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Doherty charged with cocaine possession

September 29th, 2010   by Mac

Rock star Pete Doherty was accused of possessing cocaine today after police investigated the suspected overdose death of heiress Robin Whitehead.

The 31-year-old Babyshambles star was charged with holding the class A substance when he answered bail at a central London police station.

He was one of four people arrested after the 27-year-old film-maker died from a suspected overdose on Sunday January 24.

It has been claimed the star attended a party the previous night at a flat in Hackney, east London.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said the star will appear at Thames Magistrates' Court alongside two other men on October 18.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman said the offence is alleged to have taken place between January 21 and 25.

Two of Doherty's close friends were also charged with drugs offences.

Peter Wolfe, 42, of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, who was staying in the flat where Miss Whitehead died, was charged with supplying cocaine.

He was also charged with two counts of possessing cocaine.

Musician Alan Wass, 29, of Latimer Road, west London, was charged with cocaine possession.

A 53-year-old woman questioned on suspicion of attempting to pervert the course of justice has been released and will face no further action.

Miss Whitehead, known as Robyn, had spent the last 10 days of her life filming a documentary about the singer who has battled with drugs.

She was the granddaughter of the late Teddy Goldsmith, founder of The Ecologist magazine.

The documentary film, The Road To Albion, focussed on Doherty's former band, The Libertines, as she spent a lot of time with the singer.

Her website showed pictures of Doherty with his body encased in plaster, lying on a board in a crucifixion pose.

Miss Whitehead's mother, Dido Whitehead, is a cousin of Jemima Khan and Zac Goldsmith, and her father is 1960s filmmaker Peter Whitehead.

Doherty, of Durley, Marlborough, Wiltshire, said he was "shocked and saddened" following her death.

He was questioned on suspicion of supplying controlled drugs by detectives from Hackney CID on March 19.

A spokeswoman for Poplar coroner's court said no date has been set for an inquest into Miss Whitehead's death.

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Moshe Lewin obituary

September 28th, 2010   by Mac

Moshe Lewin, who has died aged 88, was one of the foremost scholars of Soviet history. Misha Levin, as he was more familiarly known, was a vibrant and creative intellectual whose work, expressed in a language and style distinctively his own, and informed by his life experiences, made a major contribution to the field of social history.

His magisterial work Russian Peasants and Soviet Power (1968) explores the clash between the world of the peasants and the priorities of an industrialising state in the late 1920s that had little sympathy or comprehension of the peasants' outlook. Lewin retained a strong admiration for the founder of the Bolshevik state, and his book Lenin's Last Struggle (1968) outlined Lenin's ultimately forlorn attempt to create a self-regulating dictatorship that could undertake a project of socialist modernisation, while retaining some measure of popular consent.

An ardent anti-Stalinist, Lewin was interested in the forces that nurtured state despotism. He believed that within Bolshevism, there lay the basis of a more humane, democratic form of socialism. His sympathies lay with Nikolai Bukharin and the rightists in the Communist party, whom he saw as having a greater understanding of the peasant masses than the Trotskyist left. He saw Bukharin's ideas as relevant to the renewal of the Soviet system in the post-Stalin era. His book Political Undercurrents in Soviet Economic Debates: From Bukharin to the Modern Reformers (1974) proved prescient. However, the political rehabilitation of Bukharin under Gorbachev in 1989 proved a brief spring and the dream of a socialist renaissance was soon swept aside.

The rich collection of essays in The Making of the Soviet System (1985) encapsulates much of his thinking. The terms he coined to capture the encounter between the old and new – "quicksand society", "ruralisation of the towns", "peasantisation of the working class" – entered the language of scholarly debate. He believed in the role of the historian as a commentator on the past and the present. His book The Gorbachev Phenomenon: A Historical Interpretation (1988) analysed the reformist movement of the 1980s in terms of the emergence of a new, more educated society challenging the old order of bureaucratic authoritarianism. In Russia/USSR/Russia: The Drive and Drift of a Superstate (1995) and The Soviet Century (2005), he depicted the Stalinist system as a form of "bureaucratic absolutism" that came to outlive its function.

Lewin was born in Vilnius, a region disputed between Poland and Lithuania, to Russian-Jewish parents who died in the Holocaust. In June 1941 he escaped the advancing German army by clambering on to the back of a Soviet army lorry. He worked on collective farms, and then was employed as a furnace operator. In the summer of 1943 he enlisted in the Soviet army and spent the rest of the war in a school for officers.

