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Anti-government protesters in Thailand signalled the end of their siege of Bangkok's international airport yesterday, hours after a court disbanded the ruling party and banned the prime minister from office. The People's Alliance for Democracy, which had demanded that the prime minister, Somchai Wongsawat, quit and the government step down, claimed victory and said it would today end its week-long sit-in, which has left 300,000 foreign travellers stranded.But uncertainty surrounded the resumption of flights at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi international airport. The airport director said he could not decide the restart date until sensitive systems had been examined.The sudden end to the dramatic standoff that has paralysed the country's lucrative tourist industry caught observers by surprise. The court's decision is unlikely to dramatically alter Thailand's political landscape, which is riven with divisions.The ruling also raised the spectre of street violence after government supporters angered by the judges' decision surrounded the Bangkok court and refused to allow the judiciary to leave. Hours earlier a grenade was thrown at Bangkok's barricaded domestic terminal, Don Muang, killing one demonstrator and injuring 22.Judges from the constitutional court found the People Power party (PPP) and two senior coalition partners guilty of electoral fraud for vote buying in last December's general election and barred the prime minister from office for five years. Another 59 executives from the three parties were also banned from political office, among them 24 MPs who will have to resign their seats.Immediately after the decision to disband the PPP and the Machima Thipatai and Chart Thai parties, Somchai said he would abide by the rule of law and stand aside, describing it as "not a problem. I was not working for myself. Now I will be a full time citizen".The ruling coalition's six parties immediately said they would reform under a new banner, a move not barred by the constitution. The PPP's surviving MPs are to join Puea Thai (For Thailand) and choose a new prime minister next week.But the PAD leadership embraced the court's decision, perhaps grabbing an opportunity to save face and remove itself from the airport siege that has seen its backing among Thailand's metropolitan monarchist-elite dwindling."We have finished our duty," said the PAD leader Sondhi Limthongkul, who had branded the government a proxy of the ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra. "If a puppet government returns or a new government shows its insincerity in pushing for political reform, we will return."The warning and the government supporters' decision to continue their own protests against yesterday's court ruling herald the prospect of further turmoil, though both sides will take a breather for King Bhumibol Adulyadej's 81st birthday celebrations in two days."The divisions are so deep, it's difficult to see how it could be over," said Giles Ungpakhorn, a political analyst at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, who described the court ruling as a "judicial coup" to strip the PPP of power. But for the tourists stranded by the stalemate that began a week ago, the departure of the thousands of PAD supporters comes as a huge relief. The first cargo aircraft left Suvarnabhumi yesterday afternoon after an agreement with the PAD, helping to reduce the economic distress of lost export earnings costing Thailand £53m each day. The acting head of Thailand's airports authority, Serirat Prasutanont, said he would be able to make a statement later today about when Suvarnabhumi could return to normal.Thailandguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The US suffered a setback yesterday when their west European Nato allies forced a resumption of contacts between the alliance and Russia and stalled Nato-membership bids from Georgia and Ukraine. A meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels agreed to reopen contacts with Moscow, frozen in protest at Russia's invasion and partition of Georgia last August. Despite US pressure, the meeting also declined to hasten Nato applications from Georgia and Ukraine. The meeting agreed on a "conditional and graduated re-engagement with Russia", said the Nato secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, adding that the liaison body known as the Nato-Russia Council would also resume sessions. He stressed this was not "business as usual" with Moscow, but the decision to restore contacts coincided with the EU resuming negotiations with Russia on a new strategic pact which were called off because of the Georgia conflict. "The moment has arrived to renew negotiations with Russia," said Franco Frattini, the Italian foreign minister. Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, cautioned against restoring links, but appeared to have lost the argument. A Nato summit last April split over Georgia's and Ukraine's membership bids, with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, prevailing over George Bush when the alliance refused to award the two post-Soviet countries the membership action plans that are the roadmaps to joining. The Bucharest summit sent mixed signals and arguably helped to spark the August conflict. Yesterday's meeting indicated that the transatlantic rift has widened because of that conflict, with both sides to the dispute feeling vindicated.NatoRussiaUnited StatesEuropean UnionGeorgiaUkraineguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

More than 100 governments, with some notable exceptions, will sign an international convention today banning the production of cluster bombs whose unexploded canisters have killed and maimed thousands of innocent civilians and are dangerously scattered over more than 20 countries.The convention is enthusiastically welcomed today by the Red Cross, and on the Guardian's website by David Miliband, the foreign secretary, and Frank-Walter Steinmeier, his German counterpart. The weapons had "rendered huge tracts of land unusable, cutting farmers off from their crops and visiting further suffering on families forced to risk their lives simply to pursue their livelihoods", said Matthias Schmale, international director of the British Red Cross.Miliband and Steinmeier said their goal was a "truly global treaty on cluster munitions". They noted that "many of the major users, producers and stockpilers of cluster munitions" had not yet agreed to sign it. These countries include the US, China, Russia, India and Pakistan as well as Israel, which fired many cluster bombs during the 2006 Lebanon war. Up to 1m devices failed to explode during the 34-day conflict and this summer more than 40.6m square metres were identified as still being contaminated, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). More than 200 civilians died in the year after the Lebanon ceasefire. Cluster bombs also caused more civilian casualties in Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999 than any other weapon system.At least 75 countries currently stockpile cluster munitions. More than 30 have produced the weapons. Unexploded cluster bombs have also killed civilians in Afghanistan, Chad, Eritrea, Chechnya, Sierra Leone and Vietnam.Despite initial misgivings within the military, Britain, which fired Israeli-made cluster bombs in its attack on Basra in 2003 and had been the third biggest user of cluster bombs after the US and Israel, has agreed to get rid of its stockpiles of land-fired and air-launched cluster weapons. British diplomats are trying to persuade the US to get rid of stockpiles at its bases in the UK, officials said yesterday.Today's convention excludes weapons which fire fewer than 10 explosive submunitions designed to locate a "single target". One of the most difficult issues during the negotiations in Dublin this summer leading to the convention was whether troops from countries who signed up to it would be criminally liable if engaged in joint operations with countries which had not signed such as the US for example . The text does not prohibit such "military cooperation". But British forces, like those from any other country which had signed the convention, would be required to discourage the US from using the weapons, and not stockpile them.The convention will become part of international humanitarian law once 30 countries have ratified it.Israel and the Palestinian territoriesMiddle EastDefence policyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The true scale of the maltreatment of children in the UK is revealed by child abuse experts today who say that one in 10 suffers physical, sexual, emotional abuse or neglect.Unlike Baby P, who died in Haringey, north London, while on the at-risk register after months of abuse and neglect, most maltreated children are not even referred to the authorities. Teachers, GPs and paediatricians have no confidence in the ability of social services to make a difference to their lives and fear the child's plight will be made worse if he or she is taken into care and placed in a foster family, they say.A series of papers published today by the Lancet medical journal in collaboration with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health paints a grim picture of the unseen sufferings of an estimated 1 million children a year in the UK.Between 4 and 16% of children suffer physical abuse, such as hitting, punching, beating and burning, according to a paper by Ruth Gilbert and colleagues from University College London's Institute of Child Health. The figures come from research in high-income countries, including the UK, which is not thought to differ from the average. Some 5-10% of girls and 1-5% of boys have been subjected to penetrative sex, usually by a family friend or relative. If sexual abuse is defined more widely - as anything from being shown pornographic magazines to rape - it is estimated that it will include at least 15% of girls and 5% of boys.Around 10% of children suffer emotional abuse every year, the paper says, which includes persistently being made to feel worthless, unwanted or scared. More still - up to 15% a year - suffer neglect, defined as the failure of their parents or carers to meet the child's basic emotional or physical needs or ensure their safety.Those like Baby P who are picked up by the social services and placed on the at-risk register are only the tip of the iceberg. The plight of fewer than one in 10 maltreated children is investigated and substantiated by child protection services. The experts underline a key finding from the case of Baby P - that professionals are not communicating and sharing their suspicions.Lancet editor Richard Horton said the findings, which had taken a year to reach publication, had "huge significance for considering an appropriate and measured response to the findings around Baby P". He added: "What this report does emphasise is the extent of the risk factors and consequences of child maltreatment, which are of such complexity that any reflex attempt to apportion blame or think there is a simple solution to this issue is to completely misrepresent the extent and depth of the problem."The papers also expose the paucity of evidence behind the decisions taken by health professionals and social workers. Far more research is needed into finding out what will prevent a child being abused. "We don't know how effective existing practice is," said Jane Barlow, professor of public health in the early years at Warwick University, co-author of the paper on interventions. "These are some of the most vulnerable children out there in society."In a Lancet commentary, Dr Horton says the series "will unfortunately not halt the blight of child abuse, because the phenomenon is too common, too surreptitious and too deeply rooted in deprivation and other social ills - but we nonetheless hope to raise awareness of the scientific evidence that is available, and indeed essential, to guide paediatricians and other