HemmersChess

Two teachers are accused of committing lewd acts on children, leading to extraordinary move by district

The entire teaching staff has been suspended at Miramonte elementary school in Los Angeles, where two teachers have been arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing children.

The Los Angeles school superintendent, John Deasy, announced the extraordinary move, telling parents that replacement teachers would be taking over classrooms and psychiatric social workers would be placed with each class to help students and staff.

Miramonte teacher Mark Berndt was charged last week with committing lewd acts on 23 children, while Martin Springer was arrested on Friday suspected of fondling two girls in his classroom.

Berndt, who worked at the school for 32 years, abused children of ages six to 10 between 2005 and 2010, it is alleged. The acts cited by authorities include blindfolding children in a classroom and feeding them his semen in what children were allegedly told was a tasting game.

Berndt, 61, remains jailed on $23m bail and could face life in prison if convicted. Springer, 49, is being held on $2m bail.

Springer taught at Miramonte for his entire career, which started in 1986, the district said. He taught second grade. The school board is scheduled to discuss firing him in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday.

Investigators said they knew of no connection between the Miramonte cases, though the Los Angeles Times said Berndt and Springer knew each other and had taken their classes on at least two joint field trips in the past decade.

More than a quarter of the students at Miramonte were absent on Monday while parents demanded more protection at the school.

About three dozen parents and supporters protested in front of the main doors of the school, some carrying a banner that read: "We the parents demand our children be protected from lewd teacher acts."

The protest was an unusual event in the poor, overwhelmingly Latino neighbourhood where many parents and students speak basic English. Maria Jimenez, 51, said the parents whose children are enrolled at Miramonte were divided over the removal of the entire staff. "Some are in favour. Others are against it because they did this without advising us or consulting us," Jimenez said.

The district had set up a toll-free hotline to receive reports of suspected abuse at Miramonte, said the school board president, Monica Garcia.

Houses flattened in remote villages on Negros island that have been cut off by fallen bridges and damaged roads

Rescuers have found only bodies while digging for survivors among dozens of people buried by landslides on a central Philippine island after an earthquake. The death toll has climbed to 15, with more than 70 people missing.

The 6.9-magnitude earthquake on Monday also collapsed bridges and damaged roads on Negros island. Soldiers and firefighters had to hike into mountains to reach remote villages. Most of the confirmed deaths were in Planas village, a part of Guihulngan town where about 30 houses were flattened.

The Guihulngan mayor, Ernesto Reyes, said crews were using earthmoving equipment in the search for casualties.

The damage may be worse than officials first realised because the quake cut off communications to some villages, Reyes said. "We have no water and power because electric posts were toppled," he said. "Many of our roads were damaged, including bridges, and stores are closed. We're isolated."

In the mountain village of Solongon in La Libertad town, an unknown number of people were trapped under about 100 houses.

The president, Benigno Aquino, sent air force helicopters and navy and coast guard vessels to the aid of rescuers, some of whom had been digging with picks and shovels. Workers were clearing roads and fixing and bridges to get equipment, food and medicine in.

The undersea quake was centred 44 miles north of Dumaguete, capital of Negros Oriental province, and about 400 miles south-east of the nation's capital, Manila.

The Negros Oriental police chief, Edward Carranza, said at least 73 people remained missing in the province.

The casualties could top a 2004 quake on Mindoro Island, south of Manila, where 78 people died, about half of them in a quake-triggered tsunami. A local tsunami alert was issued following Monday's quake but was soon cancelled.

Reyes said that 13 residents died and at least 29 remained missing in the landslide in Planas, where an army platoon was digging for survivors. Meanwhile the landslide had blocked a mountain river that was threatening to back up and swamp houses along its banks. Residents had been told to leave.

Mogul's former deputy tells how bankers planned real estate transactions to revalue $64m in property at $3.2bn

Allen Stanford used fake accounting to prop up his offshore bank in its waning days as withdrawal requests from investors poured in, Stanford's former top deputy has said.

Faced with a worrying number of withdrawals in 2008, Stanford came up with a plan to make a $600m capital infusion into the bank, said James Davis, Stanford's former chief financial officer and the US government's top witness.

Stanford is on trial in federal court in Houston charged with running a $7bn Ponzi scheme from his bank in Antigua. Prosecutors allege Stanford, who has pleaded not guilty, sold fraudulent certificates of deposit and used the proceeds to buy jets, luxury homes and Caribbean real estate.

In the spring of 2008 Stanford's accountants inflated the value of about 1,500 undeveloped acres in Antigua that Stanford had bought for $64m. The accountants planned a series of property transfers to put the real estate back on the bank's books with a value of more then $3.2bn, Davis told the court.
"No actual cash or assets were going into the bank?" William Stellmach, a federal prosecutor, asked Davis. "No, sir," Davis replied.

The transaction was meant to fill a hole left by Stanford's spending, which became apparent as investors took their money out of the bank, Davis said.
But by the end of December 2008 Stanford International Bank had only $88m in cash, far less than the $1bn it claimed to hold, according to documents Stellmach showed to jurors. The US Securities and Exchange Commission seized Stanford's businesses and assets in February 2009.

Davis, 63, said stress related to keeping the scheme going eventually took a toll on his health, causing him both physical and mental problems. "The fraud that I was participating in was killing me," Davis told the jury.

Stanford, the largest private landowner in Antigua and a onetime 20-20 cricket mogul, was known as "Sir Allen" after being knighted by the island's former prime minister.

Stanford was once considered one of the United States' wealthiest people, with an estimated net worth of more than $2 billion. He's been jailed without bond since being indicted in 2009.

He is on trial for 14 counts, including mail and wire fraud, and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Stellmach asked Davis why, after realizing there was fraud, he continued working for the financier.

"I wanted to please Mr. Stanford. I was a coward. I was embarrassed and he signed my paycheck," said Davis, who told jurors he made $14m in salary and bonuses during his employment.

Davis pleaded guilty in 2009 to three counts: conspiracy to commit mail, wire and securities fraud; mail fraud; and conspiracy to obstruct a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. The plea is part of a deal Davis made with the US justice department in exchange for a possible reduced sentence.

Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, received threatening messages prompting police to launch investigation

Police are investigating racist emails that were sent to the Archbishop of York following an interview last month in which he spoke of his early experiences of being on the receiving end of racial abuse after he came to the UK from Uganda.