In 1946 he returned to Poland, but soon after emigrated to France. Five years later he settled in Israel, and worked first on a kibbutz and then as a journalist. He studied at Tel Aviv University, from where he received his BA in 1961. He completed his doctorate on the Soviet collectivisation of agriculture at the Sorbonne in Paris. Intellectually he was profoundly influenced by the Annales school of history, with its focus on the autonomy of social processes and their development in the longue durée (long term).

He served briefly as a senior research fellow at Columbia University in New York City, and from 1968 to 1978 held a research post at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies at Birmingham University. He then returned to the US and took up a professorship at the University of Pennsylvania, where he remained until he retired in 1995.

He seized the opportunities of the opening of the Soviet archives under Gorbachev. Always lively and provocative, he was an intellectual who spoke to a wider public. He had a considerable reputation in France, was a regular correspondent for Le Monde Diplomatique, and spent his final years in Paris.

Those who knew him remember a battered cherub with a ready smile and a puckish sense of humour who exuded a youthful vitality and zest for life, and was a gregarious raconteur.

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12 killed as bomb explodes at Iranian military parade

September 25th, 2010   by Mac

Twelve people were killed and dozens injured yesterday when a bomb exploded among a crowd watching a military parade in north-western Iran. One local official blamed the attack on "anti-revolutionary" militants.

Thirty-five people were wounded – 15 of them critically – by the blast in Mahabad, a town of about 135,000 people in a predominantly Kurdish area near the borders of Iraq and Turkey.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but local officials blamed militants, possibly helped by foreign countries wishing to harm the Islamic Republic during its "Sacred Defence" celebrations – an annual ceremony for the Iranian military.

"This bomb was a time-bomb planted on a tree among the people and it went off at 10.20am," said a military official quoted by the website of the state-run television network IRIB.

"Counter-revolutionary groups, by inserting themselves among the people attending the armed forces parade, showed their heinous face," added Vahid Jalalzadeh, the provincial governor of Iran's West Azerbaijan province.

Television footage showed troops marching past a ceremonial podium when a blast happened. Pictures of the aftermath showed blood on the ground, shoes and an abandoned pram.

The attack occurred as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was at the UN General Assembly in New York. On 4 August, a homemade explosive went off near Mr Ahmadinejad's motorcade as he was travelling to the western city of Hamadan. He was unharmed. Several armed groups hostile to the government are active in Iran, including Kurdish separatists in the north-west, Baluch militants in the south-east and some Arabs in the south-west. The Sunni Muslim group, Jundollah Baluch, which Iran says has links to al-Qa'ida, is the most active. It claimed a suicide attack that killed 28 people in July after its leader was executed.

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Axe-wielding ministers earn Star Chamber seats

September 24th, 2010   by Mac

Five Cabinet ministers agreed yesterday to cut their budgets by about a third as the Treasury axe began to fall ahead of next month's government-wide spending cuts. Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, and Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary, were rewarded with seats on the Cabinet's Star Chamber, which will impose cuts on those ministers who cannot reach agreement with the Treasury. Both ministers have also been quick to cull quangos since the May election.

Mr Pickles may emerge as a key figure on the cabinet committee, chaired by the Chancellor, George Osborne, in pressing other ministers to fall into line. "He's a bruiser and the Treasury is delighted to get him on board," one insider said last night.

The ministers already serving on the Star Chamber, who have relatively small budgets, have also reached a provisional settlement on their departmental spending for four years. They are William Hague, the Foreign Secretary; Francis Maude and Oliver Letwin at the Cabinet Office; and the Chancellor and Danny Alexander, the Liberal Democrat Chief Treasury Secretary.

The scale of the cuts being planned was also underlined last night by a leaked Cabinet Office document listing 177 taxpayer-funded bodies which face abolition in a "bonfire of the quangos".

The hit-list is said to include the Health Protection Agency, which provides advice on infectious diseases and environmental hazards, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the Commission for Rural Communities. Four more bodies will be privatised and 129 merged. Another 94 – including the BBC World Service, the Design Council and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission – are under threat.