professionals in their practice with children who might have been abused and to help bring a new logic and clarity to public debate about this contentious area."Child protectionHealthguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The US warned India last month of a pending raid by a Pakistan-based militant group it emerged yesterday, a revelation that will add to public anger over apparent security lapses and missed chances to stop the attack on Mumbai.Although the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined yesterday to comment on intelligence shared with allies round the world, a serving intelligence source confirmed to the Guardian that a warning had been passed to Indian counterparts.ABC News also quoted a US intelligence officer saying the warning had been specific, of a potential attack "from the sea against hotels and business centres in Mumbai". The terrorists used boats to land on Mumbai's waterfront before attacking multiple targets which killed 183 people and led India to endure a four-day national nightmare.Indian intelligence sources told NDTV news yesterday they had issued several warnings about a strike on Mumbai. The latest was issued eight days before the attack, warning that the "sea wing" of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based group accused by India of being behind the attack, was planning to target Mumbai.India's navy said a "systemic failure" of security and intelligence services led to the attacks in Mumbai, the Press Trust of India reported."There is perhaps a (gap) that exists and we will work to sort this out. There is a systemic failure which needs to be taken stock of,", said Admiral Sureesh Mehta.Fishermen's groups have also claimed their warnings four months ago about militants using sea routes to land RDX explosives in Mumbai, assisted by gangsters, was ignored by the Indian authorities.Since al-Qaida's attacks of September 11 2001, almost every attack against the west has led to revelations of missed opportunities and intelligence blunders. The Bush administration was accused of missing opportunities to stop the September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, the Spanish government was accused of blunders over the Madrid train station bombings and the British government is accused of missing chances to stop the July 7 2005 bombing of London's transport network.But Vincent Cannistraro, a former CIA head of counter-terrorism, said yesterday the information passed on by the US was not specific. "They provided some sketchy intelligence in October that Lashkar-e-Taiba was getting ready to increase anti-Indian activity. Mumbai was mentioned because hotels kept coming up," he said.Hasan Gafoor, Mumbai's police commissioner, echoed Cannistraro yesterday, saying: "There was no specific intelligence."Disclosure of the US warning came as Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, was due to arrive in Delhi to try to reduce tension between India and Pakistan.The Pakistan government was yesterday deciding how to react to India's demand that it hand over 20 people linked to terrorism as the two countries fight a battle for world opinion after the attacks on Mumbai.India's foreign minister said yesterday that military action was not being considered which was taken as meaning Delhi would concentrate on diplomatic means to press Pakistan to act against militants whom it claims were linked to the attacks. But Pranab Mukherjee appeared to backtrack later, saying: "I am neither making any comment on military options. What I am saying is every sovereign country has its right to protect its territorial integrity and take appropriate action as and when it feels necessary."India is expected to outline its case against Pakistan to Rice, based on intercepts and the testimony of the only terrorist captured alive. Amid widespread anger at the political class, Mukherjee publicly confirmed the first concrete demand aimed at Pakistan after the attacks: "We have in our demarche [diplomatic protest], asked for the arrest and handover of those persons who are settled in Pakistan and who are fugitive of Indian law," he said.In Mumbai both hotels turned into killing grounds have started repairs as they race to reopen. Yesterday the Oberoi Trident hotel said it hoped to start accepting guests in a fortnight. "Guests will come back to the hotel they knew," Ketaki Narain, a spokeswoman for the Oberoi group, said.The Taj Mahal Palace hotel has appointed a team headed by a structural engineer to help restore it to how it was before the attack.The hotel's lobby featured paintings by the renowned Indian artist Maqbool Fida Husain which were damaged in the shootout.Indian media quoted Husain as announcing he would paint again: "I have decided to paint a series of paintings condemning the attack. I am sure some day the Taj will regain its glory and I hope to show these paintings there," he said.Mumbai terror attacksIndiaPakistanUnited StatesGlobal terrorismguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Young people in schools around London have been learning about the music business by setting up and running their own record labels

Police forces across Britain have reopened a series of unsolved murder cases involving young women after an itinerant handyman was convicted yesterday of raping and killing a schoolgirl who went missing 17 years ago.Peter Tobin, 62, was given a life sentence for murder after a jury found him guilty of abducting, raping and murdering Vicky Hamilton, 15, who disappeared in the centre of Bathgate, near Edinburgh, in February 1991. Her body was dug up in the back garden of Tobin's former home in Margate, Kent, last year.Detectives are understood to be re-examining at least four cases involving missing girls and women after drawing up a detailed profile of Tobin's life and movements since he was born near Paisley, Renfrewshire, in 1946.Tobin is already serving life for the rape and murder of Angelika Kluk, a Polish student. Her body was discovered bound and gagged under the floor of a Catholic church in Glasgow in September 2006, where Tobin had been working as a handyman under an assumed name.Detective Supt David Swindle, of Strathclyde police, said yesterday that Tobin had travelled extensively across Britain during his life and police were working on "any potential links between Tobin's movements and outstanding missing females or victims of crime". The detective said no house searches were planned but that might change "should the intelligence and evidence warrant it".Detective Chief Supt Malcolm Graham, head of CID at Lothian and Borders police, told reporters before Tobin's conviction that police across the UK were re-examining unsolved cases. There had been "information-sharing with a variety of other forces throughout the UK", he said, and that would continue "to establish whether Peter Tobin had committed any other crimes".The jury in Dundee took less than two and a half hours to deliver the guilty verdict yesterday. It was greeted with cries of "yes" from Vicky's family and friends. Her father, Michael, shouted "rot in hell" as the judge, Lord Emslie, sentenced Tobin to a minimum of 30 years in jail.Lord Emslie told Tobin he was guilty of a "truly evil" crime, adding: "Yet again you have shown yourself to be unfit to live in a decent society." He continued: "It is hard for me to convey the loathing and revulsion that ordinary people will feel for what you have done. Abducting and killing a child on her way home from a happy weekend with her sister and then desecrating her body must rank among the most evil and horrific acts."Tobin was also convicted in 1994 of raping and sexually assaulting two girls aged 14 and 15 at his flat in Havant, Hampshire, after he drugged them with the sedative amitriptyline - the same drug found in Vicky's remains - and gave them alcohol.In a joint statement read out by her sister, Lindsay Brown, Vicky's family thanked the jury, prosecutors and police. "Vicky was much more than a girl who was abducted and killed by a stranger, or the girl on a 'missing' poster. Our sister was a warm, clever, generous girl who shared many happy years with us."We will always remember Vicky as she lived, not as she died."Vicky's dismembered body was recovered, wrapped in layers of plastic bags, from a carefully dug pit in the garden of Tobin's former home in Margate in November last year after Lothian and Borders police uncovered DNA evidence linking him to her disappearance.Forensic tests on Vicky's purse, which was found in Edinburgh shortly after she disappeared, disclosed that Tobin's son, Daniel, then aged three, appeared to have bitten it while staying with his father in Bathgate. Further tests on a knife hidden in the attic of the house in Bathgate, found after police searched the property last year, detected a fragment of human tissue that belonged to Vicky. Four of Tobin's fingerprints were also found on one of the plastic bags covering her remains in Margate, and partial DNA fragments similar to Tobin's detected on her body.Tobin had denied all the charges and claimed he had been in Portsmouth on the day Vicky disappeared. His defence advocate, Donald Findlay QC, told the jury there was "not one solitary scrap" of evidence that Tobin had met, abducted or killed her.Crimeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada yesterday had his bail revoked and was returned to indefinite detention in a maximum security prison pending the outcome of a legal battle over his deportation to Jordan.The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac), in effect Britain's national security court, ruled that evidence from the security services, heard in secret, had convinced them there was now an increased risk of Qatada absconding.Qatada, described by a Spanish judge as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe, was released on bail in June to live with his family in west London under a 22-hour curfew after the court of appeal ruled it was unsafe to return him to Jordan.The preacher has spent three and half years in maximum security jails since he was first declared a risk to national security in January 2001 on the grounds that he encouraged other extremists to commit acts of terrorism by providing religious sanction for them.The immigration judges said their decision to revoke his bail was based on the evidence they had heard in secret: "The secretary of state relies on information contained in the closed case to justify the revocation of bail." This remains confidential and is only spelled out in a separate "closed" unpublished judgment.The "open" version published yesterday said none of the reasons put forward by the Home Office in the public sessions of the commission's two-day hearing would justify the revocation of his bail. These included the seizure at his home of memory cards, MP3 players, computer discs and videotapes.They also rejected security service arguments that the publication of a message from a senior al-Qaida figure on a website in July, appealing to religious scholars to return to the "battlefield", and the pending government appeal to the House of Lords against the decision not to deport him also increased the risk of him absconding. The judges said it has been a long-standing assessment of the security services that Qatada, also known as Mohammad Othman, is a senior religious extremist with links to al-Qaida and these factors in themselves did not justify revoking bail.Before the Siac hearing it had been reported that Qatada was trying to flee the country but Mr Justice Mitting, sitting with two other judges, said the cleric's declared interest in renouncing Jordanian citizenship and attempting to go to the country of his birth, Palestine, did not amount to a breach of bail. They said they did not regard as significant the fact he had not formally notified the Home Office of attempts on his behalf to find a third country, other than Jordan, willing to take him. "If the appellant identifies a state or territory willing to receive him, and seeks