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Witnesses describe people running screaming from Thunder River Rapids ride after malfunction flips raft Warren Murray in Coomera and Calla Wahlquist Tuesday 25 October 2016 06.02 BST Last modified on Tuesday 25 October 2016 13.13 BST https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/oct/25/dreamworld-accident-gold-coast-theme-park

Facts, or lack thereof, prove no barrier to voter fraud claim as Republican candidate effectively rejects the election result – before the votes have been counted Ben Jacobs in Washington Tuesday 18 October 2016 12.41 BST https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/18/donald-trump-rejects-election-result-before-the-votes-have-been-counted

Embattled candidate goes on offensive with personal attacks but Democratic rival accuses him of diverting attention from lewd tape as Republicans desert him Dan Roberts, Ben Jacobs and Sabrina Siddiqui in St Louis Monday 10 October 2016 07.42 BST https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/10/debate-donald-trump-threatens-to-jail-Hillarious-clinton

Staffan de Mistura warns of ‘another Rwanda’ and offers to personally escort Islamist fighters out of city to halt bombing Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor Thursday 6 October 2016 13.54 BST Staffan de Mistura says eastern Aleppo is facing total destruction. Photograph: Martial Trezzini/EPA https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/06/aleppo-could-be-destroyed-by-christmas-warns-un-envoy-for-syria

Acrimonious legal standoff likely after inquiry says Buk brought from Russia hit Malaysia Airlines flight, killing 298 people Luke Harding and Alec Luhn in Moscow Wednesday 28 September 2016 18.08 BST https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/28/flight-mh17-shot-down-by-missile-brought-in-from-russia-ukraine-malaysia-airlines

Republican strikes authoritarian tone in convention speech focusing on recent terrorist attacks and police killings to assure Americans ‘safety will be restored’ Between the lines: what Donald Trump said said and what he meant Dan Roberts and Ben Jacobs Cleveland Friday 22 July 2016 09.40 BST Donald Trump with his son Barron and wife Melania and vice-presidential nominee Mike Pence and his wife Karen after the speech. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/21/donald-trump-republican-national-convention-speech

Dilma Rousseff suspension hands power to ex-deputy who installs conspicuously white, all-male cabinet on promise of unity Jonathan Watts in Brasilia Friday 13 May 2016 11.24 BST Brazil’s interim president, Michel Temer, has unveiled an all-male, conspicuously white cabinet to run one of the world’s most ethnically diverse nations as he promised to restore confidence in Latin America’s biggest economy. Following the suspension of Dilma Rousseff, the country’s first female president, the new head of state called for unity and said his primary task was to form a government of “national salvation” that could restore Brazil’s credibility so it could attract investment. “Trust me,” he said in his inaugural speech at the Planalto presidential palace. “Trust the values of our people and our ability to recuperate the economy.” His message came a few hours after he was accused of treachery by his former running mate Rousseff, who claimed she was forced out of office by “sabotage”, “open conspiracy” and a “coup”. The sharply contrasting statements highlight the rancorousness of an impeachment battle that has curtailed 13 years of Workers’ party rule and divided the nation. Rousseff was stripped of her powers on Thursday after losing a preliminary impeachment vote in the Senate. This followed a similar crushing defeat in the Congress in April. She now faces trial by the Senate on charges of doctoring government accounts to give an unrealistically healthy impression ahead of the 2014 election. Temer – a senior figure in the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement party – was elected on Rousseff’s coat-tails in 2014, but recently abandoned his former government partner on the grounds that the country needed new leadership to get out of its deepest recession in decades. The economy was the focus of his first speech. “It is essential to rebuild the credibility of the country abroad to attract new investments and get the economy growing again,” he said. Adding fuelling to claims of betrayal, the 75-year-old constitutional lawyer had spent the past few weeks putting together the centre-right administration that he unveiled on Thursday. Although he promised to maintain welfare programmes such as bolsa familia poverty relief, he has touted balancing the budget and getting inflation back under 10% as his priority. In a sign of his commitment to austerity, Temer has slashed the number of cabinet posts from 31 to 22. But he may find it hard to cut other costs ahead of municipal elections and with unemployment already in double digits. Whether this tough task can be achieved will depend largely on new finance minister Henrique Meirelles, who gained considerable kudos as central bank president under the first two Workers’ party governments. He will be charged with reining in expenses and encouraging other ministers to push ahead with privatisation, outsourcing and weakening stringent labour and pension laws. Several appointments were controversial. Conservationists are alarmed that the top agriculture post has been given to “soyabean king” Blairo Maggi, who has recently been promoting a constitutional amendment to remove environmental licensing on public projects. Despite the Zika epidemic, the new health minister, Ricardo Barros from the Progressive party, has no background in medicine. He becomes the fourth in little over six months to hold a portfolio which is much coveted because it has the biggest budget of any ministry. While the markets are likely to be happy, the public will need a lot of convincing. Temer’s ratings are almost as low as those of the suspended president. He has a disapproval rating of 62% and support from fewer than one in seven voters, according to the most recent poll. Temer and his cabinet are also tainted by corruption allegations. The interim president himself faces an impeachment challenge and has been barred from standing for office for eight years due to election violations. He has also been named in two plea bargains in the ongoing Lava Jato investigation into the kickback and bribery scandal at the state-run oil firm Petrobras. Half a dozen other members of his proposed cabinet, including new planning secretary Romero Jucá, also face charges by Lava Jato prosecutors. Despite these problems Temer said he had “absolute confidence” in his ability to turn things around with the help of the population. “It is urgent to restore peace and unite Brazil. We must form a government that will save the nation,” he said. As he spoke there were minor scuffles outside the building, where several dozen anti-Temer protesters staged a lie-in. They were ejected by security guards with beatings and pepper spray. Unity also appeared far from the mind of his predecessor, who has vowed to fight against her removal from office. “I may have committed mistakes but I never committed crimes,” Rousseff said. “It’s the most brutal thing that can happen to a human being — being condemned for a crime you didn’t commit. No injustice is more devastating.” Rousseff has only a slim chance of avoiding permanent removal from office. The final Senate vote – which requires a two-thirds majority – could come by September. André César, a political consultant, said the new president will not be able to enjoy a honeymoon because he has to cut costs while keeping a range of political partners happy, in addition to the likely protest on the streets from social movements. “In the very short term, turbulence will increase,” he said. “But if he can manage to advance his agenda in the first couple of months, then he can take a breath. The problem is coalition politics. There are several parties and politicians with different world views.” Mauro Rochlin, an economist at the right-leaning Getúlio Vargas Foundation, praised Temer’s economic team but said he would need support from Congress to push ahead with the necessary policies. “All the things that he needs to cut are in very sensitive, essential areas. There is no other way around it. It will be up to Congress to make important changes in spending policies. They will have to allow changes in public salaries and retirement, but the public sector is very sensitive and very mobilised.” Leda Maria Paulani, a leftwing economist at the University of São Paulo who considers the new government to be illegitimate, acknowledged there may be an initial boost to GDP because the business community had got what it wanted. But she warned that the long-term impact would be a rolling back of hard-won benefits for poor sectors of society, particularly if the government pushed austerity. “This will have terrible results in terms of the rates of growth, unemployment and everything that goes along with a recession,” she said. Michel Temer has taken over after Dilma Rousseff lost a preliminary impeachment vote in the Senate. Photograph: Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/13/michel-temer-brazil-president-rebuild-impeachment

Barack Obama is taking executive action to close loopholes used by foreigners in US, White House announces Dan Roberts in Washington Friday 6 May 2016 02.07 BST Barack Obama is launching a crackdown on international tax evasion in response to recent disclosures in the Panama Papers revealing the scale of offshore financial activity. In a series of initiatives announced by the White House on Thursday night, the president will take executive action to close loopholes used by foreigners in the US and call on Congress to pass legislation Though the later steps may hit political obstacles in an election year, the package of measures are among the most comprehensive response yet to the Panama Papers revelations, disclosed by a consortium of international journalists including The Guardian. “In recent weeks, the disclosure of the so-called ‘Panama Papers’ – millions of leaked documents reportedly revealing the use of anonymous offshore shell companies – has brought the issues of illicit financial activity and tax evasion into the spotlight,” said the White House in a statement. “The Panama Papers underscore the importance of the efforts the United States has taken domestically, and the efforts we have undertaken with our international partners, to address these shared challenges.” Earlier Obama, who is also under pressure to limit the flow of corporate money out of the US, was one of the first world leaders to respond to the record-breaking leak last month. “There is no doubt that the problem of global tax avoidance generally is a huge problem,” Obama told reporters in an unscheduled appearance last month. “The problem is that a lot of this stuff is legal, not illegal.” The initial package of measures outlined by the White House this week may not go as far as some campaigners wish, but focus largely on increasing transparency regulations as a tool to flush further offshore tax abuses into the open. These include: immediate executive action to combat money laundering, terrorist financing, and tax evasion with tighter transparency rules new treasury rules closing a loophole allowing foreigners to hide financial activity behind anonymous entities in the US. Stricter “customer due diligence” rules for banks handling money of behalf of clients The White House and Treasury also called on Congress to pass a series of detailed measures they say would more directly tackle the problem of offshore tax avoidance in the longer run. “The treasury department has long focused on countering money laundering and corruption, cracking down on tax evasion, and hindering those looking to circumvent our sanctions,” said treasury secretary Jack Lew in a statement. “Building on years of important work with stakeholders, the actions we are finalizing today mark a significant step forward to increase transparency and to prevent abusive conduct within the financial system.” http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/may/06/panama-papers-us-launches-crackdown-on-international-tax-evasion