The first Whitehall budget deals were announced after the public spending committee met for just over two hours yesterday. Mr Pickles has reached an outline agreement on cutting his £4.4bn budget for housing and regeneration but is still in talks with the Treasury over the other element – the £26.3bn grants to local authorities. No deals on capital spending on building projects have yet been struck with any departments. Precise figures for each ministry will be announced by the Chancellor on 20 October.

The Treasury had expected Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary and former chancellor, to be among the first ministers to settle, winning a seat at the top table. "He's not going to make rash decisions to fall for that trick," one ally said. Mr Clarke, who has a budget of £9.4bn, is believed to be ready to shave spending on legal aid and the probation service, but Tories are nervous about plans to curb the prison population via sentencing reform. Allies say he will not scrap short jail terms.

The biggest headache may be at the Department for Business, where the Lib Dem Vince Cable has been asked by the Treasury to offer more cuts. The Business Secretary worries that axeing schemes that help industry will weaken growth as the country emerges from recession.

About half his £19.6bn budget goes on universities. There is tension between the Tories and Lib Dems over funding them, with the former leaning towards higher top-up fees and the latter favouring graduate tax. Mr Cable is expected to be one of the last ministers to reach agreement. Another problem is Defence, in its first strategic review since 1998. Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, is due to discuss the options for reducing a £40.4bn budget next Tuesday at a National Security Council meeting chaired by David Cameron.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, is under pressure to make politically sensitive cuts in the police budget. Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is battling with Mr Osborne over the benefit system. The Health and International Development budgets will rise in real terms each year.

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Ghana trafficking victims find care and comfort in numbers

September 23rd, 2010   by Mac

Ayi was fifteen when her parents sold her. She was sent to the Ghanaian capital of Accra, where her tasks included carrying heavy loads for market women. After a year she was forced to work as a prostitute. "I was given drugs and received clients day and night," she says. Police were told of her plight by an NGO, and they arrested two men who were suspected of having trafficked her.

That NGO, the Centre for the Initiative Against Human Trafficking (CIAHT), helped Ayi back to her home town of Tamale, in the north of Ghana.

Ayi's story is far from unique, says Abdulai Danaah, CIAHT's national co-ordinator. Those trafficked can be subjected to sexual exploitation and forced labour. Although numbers are difficult to establish, Ghana's immigration services estimated in 2008-2009 there were some 12,000 victims of human trafficking.

Parents sell their children, sometimes for as little as $230, because of extreme poverty, Danaah says. They are often deceived into thinking their children will be treated well.

Tamale, where CIAHT is based, is the capital of northern Ghana. The region is the poorest in the country.

The challenge of rebuilding a life after being trafficked is great. Some of the women are ill and have sexually transmitted diseases. Research conducted in 2003 in nine countries by Melissa Farley, an American clinical psychologist and researcher, found high rates of violence, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

Many of these trafficked women have no formal skills and fall back into poverty. The psychological effects of their experiences can make it difficult to reintegrate into society.

That's where CIAHT comes in. The organisation teaches skills for employment to those who have been trafficked and provides groups with loans to help them get businesses up and running. It also gives medical and psychological assistance.

Ayi lived in a rescue house funded by CIAHT and received an hour of counselling, twice a week, for six months from a local priest.

"It is crucial not to reintegrate victims of trafficking back into society too quickly," Danaah says. "A key part of the counselling is to improve the self-image of the women so they feel they can be part of and contribute to their communities. It is also key that once the businesses are set up and running CIAHT continues long-term, low-level involvement to make sure that the ventures continue to be successful and the women feel supported."

Peer counselling also plays a part. One government official in Foushegu, a community outside Tamale, has been instrumental in getting such services in place, albeit on a small scale. "In the community of Foushegu the local church contacted me as it identified the need for counselling for victims of human trafficking," Prince Mohamed said.

"We have set up peer counselling workshops to encourage people who have been trafficked to share their experiences and to support each other. The workshops also mean that the wider community is educated about the dangers of trafficking. The community really benefits from the discussions and have requested more sessions."

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Harvard faces revolt over Martin Peretz honour

September 21st, 2010   by Mac

Harvard academics and students are demanding that the university rescind a plan to honour the editor-in-chief of a leading Washington political magazine this week after he wrote that Muslims are unfit for the protections of the US constitution and said that "Muslim life is cheap".

Martin Peretz has partially apologised for the comments but critics say they are only the most recent of a long line of bigotted columns in the New Republic by the former Harvard professor that have drawn accusations of double standards in how the American media confronts prejudice.