to put into effect his declared wish to go there, he will be fulfilling the obligation imposed on him by the deportation order to depart the United Kingdom ... We do not, however, see any realistic prospect that either of these two possibilities will be open to him in the near or medium term," they added.During the hearing Qatada's barrister, Edward Fitzgerald QC, said his lawyer, Gareth Peirce, and writer Victoria Brittain had been involved in the initial attempts to find a country willing to take him.The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, said she was pleased Qatada's bail had been revoked: "He poses a significant threat to our national security and I am pleased that he will be detained pending his deportation, which I'm working hard to secure." Qatada was in Belmarsh prison in east London last night but is expected to be moved to Long Lartin maximum securityUK security and terrorismAl-QaidaOsama bin LadenJordanGlobal terrorismguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Terje Isungset's instruments all have a tale to tell. The Norwegian composer's mouthharp is made of metal taken from a second world war German bomber. His double-bass was bought off a barfly for two beers. Then there's the instrument with the longest story of all, an instrument that has to be kept in a freezer. So what does a trumpet carved from a 2,500-year-old glacier sound like? "Very warm," says Isungset, rummaging in the deep freeze at the lockup near his house in Bergen. He keeps some ice shards in there, too; they're played like tubular bells. "They have deep, rich tones. When I first heard them, I was eager to experiment." Isungset is in the UK this Christmas, for a rather unlikely gig: he's performing his music in an adaptation of Cinderella at the Lyric in London. To bring out the story's mystical ice element, his on-stage arsenal includes a glass drumkit, waterphone (an arrangement of brass rods and water that is drummed or bowed), ram's horn, the ice trumpet (which has been treated so as not to melt, or freeze to his lips) and bicycle wheel, as well as stones, wood, mouth harp and piano frame. "We try to create music, magic moments together. We try and tune in to each other," says Isungset of his relationship with the cast.How Isungset came to play and record with ice is a long story that began two decades ago, when he was in his mid-20s. After working with 14 bands, he decided to completely "dismantle" his life as a drummer. "I had this feeling I wasn't giving music something that wasn't already there," he says. "I started to search, working hard at the idea of balance with the body - making the instrument and myself a unit. Trying, for instance, to hit the drum with my hands, without hurting myself. I abandoned all musical rules. Just pure expression: trying to lose the ego and the thoughts."Isungset realised that if he truly wanted to escape musical traditions, he would have to transform his instruments. He started tinkering with the "found" sounds of stone and glass, building them into what became totally improvised performances. Today, he works with bands as diverse as Enslaved (prog metal) and Groupa (traditional Swedish songs), but this time the deal is clear: "They don't ask me to play like any other drummer. They know my sound." It's a sound that seems to take you outdoors and into the elements, wherever you are. Stone and metal give off long, primal resonances, while ice adds warmth.Some years ago, Isungset was commissioned to write a work for the Frozen Water Fall festival in Lillehammer, a lakeside town ringed by mountains. Keen to use materials from the surrounding area, he tried ice - and got hooked. Since then, he has recorded five "ice" albums, including Iceman Is, which features a number of great Scandinavian jazz players: Arve Henriksen on ice trumpet, Iro Haarla on ice harp, trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg and vocalist Lena Willemark. In 2007, Isungset's album Igloo was nominated for a Norwegian Grammy."We build igloos to record in," he explains. "The nice thing about them is the total silence inside. Some of the ice sounds are so delicate, I have problems with noises my stomach makes: you can hear it grumbling. At least you know when to stop for lunch."The normal logistics of performing music are tricky enough; Isungset's approach, requiring him to be a slave to nature, adds quite an extra burden - but it's one that he relishes: "We travel to a place, find ice, then carve the instruments there, play the concerts, and then give the instruments back to nature where they belong. You can have 100 pieces of ice; they will all sound different. Perhaps three will sound fantastic. Nature decides whether it's possible to play or not: if it's too mild or windy, we can't."Climbing back up to his house, which backs on to the woods embracing Bergen, Isungset stops and says: "I come here and listen to the distant city. There's a big orchestra going on down there, with different soloists." A woodpecker gives a call. "Birds - great jazz musicians. I did a concert using birdsong once." Next year, Isungset will be playing at an architectural conference, making music out of building materials, "wearing a hard hat, of course". In the meantime, if he comes across Cinderella's glass slipper, chances are he'll get a tune out of it.Cinderella is at the Lyric Hammersmith, London W6, until January 3. Box office: 0871 221 1729.Classical music and operaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Metropolitan police conducted a search of Damian Green's parliamentary office last week after being told by the Cabinet Office that a series of leaks to the shadow minister could have posed a threat to national security.Minutes after the Tories intensified the pressure on the police last night by releasing a short video showing the "rigorous" search, the Met hit back by highlighting the seriousness of the operation.Sources said their investigation was prompted by a request from the Cabinet Office, whose officials told the police that the "systematic series of leaks" from the private office of the home secretary were so serious that they could pose a threat to national security. Police sources said this explained their decision to take the step - unprecedented in recent history - of arresting Green and searching his parliamentary office.Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, outlined the thinking in a letter last night to Dominic Grieve, her Tory shadow. She wrote: "Given the sensitive issues that the Home Office deals with - including matters of national security - there was a clear duty to take action to prevent leaks from happening."Whitehall sources said national security fears were raised even though none of the four Home Office documents released to the press by Green was related to the issue. They said the systematic nature of the leaks, and the fact they originated from the home secretary's private office, raised fears that a mole with access to national security documents was at large.The decision by the police to intensify the pressure on the Tories came minutes after the party released a short video showing police officers searching Green's office last week. This was released at 6pm to secure maximum coverage on the television news bulletins in an attempt to set the scene for a parliamentary battle with the government and the Commons authorities today when MPs return for the Queen's speech.MPs across the Commons are threatening to disrupt the political debate following the speech if the Speaker, Michael Martin, whose officials sanctioned the search, fails to give an adequate account when he addresses MPs at 2.30pm.The video, which the Tories released hours after the Met announced a review into Green's arrest, shows Andrew Mackay, the veteran Tory MP who is David Cameron's senior parliamentary adviser, walking into Green's office at 2.35pm last Thursday where three police officers, their faces obscured, are carrying out the search. One police officer wearing purple plastic gloves operates a large camera.Mackay shows his parliamentary pass to the senior officer before asking the police to explain what they are doing. The officer shepherds Mackay out the office, saying: "Can you turn that camera off? Can I just ask you to leave, is that possible? This is currently a scene we are going to search and it is not appropriate that you be in here."Mackay asks if they are sure and then leaves.Cameron last night held talks with Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, to coordinate their response when the Commons reconvenes today. Harriet Harman, leader of the Commons, who has expressed concern at the arrest of Green, is keen to allocate government time for a debate. She will wait for the Speaker's statement before making an announcement.The home secretary hopes to make a statement to MPs tomorrow before she opens the Queen's speech debate on law and order that has been brought forward from Monday at the request of the Tories. Smith went on the offensive last night by accusing Grieve of taking a cavalier approach to leaks. "To assert that the systematic leaking of government material is not serious if it does not relate to national security, as you and David Cameron have done, is not just a cavalier attitude to take. It is a wholly irresponsible one and entirely unfit for those who seek to hold high office."Grieve tabled a 34-point freedom of information request to the home secretary last night to try to verify her account of her role in the affair.Last night Sir Gus O'Donnell, cabinet secretary and Britain's top civil servant, delivered a thinly veiled warning to Whitehall officials over their duty to serve the government. It was vital for the operation of the civil service that individuals put aside their "political beliefs" and kept the "confidence" of ministers, he said. "All civil servants serve the government of the day. We are politically impartial and our actions are governed by the civil service code," he said at an awards ceremony in Birmingham to recognise equality and diversity in the service. The video was released as the acting commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Sir Paul Stephenson, announced an urgent review of Scotland Yard's handling of the affair.Damian GreenConservativesWhitehallJacqui SmithFreedom of informationguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The business secretary, Peter Mandelson, will set out plans for a new age of "industrial activism" when he gives the annual Hugo Young memorial lecture today, saying the government must do more to support services and manufacturing for after the recession, when the country will be "an even tougher place to do business in". In the Guardian lecture, Mandelson will take a break from his department's current preoccupation with getting the banks to resume lending to paint a picture of Britain on "the other side" of the recession. He will say: "We will get through the downturn. But on the other side we will encounter an even tougher place to do business in and we need to be fully prepared."Mandelson will sketch out a new doctrine of "market-driven industrial activism" to ready the economy. Aides describe this as a model that would see the government, in partnership with the private sector, driving what they call "available streams of the economy" to support growth sectors. Low-carbon technology, civil nuclear plans and high-tech manufacturing are all likely to be boosted.Today's speech will build on a defence of Britain's manufacturing base the business secretary mounted last week at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), in which he said he "hated" Britain being described as a "post-industrial economy" since the UK was the sixth-largest manufacturer by output. Though the future for the country may not lie with "mills and smokestacks", he told the CBI, it lay with the "next industrial revolution and the low-carbon and post-carbon technologies that will define the 21st century."According to the Purchasing Managers Index published