually sugar water and KY Jelly you didn't have that amazing iron-y smell in the operating theatre."</p><p>So you had the language, the machines, the documentary feel of the camerawork - but was ER truly realistic? Perhaps the honest answer is: it was as realistic as a drama aiming at widespread popularity can be. I watched it while I was flatsharing with a group of medical students who used to laugh hysterically as a lifetime's worth of rare and wonderful diseases were presented to a doctor in a single hour. The lectures, conferences and the exam-cramming that junior doctors have to fit in went largely unrecorded. And more fundamental and uncomfortable truths were undoubtedly glossed over, most notably that of payment for the state-of-the-art treatment all patients receive. As Anne Karpf, author of Doctoring the Media, points out, the first question patients are asked in a US hospital is "Are you insured?" and if the answer - as it frequently is - is no they are unceremoniously shown the door. "It's not exactly social realism," says Karpf. "You wouldn't use it as a primer of what's going on in medical care, but you can't have it be warts-and-all and still work as a drama. When you think how the insurance industry has completely skewed healthcare provision and is the major obstacle to providing an American NHS and means that most of the US population is either crippled by their premiums or living in dread of falling ill - well, how many episodes can you get out of that?"</p><p>Nevertheless, like our own Casualty at its inception, ER did frequently protest against the bureaucrats, the budget cuts and compromises forced upon doctors and uninsured patients by an unjust system. This, combined with its frenetic energy, was enough to make it seem like cinema verit&eacute; compared to what had come before.</p><p>ER should have come with a health warning to anyone raised on Dr Kildare and Marcus Welby, MD (or over here, Dr Finlay's Casebook and Emergency Ward 10). Gone were the selfless, idealised and idealistic secular saints in white coats. Here instead were doctors who were - whisper it - human and fallible, whose personal lives were usually a mess and frequently intruded on the professional and vice versa. Out went Kildare's languorously holistic approach. In came the modern urban medical mantra "Treat 'em and street 'em". Instead of one all-seeing, all-knowing doctor we had a decidedly non-omniscient team who seemed most of the time to be struggling to keep their heads above water, as the neverending tide of sick and injured, drink-, drugs- and gang-battered humanity threatened to drown them. </p><p>Some of the iconography endured, of course, otherwise we would all have become very depressed very quickly. Among the original cast members, John Carter (Noah Wyle) embodied Kildarean idealism, but he looked in vain for a Dr Gillespie-ish mentor in the fearsome Peter Benton, his fantastically irascible supervisor played by Eriq La Salle ("a pussycat" in real life, Kingston assures us). Dr Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) was the moral centre of the show - an essentially decent man, but unlike Welby (a physician who experienced just one patient death in 50 episodes, for which he was not culpable), human; capable of making mistakes, dogged by debt, divorce and eventually disease, dying of a brain tumour in season eight. (The infallible Welby and Kildare, we must assume, simply ascended bodily into heaven.) Dr Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield) was another good doctor, but broke with tradition by being a woman. </p><p>And then, of course, there was Dr Doug Ross. He was - and people do tend to forget this, so I'm going to put it bluntly - a total shitbag, but he had two redeeming features. First, he was a talented paediatrician who would always go the extra mile for his tiny charges, and second he was a talented paediatrician played by George Clooney; basically the man-holding-baby Athena poster made flesh. For this, the world forgave him for driving lovely Nurse Hathaway to attempted suicide in the opening episode (she was supposed to die, but the producers decided she was too good an actor not to put through the mill a few dozen times more, so they resuscitated the role) and innumerable idiocies thereafter. He left in season five but the show survived his loss and into the void stepped Noah Wyle as Carter, whose storyline about his painful, faltering physical and psychological recovery after being stabbed by a patient was a revelation. It unfolded over several series, and in the course of it both Carter and Wyle were transformed from callow youths to proven professionals, a useful reminder to everyone perhaps in these increasingly base and reality-TV obsessed times of the kind of rewards that can only be reaped by commitment to long-running dramas.