A spokeswoman for Dr John Sentamu, the second most senior bishop in the Church of England, said: "A large quantity of correspondence was received in response to the archbishop's interview with the Daily Telegraph, which touched on a wide range of issues.

"Among many positive emails that he has received, there have been a small number of abusive and threatening emails of a racist nature which North Yorkshire police are investigating as hate crimes."

A spokesman for North Yorkshire police said: "We can confirm that a complaint has been received from the office of Archbishop John Sentamu, following the receipt of emails containing racially offensive statements.

"The emails are being investigated as a hate crime."

Sentamu, who trained as a lawyer in Uganda but left after he was beaten by members of Idi Amin's regime, spoke about racist abuse he received from some parishioners in south London in the 1980s.

He said: "There was a lady who didn't want me to take her husband's funeral because I was black. I took one funeral and at the end a man said to me, 'Why did my father deserve to be buried by a black monkey?' We received letters with excrement in."

The archbishop was denounced by gay rights campaigners after he used the interview to speak out against legalising gay marriage, saying: He said: "If you genuinely would like the registration of civil partnerships to happen in a more general way, most people will say they can see the drift. But if you begin to call those marriage, you're trying to change the English language."

Peter Tatchell, co-ordinator of the Equal Love campaign, told a protest at York minster last week: "Archbishop Sentamu is a religious authoritarian who wants to impose his personal opposition to same-sex marriage on the rest of society."

Leading doctors voice concerns that reforms will suffocate GPs and jeopardise promised freedom to commission care

Two prominent backers of the coalition's NHS shake-up have joined the growing chorus of critics by claiming that GPs will be "suffocated rather than liberated" by the planned changes.

Dr Charles Alessi and Dr Michael Dixon have helped Andrew Lansley claim credibility for his plans among doctors over the past 18 months by strongly supporting his radical restructuring. They are leading lights in the NHS Alliance and the National Association of Primary Care, two key pro-reform organisations.

But they now fear that the new consortiums of local doctors, which will start commissioning healthcare for patients in England from next year, will not have the freedom that the health secretary has repeatedly pledged. Lansley has attempted to persuade sceptics that his reorganisation will put family doctors in charge of healthcare.

NHS primary care trusts (PCTs) and strategic health authorities (SHAs) are due to be abolished next year.

But the doctors are worried that the GP-led clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), which will replace PCTs, will find themselves unexpectedly under the control of another organisation, the NHA National Commissioning Board (NCB).

In July the NHS chief executive, Sir David Nicholson, said "CCGs will be the engine of the new system" and that the reformed NHS "gives pride of place to clinical leaders". But the reality is that primary care doctors and clinical commissioners will not have the promised ability to make key decisions because the current bureaucracy is simply being replaced by another that is growing up around the NCB, the pair claim.

The Department of Health's latest document about the design of the new board involves "layers of bureaucracy and management, with complex guidelines. The old 'footprint' [of the PCTs and SHAs], ie 50 local offices, remains there, plus four sector outposts, all using a single operating model," the two organisations said in a joint statement .

The fact that many of the staff of the new NCB will simply be staff who have joined from PCTs and SHAs "adds to clinical commissioners' concerns and perceptions that they will be suffocated, instead of liberated, which in our view is fundamental to the success of clinically-led commissioning", they added.

"What we are hearing and seeing are the same old messages and the same old structures, albeit with new nomenclatures", said Alessi, a key figure in a CCG in south-west London.

"If we put the same ingredients into the mix, the likelihood is that we shall deliver the same inefficient environment and outcomes. This is insupportable in an economy of tight financial restraint."

Most CCGs now see the new board as the greatest threat to their effective functioning, added Dixon, a GP in Devon and chair of the NHS Alliance.

The pair's comments are another blow to the health secretary as his health and social care bill prepares to undergo its report stage in the House of Lords, when peers will seek to force the government to accept further amendments to its plans. Labour seized on the men's remarks as further evidence of the growing concerns the bill is causing.

"Things are going from bad to worse for Andrew Lansley. In the last fortnight there has been a deepening crisis of professional confidence in the government's health bill, but until now the health secretary could rely on the support of the NHS Alliance and the National Association of Primary Care," said Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary.

"Yet the bill's biggest cheerleaders are now lambasting the increasing layers of bureaucracy. Even the health bill's greatest supporters are now concerned that Lansley's plans are so complex and full of worrying uncertainties that they risk thwarting the principle of true clinician-led commissioning."

The British Medical Association also fears CCGs' freedom will be curtailed. "There are significant concerns that CCGs will not have genuine freedoms and sufficient independence to make locally sensitive, locally accountable, patient-focussed decisions," it said.

In a briefing to peers ahead of the report stage it says that, despite ministers agreeing to amend several aspects of the bill, the legislation should still be dropped because it involves too much use of "market forces", and could also affect doctors' relationship with their patients through financial incentives for CCGs.

The Department of Health said: "By handing power and responsibility for choosing and purchasing services to doctors and nurses on the ground, we are shifting the decision making closer to patients and building on the trusted role that GPs and other front line professionals already play throughout the NHS.

"The NHS commissioning Board will provide national standards, but doctors and nurses will have the freedom to make decisions about their patients and their organisations."

Emil Boc says he is quitting to 'release tension' after weeks of protests over austerity measures and alleged corruption

The Romanian prime minister and his cabinet have resigned after weeks of sometimes violent protests over widespread corruption and austerity measures.

Emil Boc said on Monday he was quitting "to release the tension in the country's political and social situation".

During his three-year rule, salaries of state employees were cut by a quarter and VAT increased by five percentage points, while the European debt crisis hit Romania's exports hard.

It was a toxic combination in a country that was already the second poorest in the EU, better off only than Bulgaria, which also joined the union in 2007.

The collapse of Boc's cabinet marks the fall of yet another EU government since the euro crisis started to bite. Since 2009, governments in Slovakia, Slovenia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Ireland and the Czech Republic have imploded before scheduled elections, with economic woes playing a significant role in each demise. Voters in Hungary, Spain and Portugal also signalled their unhappiness with the fiscal policies of their governments, plumping for new leaders at the ballot box.

President Traian Basescu asked foreign intelligence service head Mihai-Razvan Ungureanu to form a new cabinet. Ungureanu quickly pledged to continue the unpopular economic reforms and his appointment may do little to assuage popular anger.

Basescu named justice minister Catalin Predoiu as interim prime minister until Ungureanu puts his team and plans up for parliament's approval, a vote that will probably come next week.