on Monday, British manufacturing shrank in November at the fastest rate since records began in 1992, making it the third month in a row to see a record decline. In October the CBI said optimism among British manufacturers was at its lowest level for three decades.Today Mandelson will defend the government against claims its industrial policies were becoming overly statist, something critics say repudiates the modernisation platform on which Labour was elected in 1997.He will say: "For New Labour this is a critical moment to renew and think further about how Britain adapts to globalisation and the tougher economic challenge we are facing. Not to retreat from the strong and abiding commitment to open economies and free markets that New Labour made in 1994. Certainly not to be hubristic that big government is back: I don't believe it is or should be. But to define urgently what smart government can do to resolve not just the present crisis but to guarantee Britain's future prosperity."Mandelson will also acknowledge the government's attempts to steer business through the recession may have frustrated some. He will say: "While the government is doing a lot to back enterprise and support entrepreneurs, some of its efforts appear to business as insufficiently joined up and often overlapping."Last night a business department spokesman said rights to flexible working would be going ahead. The business secretary caused controversy only three weeks into his job when he announced a review of the rights, on account of businesses fearing they would be unable to afford it during a downturn. Yesterday an aide said the review had wrapped up and they were "happy for it to go ahead".It will not be included in the Queen's speech tomorrow since it does not require primary legislation.Economic policyPeter MandelsonRecessionCredit crunchguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, is refusing to back down over a decision to let out its congress hall this Friday to a British company whose suppliers are alleged to use sweatshop labour in Bangladesh to manufacture cheap T shirts.This is despite pressure from two general secretaries and Labour MPs who want him to cancel the event. A letter published in today's Guardian attacks the TUC for allowing Associated British Foods, owners of the clothing group Primark, to hold its annual meeting on Friday. The letter has been organised by No Sweat, a campaigning organisation against sweated labour and the exploitation of migrant workers.Some 106 people, including two general secretaries, five Labour MPs, former minister Tony Benn and comedian Mark Thomas, have signed the letter. It says: "It is embarrassing for trade unionists in the UK to see the supreme body of British trade unionism benefit from Primark's profits, particularly as the AGM coincides with the No Sweat speaker tour, which features a delegation from National Garment Workers Federation of Bangladesh."This time last year, Primark was believed to be sourcing clothes from a factory chain in Bangladesh, which forced its workers to work 14-hour shifts for as little as 4p an hour. When workers have organised against these appalling conditions, they were met with severe state repression. Trade unionism in Bangladesh remains illegal. In this sense, a portion of ABF's profits come as a direct result of the merciless violence with which the Bangladeshi state enforces its anti-trade union laws and at the direct expense of our brothers and sisters in the NGWF. We hope that you will do all you can to stop the forthcoming AGM in the spirit of international workers' solidarity. If it continues to go ahead then No Sweat will be calling on trade unionists in London to picket the TUC building on December 5."Last night the TUC stood by its decision. A spokesman said: "Associated British Foods has made a commercial booking to hold its AGM in the TUC's conference facilities. This is not a Primark event. ABF is a unionised company with good relations with UK unions. The TUC has a proud record of campaigning for vulnerable workers in the UK and developing countries. We believe in constructive engagement with companies. We welcome ABF's membership of the Ethical Trading Initiative and have used that opportunity to press concerns about supply chain issues - including in Bangladesh."Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union, said yesterday: "We need to raise the bar on what are acceptable standards. Just because a company recognises trades unions in the UK does not mean we should pass over exploitation and abuse of labour standards in China or other overseas territories. Primark has a very poor reputation on labour standards at overseas suppliers'" he claimed. "The TUC's rental policy needs to be changed to exclude the likes of Primark."If the meeting goes ahead the GMB and the National Union of Journalists are likely to ask for change in the rules governing the letting of TUC premises.Trade unionsPrimarkLabourguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The CBI warned yesterday that government would not meet its ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions unless it introduced bolder policies including new financial incentives, but said the global economic crisis was no reason for either side to slam the brakes on.Richard Lambert, the director-general of the main employers' body, said he supported a ministerial drive to tackle climate change and cut greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050 but the right framework for investment needed to be in place if the private sector was to develop the necessary technologies."We must not let the global economic crisis become an excuse for inaction on climate change. Now more than ever, we need to secure a binding EU climate change deal, or the opportunity to make the transition to a low-carbon economy will slip through our fingers," he added.The government had made a promising start by setting up a new Department for Energy and Climate Change plus creating a new planning act. But 300 wind farms still awaited planning approvals, companies needed incentives to cut non-carbon emissions and further financial help was needed to speed-up the insulation of homes, Lambert said at a special climate change conference organised by the CBI and attended by Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary.Miliband praised Lambert and other business leaders for setting the pace on green initiatives. Britain would continue to lead the way on climate change and he insisted it was not the time now for the European Union to row back on previous commitments when it met to discuss climate change at Poznan in Poland next week.Climate changeCarbon emissionsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Man cannot live by bread alone - he also needs some shepherd's pie and a dollop of rice pudding. That, at least, is the word from Tesco, reporting an extraordinary surge in sales of comfort food. As we feel the first chill of the recession, and as American economists declare that the downturn in the United States began a full year ago, making the current slump already longer than the average recession since the second world war, the supermarket chain has noticed a run on its cosiest products.Sales of lamb hotpot are up 615% on this time last year, while beef casserole and dumplings have leapt by 279%. Deep-filled pies are selling at more than double the usual rate, as is cheesecake. Hot cakes are selling like hot cakes. Could that be down to the wintry weather rather than the frozen economy? No. Tesco saw the boom in reassuring ready meals and cosy grub during the period from May to October. This isn't about staying warm, says the store, along with other retailers who've noticed a similar pattern on their shelves. It's about Britons cheering themselves up, padding their tummies as they tighten their belts. And notice the dishes in demand: traditional British fare, as if we're fleeing scary global economic forces, seeking refuge in the familiar smells of mum's kitchen and school dinners.So much for what we're putting into our stomachs as the economy plunges downward, with most forecasters expecting the thud to come once the fleeting lift of Christmas is over. What will happen to our other appetites, those located not in our mouths but between our ears? What is the brainfood we'll be seeking out as times get tougher? Put simply, what's likely to be the culture of this recession?Not so different from the food, as it happens. While Waitrose reports an 80% increase in sales of loaf cakes, ITV is cheering a rise in the television equivalent: viewing figures for I'm A Celebrity are up on last year. The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing are doing a roaring trade too. And what has just become Britain's fastest-ever selling DVD? Mamma Mia!.Think of it as comfort culture to accompany the comfort food. We want to be eased through the freeze, and Ant and Dec can be relied on to do that just as effectively as a slice of steak and kidney pie.Of course, this habit has a long history. Cinema audiences developed the desire to be transported into mindless escapism, watching Busby Berkeley's synchronised swimmers make pretty shapes in the depths of the Great Depression. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made their top-hatted and ballgowned debut in 1933, the same year unemployment in the US hit 25%. If today's audiences are blocking out all thoughts of the credit crunch in favour of watching Meryl Streep play the Dancing Queen on a sun-kissed Greek island where the skies are permanently blue, they are doing no more than honouring a tradition started by their grandparents. But it's not all mindless. Brucie and Cheryl Cole are far from the only cultural providers experiencing a boom during the bust. In a declining newspaper market, the Financial Times and the Guardian both saw their sales rise as the financial crisis hit. (The number crunchers on the Guardian's website have seen big increases - led by serious news, with massive leaps in interest in business stories.) Richard Reeves, director of the thinktank Demos, says he has spotted three different people reading JK Galbraith's The Great Crash on his morning train to work. "People want more entertainment," he says, "but they also want more enlightenment."It seems we either want to escape the current turmoil or understand it. The latter might not always mean digesting dense economic tracts. Nicholas Hytner, artistic director of the National Theatre, has noticed the spectacular response the musical Billy Elliot has just received on Broadway. A tale of declining industry, hardship and the threat of joblessness, "It acknowledges pain, individual achievement in overcoming that pain and collective solidarity in the face of it," Hytner told me yesterday, suggesting that Billy Elliot had come at just the right moment for New York theatregoers. He has no plans to stage either a feelgood musical at the National - there will be no "sugar rush of escapism" - or an instant play about the recession. That kind of second-guessing of the audience never works, he says.Still, artworks that offer neither escapism nor explanation might struggle in the great freeze. There will surely be a diminished appetite for miserable stories that don't even offer the consolation of enhanced understanding of the upheaval. I'm told there were an unusually high number of empty seats at the Oxford Playhouse when the touring production of Liberty, set in the France of 1793, arrived this autumn. Apparently people weren't in the mood to spend an evening contemplating Robespierre's Terror. (Users of guardian.co.uk were similarly reluctant to wallow in the details of the Baby P case.)Two big movies were released last week: Four Christmases, a light comedy with Reese Witherspoon, went straight to number one. Trailing behind it was The Changeling, Angelina Jolie's grim tale of a mother's search for a missing child. Similarly, it will be fascinating to see if the publishing subgenre known as "misery lit" continues