The frontrunner says he has been treated ‘very unfairly’ by the party establishment as Lewandowski controversy swirls Ben Jacobs in Washington Wednesday 30 March 2016 04.14 BST Donald Trump has backtracked on his much ballyhooed pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee as he deals with swirling controversy after his campaign manager was charged with assaulting a reporter. In a television town hall in Milwaukee with CNN on Tuesday night, Trump insisted he had been “treated very unfairly” by the Republican National Committee and the establishment and revoked the commitment he signed in September. Although the Republican frontrunner previously hinted that he might do so, saying the RNC was “in default”, he had never explicitly revoked his commitment until Tuesday. The statement came as Trump stood by Corey Lewandowski, his embattled campaign manager, who was captured on tape forcibly grabbing a reporter for the right-wing website Breitbart after a press conference. Trump suggested that the reporter, who had been screened by the secret service in order to be allowed in the candidate’s vicinity, may have been carrying a bomb. Lewandowski’s arrest dominated the CNN town hall, which featured anchor Anderson Cooper questioning all three Republican candidates. Texas senator Ted Cruz, when asked if he would fire his campaign manager for the same behavior, replied “of course”. John Kasich said: “I haven’t seen the video but they tell me the video is real and of course I would.” Trump struggled with policy questions. While calling Nato “obsolete,” Trump bemoaned the fact that the international alliance doesn’t deal with terrorism. Nato has taken a lead role in the war in Afghanistan against the Taliban. He also said nuclear proliferation “is going to happen anyway” and seemed comfortable with Japan developing nuclear weapons. On domestic policy, Trump challenged conservative orthodoxy by stating education and healthcare were two of the three key functions of the federal government along with security. Both are controversial as many Republicans call for the abolition of the Department of Education as well as repealing Obamacare and severely limiting the federal role in healthcare. The Republican frontrunner was also chastised for his tone by Cooper, who compared Trump’s argument to that of a five-year-old, when he defended his jibes towards Ted Cruz’s wife. Trump was not the only candidate to leave the door open to not backing the GOP nominee in November. Ted Cruz who pledged in March to support the party’s nominee regardless, said of Trump: “I am not in the habit of supporting someone who attacks my wife and my family and I think our wife and kids should be off limits.” This repeated previous statements that Cruz has made in recent days after Trump’s threat to “spill the beans” on his wife and accused the frontrunner of spreading lies about him in a supermarket tabloid. This was echoed by Kasich, appearing after Trump, who said: “I gotta see what happens. If the nominee’s somebody who’s hurting the country I can’t stand behind them.” The Ohio governor had also previously pledged to support the party’s eventual nominee. Both Kasich and Cruz were asked if they had paths to victory. Cruz insisted that he could pick up the nearly 800 delegates he needed to win on the first ballot by noting “most of the races are winner-take-all or winner take most”. The Texas senator said Trump had a ceiling and faced “a difficult time reaching over 50% of the vote” and dismissed Kasich as having “no path to winning”. Kasich, who insisted that the nomination would be decided by a contested convention, referenced the history of the Republican party. He noted that often the party’s nominee did not arrive at the convention with a plurality of delegates. Kasich took a firm stance criticizing Cruz and Trump for their policies towards Muslims in the United States. The Ohio governor sneered at Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States, “raise your hand if you’re a Muslim, that doesn’t work”, he said, while also criticizing Cruz’s proposals to increase police presence in Muslim neighborhoods. Kasich quoted New York police commissioner Bill Bratton who described Cruz’s plan as “ridiculous”. He also was the only candidate to reference the Easter Sunday terrorist attack in Lahore when he said “when people in Pakistan die, we all die a little bit”. The candidates also were asked personal questions which they answered to varying degrees of effectiveness. When Trump was asked about the last time he apologized, his response was “oh wow” and he was left briefly speechless before recalling apologizing to his mother for using foul language and his wife for not behaving in a “presidential” manner. Cruz said his biggest weakness is that “I am a pretty driven guy” while criticizing other politicians for “running around behaving like they are holier than thou”. Donald Trump being questioned by CNN’s Anderson Cooper in Milwaukee on Tuesday. Photograph: Darren Hauck/Getty Images http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/30/donald-trump-revokes-pledge-to-support-republican-nominee

PM rejects resignations from interior and justice ministers Police believe five people were involved in blasts Jon Henley European affairs correspondent Thursday 24 March 2016 18.13 GMT Two Belgian government ministers have offered to resign amid mounting criticism of the country’s failure to foil Tuesday’s airport and metro suicide bombings in Brussels, as police hunted two suspects still believed to be on the run. With prosecutors releasing more evidence that the attacks that killed 31 people and injured 300 others were carried out by the same Islamic State network responsible for November’s carnage in Paris, the country’s interior and justice ministers conceded errors had been made and offered to stand down. Turkey has accused Belgium of ignoring warnings about Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, one of the two suicide bombers who blew themselves and 11 other people up at Zaventem airport, saying he was twice deported from Turkey last year and flagged as a suspected foreign jihadi. Prosecutors also confirmed on Thursday that Ibrahim’s brother Khalid, who detonated the bomb that killed 20 more people at Maelbeek metro station, had rented a flat used as a hideout for the Paris attackers and was named in an international arrest issued on 11 December. A fourth attacker, caught on CCTV cameras with the two airport bombers, is still being sought and a fifth suspect, thought to have been involved in the metro attack, could be dead or alive. Belgian officials have rejected Turkish allegations of inaction following Ibrahim el-Bakraoui’s deportation last July, saying foreigners suspected of fighting in Syria cannot be detained without evidence they have committed a crime. Bakraoui was on parole after serving half of a ten-year sentence for armed robbery. But the interior minister, Jan Jambon, admitted there had been “errors at Justice and with the Belgian liaison officer in Turkey,” adding that “if you put everything in a row, you can ask yourself major questions” about the government’s handling of the Islamist threat. Jambon said the prime minister, Charles Michel, had refused to accept his resignation with the words: “In time of war, you cannot leave the field.” The justice minister, Koen Geens, also offered to go. In further evidence of connections between the Brussels and Paris attacks, police sources have said they believe the second dead suicide bomber at the airport was Najim Laachraoui, 24, a veteran Belgian Islamic State fighter and bombmaker whose DNA was found on two of the explosive belts used in Paris. The third man caught on airport security cameras, wearing a cream jacket and pushing a baggage trolley into the departures hall alongside Laachraoui and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, is now the subject of a manhunt. The federal prosecutor, Frédéric van Leeuw, has said the man fled the airport leaving behind a third suitcase bomb. French and Belgian media have said a man carrying a large bag was seen on CCTV in Khalid’s company just before the explosion: the possible fifth attacker. It is not clear whether the man, pictured in a computer-generated image with hollow cheeks and a small goatee beard, was killed in the blast or escaped. Local media reported that the extremists may initially have been planning an attack on a nuclear site in Belgium but decided to change targets after police raids in Brussels last week that ended in the death of one militant and the capture of Salah Abdeslam, the sole survivor of the 10 jihadis who killed 130 people in Paris last November. The DH newspaper cited police sources as saying the Bakraoui brothers had filmed 10 hours of video of the daily routine of the head of Belgium’s nuclear research and development programme using a concealed camera. Police have confirmed the existence of the footage, but not who shot it. Other reports suggested an attack may have been planned for Easter Monday. EU justice and interior ministers were holding an emergency meeting on Thursday in the wake of the attacks, and the French president, François Hollande, said France would “speak loud and clear” for better intelligence sharing between EU member states and tougher measures against weapons trafficking. All the Brussels attackers so far identified by police and prosecutors have links to Abdeslam. Laachraoui travelled to Hungary with him last year, while the Bakraoui brothers rented – as well as the Belgian safe house used by the Paris killers – an apartment in the Schaerbeek district of Brussels where Abdeslam himself hid for three weeks after the attacks. Abdeslam, 26, who is suspected of buying materials, renting cars, booking rooms, scouting locations and moving people into place for the Paris attacks, appeared briefly in court on Thursday and was remanded in custody until 7 April. His lawyer, Sven Mary, said Abdeslam no longer opposed extradition to France, but “wishes to leave ... as quickly as possible” in order “to explain himself”. Mary said Abdeslam was due in court in Brussels on 31 March to face a European arrest warrant issued by France and that his extradition could take place in a matter of weeks. The accumulating evidence that Belgium’s police and intelligence services were aware the extremists were members of the Paris attacks cell, but unable to prevent Tuesday’s bombings, has drawn heavy international criticism and highlighted the scale of the country’s security problem. Faced with some 300 locals who have fought in Syria, Belgium is the biggest European supplier of foreign jihadis in relation to its national population of 11 million. The country’s foreign minister, Didier Reynders, has insisted security always had to be balanced with civil rights. But the president of the European commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, defended Belgium, telling the Flemish-language daily De Standaard: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. There was terrorism in Britain and in Germany in the 1970s and 1980. There was terrorism in Spain, in Italy and much more recently in France. People should stop lecturing Belgium.” Brussels airport is likely to remain closed until Saturday, with passengers diverted to Antwerp, Liege and Lille in France. Another minute’s silence was held across the country on Thursday, the second of three days of national mourning. Michel, the prime minister, said everything was being done to determine who was responsible for the attacks, which he described as targeting the “liberty of daily life” and “the liberty upon which the European project was built.” Belgium and its people had been “hit at our heart,” he said. Islamic State released a video on Thursday calling on its followers to wage jihad after the Brussels bombings for which it claimed responsibility on Tuesday. “The crusaders aircrafts, including Belgium’s, continue to bomb … night and day,” the video said. “Every Muslim who is well aware of the history of Islam, knows that the holy war against infidels is an integral part of Islam.” Najim Laachraoui, Khalid el-Bakraoui (top), Ibrahim el-Bakraoui (bottom), the unknown man from the airport CCTV footage (top right) and a fifth unidentified man. Composite: Handout http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/24/brussels-police-attacks-identify-man-suicide-bomber-accomplice

The man captured after a four-month manhunt tells police he was supposed to detonate his explosive device but changed his mind at the last minute Kim Willsher in Paris Saturday 19 March 2016 19.51 GMT Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in November’s Paris attacks, has told police he was supposed to blow himself up at the Stade de France but backed out at the last minute. François Molins, the French public prosecutor, confirmed Abdeslam had been a key member of the commandos who carried out the series of bombings and shootings in the city on 13 November, but said the alleged confession should be treated with care and needed to be double checked. Abdeslam was charged with terrorism offences in Belgium on Saturday after being arrested in a raid in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek the day before. Abdeslam will fight his extradition to France but was “collaborating” with Belgian investigators, his lawyer said on Saturday. Molins said at a press conference in Paris on Saturday that Abdeslam’s claim raised questions about why he was in the 18th arrondissement of Paris on the evening of the attacks, after dropping off three other jihadis at the football stadium. Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attacks including a bombing in the 18th arrondissement, which never happened. The hunt for Salah Abdeslam (see link) Three suicide bombers set off explosive vests outside the stadium after being refused entry. Inside, the president, François Hollande, was watching the France v Germany friendly match. Investigators who have traced his movements believe Abdeslam drove the others to the stadium in a black Renault Clio later found abandoned. An explosive belt thought to have been worn by him was later discovered in a rubbish bin in the area. “Salah Abdeslam is a key actor in the attacks in Paris and St Denis (Stade de France). He had a central role in the make-up of the commandos and in the logistical planning of the 13 November attacks,” Molins said. He added that another central role was in bringing members of the terrorist cells into Europe and that Abdeslam had travelled to several countries where he is believed to have used the Balkan route to bring jihadis to Belgium. He said investigators had established Abdeslam had rented at least two vehicles used in the Paris attacks, and had bought 12 remote detonators as well as 15l of peroxide used to fabricate the explosives. Molins said cooperation between French and Belgian investigators and magistrates in the case had been “exemplary”, adding that Abdeslam’s arrest was “an immense relief for all especially the families of the victims of the attacks, with whom my thoughts are at this moment.” Molins explained that Abdeslam had been informed at 4.15pm that he was subject to a European arrest warrant that allows a person being sought to be transferred from one European country to another within a three-month limit from the date of arrest. Alexandre Plantevin, former anti-terrorist judge, told BFMTV it was “not for Abdeslam to decide” whether he would be extradited or not, and that sooner or later “he will appear before a French judge”. A four-month international manhunt came to an end on Friday when heavily armed Belgian police tracked Abdeslam to an apartment in Molenbeek, Brussels, 500 metres from where he grew up. As the suspect fled with a man believed to be an accomplice, he was shot in the leg. Abdeslam appeared before a judge on Saturday and details emerged of how police finally caught the Belgian, thought to be the only surviving member of a 10-strong cell linked to Isis that carried out the attacks on the French capital. He was officially charged with “participation in terrorist murder” and in the activities of a terrorist organisation. An accomplice arrested with him, believed to be Amine Choukri, has been similarly charged with “terrorist killings and participating in the activities of a terrorist group”. President Hollande called an emergency defence council meeting of ministers at the Elysée Palace on Saturday, after which the interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said the arrest was “an important blow against the terrorist organisation Daesh [islamic State] in Europe”. The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, welcomed Abdeslam’s arrest but said the terror threat remained very high, adding it was “as high as, if not higher than, we had before 13 November.” He said: “Other networks, other cells, other individuals in France and in Europe are getting organised to prepare new attacks. We must remain mobilised at a national as well as European level.” Police Nationale’s wanted notice for Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year-old man wounded and captured in Brussels. Photograph: Police Nationale/PA http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/19/paris-attacker-salah-abdeslam-was-supposed-to-blow-himself-up