</p><p>ER was embraced by the public on a grand scale because it was a show that recognised that we are an assertive, informed, cynical, brutal and brutalised society that is not ready to accept authority - with or without a white coat - unquestioningly. So it gave us both a credible collection not of Good Doctors, but good-enough doctors, who succeeded more often than they failed, but failed nevertheless. Through the "frequent flyer" patients - the drunks, addicts and chronically ill who return time and again to the emergency room - and the halt and the lame gloriously restored to health it gave us a view of modern medicine that recognised some of its limitations but also revelled in its possibilities. Our faith was tested but not destroyed. </p><p>Now it is almost over. After 15 years, some of the bloom is inevitably off the rose. Its pacing and style is still there, but now looks less novel since it was adopted and absorbed by almost every television genre as soon as their creators could get hold of a Steadicam; such is the price of innovation. Moreover, as the seasons have worn on, the original central cast has left and a range of shorter-term characters have replaced them, the soap aspect of the show has come to greater prominence. The rage against the machine has been subsumed in the lather of concerns about the doctors' complex personal lives. What interest in wider and political considerations there was has dissipated the further it has moved in time from Dr Crichton's original experiences. The underlying acknowledgement that modern medicine is frequently a palliative rather than a solution - explicit in storylines that have the ER staff tending to multiple gang victims as the latest drug feud escalates, unable to do more than patch the wounds and wait for the next one - has also become harder to find.</p><p>But if it is not ending quite at the top of its game, it is certainly quitting well before viewer or production fatigue has set in. The final series promises to reunite much of the old school - including Benton, Greene, Corday, Weaver, Romano and Carter, either in flashback or in "real" time. "For an audience that has followed all our characters, it will be a very nice way to say goodbye," promises Kingston. "None of it will seem cheesy or contrived. Everything is totally reasonable, totally feasible." It should be a fitting end for a well-loved and deservedly admired show that redefined the way we see both medicine and drama. In an ideal world, it would be succeeded by the medical equivalent of The Wire; a programme sophisticated enough to examine and wrest compelling drama even - especially - from the biggest questions about the flaws and failures of our most fundamental social systems. As it is, we will be left only with the increasingly risible and formulaic House (whose utter infallibility would impress even Kildare) and the unforgiveable Grey's Anatomy.</p><p>Nurse, the screens - switch them off.</p><p>• The final season of ER starts on More4 on Thursday at 9pm</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/television">Television</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/television">Television</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/9sl8KRLmXC1zbPo2zgsJRvov2Is/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/9sl8KRLmXC1zbPo2zgsJRvov2Is/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:04:37 GMT

Duncan Campbell on what happened when musician Manu Chao took his own train through Colombia
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/15131?ns=guardian&pageName=Music%3A+Out+of+their+heads&ch=Music&c3=The+Guardian&c4=World+music%2CMusic%2CBooks%2CCulture+section&c5=Folk+Rock+Music%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Duncan+Campbell&c7=2009_01_07&c8=1143340&c9=article&c10=GU&c11=Music&c12=World+music&c13=&c14=&h2=GU%2FMusic%2FWorld+music" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Few musicians would allow a journalist to accompany their band through one of the world's most dangerous countries. Even fewer, one suspects, would be happy about that journalist being their father. But Manu Chao is not just any musician, and his father, Ram&oacute;n, a critic for le Monde Diplomatique, is not just any journalist - so perhaps it should surprise no one that they ended up together on a legendary 1993 tour of Colombia by train, carrying not just musicians, acrobats and tattooists, but a fire-breathing dragon and an ice museum as well.</p><p>Ram&oacute;n's account of that journey, The Train of Ice and Fire, is published in English next month. For Manu's growing army of admirers, the book provides a magical-realist insight into how his music has developed. More than 15 years ago, Manu and his then band, Mano Negra, took a special train across the country, performing free at stations for people unable to afford the concerts. A 50-strong Colombian-French team constructed the train out of a functioning locomotive and decommissioned carriages and off they went, ignoring all warnings of kidnappings and worse.