He will be in charge until the new government is formed over the coming weeks and could potentially hold on to the position until the next general election, in November.

Opposition politicians celebrated Boc's departure and called for early parliamentary elections. "This is a victory for those that demonstrated on the streets," said Crin Antonescu, who heads the opposition Liberal party. The "most corrupt, incompetent and lying government" since the 1989 fall of Ceausescu had gone, he said.

Shortly before his resignation, Boc's approval ratings had dipped below 20%, with thousands of Romanians braving freezing temperatures and heavy snow to protest in towns around the country.

They are angry about low living standards and what they say is widespread corruption in a country where the average wage is less than €350 (£290) a month and some villages and even parts of Bucharest have no running water or electricity.

Septimius Parvu, deputy director of the Pro Democracy Association, an NGO based in Bucharest, said Boc's resignation showed a "slow evolution" in Romanian politics. "The change in government shows that politicians are starting to realise they cannot govern without the people," he said. "They were taken by surprise by the protests, which, even if they were not on the scale of those in Russia, for example, took place all over the country and were the biggest seen in Romania for perhaps 20 years."

But one protester, PhD student Stefan Guga, 26, said it was wrong to characterise Boc's departure simply as a victory for the demonstrators. It also showed very pragmatic political and electoral calculations on the part of both governing and opposition parties, he said.

"Boc has been made a scapegoat," he said in a phone interview from Bucharest. "It's not that his party, the Democrat Liberals [PDL], wanted to get rid of him – but they found it very convenient to push for the prime minister's resignation and attribute much of the government's failures over the past years to his personal incompetence."

Guga, who attended many of the protests in Bucharest's University Square, said Boc's leaving was a distraction from the key demands of protesters, which, as well as a respite from painful austerity measures, were for real democracy and an end to corruption. "For the Democrat Liberals Boc's resignation can be seen as a last-minute solution to save a bit of face before the upcoming local and parliamentary elections," he said.

The reality, he said, was that the PDL will now regroup and hope that they can avoid early elections so that come November, they have a better chance of winning back the electorate. The PDL and its allies currently have a slim parliamentary majority.Guga said that if the protesters wanted to see any politician fall on his sword, it was Basescu, the president, a gruff former sea captain who despite holding a position that is theoretically ceremonial has made many policy announcements himself. "He is seen as the man who really pulls the strings in Romania," said Guga. "The image of Boc was just as Basescu's puppet."

Boc, who became prime minister in 2008, urged Romania's feuding politicians to be mature and rapidly vote for a new government. He defended his record, saying he had taken "difficult decisions thinking about the future of Romania, not because I wanted to, but because I had to".

Explaining his resignation in a televised speech, Boc said: "I took this decision to release the tension in the country's political and social situation, but also in order not to lose what Romanians have won.

"I know that I made difficult decisions, but the fruits have begun to appear. The most important thing is the economic stability of the country. In times of crisis, the government is not in a popularity contest, but is saving the country."

He added that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecast growth of up to 2% this year lower than expected, but higher than the EU average.

Committed at some stage to adopting the euro under the terms of its accession to the EU in 2007, Romania is still struggling with the economic legacy of communist state control.

While not suffering the difficulties that the euro created for leaders in the likes of neighbouring Greece, Romania's government also struggled to finance itself without external support and found itself forced to make brutal cuts that enraged ordinary citizens.

In 2009 it was forced to sign up for a €20bn (£16.6bn) loan with the IMF, the EU and the World Bank to help pay salaries and pensions after the economy shrank by more than 7%. The aid was seen as essential to maintain investor confidence, prevent a run on the currency and keep borrowing costs at sustainable levels, even though its public debt to GDP ratio was the fourth lowest in the EU.

In 2010, the government increased sales tax from 19% to 24% and cut public workers' salaries by a quarter.

The IMF mission chief in Bucharest, Jeffrey Franks, told Reuters: "I see no reason necessarily for this to have a material effect on the aid agreement. We have every expectation the agreement will continue."

Paul Ivan, research assistant at the Centre for European Policy Studies, said the resignation was not a surprise. "There had been repeated calls for this," he said in a phone interview from Brussels. "The population had become increasingly unhappy with the austerity policies of the government."

But Ivan said Romania's economic problems were not just caused by domestic policies but external ones too. "Romania's economy is very reliant on the fortunes of the rest of the European Union. So when growth in other countries practically stopped, exports decreased and firms here started to lay off staff," he said.

Romania's textile and car industries have been particularly hard-hit, he said. French carmaker Renault has a big Romanian plant which produces the Logan under the badge of its Romanian subsidiary, Dacia.

Most of Romania's banks are also foreign-owned, said Ivan, meaning that when the debt crisis dug in, they were ever more reluctant to issue loans and mortgages.

Neuroscience breakthroughs could be harnessed by military and law enforcers, says Royal Society report

Soldiers could have their minds plugged directly into weapons systems, undergo brain scans during recruitment and take courses of neural stimulation to boost their learning, if the armed forces embrace the latest developments in neuroscience to hone the performance of their troops.

These scenarios are described in a report into the military and law enforcement uses of neuroscience, published on Tuesday, which also highlights a raft of legal and ethical concerns that innovations in the field may bring.

The report by the Royal Society, the UK's national academy of science, says that while the rapid advance of neuroscience is expected to benefit society and improve treatments for brain disease and mental illness, it also has substantial security applications that should be carefully analysed.

The report's authors also anticipate new designer drugs that boost performance, make captives more talkative and make enemy troops fall asleep.

"Neuroscience will have more of an impact in the future," said Rod Flower, chair of the report's working group.

"People can see a lot of possibilities, but so far very few have made their way through to actual use.

"All leaps forward start out this way. You have a groundswell of ideas and suddenly you get a step change."

The authors argue that while hostile uses of neuroscience and related technologies are ever more likely, scientists remain almost oblivious to the dual uses of their research.

The report calls for a fresh effort to educate neuroscientists about such uses of the work early in their careers.

Some techniques used widely in neuroscience are on the brink of being adopted by the military to improve the training of soldiers, pilots and other personnel.

A growing body of research suggests that passing weak electrical signals through the skull, using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), can improve people's performance in some tasks.

One study cited by the report described how US neuroscientists employed tDCS to improve people's ability to spot roadside bombs, snipers and other hidden threats in a virtual reality training programme used by US troops bound for the Middle East.