Resounding victory gives Clinton momentum for Super Tuesday Sanders leaves state early to focus on Texas and Minnesota Lauren Gambino in Columbia, South Carolina and Dan Roberts in Dallas Sunday 28 February 2016 00.02 GMT Hillar-y Clinton crushed Bernie Sanders in the South Carolina primary and immediately turned to potential battles ahead as she offered a vision for America based on “love and kindness” in stark contrast to the anger and division promoted by Donald Trump. Polls closed at 7pm local time across South Carolina, and within seconds the Associated Press had called a victory for Clinton. Final polls had suggested she was heading for a victory margin of more than 27 points, but the reality was much more overwhelming – with 100% of the votes counted, Clinton led 73.5% to 26% over Sanders. The Vermont senator had in effect conceded defeat within two hours of polls opening Saturday when he flew out of the state, heading for Texas and Minnesota, two of the Super Tuesday battlegrounds looming this week. With the South Carolina stage to herself, Clinton promised: “Tomorrow we take this campaign national.” And in a pointed message to Donald Trump, she said: “Despite what you hear, we don’t need to ‘make America great again’. America has never stopped being great. But we do need to make America whole again. “Instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down barriers. Relishing her victory, she set herself up first as a more rounded candidate than Sanders – “America isn’t a single issue country, my friends” – and then as an optimistic counterpoint to Trump. “I know it sometimes seems a little odd for someone running for president these days, in this time, to say we need more love and kindness in America,” Clinton said. “But I’m telling you from the bottom of my heart, we do.” Associated Press exit polls showed that about six in 10 South Carolina voters were black, a demographic in which Sanders appeared to have had little cut-through. The exit polls also suggested that Clinton won 84% to 16% with black voters. She invoked civil rights heroes Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr and John Lewis as she said America must face the reality of systemic racism in its broken criminal justice and immigration systems. The result in South Carolina means she heads into Tuesday’s contests across 12 states believing she can begin to pull away from her tenacious rival from Vermont. Sanders took off from Dallas bound for Rochester, Minnesota two minutes before polls closed and was in the air when the result was announced. His campaign team sat in silence at the front of the plans as members of the media in the seats behind sought a response to the result. In a statement released by his campaign, Sanders said: “Let me be clear on one thing tonight. This campaign is just beginning. We won a decisive victory in New Hampshire. She won a decisive victory in South Carolina. Now it’s on to Super Tuesday ... Our grassroots political revolution is growing state by state, and we won’t stop now.” After extracting a win from a virtual tie in Iowa, losing overwhelmingly in New Hampshire, and rebounding in Nevada, South Carolina gave Clinton her first big win of the campaign with just three days to go before the Super Tuesday contests, where she is poised to win handily in states with similar electorates. Clinton worked hard in the state, dedicating much of the past week to campaigning in churches, community halls and college campuses. She was joined by a major figure in the civil rights movement, congressman James Clyburn, who refused to endorse a candidate in 2008, and other local politicians. The mothers of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner and other black men killed by police officers also campaigned for her in the state. At almost every event, she spoke forcefully about the women’s struggle. Obama remains wildly popular among Democrats in South Carolina, and especially among black voters. Clinton sought to lay claim to the president’s mantle by embracing his signature policies and emphasizing their closeness. “I’m really proud to stand with President Obama,” Clinton said at an event Kingstree on Thursday. “And I am really proud to stand on the progress he’s made, because I want to build on it and go further. I will not let the Republicans rip it away and set us backwards.” But there were also signs that Clinton still has work to do. On Wednesday she was confronted at a fundraiser in Charleston by Black Lives Matter protesters, who demanded she apologize for the consequences of her husband’s 1994 crime bill and for having called young black males “super-predators” in a 1996 speech on crime. In a statement to the Washington Post, Clinton said “shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today”. Asked about the crime bill during a town hall in Charleston, she said its consequences were “serious” and she had proposed an agenda for healing some of the damage done by the law, especially to communities of color. Sanders spent time and money on the South Carolina primary, tweaking his stump speech to include an anecdote about marching with Martin Luther King Jr, appearing at campaign events with the rapper Killer Mike and airing a radio ad from film director Spike Lee. But Sanders’ team always believed the south would be a uphill struggle compared to more progressive states in the north and west of the country. In South Carolina, Sanders duly struggled to introduce himself to voters who have long known the Clinton name. “I don’t even know Bernie Sanders. Who is that?” said one voter, T Jackson, after leaving a polling station in Hopkins on Saturday. “Nothing against him. I’ve never even heard of him before now. But we [have] known Hillar-y forever.” It was that feeling of familiarity and loyalty that drew Jackson to the polling booth on Saturday morning. “In the last election, we were in line when they declared the winner and I hadn’t even voted yet. So evidently my vote didn’t count,” Jackson said. “It was very disappointing. My vote doesn’t matter. But I vote anyway, I voted today, hoping that it does matter.” Pattie Murray, a preschool teacher from Hopkins, was among a minority of voters who had not yet forgiven Clinton for the heated campaign she and Bill Clinton ran against Obama in 2008. Obama won South Carolina by 28 points, a victory he owed in large part to the support of black voters. “She says that she would keep Obama’s policies and everything,” Murray said, “but she really bashed him when they ran against each other. In the very beginning, she really was really against [him] and basically said he wasn’t the person for our country. Now to get that vote, she’s saying she’ll continue his policy.” On the Sanders plane, as South Carolina receded into the distance, Jane Sanders told reporters the campaign would regard it as a good night if he reached 40% of Democratic voters in the state. Some in the Sanders camp were privately braced for worse than a 20-point gulf – particularly among African American voters. “I think we’re getting a lot better [at reaching African American voters] – it’s just that they didn’t know us,” said Jane Sanders when she was asked by the Guardian why efforts to reach this crucial Democratic constituency appeared to have been unsuccessful. “They didn’t know us in the south generally.” She said: “Hillar-y Clinton has fought three elections through these states. This is our first. From May to December, the media didn’t take [bernie] seriously. They didn’t have a chance to meet him. That’s not because we weren’t trying, but we couldn’t spend as much time in the south as we’d like.” Sanders’ relatively lukewarm position on gun control also appears to have hurt the campaign in South Carolina, where memories of last summer’s shooting at a Charleston church are raw, but Jane Sanders was unrepentant about the more nuanced position. “I find it interesting that there are some states where she’s hit us hard on guns and some states she’s not talking about it,” she said. “Bernie is saying the same thing in every state, so that everybody knows where he stands.” The Sanders team hopes to put South Carolina behind it more quickly than its setback in Nevada, in part because expectations were low but also because it remains confident of picking up large numbers of delegates – if not outright wins – on Super Tuesday. “The mood is good. It’s going as we thought,” said Jane Sanders. “It’s a 50-state election and the states that she is picking up are red states.” She also defended the decision to leave South Carolina so quickly. “They’re just voting today. We want to get to Texas and Minnesota and it’s difficult to get it all in. Time is short.” The reception in Austin, the first of two Texas rallies on Saturday, certainly appeared starkly different. Thousands flocked to a race track outside the liberal city to hear Sanders return to his more typical call for political revolution. Privately, staff say the campaign hopes to pick up delegates rather than win outright in Texas, but the senator did not seem to have gotten the memo about expectations management. “If all of you come out to vote and bring all your friends and family, we are going to win here in Texas,” Sanders said, to wild applause. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/27/Hillarious-clinton-bernie-sanders-south-carolina-primary

Rubio and Cruz go after frontrunner on immigration, healthcare and more Both campaigns claim victory ahead of crucial Super Tuesday races in US 2016 elections Sexual assault allegations against Trump resurface Republican debate in Texas: 11 things we learned Ben Jacobs and Tom Dart in Houston Friday 26 February 2016 07.12 GMT Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz shake hands while Donald Trump stands by. Photograph: David J. Phillip/AP Vids in link http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/25/donald-trump-marco-rubio-ted-cruz-republican-debate-houston

“I want to be like you when I grow up,” Michelle Obama told her. by Kia Makarechi Here’s the right way to start the week: watch this inspiring video of a special White House visit. Virginia McLaurin, a 106-year-old black woman, had dreamed of meeting President Barack Obama. More than a year ago, she recorded a YouTube video expressing her wishes to visit the White House while the nation’s first black president inhabited it. Her wish was recently granted: the White House on Sunday night released a video of McLaurin dancing into a reception room to meet with Obamas, and her joy and pride is infectious. She was invited as part of the White House’s Black History Month celebrations. When the president asked McLaurin if she would like to meet Michelle Obama, the centenarian began dancing over to greet the First Lady. The president, at first, appeared almost concerned about her excitement, suggesting she “slow down now.” “I want to be like you when I grow up,” the First Lady told McLaurin, who said that it was an “honor” to be invited. According to a Facebook page set up in her honor, McLaurin was born in 1909 in South Carolina, and moved to the nation’s capitol in 1941. “I didn’t think I’d ever live to see a colored president,” McLaurin said in the video she posted in 2014. “I am so happy. I pray for you every day of my life.” http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/02/106-year-old-white-house-dancing-video