</p><p>Part of the plan was to pay homage to Gabriel Garc&iacute;a M&aacute;rquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, by taking a slab of ice to Aracataca, the town that inspired the novel. Ice is a key theme in the book, from the opening sentence: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buend&iacute;a was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Clearly, the journey needed someone to write it down.</p><p>Chao Jr set a few conditions. "What you write must be accessible to everyone," he told Ram&oacute;n. "You mustn't use too many literary references. Your last novel was too ornate. I couldn't finish it." </p><p>The train travelled through territory contested by Farc guerrillas and the army, attracting the curiosity of both - plus spectators in their thousands, and stowaways. Manu was impressed by the resilience of his audience. In the book, he recounts spending time with Bogot&aacute;'s street children: "Life's hell for them. But despite everything, they're more cheerful than you or me. They're 12 years old, drugged to the gills and not one of them's a virgin. When they go to sleep at night, they don't know if they're going to wake up - a plastic bag over the head, in the boot of a car, over the mountain and, pow, a bullet in the head."</p><p>Ram&oacute;n was stunned by what they saw of the country during the tour. "It is hard to believe that there is so much violence in such a friendly, affectionate people," he says, on a recent visit to London. To judge by the book, the father, now 73, seems to have indulged in more rock'n'roll behaviour than the son. Although he had never taken drugs and did not even smoke cigarettes, he could not resist some marijuana cake on offer on Christmas Eve. "I was in the clouds and totally out of it for two days. Manu said, 'Honestly, Papa, I can't leave you anywhere.' On another occasion, when I got a tattoo, his reaction was the same. But I think he really liked the fact that I came." </p><p>Music runs in the family. Ram&oacute;n was a child prodigy, a classically trained pianist who left Spain to study at the Conservatoire in Paris. "My father thought I would be the next Mozart but I wanted to be Cervantes," he says. Did he inspire Manu? "When I was 10 or 11, he tried to make me play the piano but I preferred football," says Manu.</p><p>The 1993 tour did, in the end, split the band, some of whom departed before the final concerts. Manu returned to Paris disheartened, and went on to form his new band, Radio Bemba. He nearly recruited a new band member in Colombia - a street kid, Rondelle, who could sing and dance brilliantly. Every time Mau and Ram&oacute;n return to Colombia, they look for him.</p><p>The Latin-American connection continues. Manu's new single, La Vida Tombola, features in Maradona, a documentary about the Argentinian footballer. The pair also have an enduring involvement in Radio La Colifata, which translates as Radio Loony, and broadcasts live from a mental hospital in Buenos Aires. Manu will be appearing on the radio station again this year, perhaps recounting again the tale of that train of ice and fire.</p><p>• <strong>The Train of Ice and Fire</strong> is published by Route on 9 February.</p><div style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/worldmusic">World music</a></li></ul></div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> &copy; Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html">More Feeds</a><p style="clear:both" /> <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/2YRt7pZDR6aTPocSHqKo-iaM7jk/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/2YRt7pZDR6aTPocSHqKo-iaM7jk/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 00:07:41 GMT

Domino's thrives as people stay in with a pizza
Domino's Pizza to push on with aggressive expansion plans despite the recession, while high-street baker Greggs is also looking to open more shops <p><a href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/wCgop2Z90ZLNfE1myfU6xb6msew/a"><img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/wCgop2Z90ZLNfE1myfU6xb6msew/i" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>
Wed, 07 Jan 2009 10:05:52 GMT

Debenhams and Next perform better than feared
<div><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/97893?ns=guardian&pageName=Business%3A+Next+chief+dismisses+talk+of+high+street+%27meltdown%27&ch=Business&c3=guardian.co.uk&c4=Marks+and+Spencer+Group+%28Business%29%2CDebenhams+%28Business%29%2CNext+%28Business%29%2CBusiness%2CRetail+industry+%28Business%29%2CHigh+street+retailers%2CJobs&c5=Fashion+and+Beauty%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CBu