to enjoy its past dominance of the bestsellers list. Right now, the hardback non-fiction top 10 is entirely made up of the comfort food of celebrity biography, topped by Dawn French's Dear Fatty - surely the literary equivalent of a sticky toffee pudding.There are other clues to the cultural future besides the twin paths marked escape or understand. Price is one. Just as local pizzerias are holding up while posh restaurants expect to struggle, so culture that comes cheap has better prospects for survival. Sky subscriptions and DVD sales are so far weathering the recession. When you're counting the pennies, a ready meal and a film on the telly suddenly looks like a good bet.Paradoxically, that could tilt the landscape towards high culture. If government subsidies get cut, many in the arts predict it will be smaller, grassroots projects that feel the knife: they're easier to slice than the heavy-hitting opera companies and art galleries. And while commercial theatre might take a pounding, the major subsidised institutions will still be left standing. But what if things get really severe? Reading could make a comeback, predicts John Carey, former Merton Professor of English at Oxford. In the 1930s, he says, some of the poorest turned to books for diversion. "Reading is astoundingly cheap," he says. "Libraries must be the cheapest form of entertainment possible." Classics were especially popular: they were inexpensive and available. "Social histories of the time are full of references to Dickens," says Carey.Still, the biggest cultural impact of the recession may be unseen for decades to come. Hytner notes that the great plays of the depression era - by Arthur Miller or Clifford Odets - came years later. It is the children of the slump, those witnessing their parents losing their jobs or businesses, who we should be watching. The seed of their future work is being planted right now. freedland@guardian.co.ukRecessionUS economic growth and recessionCredit crunchTescoSupermarketsRetail industryguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Anne Karpf: Care homes, arts projects and other innovations in dementia treatment could save people from a life of bland reassurance

The Ford plant in Highland Park, a city within the city of Detroit, is a monument to the American automobile. It opened in 1910, and three years later pioneered the world's first car assembly line. In 1925, it spewed out 9,000 Model Ts in a single day. The revolution that turned America into a car-owning democracy had arrived. Today, there is ample evidence of that revolution. The factory looks over a six-lane highway that is heavy with traffic from dawn to dusk. Next door is a drive-thru McDonald's, where customers come to order Big Macs before rolling 50 metres to a drive-thru chemists to pick up indigestion tablets.The story of the plant is told in one of those green-and-gold heritage plaques erected by the main entrance. It says: "Mass production soon moved from here to all phases of American industry and set the pattern of abundance for 20th-century living." Pattern of abundance: the phrase reads like a sick joke, for the Ford factory it describes is a shell of what it once was. Its red brick and granite walls still stand proud, framed by decorative mosaics. But the windows are broken or boarded up, its ceilings have gaping holes, the floor is covered in broken lumps of fallen plaster. On the roof, the flagpole that for years flew the Stars and Stripes is rusty and bare.Other companies, other countries, might have turned Henry Ford's factory of dreams into a museum rather than let it decay into the pitiful wreck that it is today. But Ford, and its fellows in the Big Three - General Motors (GM) and Chrysler - have enough to do staying alive without worrying about preserving the past. GM, the giant of the three, has lost $73bn in the past three years; it is haemorrhaging $2bn a month. At that rate it will run out of cash by the middle of next year and collapse by that year's end, potentially bringing millions of workers down with it. Which is why the CEOs of the three giants took their begging bowls to Washington earlier this month, pleading for a "bridging loan" of $25bn.They didn't get a warm reception. They were ridiculed by senators for having flown in three separate corporate jets, an act that must rank among the most impressive PR disasters of the decade. But what the senators and the largely hostile media coverage missed was that the miserable condition of the Detroit car industry is not merely a comment on the failed leadership of its corporate executives, though it is that. It is also a matter of personal survival for millions of Americans who depend, directly or indirectly, on the revolution Henry Ford began 100 years ago.Nowhere is this more visible than in Detroit, the crucible of the Big Three. Half of GM's 100,000 workers live in the city, and they in turn support a spider's web of relatives, spin-off industries and services. Detroit is really nothing but a company town. Hamtramckis a city within the city that borders one of GM's main factories. When GM enjoyed good times, Hamtramck boomed. Now GM is in the doldrums, Hamtramck is too. We walk along a stretch of shops along one of its main streets. First in line is Anna's Beauty Salon: it's closed, but the sign on the door suggests Anna is managing to stay open four days a week. Next, Popular Fashion and Variety Store: shut down. Billiards and Burger Hall: abandoned. Antiques store, an oil painting portraying an autumn landscape still in its window: deserted. Law offices: vacant. Funeral home: open. Even in a recession, one aspect of life must go on - the ending of it.On the other side of the road is the Family Donut shop, a local institution run by a Polish family for the past 28 years. It has a picture of Princess Diana on the wall, a gift from one of the regular clients, and another of the Three Stooges. The owner, Vojno, is unloading a bundle of cardboard boxes used to pack the donuts. A few years ago he would order up to 30 bundles a month; now it's 10. On Polish festive days, there would be a line of customers out the door and round the corner, and the stools at the counter would be loaded. Today, the line is more of a dribble and the counter is largely empty. Unless GM recovers, and money starts flowing again, he will have to close in a few months. "It's not just me. Everybody around here is going to shut down," he says. What will he do if he does have to close? "I'll stay home and sleep. I'm hungry for sleep," he says.One of the few clients, dressed in a bomber jacket with Detroit written across the back, shouts over at him. "You only work one job, so why do you need to sleep?""Shut up, Eddie," Vojno replies."I work three jobs to make my money," Eddie Fabiszak says, prompting the only other customer in the bakery to say, under his breath: "Lucky man."The other customer is Melis Lejlic, 27, a naturalised American originally from Bosnia. His father and mother, two uncles and a cousin all work in the car business. All now fear redundancy. Lejlic works in construction, but that is no better. Car workers are no longer spending on home improvements, so demand for his work has fallen by half. Of 10 builders he knows, seven are unemployed. "Everybody in a small town like this is looking to the car industry, and there's no hope there," he says. "Drive around, you'll see. Detroit is worse right now than Baghdad."The comparison sounds far-fetched, but in the streets around the GM plant you can see what he means. Several houses have no glazing in their rickety wooden walls. Front lawns have turned into littered pasture. Walls are lined with barbed wire. A mural of a Stars and Stripes has been graffitied. And though it is nothing like Baghdad, there is clearly a market in lawlessness. A poster advertising the services of a lawyer says: "Aggressive criminal defence. Drugs CCW [carrying a concealed weapon] Theft Murder All felonies misdemeanours." That is how Henry Ford's dream looks in November 2008.GM's headquarters in downtown Detroit dominate the city's skyline. The seven cylindrical glass towers of the Renaissance Centre were built in 1977 as a statement of the company's untouchable status as the then unquestioned king of the auto world. Inside the main tower, there is an exhibition of some of GM's most memorable models, dating back to the 1950s. It is almost shocking to see how beautiful and exhilarating those cars were. There is a 1953 Chevrolet Corvette Roadster, built largely by hand, its white, sensuous curves set off by red leather seats. Then there's a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air in black, the quintessential car of the American dream, big enough to carry a family to its suburban home but sufficiently powerful and sleek to avoid any sense of frumpiness. Pride of place goes to a 1959 Cadillac series 62 convertible, which is an outrageously attractive work of art. This was the baby of Harley Earl, GM's legendary designer. Inspired by the tail of a second world war fighter plane, he placed fins on the back of the car, with rear brake lights the shape of rockets and exhausts mimicking those of a jet. The 59 Cadillac summed up an entire generation - young, dangerous, fast, unstoppable.Peter DeLorenzo spent 22 years working in the car business as an advertising and marketing consultant and now runs an influential website called Autoextremist. He explains that when the explosion of creativity burst out in the 50s, Detroit had just emerged from the crucial role it had played as the manufacturing backbone of the war effort, churning out tanks and missiles at extraordinary rate, and confidence was riding high. "Coming out of the second world war, the automobile was the symbol of American might. GM was the symbol of American might, and most Americans were proud that GM was a successful corporation that turned out magnificent cars people wanted."The design-led strategy not only generated exquisite cars, it worked handsomely for GM. In 1955, four out of every five cars around the world were US-produced and half of those came from GM. The Big Three monopolised around 95% of the domestic market, and between them they transformed the US. They provided the stimulus for the biggest construction project in world history - the laying of the US interstate highways - and gave birth to the suburbs and to urban sprawl. Think Los Angeles. Think Phoenix rising out of the desert of Arizona.How you get from the invincibility of those days to the verge of bankruptcy is a cautionary tale for the whole of America as its dominance wanes in an increasingly globalised economy. DeLorenzo, who has written a book called The United States of Toyota, dates the start of the rot to 1979 - just after GM had moved into its monolithic new headquarters in the Renaissance Centre. By then Japanese car companies were already snapping at the heels of the Big Three, but Detroit ignored the threat, steeped in complacency that the good times would last for ever. Leadership within the business also crucially changed hands, from the designers to what DeLorenzo calls the "bean counters". By the 1990s, the Big Three's reputation for innovation and beauty had withered, replaced by a reputation for faulty products. "People started to associate Detroit with cars coming off the assembly line and their doors falling off," says Micheline Maynard, a New York Times business reporter and author of The End of Detroit: How the Big Three Lost Their Grip. She recounts how in 2002 GM's vice-chairman, Bob Lutz, declared that their vehicles were every bit as reliable as Honda's and Toyota's; that same afternoon GM recalled 1.5m minivans.From the sleek elegance of the 1959 Cadillac to the lumpen brutality of the Hummer: what was in the mind of the GM executive who conceived putting a machine modelled on armoured vehicles on to the civilian streets of US cities, at barely 13 miles per gallon? But then Lutz has argued that that hybrids like the Toyota Prius "make no economic sense" and once called