Dmitry Medvedev rejects claims of civilian bombings and tells Munich conference countries need to build trust Chris Johnston and agencies Saturday 13 February 2016 14.29 GMT The Russian prime minister has said the world is slipping into a “new cold war” after European leaders condemned his country’s airstrikes on Syria and called on Vladimir Putin to end them as a precursor for peace negotiations. Dmitry Medvedev told a security conference in Munich that a lack of cooperation threatened to return the continent to “40 years ago, when a wall was standing in Europe”. He rejected the widely held belief that Russian planes had hit civilian targets in Syria. “There is no evidence of our bombing civilians, even though everyone is accusing us of this,” he said on Saturday. “Russia is not trying to achieve some secret goals in Syria. We are simply trying to protect our national interests … “Creating trust is hard … but we have to start. Our positions differ, but they do not differ as much as 40 years ago when a wall was standing in Europe. “You could say even more sharply: we have fallen into a new cold war,” he said. “Nearly on a daily basis, we are being blamed for the most terrible threat to Nato as a whole, to Europe, to America, to other countries. They make scary movies where Russia starts a nuclear war. I sometimes wonder: are we in 2016 or 1962?” The Nato secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, rejected Medvedev’s accusations: “Russia’s rhetoric, posture and exercises of its nuclear forces are aimed at intimidating its neighbours, undermining trust and stability in Europe.” The Russian prime minister’s comments came as fighting escalated in northern Syria, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying that Turkey had shelled Syrian territories for the second time this month. Medvedev’s French counterpart, Manuel Valls, told the conference: “To find the path to peace again, the Russian bombing of civilians [in Syria] has to stop.” The US secretary of state, John Kerry, said most of Russia’s attacks had been against legitimate opposition groups in Syria. “This is the moment. This is a hinge point,” he said. “Decisions made in the coming days and weeks, and a few months could end the war in Syria – or could define a very difficult set of choices for the future. “The war in Syria has now lasted for almost five years and shows no signs of burning itself out, which is why we are so focused on a political track. If the international community and the Syrians themselves miss the opportunity now before us to achieve that political resolution to the conflict [then] the violence, the bloodshed, the torture, the bombing, and the anguish will continue – so will the siren call to jihad.” However, Russia’s foreign minister said the chances of securing a ceasefire within a week were less than 50% and his country remained deeply suspicious of US intentions. Sergey Lavrov said military cooperation between the US and Russia was the “key tool” to ensuring the humanitarian supplies were delivered and hostilities ended. “If we are moving closer to practical goals of [a] truce then, without cooperation between the military, nothing will work out,” he told the Munich conference. The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said the chance of a truce depended on Russia’s actions: “Unless Russia over the next days is going to stop, or at least significantly scale back that bombing, the moderate armed opposition will not join in this [peace] process. They cannot be expected to join in this process.” Germany’s foreign ministry said Russia’s military action had “seriously compromised” the peace process, while the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said on Twitter: “What is important now is embracing this opportunity, stopping the airstrikes, ceasing targeting civilians and providing humanitarian access.” The Lithuanian president, Dalia Grybauskaitė, told the conference the situation was more serious than the cold war. “We are probably facing a hot war,” she said. “Russia is demonstrating open military aggression in Ukraine, open military aggression in Syria. There is nothing cold about this, it is very hot.” Russian aircraft were seen in action over northern Syria again on Friday. Its intervention in the conflict since late September has significantly strengthened the hand of President Bashar al-Assad, who on Friday vowed to regain control of the entire country. His comments dealt a swift blow to international efforts to secure a ceasefire, deliver aid and promote a negotiated solution to the war that has killed more than a quarter of a million civilians. The Syrian Observatory said that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed by Russian airstrikes in Syria. Kerry said earlier that if the peace plan agreed on Friday failed, more foreign troops could enter the conflict. “If the Assad regime does not live up to its responsibilities, and if the Iranians and the Russians do not hold Assad to the promises that they have made ... then the international community obviously is not going to sit there like fools and watch this,” he said. Çavuşoğlu said Saudi Arabia had sent troops and fighter jets to Turkey’s Incirlik military base ahead of a possible ground invasion of Syria, but did not reveal any numbers. “We have always emphasised the need for an extensive result-oriented strategy in the fight against [isis]. If we have such a strategy, then Turkey and Saudi Arabia may launch an operation from the land,” he told a Turkish newspaper. The Saudi foreign minister said his country would be “ready to participate” in ground action and reiterated a desire to see the Syrian president deposed. “There will be no Bashar al-Assad in the future,” Adel al-Jubeir told Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. “It might take three months, it might take six months or three years – but he will no longer carry responsibility for Syria. Period.” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/13/russia-warns-of-new-cold-war-amid-syria-accusations-munich

Germany will close its border to Algerians, Tunisians and Moroccans and will also prevent migrants from bringing their families to join them for two years Agence France-Presse Friday 29 January 2016 01.03 GMT Germany has moved to toughen its asylum policies as Finland and Sweden announced plans to deport tens of thousands of people in a bid to contain the migrant crisis. Sigmar Gabriel, the vice chancellor, announced that Germany would place Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia on a list of “safe countries of origin” – meaning that migrants from those countries would have little chance of winning asylum. Some migrants would also be blocked from bringing their families to join them in Germany for two years, Gabriel said. The tougher rules come after Germany, the European Union’s powerhouse economy, took in some 1.1 million migrants in 2015 – many of them refugees fleeing conflict in Syria. German chancellor Angela Merkel has come under fierce pressure in recent months to reverse her open-arms policy to those fleeing war and persecution, including opposition from within her own conservative camp. Finland meanwhile joined Sweden on Thursday in announcing plans to deport tens of thousands of refused asylum seekers. The two Nordic countries are both struggling to cope with an influx of refugees and migrants fleeing misery in the Middle East and elsewhere – receiving amongst the highest numbers of arrivals per capita in the EU. The Finnish government expects to deport around two thirds of the 32,000 asylum seekers that arrived in 2015, Paivi Nerg, administrative director of the interior ministry, told AFP. “In principle we speak of about two-thirds, meaning approximately 65% of the 32,000 will get a negative decision (on their asylum applications),” she told AFP. In neighbouring Sweden, interior minister Anders Ygeman said on Wednesday that the government was planning over several years to deport up to 80,000 people whose asylum applications are set to be rejected. “We are talking about 60,000 people but the number could climb to 80,000,” he told Swedish media, adding that, as in Finland, the operation would require the use of specially chartered aircraft. He estimated that Sweden would reject around half of the 163,000 asylum requests received in 2015. Swedish migration minister Morgan Johansson said authorities faced a difficult task in deporting such large numbers, but insisted failed asylum seekers had to return home. “Otherwise we would basically have free immigration and we can’t manage that,” he told news agency TT. The clampdown came as at least 31 more people died trying to reach the European Union. Greek rescuers found 25 bodies, including those of 10 children, off the Aegean island of Samos, in the latest tragedy to strike migrants risking the dangerous Mediterranean crossing hoping to start new lives in Europe. The Italian navy meanwhile said it had recovered six bodies from a sinking dinghy off Libya – and in Bulgaria, the frozen bodies of two men, believed to be migrants, were found near the border with Serbia. Nearly 4,000 people died trying to reach Europe by sea last year, according to the International Organization for Migration. The new German rules on family reunification will mean migrants with so-called “subsidiary protection”, a status just below that of refugee, would be blocked from bringing their families to join them in Germany for two years. The status is granted to some rejected asylum seekers who still cannot be expelled because they risk torture or the death penalty in their own country. The cutoff on migrants from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia follows a chorus of demands in recent weeks to step up expulsions after a rash of sex assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve blamed by police on North Africans. As Europe struggles to respond to its biggest migration crisis since the second world war, a top Dutch politician said the Netherlands was working with some EU members on a plan to send migrants back to Turkish soil. The proposal would see asylum granted to up to 250,000 others already hosted by Turkey, Diederik Samsom said. But rights group Amnesty International blasted the plan, saying it was “fundamentally flawed since it would hinge on illegally returning asylum seekers and refugees”. The UN’s new refugee chief Filippo Grandi said on Thursday that rich countries have the means to take in the world’s refugees, despite the complex political situation in Europe. And he defended the contribution that refugees can play in building Europe’s economy, insisting they should not be seen as a burden. “Refugees have skills. They deserve our efforts,” Grandi told a press conference with OECD chief Angel Gurria in Paris. “Einstein was a refugee. We should not forget that.” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/29/germany-tightens-borders-as-finland-joins-sweden-in-deporting-refugees