"Those who had tDCS learned to spot the targets much quicker," said Vince Clark, a cognitive neuroscientist and lead author on the study at the University of New Mexico. "Their accuracy increased twice as fast as those who had minimal brain stimulation. I was shocked that the effect was so large."

Clark, whose wider research on tDCS could lead to radical therapies for those with dementia, psychiatric disorders and learning difficulties, admits to a tension in knowing that neuroscience will be used by the military.

"As a scientist I dislike that someone might be hurt by my work. I want to reduce suffering, to make the world a better place, but there are people in the world with different intentions, and I don't know how to deal with that.

"If I stop my work, the people who might be helped won't be helped. Almost any technology has a defence application."

Research with tDCS is in its infancy, but work so far suggests it might help people by boosting their attention and memory. According to the Royal Society report, when used with brain imaging systems, tDCS "may prove to be the much sought-after tool to enhance learning in a military context".

One of the report's most striking scenarios involves the use of devices called brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) to connect people's brains directly to military technology, including drones and other weapons systems.

The work builds on research that has enabled people to control cursors and artificial limbs through BMIs that read their brain signals.

"Since the human brain can process images, such as targets, much faster than the subject is consciously aware of, a neurally interfaced weapons system could provide significant advantages over other system control methods in terms of speed and accuracy," the report states.

The authors go on to stress the ethical and legal concerns that surround the use of BMIs by the military. Flower, a professor of pharmacology at the William Harvey Research Institute at Barts and the London hospital, said: "If you are controlling a drone and you shoot the wrong target or bomb a wedding party, who is responsible for that action? Is it you or the BMI?

"There's a blurring of the line between individual responsibility and the functioning of the machine. Where do you stop and the machine begin?"

Another tool expected to enter military use is the EEG (electroencephalogram), which uses a hairnet of electrodes to record brainwaves through the skull. Used with a system called "neurofeedback", people can learn to control their brainwaves and improve their skills.

According to the report, the technique has been shown to improve training in golfers and archers.

The US military research organisation, Darpa, has already used EEG to help spot targets in satellite images that were missed by the person screening them. The EEG traces revealed that the brain sometimes noticed targets but failed to make them conscious thoughts. Staff used the EEG traces to select a group of images for closer inspection and improved their target detection threefold, the report notes.

Work on brain connectivity has already raised the prospect of using scans to select fast learners during recruitment drives.

Research last year by Scott Grafton at the University of California, Santa Barbara, drew on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to measure the flexibility of brain networks. They found that a person's flexibility helped predict how quickly they would learn a new task.

Other studies suggest neuroscience could help distinguish risk-takers from more conservative decision-makers, and so help with assessments of whether they are better suited to peacekeeping missions or special forces, the report states.

"Informal assessment occurs routinely throughout the military community. The issue is whether adopting more formal techniques based on the results of research in neuroeconomics, neuropsychology and other neuroscience disciplines confers an advantage in decision-making."

Executive order halts transactions by Iranian bank in US, despite concerns that it may drive up petroleum costs

Barack Obama has ordered the freezing of Iranian government assets in the US, including transactions by the Iranian Central Bank, in tightened sanctions over Tehran's nuclear programme.

The White House said the executive order by the president "re-emphasises this administration's message to the government of Iran – it will face ever-increasing economic and diplomatic pressure until it addresses the international community's well-founded and well-documented concerns regarding the nature of its nuclear programme".

The new sanctions, which also include the threat of prosecution for foreign financial institutions if they do certain kinds of business directly with Iran, also appeared timed to fit in with measures introduced in other countries, including Britain which has already moved against Iran's banking system by cutting it off from London's financial sector.

The administration had previously shied away from direct action against the central bank fearing that if Tehran is unable to carry through financial transactions necessary to sell its oil, that could force the cost of petroleum up and hit the US economy.

But Congress pushed sanctions against the bank through in legislation attached to the US's annual defence spending bill. The president had the power to stall them but that was politically sensitive with a growing chorus of Republicans and some Democrats demanding stronger measures against Tehran.

Obama said in a statement to Congress that the new sanctions are required in part because the central bank is using "deceptive practices" to get around earlier measures.

"I have determined that additional sanctions are warranted, particularly in light of the deceptive practices of the Central Bank of Iran and other Iranian banks to conceal transactions of sanctioned parties, the deficiencies in Iran's anti-money laundering regime and the weaknesses in its implementation, and the continuing and unacceptable risk posed to the international financial system by Iran's activities," he said.

The scale of Iranian official assets in the US is unclear given more than three decades of sanctions since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

In November, the US announced measures intended to limit Tehran's ability to refine its own fuel as well as targeting Iran's Revolutionary Guards' financial interests.

The US and European Union have also imposed additional sanctions on Iran's oil industry in recent weeks.

The new sanctions also come as Obama tries to dissuade Israel from a unilateral strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Last week, US defence secretary Leon Panetta said he believes Israel may launch an attack before June.

On Sunday, Obama said he does not believe Israel has yet made the decision whether or not to attack. But he told NBC that all options remain on the table for US action if Iran presses ahead with developing a nuclear weapon.

"I think we have a very good estimate of when they could potentially achieve breakout capacity, what stage they're at in terms of processing uranium. But do we know all the dynamics inside Iran? Absolutely not," he said. "Knowing who is making decisions at any given time inside Iran is tough but we do have a pretty good bead on what's happening with the nuclear programme."

Radical Islamist cleric will walk free from Long Lartin maximum security prison after more than six years without trial

The Home Office clashed openly with judges on Monday when it criticised a decision to free on bail within days the radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada, who is accused of posing a grave threat to British national security.

The decision by Mr Justice Mitting will see Abu Qatada, once described as Osama bin Laden's righthand man in Europe, walk out of Long Lartin maximum security prison in Worcestershire after more than six and a half years in detention without trial – the longest period in modern times.

The special immigration appeals commission (Siac) has imposed some of the most draconian bail conditions seen since 9/11, including a 22-hour curfew, but this did little to assuage the anger of the Home Office ministers or politicians from all parties at the decision.

The clash takes the battle between politicians and the judiciary into new territory as Abu Qatada is a major international terror suspect. He was first detained without trial in Britain under the quashed Belmarsh regime nearly a decade ago, in October 2002.

The decision taken by the high court judge at Siac follows the ruling by the European court of human rights that he could not be deported to Jordan because he would face a "flagrant denial of justice" – a retrial based on evidence obtained through torture. Abu Qatada had been detained under immigration laws for the past six and half years pending his deportation to Jordan.