Peretz caused a stir when he wrote in a column earlier this month that Muslims in the US should not be entitled to constitutional guarantees of free speech.

"Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims ... So, yes, I wonder whether I need honour these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse," he said.

The comments provoked criticism from bloggers and academics but were initially ignored by mainstream newspapers despite Peretz's prominence – among other things he is a close friend of the former vice-president Al Gore – and the influence of his magazine.

Some of the strongest criticism has come from Harvard, where some students and academics are demanding that the university cancel a ceremony on Friday to name a $500,000 (£322,000) social studies chair after Peretz.

"Such an invitation lends legitimacy and respectability to views that can only be described as abhorrent and racist in their implication that the rights guaranteed by the US constitution should be withheld from certain citizens based on their religious affiliation," student organisations said in a letter to the university that has been signed by more than 400 people.

Among the critics is Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard, who described Peretz's views as hateful.

"If you had said this about blacks, Jews or Catholics, it would be a scandal," he told the Boston Globe.

Peretz has made two apologies, saying he was wrong to say Muslims should be stripped of their free speech rights, but defended his assertion that Muslim life is cheap. "This is a statement of fact, not value," he said.

He made a further apology on the eve of the Jewish day of atonement, Yom Kippur, saying he had "publicly committed the sin of wild and wounding language, especially hurtful to our Muslim brothers and sisters".

But some of Peretz's critics say he has a history of expressing views that would draw stinging criticism from the mainstream press if they were not about Muslims. In March, Peretz admitted to a prejudice against Arabs.

"Frankly, I couldn't quite imagine any venture requiring trust with Arabs turning out especially well. This is, you will say, my prejudice. But some prejudices are built on real facts, and history generally proves me right," he wrote in the New Republic.

Peretz, who is a strident supporter of Israel, has said in conversation that he believes Palestinians are unfit to have their own country and suggested that Arabs are genetically violent.

Although Peretz was criticised in a New York Times column after his recent comments, critics have contrasted the reticence of the American media over his views with the barrage of condemnation for the journalist Helen Thomas, after she said Israel's Jewish population should "go home" to Germany, Poland or the US.

Peretz was among her severest critics, calling Thomas wicked and a Jew-hater.

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Report shows almost 50% of girls under 18 feel unsafe in UK cities

September 20th, 2010   by Mac

Almost half of girls aged up to 18 feel unsafe in the UK's biggest cities and are often scared to go out in their own neighbourhoods, research by the Plan UK children's charity has shown.

One in five respondents said they felt threatened by gangs, and 17% said they feared someone would assault them.

More than 40% said they knew someone who had been attacked or assaulted.

The girls, aged between 11 and 18, were questioned as part of a wider international report to be published by Plan UK next week.

Entitled Because I am a Girl, the report examines the problems facing girls in cities across the developed and developing world.

In the UK, more than 500 girls living in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Coventry, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, took part in the survey.

Nine out of ten said they thought more police on the streets would make them feel safer in their home cities, and 91% wanted better street lights to make them feel more secure after dark.

"Poor street lighting, overcrowded housing, and harassment on public transport all contribute to the very real risks that girls face. These are issues that must be tackled," Marie Staunton, the chief executive of Plan UK, said.

"It is unacceptable that, in cities all over the world, including in the UK, girls are often scared to go out.

"City life should present great opportunities for girls and young women – we know that, in the developing world, girls in cities have better access to both education and health services.

"Living in cities can often be liberating. Violence and fear of violence should not be allowed to rule girls' lives."

The surveys showed that more than 50% of girls in London thought crime in their local area had gone up in the last few years. Ten per cent of girls living in cities in the Midlands knew someone who had been assaulted in their neighbourhood in the last six months.

Internationally, the report highlights urban poverty, overcrowding, unlit streets, lack of proper housing and transport and sexual harassment, making cities feel frightening to many young women.

In the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, 77% of girls said they were afraid to walk through their neighbourhoods after dark, 14% have friends who have been raped and 50% live in fear of sexual assault.

In the developing world, thousands of girls are migrating from rural areas to big cities every day looking for education and economic opportunities, as well as independence. By 2030 approximately 1.5 billion girls will live in urban areas.

The report says international, national and municipal authorities must make it their responsibility to make cities girl-friendly.