The guitarist and songwriter of the San Francisco psychedelicists fell ill earlier this week and died of organ failure and septic shock Associated Press Friday 29 January 2016 08.01 GMT Paul Kantner, a founding member of the Jefferson Airplane who stayed with the seminal San Francisco psychedelic band through its transformation from 1960s hippies to 1970s hit makers under the name Jefferson Starship, has died, aged 74. Kantner, who drew upon his passion for politics and science fiction to help write such classics as and Volunteers, died on Thursday of organ failure and septic shock. He had been admitted to a San Francisco hospital after falling ill earlier in the week, his former girlfriend and publicist Cynthia Bowman, the mother of one of his three children, said. The guitarist and songwriter had survived close brushes with death as a younger man, including a motorcycle accident during the early 60s and a 1980 cerebral haemorrhage, and he recovered from a heart attack last year. Few bands were so identified with San Francisco or so well-embodied the idealism and hedonism of the late 60s as Jefferson Airplane, its message boldly stated on buttons and bumper stickers that read “THE JEFFERSON AIRPLANE LOVES YOU.” The Airplane advocated sex, psychedelic drugs, rebellion and a communal lifestyle, operating out of an eccentric, colonial revival house near Haight-Ashbury. Its members supported various political and social causes, tossed out LSD at concerts and played at both the Monterey and Woodstock festivals. Formed by veterans of the folk circuit in the mid 60s, the Airplane combined folk, rock, blues and jazz and were the first group from a Bay Area scene that also featured Janis Joplin and the Grateful Dead to achieve mainstream success, thanks to the classics and White Rabbit. Besides Kantner, who played rhythm guitar and added backing vocals, the Airplane’s best-known lineup included singers Grace Slick and Marty Balin; lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen; bassist Jack Casady; and drummer Spencer Dryden, who died in 2005. Jefferson Airplane, named in part after blues artist Blind Lemon Jefferson, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and is scheduled to receive the Recording Academy’s lifetime achievement award this year. “He was the first guy I picked for the band and he was the first guy who taught me how to roll a joint,” Balin wrote of Kantner on his Facebook page. “And although I know he liked to play the devil’s advocate, I am sure he has earned his wings now” Kantner, who looked as much like a college student as a rock star with his glasses and shaggy blond hair, did not have the vocal or stage presence of Balin and Slick, or the instrumental power of Kaukonen or Casady. But he became the conscience of the band and by the end of the 60s was shaping its increasingly radical direction, whether co-writing the militant Volunteers with Balin or inserting a profane taunt into his own incendiary , leading to an extended fight with their record company, RCA. Meanwhile, Kantner and Slick reigned as one of rock’s most prominent couples. Rolling Stone would note their contrasting styles, labeling Slick “the Acid Queen of outrageousness” and Kantner her “calm, dry, sardonic flip side.” In 1971, Slick gave birth to their daughter, whom the couple originally wanted to call God, but decided to name China. (China Kantner became an actress and MTV VJ.) Slick and Kantner broke up in the late 1970s and Kantner had a son, Alexander, with Bowman, and another son, Gareth. Kantner was the Airplane’s only native San Franciscan and its most political and experimental thinker. He had been a science fiction reader since childhood and with friends David Crosby and Jerry Garcia among others recorded a 1970 concept album about space travel, Blows Against the Empire, credited to Kantner and Jefferson Starship. Kantner, Crosby and Stephen Stills would collaborate on the escapist, post-apocalypse fantasy Wooden Ships, which Jefferson Airplane and Crosby, Stills and Nash each recorded and performed at Woodstock. With perfect timing for a 60s band, the Airplane began splitting apart at the end of the decade. Kaukonen and Casady founded the blues group Hot Tuna, and Balin, the band’s estranged original leader, also left. In 1974, Kantner and Slick brought in new musicians and renamed the group Jefferson Starship. Their sound softened and, with Balin back, they had hit singles with Miracles and Count On Me among others and a No1 album, Red Octopus. But by the mid-1980s, when Slick and Mickey Thomas were lead vocalists, Kantner thought the music so “mundane” that he left the Jefferson Starship and successfully forced the remaining members not to use the name “Jefferson”. (His former bandmates called themselves Starship and had three No1 songs, including Sara and ). Over the past 30 years, Kantner, Balin and Casady occasionally performed as the KBC Band and a reunited Airplane briefly toured and recorded. Kantner made a handful of solo and Jefferson Starships albums and used various musicians in the studio and on the road, including daughter China on vocals and son Alexander on bass. Kantner was born in 1941, the musical and nonconforming son of a traveling salesman. He dropped out of college to pursue a career in folk music and became friendly with Crosby and future Starship member David Freiberg, spending days and nights on the beach, strumming guitars and indulging in Crosby’s premium stash of marijuana. He spent much of his life in his native city, and would look back years later and remember a golden age of art, free love and joyous possibility. He joked that San Francisco was a privileged haven, “49 square miles surrounded by reality”. He believed deeply in the 60s dream, often citing an anecdote that for a few days in 1966 the stars were so aligned that you could expect any wish to be granted. “Which, needless to say, it was,” he liked to add. Paul Kantner … On stage in 2013. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/jan/29/jefferson-airplane-founder-paul-kantner-dies-aged-74

Private firm to stop making asylum seekers in Cardiff wear coloured bands to ensure they receive meals Diane Taylor and Chris Johnston Monday 25 January 2016 14.19 GMT A private firm that houses asylum seekers will stop making them wear coloured wristbands after the policy was criticised. Clearsprings Ready Homes, which has a contract with the Home Office to accommodate newly arrived asylum seekers in Cardiff, defended the used of the wristbands but said it was looking at alternative ways of managing “the fair provision of support”. Jo Stevens, the shadow justice minister and Labour MP for Cardiff Central, had said earlier that she had “grave concerns” about the practice at Lynx House in Cardiff. Forcing asylum seekers, who cannot work and are not given money, to wear the wristbands in Cardiff echoes the recent “red door” controversy in Middlesbrough, when refugees complained that having their doors painted red by G4S, the private firm contracted to house them, made them easy targets for abuse. The first minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, said he was appalled at the use of wristbands. “This is completely unacceptable and goes against everything we stand for as a nation,” he said. “My officials had been in touch with Clearsprings about this issue and I expect the Home Office to take action on this immediately. I will be contacting them today to register our serious concerns.” In a statement on Monday, Clearsprings Ready Homes said: “Asylum seekers who spend their initial few weeks at our full-board accommodation in Cardiff have been provided with wristbands since May 2015 to ensure they receive the services they are entitled to and to make sure those more vulnerable asylum seekers have access to their specific requirements. “As in numerous such establishments where large numbers of people are being provided with services, wristbands are considered to be one of the most reliable and effective ways of guaranteeing delivery. We are always reviewing the way we supply our services and have decided to cease the use of wristbands as of Monday 25 January and will look for an alternative way of managing the fair provision of support.” The firm said it had been providing such services to the Home Office for 15 years and was “grateful for feedback to help improve the safety and effectiveness of their services”. Stevens welcomed the move but said serious questions about the policy remained unanswered by the Home Office. She praised the Guardian for raising the issue, and said that following her intervention and pressing from “local asylum seeker groups ... we have secured an end to this crass and unnecessary wristband policy”. “However, there remain serious questions which I’m raising with the Home Office minister about how this policy was allowed to operate in the first place and whether it is operating elsewhere in other Home office temporary accommodation units.” Stevens has been attempting to ask an urgent question in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon and has been contacting the whips’ office. Her intervention followed a Guardian report on Sunday that asylum seekers housed by Clearsprings had been told to wear the wristbands at all times or they would not be fed. It is believed Clearsprings will switch to a temporary manual system for identifying residents entitled to meals. Photo ID cards would be introduced within the next few weeks. Stevens said on Sunday: “The reported abuse is completely unrepresentative of the kindness and generosity that my constituents and people across the whole of Cardiff have shown to asylum seekers and refugees over a long period of time.” She said she would petition in parliament for an investigation into why the practice had been permitted. Eric Ngalle, 36, spent a month in Lynx House, where initial accommodation is provided for asylum seekers, before he was granted refugee status in November 2015. He is now working as a writer and making a theatre production with the Arts Council of Wales. “My time in Lynx House was one of the most horrible experiences in my life. I hated wearing the wristbands and sometimes refused to wear them and was turned away from food,” he said. “If we refused to wear the wristbands we were told we would be reported to the Home Office. Some staff implemented this policy in a more drastic way than others. I made a complaint about the wristbands to Clearsprings but nothing was done. We had to walk from accommodation about 10 minutes away to Lynx House to get food and sometimes when we were walking down the street with our wristbands showing. “On the road we had to walk down there is often heavy traffic. Sometimes drivers would see our wristbands, start honking their horns and shout out of the window, ‘Go back to your country.’ Some people made terrible remarks to us. “If you take off the wristband you can’t reseal it back on to your wrist so if you want to eat you have to wear it all the time. Labelling them on a daily basis with silver, red or blue tags only serves as a reminder that they are still wearing the garments of an outcast.” Maher, 41, who recently stayed at Lynx House but has now been granted refugee status, said he was angry about being forced to wear the wristband. “When you walk down the street all the local people who see this brightly coloured band know who we are and where we live,” he said. “We feel we are not equal with this community. All the time I tried to hide the band so people could not see it.” Asylum seekers in the UK are not allowed to work or claim mainstream benefits. Some receive a small amount of money or an Azure card to use in supermarkets. But newly arrived asylum seekers placed in what is known as initial accommodation by the Home Office receive neither money nor an Azure card. They are placed in hotel-style accommodation and given three basic meals a day. Mogdad Abdeen, 24, a human rights activist from Sudan, spent three months in Lynx House at the end of last year. He has been moved to different accommodation in Cardiff while he waits for a decision on his claim. “This wristband is discrimination, clear and simple. No band, no food. We are made to feel that we are second-class humans. People in Lynx House are scared of meeting new people in case they see the wristband and give them problems. “Sometimes when we are standing outside Lynx House queueing for food people shout out of their car windows ‘refugee, refugee’. When we complain about the wristbands nobody listens to us.” When some of the occupants of Lynx House were asked if they were willing to be identified, all refused, saying they were scared they might be punished for speaking out. Instead they agreed to have their hands photographed wearing the bands. Chloe Marong, the coordinator of the Trinity Centre in Cardiff, which supports asylum seekers and refugees, has expressed concern about the wristbands. “We have raised concerns about these wristbands with the Home Office and Clearsprings but so far nothing has been done. These wristbands mark asylum seekers out and further stigmatises them in an already very hostile environment,” she said. Adam Hundt of Deighton Pierce Glynn solicitors said: “Concerns about this practice have been raised with us and we have been looking at it. Asylum seekers are a very scared and vulnerable group and the last thing they want to do is stand out from the crowd. “In some areas it can be dangerous for them to do so, so it is easy to understand how asylum seekers feel they are being branded with these brightly coloured wristbands which draw unwelcome attention to them and make them feel ashamed. It is particularly concerning that wearing the wristbands is linked to whether or not they get food or go hungry. It should be possible to come up with a system to ensure that people are fed without publicly humiliating them and undermining race relations.” ‘When we complain about the wristbands nobody listens to us,’ says Mogdad Abdeen. Photograph: Gareth Everett/Huw Evans Agency http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/25/government-to-be-challenged-in-commons-over-refugee-wristbands