A Home Office spokesperson said he should remain in detention: "This is the argument we made in court and we disagree with its decision. This is a dangerous man who we believe poses a real threat to our security and who has not changed in his views or attitude to the UK."

The Home Office said it will consider an appeal against the European court's ruling. It will also continue a fresh attempt to secure diplomatic assurances from Jordan that Abu Qatada will not face a trial based on torture-tainted evidence.

The British ambassador held two meetings last week with the Jordanian authorities to try to open talks on the issue.

But the decision angered both Labour and Conservative backbenchers. The former Labour home secretary David Blunkett said the decision had left the government facing a very real difficulty: "It is an unholy mess. We are left in the absurd position of not being able to remove a man even though everyone accepts he won't be tortured, not being able to keep him in prison because his human rights trump the protection of the British people, and a government that has watered down control orders so that they are more lax than was previously the case."

The Conservative backbencher Dominic Raab echoed Blunkett's anger: "This result is a direct result of the perverse ruling by the Strasbourg court. It makes a mockery of human rights law that a terrorist suspect deemed 'dangerous' by our courts can't be returned home, not for fear that he might be tortured, but because European judges don't trust the Jordanian justice system."

The bail conditions set down by Mr Justice Mitting are draconian, comprising a 22-hour curfew rather than the "overnight residence requirement" specified in the coalition's replacement for control orders. They include an electronic tag, MI5 vetting of all his visitors except for immediate family, and monitoring of his communications. The delay in his release is to allow the security services to check the proposed bail address and organise their surveillance operation.

In his ruling, the judge said that although the six and half years Abu Qatada had been detained under immigration powers was "unusually long", he agreed with the home secretary that it was also lawfully justified. However, he added: "The time will arrive quite soon when continuing detention or deprivation of liberty could not be justified." The Siac judge warned the home secretary, Theresa May, that Abu Qatada's "highly prescriptive" bail terms would be relaxed after three months if there is no "demonstrable progress" made with the Jordanians.

The bail conditions mirror those set in 2008 when he was released for six months before being returned to prison on unspecified national security grounds. The judge said the risks to national security and of absconding in the case had not significantly changed since then.

During the one-day bail hearing, Edward Fitzgerald QC, representing Abu Qatada, argued that his detention had gone on too long to be reasonable and there was no prospect of the detention ending in any reasonable period. Even if new diplomatic assurances were secured it would only trigger a new round of litigation in the English courts."There comes a time when it's just too long, however grave the risks," said Fitzgerald.

The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, said May had to explain urgently what action she was taking on the national security implications of the ruling. "Abu Qatada should face terror charges in Jordan, and the home secretary needs to urgently accelerate discussions with the Jordanian government to make that possible," she said. The home secretary also had to spell out the counter-terror safeguards that will be taken to lower the national security risk.

The security services have never disclosed the actual cost of mounting round-the-clock surveillance operations on terror suspects such as Abu Qatada but it does have serious implications for their resources.

Abu Qatada, whose real name is Omar Othman, 51, featured in hate sermons found on videos in the flat of one of the 9/11 bombers. Since his original detention in October 2002, every attempt to deport him to Jordan has been frustrated. The law lords ruled three years ago that he could be sent back but the Strasbourg decision overturned that ruling.

• Exasperated Angela Merkel warns 'time is of the essence'
• Portugal's PM says 'we will not allow it to happen here'

Greece appeared intent on taking make-or-break talks over a €130bn (£108bn) rescue programme for the debt-choked country down to the wire tonight as officials announced that the discussions would be delayed.

Confounding market expectation and European hopes, the government said agreement over the conditions attached to further aid could not be reached as a meeting between political chiefs and the prime minister, Lucas Papademos, had been deferred until today.

"All parties have basically accepted the deal," said a well-briefed source, referring to the three elements in Papademos's national unity coalition. "But it is felt that the details have to be fine-tuned. The leaders want to know what they are signing up to."

With Greece staring at the spectre of bankruptcy – barely six weeks before it has to make bond repayments worth €14.5bn – EU officials expressed disbelief that politicians could not finally put their name to an accord.

Unable to conceal her own exasperation, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said: "I honestly can't understand how additional days will help.

"Time is of the essence. A lot is at stake for the entire eurozone," she said after holding debt crisis talks in Paris with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Papademos, a technocrat who was appointed to the post with the express purpose of passing the measures to secure the bailout deal, originally told the leaders to conclude talks by midday.

But the deadline came and went. Infuriated, Amadeu Altafaj-Tardio, a spokesman for the European economic affairs commissioner Olli Rehn, said: "The truth is we are already beyond deadline … the ball is in the court of the Greek authorities."

Hours later, the prime minister's office announced that the meeting would take place in the "late afternoon". Rumours swirled that a deal was near, with headway made on the highly contentious issues of wage cuts in the private sector. In anticipation, the Athens stock market rallied.

By mid-afternoon, however, the meeting had been cancelled with officials saying Papademos would instead hold talks with visiting inspectors from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, the "troika" propping up the insolvent Greek economy.

The postponement confirmed that ahead of general elections in April the high-stake talks have also been turned into a high-stakes game of brinkmanship.

Acutely aware of the uproar that further austerity is bound to ignite among a populace that has endured unprecedented belt-tightening but seen little in return as Athens repeatedly misses fiscal targets, Greece's political class has worked furiously to disassociate itself from reforms increasingly seen as counter-productive.

Emerging from a marathon session of similar talks on Sunday, Giorgos Karatzaferis, the media-savvy leader of the populist Laos party, said: "I'm not going to contribute to the explosion of a revolution [by backing] a wretchedness that will then spread across Europe."

Racheting up the pressure on politicians, powerful unionists in both the public and private sector warned that the reaction to any agreement entailing further austerity would be "ferocious and possibly uncontrollable". A general strike was called for Tuesday with civil servants and workers saying they would step up action later in the week.

Ilias Iliopoulos, at the civil servants' union ADEDY, said: "We don't care if they feel forced to accept such measures. The fact is 500,000 families are not even earning a euro a week and another million only have work sporadically."

"Greek people can't take the burden of any more measures. If our politicians are foolish enough to agree to what our so-called saviours say, if they go ahead with yet more cuts and job losses, there will be an explosion. The reaction will be uncontrollable."