global warming "a total crock of shit".The other key element in the demise of Detroit concerns the staple of the American auto industry - the car worker. Ron Nidiffer is drinking beer in the New Dodge Lounge in Hamtramck, temporarily off work as the GM plant has suspended production for want of sales. He has worked in car factories for 36 years, 10 of them on the assembly line. He is one of a dying breed of car workers who had their pay and conditions set back in the heyday. His union, the United Auto Workers, negotiated a series of deals in the 1970s and 80s that have become the albatross around the industry's neck. He makes $29 an hour - substantially more than American workers in Japanese plants that have been transplanted to the non-unionised south, from Alabama to Texas. But the trouble really starts when you include the so-called "legacy costs", the generous terms agreed for pensions and health care that allowed workers to retire as young as 48. GM now carries about 470,000 retirees and spouses on benefits - more than four times its productive workforce - adding a total of about $2,000 for every car it makes, a terrible burden in the face of fierce foreign competition.The symbol of excess that the UAW's critics like to point to is the "jobs banks", by which workers are paid 95% of their salaries for doing nothing. The scheme was introduced as a way of ensuring minimum employment levels, but billowed uncontrollably until it included about 40,000 workers. Nidiffer concedes that looking back, the jobs bank was indefensible. "Yes, it was a bad idea. And I understand why some people are jealous of what we've had. We had good conditions, even to excess."But what annoys him is the assumption that the largesse and complacency that epitomised the attitude of both unions and management is still prevalent today. The job banks have been whittled down to 3,500 workers, and wages have been cut in half for all new employees. He is one of the last at the GM plant in Hamtramck to enjoy the old $29 an hour rate, the others having taken redundancy. A deal has also been struck to lift the burden of legacy costs from GM's shoulders by transferring health insurance into an independent fund administered by the union. After all that, to hear Congress turn away the plea for $25bn from the Big Three CEOs makes Nidiffer see red. "I'm extremely mad. We've made all these concessions, taken the hit, and yet we're still accused of being lazy and greedy."It has not made him any happier that while Congress rebuffed Detroit, it has bailed out the banks with apparent alacrity, including Citibank which was last week handed the exact amount requested by the Big Three. "We're looking for a pittance compared with what they've given the banks," Nidiffer says. His anger is echoed in the front-page headline in the Detroit Free Press: "$85 billion for AIG. $700 billion for financial firms. $25 billion for Citigroup. Why is the bar so high for $25 billion to Detroit?"Nidiffer's frustration is heightened by his belief that if Detroit can see it through another 18 months it will have turned the corner. His GM plant is poised to produce the Volt, a new plug-in electric hybrid that will run for 40 miles on one full battery before a tiny petrol motor recharges it. The cutting-edge model, which goes into production in 2010, has been spearheaded by Bob Lutz, the global warming sceptic - a sign of how dramatically the outlook has changed at GM.But none of the new ideas being scrambled out by the Big Three will matter if they fail to make it to 2010. Will the Volt go down in history as a great idea that GM carried with it to its grave? "There used to be a saying, so goes GM, so goes the country," Nidiffer says. "That was in happy days. But the same is true now. If GM goes under, the ripple effect will be felt throughout America."A car worker desperate to hold on to his job would say that, wouldn't he? But economists agree. Susan Helper, a professor at Case Western university, says if GM went into bankruptcy next year, it could set in train a knock-on effect that would hit not just the 240,000 employees of the Big Three, but also 730,000 suppliers and about 1 million people working in dealerships across the country. Harder to quantify, but potentially even more devastating, would be the loss of social capital - the knowledge that is imbedded in a generation. "The idea that you can just liquidate Detroit and start again is crazy. Knowledge is not held by any one person, but comes from how people in a company interact."Crunch time is coming. The tragedy of the American car is approaching its climax. You can feel it, palpably, on the lot of Galeana's Dodge dealership, a short drive away from Nidiffer's watering hole. Balloons in red, white and blue festoon the long line of cars, but who are they fooling? A more accurate reflection of the mood are the signs propped up under a succession of bonnets that spell the word S-A-L-E. Inside, a query about how things are going is met with the reply: "Look at the board." The board in question has just one car handwritten on it - the extent of today's business. Two years ago, the daily average was 15 cars.Chrysler, which owns the Dodge brand, used to offer huge discounts on the price of the cars disguised as leasing agreements. But in July it announced it was suspending all leasing, and business went through the floor. The Big Three can no longer afford to lower their prices, so instead the cars sit on the lot, looking cheerful beneath the balloons. There is one small cause for hope for Galeana's dealers. A local Chrysler plant has just announced 5,000 job losses, and each worker made redundant will be given a voucher to buy a new Dodge car. It's come to this: the only chink of light for the dealers are the redundancy packages of the workers who make the cars they sell.This week, the CEOs of the Big Three have one last shot at saving Detroit. They are travelling back to Washington to plead their case again. And this time, they won't be going by private jet - Ford's Alan Mulally will drive a Ford hybrid, and GM chief executive Rick Wagoner and Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli will fly on commercial planes. Tomorrow and on Friday, they will present Congress committees with a new business plan that is expected to include a cap on top bosses' pay, concessions from the UAW and the death of the most loss-making brands. Less certain is the outcome. Will they get their $25bn and, if they do, will it be anywhere like enough? Or will this once great institution, this embodiment of American might and ingenuity - and with it the livelihood of millions - go the way of Henry Ford's factory of dreams.Automotive industryGeneral MotorsFordUS economyUnited Statesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

On one side there is an ageing crooner in a cardigan and on the other an impish TV presenter who favours wooden beads. It is Countdown vs Top Gear with Des O'Connor versus Richard Hammond - and the man known as The Hamster is winning hands down.Hammond and O'Connor are going head-to-head as the Christmas TV faces of two of the UK's biggest supermarkets, and O'Connor's Tesco is now trailing way behind Hammond's Morrisons. Tesco, the UK's biggest retailer, yesterday revealed its worst sales figures for 14 years. Like-for-like sales - which exclude gains from new stores - were ahead just 2% in the last three months, or half the growth achieved in the previous quarter.In an unusually gloomy quarterly trading update, Tesco's chief executive, Sir Terry Leahy, blamed the economic downturn: "We are pleased with our progress, but we are also realistic - the current economic climate and the strain this is putting on consumers everywhere is something that all businesses are feeling, including ours." But not all supermarkets are as gloomy. Bradford-based Morrisons is - so far - storming through the recession. Tomorrow it is expected to reveal recent sales up around 7.5% on last year - maintaining much the same impressive rate of growth as it reported three months ago.Tesco's performance is also markedly worse than its rivals Sainsbury and Asda. Sainsbury - which has hired "I'm a Celebrity ..." hosts Ant and Dec to star in its adverts alongside its usual frontman Jamie Oliver - last month revealed like-for-like sales up 3.9%. Meanwhile Asda, which is reflecting the new austerity by shunning celebrities and filming traditional family Christmas ads in the Yorkshire Dales, grew 6.9% in the three months to the end of September. But Morrisons is now top of the pile, pulling in thousands of new shoppers every week, especially in the south-east, where it was almost unheard of until a couple of years ago.The Morrisons empire, built by Sir Ken Morrison, was always a fiercely Yorkshire business. But it descended into chaos, with tumbling sales and profits after it took over its larger rival Safeway. Shareholders demanded a management shake-up and Marc Bolland was installed as chief executive, even though he had spent his career working for Dutch brewer Heineken and had never run a shop. Bolland did, however, understand marketing.The stores were given a new green and yellow look and out went the outmoded "More reasons to shop at Morrisons" adverts. In their place Bolland brought in a raft of celebrities - Denise van Outen, Lulu, Alan Hansen, Nick Hancock and, more recently, Richard Hammond.The TV adverts now concentrate on image, while press adverts go toe-to-toe with Tesco and the others on price. One retail executive said: "It was an old-fashioned grocer competing with the slicker marketing of rivals. The new Bolland empire has given the brand a slick new look and feel. He has taken the brand and the business and given it a polish". It is, however, far too soon to write off Tesco. Yesterday's poor sales figures were actually slightly better than most City experts had predicted, and its shares rose. The grocer, which accounts for £1 out of every £7 spent on the UK high street, decided months ago that a full-scale recession was on its way and, in a bid to stop bargain-hunting shoppers drifting away to discount outlets such as Aldi and Lidl, launched its own range of Discounter goods.In September, some 350 new lines - from Shampoo to curry sauce and teabags - went onto Tesco's shelves. The range was the biggest since Tesco launched its Value label in the last recession, with prices higher than Value, but lower than the premium, proprietary brands and the grocer's standard own-label equivalents. The supermarket rebranded itself as "Britain's biggest discounter" and the bargain range has been expanded to 800 products. Yesterday's lower sales figures, said Tesco, are a direct result of introducing these lower-priced goods. "We think this is the right strategy to help our business and our customers through the tougher times ahead."According to Tesco, the new range is pulling in 300,000 new customers a week and now accounts for 5% of everything that goes through its tills. At the same time, sales of higher-priced organic foods and the grocer's Finest upmarket heat-and-eat meals has gone into reverse. Aside from the impact of the discount range, the big supermarkets are currently locked in a fierce price war. For retailers, discounting means selling more just to stand still.City analysts were yesterday divided over exactly whether Tesco was cleverly planning for the future, or falling out of favour. Oriel Securities said it was obvious that shoppers were switching to Tesco's lower-priced Discounter range "but in general we are seeing a waning in the UK's love affair with the market leader".But another from broker Cazenove, said the data showed Tesco "is back on the front foot in the UK and is ahead of its competitors in preparing for battle fought in a deflationary world".TescoMorrisonsSupermarketsAdvertisingCredit crunchRecessionChristmasguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

A British doctor volunteering in DR Congo performs a life-saving amputation using text message instructions from a colleague.