Hollywood actor met Mexican kingpin, now sought by US for extradition, while he was on the run following prison escape David Agren in Mexico City Sunday 10 January 2016 06.03 GMT Actor and activist Sean Penn turned gonzo journalist and got an interview with the world’s most wanted man, Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, just after the Mexican drug baron escaped from a maximum-security prison, it has emerged. At his hideouts in the impenetrable hills of western Mexico, Guzmán told the Hollywood star about his drugs business, rags-to-riches life story and how he hired European engineers to help him to slip out of the prison. Mexican authorities claim they monitored Penn’s movements after they found out about his meeting with Guzmán in October and that helped lead them to a ranch where El Chapo was staying. Guzmán, fresh from his escape through an expertly engineered tunnel, told Penn in a seven-hour visit and follow-up video for an article published in Rolling Stone: “I supply more heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and marijuana than anybody else in the world … I have a fleet of submarines, airplanes, trucks and boats.” It’s an incredible accumulation of weaponry and wealth for a man who identified himself as a farmer in the last interview he gave more than two decades ago. He told Penn, who says he made contact with the drug lord through the Mexican actor Kate del Castillo, that he had not done drugs in 20 years and that: “I don’t want to be portrayed as a nun.” Navy marines found Guzmán on Friday at a no-tell motel in the tomato-growing town of Los Mochis – from which he attempted to escape, appropriately enough, through a tunnel. In the end, it appears El Chapo’s Hollywood ambitions cost him. Mexican officials marched him in front of the media on Friday night at the Mexico City airport, where the attorney general, Arely Gómez, said El Chapo had wanted to make a biopic and reached out to actors and producers. Gómez also said investigators gathered information about potential participants in the film meeting with lawyers representing El Chapo. She did not mention any actors by name, but Penn is the only person to reveal contact with El Chapo. In his Rolling Stone story, Penn says he got in touch with Guzmán via Del Castillo, star of the narco-themed soap series La Reina del Sur, who made public statements against the Mexican government in 2012, saying: “Today I believe more in Chapo Guzmán than in the governments that hide the truth, even if it’s painful.” She added: “Mr Chapo, wouldn’t it be cool if you started trafficking in love?” After he was imprisoned Guzmán contacted Del Castillo through his lawyers. At the time Hollywood producers were peppering him with offers to portray his life story. They agreed to produce a film and traded messages via BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) after his escape in July 2015. Del Castillo accompanied Penn on his trip to interview El Chapo and served as a translator. Penn recalls arriving at El Chapo’s lair, where, “[Guzmán] opens Kate’s door and greets her like a daughter returning from college.” Penn mentions divisive presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, whose head Guzman reputedly put a $100m bounty on over anti-Latino comments. “Ah! Mi amigo!” Guzmán responds. In July 2015 Guzmán escaped the Altiplano prison near Mexico City by squeezing through a hole in his cell’s shower area and into a tunnel nearly a mile long. To build the tunnel he flew in German engineers, who advised his workers on how to address a problem of low-lying water under the prison. After slipping away, federal forces nearly killed him in the Sierra Madre mountains, where he was hiding out. He escaped with only a leg injury, according to details later provided to the media by the Mexican government. Guzmán recounted the close call in a BBM to Del Castillo: “Two helicopters and 6 BlackHawks began a confrontation upon their arrival. The marines dispersed throughout the farms. The families had to escape and abandon their homes with the fear of being killed. “We still don’t know how many dead in total.” Guzmán sent many men to early graves. His attempts to seize the coveted cocaine-trafficking corridor through Ciudad Juárez from the incumbent Juárez cartel turned the border town into the murder capital of the world. Guzmán appears sanguine about his past, saying: “Well, it’s a reality that drugs destroy. “Unfortunately, as I said, where I grew up there was no other way and there still isn’t a way to survive.” Penn often expresses admiration for Guzmán and his exploits, referring to him as a Robin Hood figure in Sinaloa state, showering locals with services. Government statistics still show his home municipality of Badiraguato as one of the poorest in country. The actor strikes an apologetic tone at times, writing: “I take no pride in keeping secrets that may be perceived as protecting criminals.” But he also appears anxious to play up perceived virtues. “I took some comfort in a unique aspect of El Chapo’s reputation among the heads of drug cartels in Mexico: that, unlike many of his counterparts who engage in gratuitous kidnapping and murder, El Chapo is a businessman first, and only resorts to violence when he deems it advantageous to himself or his business interests,” Penn writes. Rolling Stone said it submitted the story to Guzmán for his approval, and he allowed it to run as written. Guzmán re-entered the Altiplano prison – guarded by tanks – on Friday night. On Saturday, the Mexican government said it started processing extradition orders against Guzmán brought by the US government on drug, murder and money laundering charges. The attorney general’s office said in a statement: “With the capture of Guzmán Loera it should start the respective extradition proceedings.” The office added that two federal judges had issued orders for his apprehension and extradition and that Guzmán had 20 days to present evidence in his defense. His lawyers have said they would seek injunctions against extradition – a process that could keep Guzmán in Mexico longer than many in the government might want. The prospect of extradition has spooked Guzmán previously. He once escaped from the Puente Grande prison in Guadalajara by being wheeled out of the front door in a laundry cart. Press reports said he had run his cartel from the prison, threw parties and ordered in sex workers, but made his escape as extradition proceedings advanced to an uncomfortable point. The Mexican government opted against extraditing him after his February 2014 arrest. The then attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam, infamously said Guzmán would eventually arrive in the US – after serving his sentence in Mexico “[in] about 300, 400 years”. Sean Penn with the then fugitive Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán in 2015. Photograph: Sean Penn/Rolling Stone http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/10/el-chapo-caught-on-camera-by-sean-penn-as-biopic-mystery-unfolds

Just because xenophobes are fanning the flames doesn’t mean we should censor the discussion about the assaults in German cities on New Year’s Eve Friday 8 January 2016 07.00 GMT By Gaby Hinsliff On New Year’s Eve, something happened that I don’t really want to talk about. It happened not to me but to about 100 women in Cologne and other German cities, some of whom probably didn’t want to talk about it either; it often takes a while for victims to report sexual assault to the police. But that’s not quite why it has taken nearly a week to piece together the story of a spate of muggings and sexual attacks carried out that night by seemingly organised gangs of young men. Many Germans are asking why politicians, police and broadcasters seem so reluctant to discuss what happened under cover of the crowds (the state broadcaster EZF apologised for not covering the attacks until Tuesday), and whether it’s because the attackers are widely described as looking Arab or north African. Which is why, of course, liberals like me are reluctant to talk about it. For xenophobes and racists, or merely anyone opposed to immigration, this story is Christmas come a week late. Rightwing politicians are salivating at this juicy new angle of attack on Angela Merkel’s “open door” refugee policy – although German authorities say the perpetrators’ origins are unknown and there’s no evidence linking recently arrived refugees to the attacks. Just watch the misogynistic dinosaurs defending young women’s right to party, now that it’s a legitimate way of attacking immigration. How long before Nigel Farage, recently reduced to grabbing headlines by suggesting someone might have murderously sabotaged his Volvo, takes up a story that seems tailor-made for the year of a likely EU referendum? British newspapers were yesterday warning of an immigrant “demographic timebomb”, on the grounds that migrants are disproportionately young men and young men are disproportionately responsible for violent crime. You’d never know that until now the demographic timebomb everyone feared was an ageing Europe, devoid of fit young working people to fund their pensions. So no wonder liberals would do anything to avoid fanning these flames, since we see in all this righteous indignation a blatantly racist old trope about barbarians at the gates. We bend over backwards to report it responsibly, to moderate the frothing rage bubbling up below the line. Quite rightly, we argue that punishing millions of refugees for the actions of a few criminals of unknown origin makes no more sense than branding all white men paedophiles because of Jimmy Savile. Or we say there have always been muggers and gropers, they’re only global news when they’re not white. But by trying not to give succour to racists, the risk is that we end up miserably self-censoring, giving the “why can’t we talk about immigration?” brigade ammunition for their conspiracy theories. Journalism isn’t really journalism when it avoids stories for fear of how some might react. The parallels between German politicians’ discomfort over Cologne and Britain’s response to predominantly Asian gangs grooming girls in Rotherham for sexual exploitation aren’t exact, but there are lessons to be learned. The first is that pushing victims under the carpet for the sake of cohesion is dangerous. When allegations about older Asian men preying on white girls in northern cities initially surfaced, well over a decade ago, it was the BNP that first took up the cudgels. Unfortunately, that meant journalists and politicians instinctively shied away, wary of giving the BNP publicity. It’s too simplistic to blame the failure to tackle grooming on so-called political correctness alone – the profoundly politically incorrect tendency to see exploited girls as “slags” complicit in their abuse, bog-standard incompetence and even alleged corruption played significant parts – but if everyone had asked harder questions a decade ago then it seems likely some children wouldn’t have suffered. It was a reminder that victims are victims, even when championed by the wrong people for the wrong reasons. But the second important lesson is that, perhaps surprisingly, confronting the links between ethnicity or culture and crime doesn’t necessarily change the response all that much. The New Year’s Eve attacks are shocking at least partly because they’re confusing. If they were primarily sexually motivated, done for kicks or fuelled by assumptions about western women’s sexual availability, then surely there would be no reason to steal the victims’ valuables. Rapists seek power, not money. But if these were primarily robberies, and the groping just a novel way of disorientating victims long enough to pick their pockets, it’s odd that some of the assaults were reportedly so serious and that not all victims lost valuables. Perhaps different crimes are simply being lumped under one umbrella, but as with the mob assaults on women, including journalists covering protests in Tahrir Square, where sexual opportunism was hard to distinguish from political intimidation, this feels like a new phenomenon. Liberals shouldn’t be afraid to ask hard questions. Young German women thankfully enjoy historically unprecedented economic and sexual freedom, with their expensive smartphones and their right to celebrate New Year’s Eve however they want. The same isn’t always true of young male migrants exchanging life under repressive regimes, where they may at least have enjoyed superiority over women, for scraping by at the bottom of Europe’s social and economic food chain. It is not madness to ask if this has anything to do with attacks that render confident, seemingly lucky young women humiliated and powerless. But even if it does, the answer wouldn’t be to halt immigration – even if that were possible, which it isn’t regardless of whether Britain leaves the EU – just in case a few immigrants are sexually aggressive, any more than the answer to Savile is to keep all men away from children. Too often anti-immigrant feeling stems from what’s really a long-running failure of the state – to protect children at risk, to provide enough social housing or school places, to police what has reportedly been a rough area of Cologne for years – which becomes more visible as the population grows. And since that growth can’t be turned on and off like a tap, whatever some politicians say, the answer is for governments to do what we elect them to do: rise to the challenge, calm the fear that breeds extremism by demonstrating they can cope. Which in this case means treating this crime wave exactly as they would any other: policing more effectively, with extra manpower if necessary, and being upfront at all times about doing so. Bluster and blame fools nobody. But neither, it turns out, does queasy silence. ‘No wonder liberals would do anything to avoid fanning these flames, since we see in this righteous indignation a racist old trope about barbarians at the gates.’ Illustration by Ben Jennings http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/08/cologne-attacks-hard-questions-new-years-eve