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Pope praises UK as a 'force for good'

September 18th, 2010   by Mac

Pope Benedict XVI praised the UK as a "force for good" today as thousands of people turned out to greet him on the first day of his historic visit.

But he also delivered a warning about "aggressive forms of secularism", urging the nation not to lose its traditional values as it "strives to be a modern and multicultural society".

The first state visit to the UK by a pope came amid renewed anger at the worldwide child abuse scandal that has engulfed the Roman Catholic Church and dogged the Pope's own religious career.

As he flew to Scotland, the Pope spoke of his "sadness" over his church's handling of child abuse scandals.

He said abusive priests had not been dealt with decisively or quickly enough.

The Pope's comments, to reporters on board his plane, marked his most thorough admission to date of failings in the way the sex abuse scandal was handled.

But despite the controversy, his followers turned out in large numbers in Scotland.

The Pope was greeted by enthusiastic crowds, particularly at tonight's Mass in Glasgow, where babies were passed to him to be blessed as he arrived in the Popemobile.

In his address at the Mass he made a reference to the size of the turnout, saying: "It is with some emotion that I address you, not far from the spot where my beloved predecessor Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass nearly 30 years ago with you and was welcomed by the largest crowd ever gathered in Scottish history."

An estimated 250,000 were present in 1982 compared with around 65,000 tonight, but church leaders in Scotland declared themselves delighted with the reception the Pope received.

After he was officially welcomed by the Queen at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh the Pope spoke of the UK's important place in history.

He said: "Your forefathers' respect for truth and justice, for mercy and charity, come to you from a faith that remains a mighty force for good in your kingdom, to the great benefit of Christians and non-Christians alike."

He cited anti-slave campaigners William Wilberforce and David Livingstone, and women such as Florence Nightingale, as examples of that force for good.

And he praised Britain's fight against Hitler's "atheist extremism", saying that "Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live".

The Pope, who was forced to join the Hitler Youth as a 14-year-old schoolboy, said the UK remained "a key figure politically and economically on the international stage".

"Your Government and people are the shapers of ideas that still have an impact far beyond the British Isles. This places upon them a particular duty to act wisely for the common good."

And, referring to the future, he delivered an apparent warning about the risks to the nation's traditional values.

He said: "Today, the United Kingdom strives to be a modern and multicultural society.

"In this challenging enterprise, may it always maintain its respect for those traditional values and cultural expressions that more aggressive forms of secularism no longer value or even tolerate."

The Glasgow crowd had been warmed up by Britain's Got Talent star Susan Boyle who got a huge cheer when she took to the stage.

Wearing a long black coat and heels, Boyle, 49, sang the tune that catapulted her to fame, I Dreamed A Dream from the hit musical Les Miserables.

Pilgrims waved flags in the air as she sang.

The leader of Scotland's Catholics Cardinal Keith O'Brien expressed delight with the turnout in Edinburgh.

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The coalition 'does God', says Baroness Warsi

September 16th, 2010   by Mac

The Tories have said that the coalition government "does God", as it launched an attack on Labour's approach to faith.

Lady Warsi, the Conservative chair, said Labour acted as if faith was confined to "oddities, foreigners and minorities".

In a speech to Church of England bishops in Oxford, Warsi said the last government was "profoundly wrong" because it appeared to view religion as "a rather quaint relic of our pre-industrial history". She added: "They were too suspicious of faith's potential for contributing to society – behind every faith-based charity, they sensed the whiff of conversion and exclusivity.

"And because of these prejudices they didn't create policies to unleash the positive power of faith in our society."

The last government had encouraged "a new kind of intellectual, who dines out on free flowing media and sustains a vocabulary of secularist intolerance," she said. "The fact is that our world is more religious than ever. Faith is here to stay. It is part of the fabric of human experience. And in Britain faith is very much alive and kicking."

Warsi referred to a comment by Alastair Campbell that Labour did not "do God" to show how the coalition understands faith groups. "If anyone suggests that this government does not understand, does not appreciate, does not defend people of faith, dare I even say does not 'do God', then I hope my schedule this week will go some way to banishing that myth," Warsi said, pointing out she had celebrated the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, dined with the chief rabbi, and is due to meet the pope.Her remarks will surprise Labour. Tony Blair is a strong Christian who converted to Catholicism. David Cameron has said his faith "is a bit like the reception for Magic FM in the Chilterns: it sort of comes and goes". Nick Clegg is an atheist.

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