The deadlock immediately raised fears that three years into the crisis, Greece might finally be heading for the disorderly default international creditors, lead by Germany in the EU, have tried to avert.

But in Athens analysts insisted that the real threat to keeping bankruptcy at bay lay not so much in the negotiating arena as in a society seething with anger over the prospect of more austerity.

"The Greek side has no cards in its hand," said Theodore Pelagidis, professor of economics at Piraeus University. "This is not about not accepting the bailout but about politicians wanting to convince Greeks that they have not just submitted to the demands of foreign lenders but done their utmost to get the best deal. Yes, there are a lot of painful details that have to be discussed but all these delays are actually part of a show."

Eurozone finance ministers have told Greece that they want a blueprint of a basic deal to be approved by Wednesday's meeting in Brussels.

No longer willing to take any chances, Papademos on Monday ordered the finance ministry to outline what consequences bankruptcy might have on society and the economy. One Greek official said it would make Argentina "look like a picnic".

Papademos's plan is to present the findings to Greece's squabbling political leaders on Tuesday to ensure they sign off on the deal immediately.

As Greece failed to resolve its crisis, the Portuguese prime minister attempted to stave off speculation that his country would be the next to find itself in talks over a rescue package. Pedro Passos Coelho said Portugal's debts were under control and could be contained without the need of a fresh injection from the EU.

"We will not allow what happened in Greece to happen here," he said. "We hope that there will be the will to reach a new aid programme for Greece."

Coelho likened Portugal to Ireland, which he said had a debt structure that would delay the need for loan repayments until next year. "Our debt profile is very similar to Ireland's, both in absolute value and in debt to GDP terms," he said.

Daily Mail editor in chief tells Leveson inquiry he wants tough sanctions for those who break the law or lower standards

The editor in chief of the Daily Mail has called for a new system of certifying journalists, with tough sanctions for those who fall below acceptable standards or break the law.

Paul Dacre also called on the industry to introduce a transitional arrangement to replace the much-criticised Press Complaints Commission as soon as possible to show newspapers had "good intentions" to break from a past tarnished by allegations of phone hacking, corruption and computer hacking.

Outlining his vision of the future, Dacre said the new system of accreditation of journalists would act as a "Kitemark" for standards. He suggested that journalists not carrying an accredited card would be barred from covering events such as key government briefings or interviews relating to sporting fixtures.

A new ombudsman for standards should also have the right to recommend a journalist be struck off, just as doctors can be struck off by the General Medical Council, he said. "The public at large would know the journalists carrying such cards are bona fide operators, committed to a set of standards and a body to whom complaints can be made."

Over three and a half hours, an at times testy Dacre was questioned at the Leveson inquiry about the behaviour of his own staff in relation to a litany of stories that have been criticised by other Leveson witnesses, including ones on Madeleine McCann, Christopher Jefferies, Hugh Grant and the late Boyzone singer Stephen Gately.

He launched a robust defence of his decision to describe Grant's evidence as "mendacious smears", declaring that the actor's claim that a story about him may have been sourced from phone hacking was damaging to his newspaper.

"If I had allowed it to stand it would have been devastating for our reputation and it needed rebutting instantly."

Dacre repeatedly claimed that Grant had brought much of the attention he complained about upon himself. He said Grant "invaded his privacy with great proficiency" by frequently talking in public about private matters, including his desire to have a child. But he did accept that the behaviour of the paparazzi about whom Grant and others have complained was an issue. "I think there are broader issues that the industry needs to look at. The problem of paparazzi, that worries me – I think we need to try to look at that."

Dacre admitted that he knew the newspaper had used a private detective, Steve Whittamore, who was convicted in 2005 of illegally accessing confidential records such as ex-directory numbers.

He said he thought he became aware of the use of Whittamore "some time about 2004, 2005-ish" but said he was not aware of the extent of his use or that he might have been obtaining information illegally. Asked whether he thought it was acceptable to get hold of a person's "friends and family" telephone numbers, he said the information could have been obtained legally but Whittamore "was a quick and easy way to get that information".

He said he would now accept there was a "prima facie case that Mr Whittamore could have been acting illegally" but he did not accept this as "evidence our journalists were actively behaving illegally".

At times exasperated by the inquiry's line of questioning, Dacre pressed the point that he had demonstrated "huge willpower and vigour to stamp out and change of all of this", banning the use of detective agencies, writing the Data Protection Act into journalists' contracts and holding seminars for staff.

He told Leveson: "Goodness knows, I don't know what more I could have done." Dacre also mounted a staunch defence of Jan Moir, the columnist who was the subject of 25,000 complaints following a piece she wrote about the death of Gately.

"I would die in the ditch to defend any of my columnists' rights to say whatever they wish", he said, adding that she hadn't "a homophobic bone in her body". But he did observe that her column could have benefitted from some "judicious subbing [editing]" that day.

Dacre told the inquiry he had turned down an offer to edit the Times because it would have curbed his independence. He described Rupert Murdoch as a "great proprietor in his time" but said he would not have given him the necessary freedom. He said there was no doubt Murdoch "had strong views" which he expected to be followed by his editors. "The classic case is the Iraq war" and the "implacable support" he gave Tony Blair, said Dacre.

Dacre reserved the more forceful side of his personality for the issue of the importance of the press to society.

He said his paper had written hundreds and thousands of stories and the inquiry was alighting on a few negative examples. The British public were being given "a very bleak, one-sided view" of an industry that employs thousands.

£50bn merger with Xstrata will be latest City coup for billionaires behind commodities trader

More than £50m of World Food Programme aid to feed the starving has ended up in the hands of a London-listed commodities trader run by billionaires, despite a pledge by the United Nations agency to buy food from "very poor farmers".

Glencore International, which buys up supplies from farmers and sells them on at a profit, was the biggest single supplier of wheat to the WFP over the last eight months, the Guardian can reveal.

Glencore, which was able to operate with secrecy from its base in Baar, Switzerland, until it floated on the London stock exchange last May, is expected on Tuesday to announce a merger with mining group Xstrata to become one of the 10 biggest FTSE 100 companies with a market value of more than £50bn.

Details of the dealings with Glencore, which controls 8% of the global wheat market, emerged a year after the head of the WFP committed to buying food from local farmers.

"Our new motto is to help people feed themselves," Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the WFP, told China's state news agency. "When we can, we purchase our food from the very poor farmers who suffer because they are not connected to local markets."