Head of international monitoring agency says claimed H- bomb appears to be no more powerful than previous test Julian Borger World affairs editor, and Justin McCurry in Tokyo Wednesday 6 January 2016 13.50 GMT The suspected North Korean nuclear test appears to be “pretty similar” to Pyongyang’s last test in 2013, according to the head of the international agency tasked with monitoring such incidents. This initial finding adds to scepticism about the North Korean claim that it has tested a much more powerful hydrogen bomb – a development that, if true, would mark significant progress in its nuclear capability. The announcement on North Korean TV that a “miniaturised hydrogen bomb” was successfully tested underground on Wednesday morning provoked outrage from the US, China, Japan, South Korea, the United Nations and Nato. The 2013 test was estimated to have involved an atomic fission device with a yield of between six and nine kilotons, smaller than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hydrogen – or thermonuclear – weapons use a primary fission blast to set off a much bigger blast caused by fusion. The yield is typically more than a thousand times greater. Nuclear experts said that North Korea could be experimenting with a hybrid - a boosted fission device, in which small amounts of hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium are placed inside the core of an atomic bomb to increase its yield through fusion. But if that had been successful it should have produced a yield in the tens of kilotons range. The seismic shock from the new suspected test – the country’s fourth nuclear test if confirmed – was detected and reported by the preparatory commission for the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty Organisation, based in Vienna, which monitors suspected tests while seeking to rally international support to bring the test ban into force. “We have about 30 stations who have seen the event through this point in time. That was a couple of hours after the event. Our analysts are working hard to try to give the best estimates and fine-tune the data in order for us to have the best technical specification of this event,” Lassina Zerbo, the commission’s executive secretary, told the Guardian. Zerbo said that the initial seismic readings suggested a similar test to the one carried out by North Korea three years ago. “It is close to what happened in 2013. I think they are pretty similar in terms of location, magnitude and so forth.” He added that confirmation of a nuclear test would only come once winds had driven particles released in the blast towards CTBTO monitoring stations in countries neighbouring North Korea. “To confirm if an event is nuclear we need the smoking gun, which is the radio isotopes that are released from a blast,” Zerbo said. “We have a network of stations and the winds will blow the venting to our stations. We have some stations in Japan, in Russia and in the vicinity and those stations may be able to pick up something in the next 48 or 72 hours.” It will not in the CTBTO commission’s mandate to determine what kind of weapon has been tested, but scientists should be able to determine whether a hydrogen bomb was involved on the basis of which radionuclides are picked up. In 2013, it took 50 days for such particles to be detected but analysts are hopeful confirmation of this blast will come earlier as the US Geological Survey estimated that the suspected test was close to the surface. Zerbo said the best way for the international community to put pressure on North Korea or any other states contemplating new nuclear tests, is for countries who have so far not ratified the comprehensive test-ban treaty to join. Twenty years after the treaty was adopted by the UN, there are still eight key states who need to join for it to become legally binding. Five of those – the US, Iran, Israel, Egypt and China – have signed but not ratified it. Another three – North Korea, India and Pakistan – have not even signed it. “These eight countries should show leadership to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” Zerbo said. “We need people to work on this issue. We don’t want to see more tests before people think this treaty is important. The only way to stop this is to make it legally binding. I hope this will be the last wake-up call to the international community to act on this treaty.” The North Korean state television broadcast said the test was a “complete success” and that it had propelled the country into the “rank of advanced nuclear states”. It had been overseen by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and conducted ahead of his 33rd birthday this Friday. “[North Korea’s] fate must not be protected by any forces, only by [North Korea] itself,” the broadcast said. North Korea would not abandon its nuclear weapons program as long as the US maintained what it called “its stance of aggression”. “The US has gathered forces hostile to DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] and raised a slanderous human rights issue to hinder DPRK’s improvement,” it said. “It is just to have H-bomb as self-defence against the US having numerous and humongous nuclear weapons. The DPRK’s fate must not be protected by any forces but DPRK itself.” North Korea conducted nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013, drawing condemnation and rounds of UN sanctions banning trade and financing activities that aid its weapons programme. A successful fourth test could deepen North Korea’s international isolation if the UN security council decided to respond with more sanctions. Pyongyang is thought to have developed several crude nuclear weapons. The test is bound to ratchet up tensions between the isolated country and its neighbours as well as Washington. China’s foreign ministry said that Beijing did not have advance knowledge of the test and added that it firmly opposed Pyongyang’s action. The South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, said the country would take decisive measures against any additional provocations by North Korea and work with the international community to make sure the country pays the price for its latest nuclear test. Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said his country would make a firm response to North Korea’s challenge against nuclear non-proliferation, calling its test a threat to Japan’s security. The UN security council was planning to meet on Wednesday in New York to discuss North Korea’s nuclear test, council diplomats said. The White House said it could not confirm North Korea’s claims, but added the US would respond appropriately to provocations and defend its allies. The EU said the test was a “grave violation” of UN resolutions. Philip Hammond, the British foreign secretary, said during a visit to Beijing: “I think I can say that Britain and China are pretty much completely aligned on North Korean nuclear. We both strongly oppose the acquisition or testing of nuclear weapons by North Korea and we both want to see a resumption of the six-party talks.” Since becoming North Korean leader in late 2011, Kim has stepped up condemnation of joint US-South Korean military drills he believes are preparation for an invasion. In early 2013, Kim responded to UN sanctions imposed after North Korea’s third nuclear test by unleashing a barrage of threats aimed at South Korea, the US and Japan. Kim appears to have caught the world off-guard yet again. He did not mention his country’s pursuit of a nuclear deterrent in his new year address, an omission some analysts said was designed to improve the prospects of a summit with the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping. Speculation that the regime in Pyongyang had conducted a surprise nuclear test on Wednesday arose after seismologists from South Korea, China and other countries said they had detected a “manmade” earthquake in the country that could have been caused by an explosion. The US last month dismissed Kim’s claims that his country had developed a hydrogen bomb. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/06/north-korea-hydrogen-bomb-test-claim-met-with-increasing-scepticism

International Organisation for Migration announces latest figures, with Greek island of Lesbos now the main refugee gateway Patrick Kingsley Migration correspondent Tuesday 22 December 2015 12.43 GMT More than a million people have now reached Europe through irregular means in 2015, the International Organisation for Migration has announced, in what constitutes the continent’s biggest wave of mass migration since the aftermath of the second world war. Out of a total of 1,005,504 arrivals by 21 December, the vast majority – 816,752 – arrived by sea in Greece, the IOM said. A further 150,317 arrived by sea in Italy, with much smaller figures for Spain, Malta and Cyprus. A total of 34,215 crossed by land routes, such as over the Turkish-Bulgarian border. The overall figure is a four-fold increase from 2014’s figures, and has largely been driven by Syrians fleeing their country’s civil war. Afghans, Iraqis and Eritreans fleeing conflict and repression are the other significant national groups. The European migration flow is nevertheless far more manageable than in the Middle East, where roughly 2.2 million Syrian refugees live in Turkey alone. In Lebanon, 1.1 million Syrians form about one-fifth of the country’s total population, while Jordan’s 633,000 registered Syrian refugees make up around a tenth of the total. The denial of basic rights to refugees in those countries, where almost all Syrians do not have the right to work, is one of the causes of Europe’s migration crisis. Refugees who have lived for several years in legal limbo are now coming to Europe to claim the rights bestowed on them by the 1951 UN refugee convention. “In Jordan, life is so difficult,” said Nemer, a 24-year-old Syrian student, minutes after landing this week on the Greek island of Lesbos. “There’s no [legal] work. I can’t go to university. There’s no hope. And in Turkey it’s the same thing: no work and no hope.” Other refugees are fleeing directly from the war zones themselves. Aruba al-Rifai, a 44-year-old civil servant from the outskirts of Damascus, arrived on Lesbos this week having come straight from Syria. “The bombs are getting worse, and it’s just the beginning,” said Rifai. “I come to Europe to feel like a human being.” Lesbos is now the main refugee gateway to Europe, with just under half of those entering the continent in 2015 doing so by using the island as a staging post between the Greek mainland and the nearby shores of Turkey. Despite the worsening weather, and despite a so-called crackdown on Turkey’s people-smugglers, the numbers arriving in December are still higher than in June and July. Over 15 boats arrived on Lesbos on Monday. Across the Greek islands, the average number of refugees arriving each day in December is 3,338, lower than the October peak of 6,828, but far higher than July’s 1,771. The IOM data is the latest in a slew of different and sometimes contradictory figures being used to quantify the European migration crisis. Other sources include the UN refugee agency, which is not publicly monitoring land arrivals; Frontex, the EU border agency, which sometimes double-counts people; and Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, whose data conflates numbers from the refugee crisis with those that refer to internal European migration. Between 12 and 14 million Europeans are estimated to have been displaced in the aftermath of the second world war. The record movement of people into Europe is a symptom of a record level of disruption around the globe, with numbers of refugees and internally displaced people far surpassing 60 million, UNHCR said last week. “I don’t understand why people are insisting that this is a European problem. This is a global issue,” Michael Moller, director of the UN office in Geneva, told a news conference on Tuesday. The UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres called on Friday for a “massive resettlement” of Syrian and other refugees within Europe, to distribute many hundreds of thousands of people before the continent’s asylum system crumbles. He called for European countries to recognise the positive contributions made by refugees and migrants and to honour what he said were “core European values: protecting lives, upholding human rights and promoting tolerance and diversity.” Arrivals chart (country by country) in link http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/22/one-million-migrants-and-refugees-have-reached-europe-this-year-iom