British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh signalled the creation of a "truly global" airline yesterday as the carrier announced £3.5bn merger talks with Australian rival Qantas.BA is already in talks to combine its services with American Airlines and Spain's Iberia but it took shareholders unawares yesterday with the bold announcement that it had also turned its attention to the Asia-Pacific market as industry consolidation gathers pace. A combined BA and Qantas would create a unique business with 71 million passengers a year, 474 aircraft flying to more than 230 destinations in two continents. "It is an exciting step towards a truly global airline," said Walsh. Consolidation in the airline industry has been confined to intracontinental deals so far, with Air France joining Dutch competitor KLM and Delta Airlines merging with Northwest in the US. Shares in BA rose 12% to 157.10p on the news.The BA boss said he was confident that the Iberia deal, which has been slowed down by concerns over BA's pension fund deficit, would not be derailed by another round of talks. "We can do both at the same time. I expect both deals to progress," said Walsh, who added that the Iberia and Qantas discussions were being conducted by separate teams within BA. Sources close to the talks said BA hoped that news of the Qantas proposal, which Iberia only learned of yesterday, would encourage the Spanish carrier to inject more urgency into discussions.BA and Qantas are exploring a dual listing structure similar to the model employed by Anglo-Dutch groups Reed Elsevier and Shell, which would bypass airline ownership restrictions in the UK and Australia. If BA's merger with Iberia goes ahead, the business created by that deal will become one half of the dual listing with Qantas. BA/Iberia and Qantas would have a combined balance sheet, overlapping boards and an integrated management team - but remain separate legal entities with two groups of shareholders. Walsh described the deal as a "merger of equals" but Qantas is the slightly larger business by market capitalisation, with a value of A$4.45bn (£1.9bn) compared with BA's £1.6bn at yesterday's closing prices.In Australia the ownership limit for foreign airlines is 35%, though the government is proposing to raise that to 49% - in line with UK limits for non-EU carriers.Analysts said a BA and Qantas merger could transform the industry. "If someone can find a way to structure a cross-border airline we can move towards a properly consolidated industry. But the question is can they do it?" said Andrew Lobbenberg, analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland.BA and American Airlines are applying for regulatory clearance to collude over fares and schedules in the lucrative Transatlantic market. However, it would stop short of a full-blown merger because of ownership restrictions.Douglas McNeill, analyst at Blue Oar Securities, said the AA deal had the biggest cost-saving potential for BA because it already co-operates with Qantas on Heathrow-Australia routes and with Iberia on Heathrow-Madrid services.The flurry of merger and acquisition activity in the airline market is being driven by financial necessity. The International Air Transport Association, the industry trade body, expects the world's airlines to show a collective loss of $9.3bn in 2008 and 2009.BA expects a Qantas deal to benefit shareholders because it will combine two separate networks. Qantas has a strong position in an Asian market that, until recently, was growing strongly. Virgin Atlantic, which is urging US authorities to block the BA/AA alliance, also urged regulators in the UK and Australia to investigate the impact of the Qantas deal on passengers."Regulators need to scrutinise these merger attempts like never before and ensure that consumers aren't disadvantaged by BA's attempts to become even more dominant, to the detriment of true competition." The combined businesses would generate revenues of £15.7bn, with BA the bigger earner with turnover of £8.7bn last year. Shares in BA are trading more than 50% below the year-high as a result of concerns over the impact of the economic downturn on its profits. The airline is anticipating making a "small" profit this year, after achieving record pre-tax profits of £883m in the year to March 2008.Head to headQantasDestinations 145 citiesFleet 224Staff 37,000Pre-tax profit £575m Market cap £1.77bn (A$4.3bn)Slogan The Spirit of AustraliaBritish AirwaysDestinations 300Fleet 245Staff 65,000Pre-tax profit £883m Market cap £1.8bnSlogan World's favourite airlineBritish AirwaysAirline industryguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Mark Leckey has been handed two kinds of hangover cure the morning after winning the Turner prize - a packet of ibuprofen and an orange tube of Berocca. But the hangover doesn't show: the artist is neat as a pin in dandyish pink jeans, delicately polka-dotted shirt and a bleached-gold mane straight out of the George Michael school of haircare. When the Turner prize is not being decried as insanely controversial, it is written off as dull and well past its sell-by date. This year's show fell into the latter category. Leckey, like many a winner before him, has discovered the hard way that a cheque for £25,000 and an instantly improved career come at the price of a public mauling. The Independent yearned for something that wasn't "about wearing your theory-stuffed brain on your sleeve". The Telegraph wrote off the entire show as "technically competent, bland, and ultimately empty". "What I was warned to expect, but still shocked me, was how much obloquy and hatred the prize generates," he says. "I love the Stuckist conspiracy theory, that Nicholas Serota is a kind of machiavellian Skeletor who manipulates the government and the people." He will have had good advice, too: at Monday night's ceremony he was hand-in-hand with a Tate curator who has overseen previous Turner prize exhibitions; one of this year's judges, Daniel Birnbaum, is a colleague at the Frankfurt art school where he teaches. ("I know it looks ropey," he says of this last fact. "But it won't have helped me. He would have had to make a more convincing case for me, if he argued for me - and I don't know that he did.") Even so, he has been caught off guard. "I certainly wasn't expecting my work to be called boring and over-intellectualised. People wrote about me who don't know me, don't know my work, made an opinion based on one piece of work. They just steamed in."For some artists, the payback for this "obloquy" is the experience of having 60,000 members of the public come to see their work at Tate Britain. Not for Leckey. He accepted the nomination partly "because I wanted to see what it was like outside the sometimes constricted art world. It's small and can be very self-congratulatory." But, he says, "I am not interested in my work being democratised." What he'd really like, now, is for some doors to open. In particular, he wants his own television series - a variety show, with his band, Jack Too Jack, as the house orchestra. It would have musical numbers, and a little play or sketch, and Leckey sitting in a leather armchair à la Ronnie Corbett telling an anecdote - except the chat would be "about art and ways of seeing". John Berger meets the Two Ronnies, he says. Would the BBC be remotely interested? "Well, there'd be no swearing," he says. "This would be good, old-fashioned, light entertainment."Leckey takes me through his room in the Turner exhibition. Here is a little model of his flat, also his studio, which often appears in his films, marking the liminal space between the "real" world and the world of images in which he operates, or loses himself. Over there is Felix the Cat, spinning endlessly on a screen; there is something almost pornographic in the camera's pitiless gaze. Over here is a film that, by sleight of hand, appears to show Jeff Koons' Bunny, a metal sculpture of an inflatable rabbit, taking pride of place in Leckey's apartment. But it's all smoke and mirrors - the piece was never there. Leckey is an admirer of Koons. "I like the idea of something that's almost inhuman in its perfection, like Bunny. It's as if it just appeared in the world, as if Koons just imagined it and it appeared. I always get too involved in the work." He also likes the notion that Warhol made his art unselfconsciously, "that he produced this work and went, 'Ah, really?' I like the idea that you let culture use you as its instrument. What gets in the way is being too clever, or worrying about how something is going to function, or where it's going to be. When you start thinking of something as art, you're fucked: you're never going to advance."Leckey, 44, is the son of working-class parents who met while they were both working at Littlewoods. He was a "woollyback", someone from outside metropolitan Liverpool. "Ellesmere was an overspill town. I grew up with a sense of feeling inadequate, with the idea that the real action was going on over the river." He became a casual. "It was a working-class style, a genuine subculture. It was lads who adopted middle-class leisurewear - golfwear, sportswear - that you could see in magazines worn by the jetset. Ultimately, another word for casual was football hooligan. It was a kind of drag, a disguise. A means of using style to transform yourself." This was the era of the new romantics, but "casuals were more stylish, and smarter". You could say that Leckey's early negotiations between image and substance, his early attempts at self-transformation, were a kind of preparation for life as an artist. But art was a long time in the future. At Whitby comprehensive, now Whitby high school, he dyed his hair. "Like a skunk. And I used to jump out of windows: my effort to escape. My record was two floors." He left at 16 with one O-level, in art. He can't remember what grade he got. Then there was a period when "I was a scally. A bad lad." What kind of a scally? "I scallied around," he says, evasively. "A bit of this, a bit of that." He went on various YTS schemes. Then, at 19, "I suddenly got deeply fascinated in trying to find out when civilisation began. In Ur and Babylon. I started going to the library. I am an autodidact - that's why I use bigger words than I should. It's a classic sign." Leckey's obsession with the beginning and the end of things has stayed with him. "It's the terror of infinity. I'm not convinced about the solidity of anything. Everything seems ephemeral." Sometimes images "seem more authentic than what they represent": this is a theme of his filmed lecture, Cinema-in-the-Round, part of the Turner prize show.Finally, Leckey says, his stepfather sat him down in the kitchen, and said: "Everything in this room has been designed and made by someone. You could do that." He took A-levels and went to art college in Newcastle, which he hated. "It was the early 1990s, when critical theory had swept the nation. The place was full of hippies from down south who were reading Mervyn Peake and Tolkien, and suddenly they were made to read Barthes and Derrida. It was like a Maoist year zero. I became very suspicious of the merits of critical theory, which is why I have been shocked at being accused of being over-academic. I've never seen myself as theoretically minded."When Leckey collected the Turner prize cheque from Nick Cave on Monday night, he declared himself "chuffed to bits", and said that he was sounding more and more scouse. Then, surveying the room, he declared rather elliptically: "This is all good." I wonder what he meant. The prize? The party? The art world? "I was trying to say, not very well, that the art world in London, in Britain - that this is my world. It's good you can get acknowledged by your peers and that there is a sense of community. OK, that sentimentalises it, because it can be a bitter world, it can get factionalised, and lots of us can be sitting there scowling about White Cube gallery. "When you read about the Turner prize in the press, and about the art world in general, you get the wonky idea that it's all about Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Banksy. I get riled by Damien Hirst's skull and by Banksy. It just irks me. The work is trite. And then it comes to represent culture and art, it becomes totemic. And I don't understand that." ? The Turner prize exhibition is at Tate Britain, London SW1, until January 18. Details: 020-7887 8888.Mark LeckeyTurner prizeArtAwards and prizesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