Raj Patel, an economist expert in the global food trade and former UN employee, said it was shocking how much food aid money was "funnelling to one of the largest commodity traders".

The rising price of wheat has squeezed the incomes of millions of the world's poorest people. Many have been forced to turn to the WFP, which last year fed more than 90 million people in 73 countries.

Over the last eight months Glencore has sold wheat worth $78m (£50m) to the WFP, according to details of contracts published on the agency's website.

In the biggest single deal, the WFP bought $22.5m of Glencore wheat in July last year to feed Ethiopians in one the worst famines in recent memory. The WFP also bought Glencore wheat, sorghum and yellow split peas for Kenya, Djibouti, Bangladesh, Sudan, North Korea and Palestine. Last month the WFP spent $10.8m on wheat for drought-stricken Djibouti.

In its latest half-year financial results Glencore, which previously attracted controversy for environmental breaches and accusations of dealing with rogue states, including Iraq under Saddam Hussein, reported that revenue from agricultural products doubled to $8.8bn. The company said its performance had been "driven by stronger profits in grains and oil seeds" for which "prices were substantially higher in H1 [the first half of] 2011 compared to H1 2010".

The company said: "There were increased geographic arbitrage opportunities [buying commodities cheaper in order to sell them on later at a higher price] available in wheat and edible oils." It said the average wheat price of a bushel [8 gallons] of wheat increased by 60% over the previous year to $778.

A spokeswoman for the WFP said: "As a humanitarian agency that depends entirely on voluntary donations we always aim to get the most competitive price when purchasing food on the open markets. Rising food prices do have an impact on our budget and they can be driven up by any number of factors, including speculation."

Glencore said it won the WFP tenders because "we were able to offer the commodities needed at the lowest possible price".

Rob Bailey, a senior research fellow in food security at Chatham House in London, said the WFP often buys from traders such as Glencore, Cargill and Viterra, because food donations are not available and local farmers cannot provide the quantities needed. "It is concerning that the World Food Programme is left at the whim of international markets precisely when prices are high," he said.

"Such crisis periods of high volatility are also when the big traders make the most money, because they have the best information on likely supply and demand and how markets are going to evolve, allowing them to take positions in the market to turn profits."

John Hilary, the executive director of the War on Want, said: "Glencore's self-confessed speculation on grain markets last year forced up prices at a time of world shortage, driving more people into extreme hunger. The WFP needs to rethink its priorities and support local markets rather than corporate giants such as Glencore."

Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World's Food System, said: "It's a shocking amount of money to be funnelling to one of the largest commodity traders. That financial entities are now making their presence felt – and Glencore is among the most powerful of these new corporations – points to the increasing financialisation of food in the 21st century."

Glencore admitted that it bet on a rising wheat price after drought in Russia, according to investment bank UBS. "[Glencore's] agricultural team received very timely reports from Russia farm assets that growing conditions were deteriorating aggressively in the spring and summer of 2010, as the Russian drought set in … This put it in a position to make proprietary trades going long on wheat and corn," UBS said in a report to potential investors, disclosed by the Financial Times.

On 3 August 2010 the head of Glencore's Russian grain business, Yury Ognev, urged Moscow to ban grain exports, according to the UBS report. Two days later Russian authorities banned wheat exports, which forced prices up by 15% in two days.

On Monday Glencore said UBS's account of its role in the Russian grain crisis was "simply untrue. In any case, the export ban did not help our business".

A spokesman said: "We share the view that financial speculation in agricultural products markets can be harmful. Our business is physical – we produce, buy, store and blend agricultural commodities.

"We bridge the gap between harvests that last for a couple of weeks and demand which is fairly constant throughout the year.

"Because we are physical holders, we are always net sellers in the agricultural products futures markets which actually has a downward effect on the prices of agricultural products futures."

Glencore's chief executive, Ivan Glasenberg, earned the moniker "the $10 billion man" when his stake was valued at £5.76bn at last May's flotation. Four other partners – Daniel Maté, Telis Mistakidis, Tor Peterson and Alex Beard – were also made paper billionaires. More than $3.6bn was given to the WFP last year, with the US contributing $1.2bn and the UK £144m.

Merger deal anticipated

Glencore is on Tuesday expected to announce plans to merge with mining group Xstrata to become one of the 10 biggest companies listed on the London stock market. It will be the latest move in Glencore's journey from secretive trading house founded by Marc Rich, a commodities traderwho was charged by US authorities with selling oil to Iran during the 1979-81 hostage crisis, to global powerhouse in the sale of commodities from copper and coal to sugar and wheat.

The largest shareholder in the combined company – dubbed Glenstrata – will be Ivan Glasenberg, Glencore's multibillionaire chief executive. But Glasenberg, who makes so much money he indirectly funded a generous Christmas tax break for the other residents of the Swiss village where he lives, is understood to be planning to step aside to become deputy to Mick "the miner" Davis, the head of Xstrata.

Davis, already one the highest paid executives in the FTSE 100, is likely to be offered a "golden handcuffs" deal to stay at the company. A change of control clause could also see Davis collect an additional £10.7m in long-term shares.

The deal is likely to see Glencore pay about an 8% premium to buy up the Xstrata shares it does not already own.

Sir John Bond, Xstrata's chairman and a former chair of HSBC and Vodafone, will lead the Glenstrata board, while Glencore's chairman Simon Murray, who has been attacked for his "unbelievably primitive" views on women in business, is likely to step aside.

Tony Hayward, the former boss of BP, is likely to be appointed the senior independent director of the combined company, which will have more than 120,000 staff across five continents.

Former Northern Ireland first minister, 85, is being treated in Ulster hospital, his wife confirms

Former Northern Ireland first minister Ian Paisley is in intensive care in hospital after suffering respiratory problems.

The family of the 85-year-old founder of the Democratic Unionist party, now officially known as Lord Bannside, confirmed that he was being treated in Ulster hospital on the outskirts of east Belfast.

In a statement issued on Monday afternoon his wife, Lady Paisley, requested that "the family's privacy be respected at this time".

The veteran unionist politician and fundamentalist Protestant preacher took ill at the family home in east Belfast on Sunday. DUP members of the Northern Ireland assembly were briefed on their ex-leader's medical condition in the Stormont parliament.

Last year Paisley had a pacemaker fitted at St Thomas's hospital in London after he fell ill at Westminster. Paramedics had to revive him after he collapsed in parliament.