Republican frontrunner wants ‘total and complete shutdown’ of borders to Muslims after San Bernardino shooting in latest boundary-pushing proposal Ed Pilkington in Charleston, South Carolina Tuesday 8 December 2015 00.27 GMT Donald Trump, the leading contender to become the Republican party’s nominee for US presidential candidate, has called for a “total and complete shutdown” of the country’s borders to Muslims in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack. Trump made his most extreme pledge yet – in a race in which he has consistently pushed the boat out on issues of race and immigration – in a statement released to the media through his presidential campaign team. He said there was such hatred among Muslims around the world towards Americans that it was necessary to rebuff them en masse, until the problem was better understood. “Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” the billionaire real estate developer said. Trump put out his incendiary proposal just hours before he was scheduled to appear at a rally on board the USS Yorktown, a second world war aircraft carrier that is berthed near Charleston, South Carolina. The military location was carefully chosen for an address that falls on the 74th anniversary of the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor that brought America into the war. After being interrupted several times aboard the ship, he said the proposal was “probably not politically correct, but I don’t care”. To justify his extreme call for a total rejection of all Muslims seeking to enter the US, Trump turned to what he claimed to be polling data that underlined what he said was the violent hatred of followers of the faith toward Americans. However, the statement cites the Center for Security Policy, an organisation branded extremist by anti-race-hatred campaigners at the Southern Poverty Law Center. “Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won’t convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women,” Trump’s “policy statement” said. The former reality TV star added: “Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine.” Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said Trump’s proposed ban would apply to “everybody”, including Muslims seeking immigration visas as well as tourists seeking to enter the country. Another Trump staffer confirmed that the ban would also apply to American Muslims who were currently overseas – presumably including members of the military and diplomatic service. “This does not apply to people living in the country,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News, “but we have to be vigilant.” In an interview with the Guardian, Trump senior policy adviser Sam Clovis said: “I don’t think there is anything wrong about asking about religious affiliation.” Trump’s remarks immediately drew condemnation from Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley, who tweeted: “@realdonaldtrump removes all doubt: he is running for President as a fascist demagogue.” Other politicians on both sides of the aisle quickly followed suit – including former vice-president **** Cheney. Trump has come under fire before for his contentious views on how to deal with the threat of domestic radicalization of Muslims. He has refused to rule out creating a government database of all American Muslims. He has also called for the deportation of 11 million undocumented Hispanics, as well as said were he elected president, he would build a wall along the border with Mexico. Since the Paris attacks orchestrated by Islamic State, and last week’s attack in San Bernardino, California by a married couple inspired by the terror group, Trump has sought to build his already substantial lead over his Republican presidential rivals by portraying himself as being tougher than all others on national security. He responded in a tweet on Sunday night to President Obama’s Oval Office address on combating the Isis threat by saying: “Is that all there is? We need a new President – FAST!” In his address to the nation on Sunday night, the president was at his most passionate when he made an appeal to Americans for tolerance in the aftermath of the California shooting. Obama specifically sought to underscore that while Muslims have a responsibility to identify and reject extremism within their ranks, Americans cannot lose sight of the fact that the vast majority of Islam’s more than a billion followers are peaceful. “We cannot turn against one another by letting this fight be defined as a war between America and Islam,” Obama said. “That, too, is what groups like Isil want. Isil does not speak for Islam. They are thugs and killers. Part of a cult of death. And they account for a tiny fraction of a more than a billion Muslims around the world, including millions of patriotic Muslim Americans who reject their hateful ideology. “Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors. Our co-workers. Our sports heroes. And, yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country,” he added. “We have to remember that.” Trump’s threat was met with perplexed anger on the part of prominent Muslim American groups. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the largest such group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said on Twitter: “Where is there left for him to go? Are we talking internment camps? Are we talking the final solution?” Republican presidential rival Lindsey Graham, one of a number who have seen their prospects of making headway in the campaign subsumed by Trump’s dominance, said: “What has been in the past absurd and hateful has turned dangerous.” He told the Guardian: “Donald Trump today took xenophobia and religious bigotry to a new level. His comments are hurting the war effort and putting our diplomats and soldiers serving in the Middle East at risk. The way to win this war is to reach to the vast majority of people in Islamic faith who reject Isil and provide them the capability to resist this ideology. “Today’s statement embraces a ‘fortress America’ approach, is doomed to fail and shows a complete lack of understanding by Donald Trump as to what the war is all about. As to interpreters and others who have helped American military in Iraq and Afghanistan, this policy, if enacted, would be a death sentence.” Trump’s choice of polling data to hold up his highly controversial views was in itself inflammatory. He cited data that purported to show that a quarter of those Muslims polled – Trump did not specify what the sample group was, nor even what part of the world he was referring to – “agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of global jihad”. More than half of the unspecified sample group “agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah”. The data was drawn from the Center for Security Policy, a neoconservative thinktank based in Washington DC whose founder and president, Frank Gaffney, is a prominent US Islamophobe. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate speech in the country, has described Gaffney as being “gripped by paranoid fantasies about Muslims destroying the west from within”. The SPLC said that “Gaffney believes that ‘creeping Shariah’, or Islamic religious law, is a dire threat to American democracy”. In 2011, Gaffney, a former Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, was barred from the influential Conservative Political Action Conference having suggested that two of its organizers had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. Additional reporting by Ben Jacobs in Washington http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/07/donald-trump-ban-all-muslims-entering-us-san-bernardino-shooting

Frontrunner for Republican presidential nomination makes announcement as outcry over his suggestion that Muslims should be banned from US continues Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem and Ben Jacobs in Washington Thursday 10 December 2015 12.59 GMT Donald Trump has said he will “postpone” a trip to Israel and a meeting with the country’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, until “after I become president of the US”. Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump I have decided to postpone my trip to Israel and to schedule my meeting with @Netanyahu at a later date after I become President of the U.S. 1:12 PM - 10 Dec 2015 4,015 4,015 Retweets 7,055 Netanyahu had on Wednesday confirmed he would meet the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination to succeed Barack Obama in the White House despite an international outcry over his suggestion that Muslims should be banned from entering the US. Several hours after confirming the meeting, Netanyahu’s office tweeted that the prime minister rejected Trump’s comments about Muslims but had agreed to meet any US presidential candidate who visited Israel. “This policy does not represent an endorsement of any candidate or his or her views. Rather, it is an expression of the importance that PM Netanyahu attributes to the strong alliance between Israel and the United States,” the tweets said. Trump’s visit had been opposed by dozens of Israeli MPs – both Jews and Arabs – after his remarks drew condemnation across the Israeli political spectrum. The cancellation also followed reports in the Israeli media that Trump had requested a visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount religious site, revered by Muslims and Jews alike, and home to the al-Aqsa mosque – one of the most important sites in Islam. Some 37 Israeli MPs had signed a letter asking that Trump not be allowed to visit in light of his remarks. The letter, drafted by MP Michal Rozin, and mainly signed by opposition lawmakers, said that, “while leaders around the world condemn the Republican presidential candidate’s racist and outrageous remarks, Netanyahu is warmly embracing him” and any meeting would “disgrace Israel’s democratic character and hurt its Muslim citizens”. Equally damaging for Trump was the fact that Israel’s rightwing energy minister, Yuval Steinitz, one of Netanyahu’s closest political allies, had weighed in, criticising Trump’s remarks. “I recommend fighting terrorist and extremist Islam, but I would not declare a boycott of, ostracism against, or war on Muslims in general,” Steinitz told Israel’s Army Radio. Explaining his decision, Trump, who leads opinion polls in the US Republican nominating race, told Fox News he decided to postpone because “I didn’t want to put him [Netanyahu] under pressure.” “I also did it because I’m in the midst of a very powerful campaign that’s going very well and it [the trip] was not that easy to do,” Trump added. Netanyahu’s office insisted it had not intervened over the cancellation and had not spoken to Trump about his decision. Trump’s proposed visit had clearly created problems for Netanyahu, whose office had declined to comment on Tuesday about the billionaire’s intended trip, then said he was still welcome on Wednesday. By Wednesday evening, however, Netanyahu was seeking to distance himself more forcefully from Trump. A statement released by the prime minister’s office said: “The State of Israel respects all religions and protects stringently the rights of all its citizens. At the same time, Israel is struggling with extremist Islam that is attacking Muslims, Christian and Jews as one and is threatening the entire world.” The cancellation is a blow to Trump, with Israel treated as a regular campaign stop for many US presidential candidates. As Noah Pollak, the executive director for the Emergency Committee for Israel said: “Israelis appreciate American moral support and will always give our politicians a gracious reception. For the candidates, visiting is an easy way to be seen showing support for a close ally and gaining exposure to Middle East policy issues.” However, Pollak pointed out “trashing anyone who disagrees with him works for Trump domestically, but it won’t work with the prime minister of a close ally who is especially beloved by Republicans. Netanyahu criticized Trump, and Trump can’t attack him. The trip would have been humiliating, so he bailed.” Underlining the hints of difficulties and tensions around his proposed trip, Trump – in yet another of the brazen untruths that have become the hallmark of his campaign – had on Wednesday attempted to deny he had said he would be meeting Netanyahu despite the fact that the comment had been recorded. Asked about comments he made at a rally last week in which he said that he would be meeting the Israeli prime minister, Trump insisted, “I didn’t say that, no.” In reality, however, Trump told a Virginia rally last week: “I’m going to Israel, and I’ll be meeting with Bibi Netanyahu, who’s a great guy.” Donald Trump’s comments about Muslims were not endorsed by Netanyahu, but Israel’s prime minister had agreed to meet any US presidential candidate who visited Israel, his office said. Photograph: John Locher/AP http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/10/donald-trump-to-postpone-israel-trip-until-after-i-become-president-of-the-us

In a Facebook post to newborn child Max, the Facebook CEO says he will administer the initiative himself using 99% of shares in company’s stock Sam Thielman in New York Tuesday 1 December 2015 22.26 GMT The Zuckerbergs announced two births on Tuesday: a baby girl, and to one of the world’s biggest charities. That sterling spoon you might have been considering for Mark Zuckerberg’s new baby may no longer be the most exciting gift to the Facebook billionaire’s daughter: after revealing his wife, Priscilla Chan, had given birth to their first child, Max, Zuckerberg announced the creation of a charity organization called the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The couple have pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook shares in their lifetime, currently worth about $45bn. The charity, which has “the mission of advancing human potential and promoting equality”, will be administered by the CEO himself and is already on track to be worth $3bn by 2018. Zuckerberg announced the move on Facebook in the form of a letter to his baby: Dear Max, Your mother and I don’t yet have the words to describe the hope you give us for the future. Your new life is full of promise, and we hope you will be happy and healthy so you can explore it fully. You’ve already given us a reason to reflect on the world we hope you live in. Like all parents, we want you to grow up in a world better than ours today. While headlines often focus on what’s wrong, in many ways the world is getting better. Health is improving. Poverty is shrinking. Knowledge is growing. People are connecting. Technological progress in every field means your life should be dramatically better than ours today. We will do our part to make this happen, not only because we love you, but also because we have a moral responsibility to all children in the next generation. We believe all lives have equal value, and that includes the many more people who will live in future generations than live today. Our society has an obligation to invest now to improve the lives of all those coming into this world, not just those already here. Zuckerberg plans to finance the endeavor using his stock options. Some 99% of his shares will go to the charity – the tech tycoon owns 4m shares of class A common stock and 419m shares of class B, which have the majority of voting rights. “[D]uring his lifetime, he will gift or otherwise direct substantially all of his shares of Facebook stock, or the net after-tax proceeds from sales of such shares, to further the mission of advancing human potential and promoting equality by means of philanthropic, public advocacy, and other activities for the public good,” the company said in the filing. Joel Fleishman, professor of law and public policy sciences at Duke University, said he believed the announcement would spur giving among the super-rich. “I follow this pretty closely and hardly a day goes by that somebody doesn’t say he’s going to give away all his assets to charity,” Fleishman said, noting that Zuckerberg’s early-years Facebook colleague Dustin Moskovitz and his wife Cari Tuna said they were going to give away their fortune, which amounts to some $8bn, as well. “It does exemplify the spirit of the times.” Fleishman observed that the project had become particularly popular among the young and extraordinarily wealthy, who prefer “giving while living” to willing their assets to charity. “I celebrate his decision to do it as I celebrate Warren Buffet’s decision to give all that money to the Gates Foundation. People who’ve made all that money are by nature competitive; someone that young giving away that much money will undoubtedly stimulate others to do likewise.” But it’s not the executive’s first foray into charity, nor the first this week. Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Richard Branson and others announced an initiative to invest in new energy sources to stem the rising tide of climate change on Monday. Results of his previous philanthropic efforts have been mixed: In 2010, Zuckerberg partnered with then-mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Cory Booker (who has since become the state’s junior senator) to improve the notoriously poor-quality schools in the city with a donation of $100m. The endeavor was widely criticized for the percentage of the gift that went to pay consultants, among other problems. FWD.us, a political advocacy group started by Zuckerberg and Gates, has also stalled after its efforts to lobby for immigration reform failed, despite some $50m in backing from big-name tech personalities. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/01/mark-zuckerberg-and-priscilla-chan-announce-new-baby-and-massive-charity-initiative