One of Prince Charles's allies in his battle against modern architecture has attacked the "disappointing to dismal" design of British postwar towns.Sparking anger among architects, Andres Duany flew in from America and yesterday unveiled a 64-point litany of mistakes made by British architects and planners over the last 50 years. He accused architects of being "infantile" in pursuing ego-driven visions and said they were "heedless of technical and social dysfunction and widespread lack of popularity" caused by their designs.Duany is one of the original designers of Poundbury, the prince's new town in Dorset, and said the leading lights of modernist architecture including Richard Rogers, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Peter Eisenman were "increasingly irrelevant".He called on architects and planners to step aside and allow a new generation of amateurs to lead development in the 21st century. The broadside was met by a vociferous response from leading modern architects who have become used to regular disputes with the prince and his allies. Sunand Prasad, president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, said Duany was "living in another world".He conceded that architects' craft skills and traditional knowledge had been swept aside too easily between the 1950s and 1970s, but said architects were now building the "highest performance" buildings ever.Duany's outburst, will reignite a battle between architects who believe in modernism and his own "church" of new urbanism, which argues that towns should be built to strict codes, often based on traditional design.Duany used new urbanism to design Seaside, the Florida community which provided the backdrop to the film The Truman Show, and Charles has embraced the principles of new urbanism on projects to design new settlements from Newquay, Cornwall to Llandarcy, near Neath. His intervention was timed to coincide with the unveiling of a masterplan for Hertfordshire, his most ambitious UK scheme yet. In it he advocates a new town and a series of garden villages built on open land in which residents would be obliged to grow fruit and vegetables for market."It is inexplicable why architects and planners continue to pursue radical innovation as if it were 1945 every morning," he said."Only architecture, confusing itself with fashion as a platform for cultural expression, continues to be avant garde, heedless of its cost overruns, social and technical dysfunction and widespread lack of popularity."He cited "gratuitous shapes" in buildings such as winged roofs which quickly go out of fashion, "amazingly rude" colours on shop signs which "are just a vulgar way to attract attention" and civic buildings that "look common" when they should be grand.Out-of-town retail parks, excessive road signage and "placeless architecture that could be anywhere in the world" were also criticised. Duany advocates a return to "matter of fact architecture" as exemplified by the traditional English village. Prasad said it was "obviously untrue" that the majority of architects want to express themselves regardless of context. "It is not so much the innovation and the ego that is causing the problem," he said. "It is the commercial pressure to build large on sites which can't take it; it is the haphazard development of towns and the widespread confusion over our democratic planning process."Prasad said many of Duany's complaints seemed to stem from the decision to build a car-based society, and the way highways engineers took control of urban design."It was wrong to aim for a society dominated by cars," he said. "But most architects and planners have moved on, so he is really railing against a problem that doesn't exist anymore."What not to do? Avoid fashionable architecture - buildings that are obsessively of our time will be out of date too soon? Civic buildings should be grand and private buildings should recede into the background? Avoid overly transparent facades - mess inside a building looks like an unkempt yard? Avoid many buildings by one designer - diversity is the hallmark of a great place? Avoid meandering streets - excessive curves confuse and aggravate? Avoid gated-off estates - they undermine social interaction? Avoid businesses in the suburbs - every job means one less person to enliven a town centreArchitectureCommunitiesguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Interviewing this year's Turner prize winner Mark Leckey on video last night proved a more personal encounter than I expected.Leckey started by saying off-camera "I've got a problem with you - I don't know if it's going to make for a good interview." I replied that it would make a great interview, so we got stuck in. He immediately started explaining on camera what his problem was - that I had fulsomely praised his work when the Turner shortlist was announced, and then viciously changed my mind when I saw the Turner exhibition this autumn. This led to me explaining why I changed and what my reservations about his work are. I went on, obviously, to congratulate him and interview him about this terrific success. (In case that didn't come across - congratulations again, Mark.)But I was delighted to have him take me on, because the criticism that upset him appeared on this blog. These are day-to-day notes, a diary of my responses, raw criticism. Yet my blog obviously interested him enough to the extent that he wanted to have a debate just 15 minutes after receiving the highest accolade in British contemporary art.It is true that I passionately endorsed Leckey when this year's Turner shortlist was announced - and that I would definitely have put him on the shortlist myself. I admire his sensibility, his excavations of pop cultural psyche, of the images and iconographies that surround us every day ? from Homer Simpson to Jeff Koons, Felix the Cat to Titanic. But when I saw his exhibit at Tate Britain I was disappointed. It just didn't start any fires. It was interesting, but surely a Turner winner should be more than that. Let me put it bluntly. On his chosen territory of pop cultural montage Mark Leckey just isn't The Mighty Boosh. And why do we need an artist to do what a comedy show does, but better?The Turner prize is an opportunity as well as an award. Leckey ? whether he gets a TV show or not ? may well have the character to use the prize creatively and go on to greater things. But I hope he keeps the rough edges he revealed in our interview.Turner prizeMark LeckeyArtguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The Football Association is to write to Liverpool for an explanation into the orchestrated support shown for the jailed fan Michael Shields during Monday's 0-0 draw with West Ham United at Anfield.Officials at Soho Square are considering whether to bring disciplinary charges after taking exception at the manner in which Liverpool have publicly backed a man who has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for the attempted murder of a Bulgarian waiter, Martin Georgiev, in May 2005.Another Liverpool fan admitted being responsible for the crime before later retracting his confession and Shields' case will go before a high court review tomorrow. The FA, however, is alarmed that Liverpool should openly use a live televised game to try to influence the matter.Rafael Benítez's players wore T-shirts bearing the slogan Free Michael Now during their pre-match warm-up and the actress Sue Johnston was invited on to the pitch with Shields' parents to make a speech calling for the justice secretary, Jack Straw, to "do the right thing".A mosaic was held up in the Kop spelling out Free Michael Now and the match-day programme contained an article declaring the 22-year-old's innocence. "Liverpool fan Michael Shields should be here at Anfield for tonight's game," it began. "Instead, he will be sitting in a prison cell."The FA's concern is linked to the recent disciplinary case against the Ipswich midfielder David Norris for supporting the former Plymouth Argyle goalkeeper Luke McCormick. Norris had been charged with improper conduct after making a handcuffs gesture in dedication to McCormick, who had been sentenced to seven years in prison for causing the death by dangerous driving of two young brothers.The FA's disciplinary department fined Norris £5,000 and is alarmed that Liverpool should also publicly back someone convicted of a serious crime and, in the process, open themselves to allegations of playing judge and jury. The matter became a subject of controversy on radio phone-ins yesterday and the FA will, at the very least, remind Liverpool that it does not believe it is the club's role to take on such issues. "We are not comfortable about this," one source told the Guardian.There is also an element of concern as Liverpool, according to the FA, had not informed the authorities of their plans. In 1997, their then striker Robbie Fowler was fined 2,000 Swiss francs by Uefa for revealing a T-shirt expressing his support for the city's sacked dock workers.LiverpoolPremier Leagueguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

The brother-in-law of actress Jennifer Hudson is charged with murdering three of her relatives including her seven-year-old nephew.

The GOP has heaped praise on Obama's nat'l security and economic teams. See also: The latest buzz on 44