Since he stepped down as first minister Paisley has slowly retreated from public life. In December he announced his retirement as a preacher in the Free Presbyterian church, the hardline Protestant sect he founded in the 1960s.

His final sermon took place last week in the Martyrs Memorial Church in Belfast. He told worshippers inside the church he helped build that he wanted to take time out to write his autobiography.

For nearly five decades Paisley was a colossal presence in Ulster politics. He established the DUP in 1971 and opposed every attempt by successive British and Irish governments to create a power-sharing government between nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland.

When he moved aside as DUP leader he was succeeded by his long-time deputy and closest political confidant Peter Robinson.

However, Paisley stunned the political world in 2006 when, after the St Andrews agreement, he indicated that the DUP would share power with their former enemies in Sinn Féin. As a result, he and ex-IRA member Martin McGuinness became first and deputy first ministers of Northern Ireland. The pair struck up an unlikely rapport and gained the nickname "the Chuckle Brothers" because at public events they were often seen smiling together.

During his long reign as head of the Free Presbyterian church Paisley embarked on several moral crusades, including an unsuccessful battle to oppose the legalisation of homosexuality in Northern Ireland.

In opposition to Paisley's "Save Ulster from Sodomy" campaign, the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Movement depicted him as an "ayatollah" who was watching everyone in the province.

Diplomatic crisis follows day of continued violence in which at least 50 people were killed in Homs, according to activists

Britain and the US recalled their ambassadors to Damascus on Monday in protest at what the British foreign secretary, William Hague, called the "doomed" and "murderous" regime's violent behaviour towards its civilian population.

The diplomatic crisis followed a morning in which at least 50 people were killed in attacks on the Syrian city of Homs, according to activists, including the bombardment of a field hospital in which 19 people were killed.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Hague said of Assad's government: "There is no way it can recover its credibility internationally or with its own people."

Hague recalled Britain's ambassador in Damascus, Simon Collis, to London for "consultations" on what he termed an "utterly unacceptable situation which demands a united international response".

The foreign secretary also signalled the west would now scramble to explore alternative, non-UN routes in an attempt to halt the killing in Syria and prepare for a post-Bashar al-Assad future. As well as continuing support for the Arab League, Hague said the UK would intensify its contact with the Syrian opposition, and would back a new Arab-led group, Friends of Syria. "Britain will be a highly active member in setting up such a group with the broadest international support," he said.

He described Russia's and China's vetoes of the United Nations security council resolution censuring Syria as a grave error of judgment and a betrayal that implicitly "left the door open" to further human rights abuses.

Earlier in the day, an unrepentant Russia accused the international community of "hysteria" following global condemnation of Moscow and Beijing's decision to veto the UN resolution on Syria.

Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, dismissed the reaction from "some western voices" as "verging on the hysterical" and called it an "indecent" attempt to pin blame for the out-of-control violence in Syria "on one side only".

The US, Britain, France and Germany all expressed disgust at Moscow's action.

The US closed its embassy in Damascus and evacuated its ambassador and other diplomats amid security concerns. The French president, Nicholas Sarkozy, described the rejection of the Arab-backed security council resolution as a scandal, with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, saying she was appalled.

Hague's remarks came amid another day of bloodshed and mayhem in Homs, the opposition-controlled town relentlessly targeted by Damascus since Friday. At least 50 people were killed on Mondaywhen shells slammed into a makeshift clinic and residential suburb, in the third day of indiscriminate bombardment by the Syrian army, activists said. Another 10 people were reported killed elsewhere, they added.

The Guardian was unable to independently verify the casualty figures.

The government denies shelling Homs. But activists say as many as 200 people were killed on Saturday, the highest death toll since the uprising in Syria began last March. Arab satellite television stations broadcast live footage from the town, showing smoke rising from some buildings and explosions.

In an interview with NBC, Barack Obama said that despite the failure of UN diplomacy there was no prospect of western military intervention in Syria. But he said he still believed it was possible to reach a negotiated solution to the conflict. He added: "The Assad regime is feeling the noose tightening around them. This is not going to be a matter of if, it's going to be a matter of when."

Asked why Syria differed from Libya, Obama said there was a lack of unity among the major powers in dealing with Syria. He stressed, however: "We have been relentless in sending a message that it is time for Assad to go, that the kind of violence we've seen exercised against his own people over this weekend and over the past several months is inexcusable."

Lavrov will on Tuesday lead a Russian diplomatic mission to Damascus and hold talks with Assad, Syria's president. Mikhail Fradkov, Russia's foreign intelligence chief, will also attend. There has been speculation Moscow may privately be seeking to persuade Assad to make a "controlled exit", handing over power to trusted senior generals, in a move that would preserve Russia's influence in a post-Assad scenario.

Russia has cast its efforts as an even-handed attempt to get both sides to negotiate, in contrast to the partial diplomacy of the west. Lavrov said he would urge Assad to withdraw his heavy weapons from Syria's towns and cities, a key Arab League demand. But he also said he wanted what he called "extremist groups" – opposition fighters from the Free Syrian Army – to disarm as well.

Analysts said Russia's diplomatic initiative stood little chance of success, with Assad emboldened by the Russian and Chinese votes to crush the rebels militarily, and Russia's credibility with Syrian opposition groups at zero. "My gut feeling is it will go nowhere," David Hartwell, senior Middle East analyst at IHS Jane's said.

He added: "The debate has been sharpened by what happened on Saturday. Moscow's argument that Assad is a credible figure who can lead a reform movement in Syria is increasingly weak. The Russians have got themselves in a situation where they are not treated seriously by anybody, certainly not by the opposition."

Russia appears to have rejected the UN resolution for several reasons. The Kremlin has traditionally enjoyed good relations with Syria and supplies it with billions of dollars worth of military hardware. In return, Damascus gives Russia a strategic foothold in the Middle East, allowing it the use the Syrian port of Tartus as a naval base. Russia is also Syria's third biggest trading partner (after Ukraine and China).

But geopolitics also played a role. The Kremlin is keen to create difficulties for the west, and the US in particular. It is happier siding with a fellow authoritarian regime, especially one in the grip of a popular uprising. Additionally, Moscow feels betrayed after supporting last year a UN no-fly zone in Libya, which, it says, was used as a pretext for western-engineered regime change.

And then there are domestic factors, ahead of next month's presidential "election" in Russia and unprecedented street protests against Vladimir Putin's rule. Putin's is reflexively opposed to what he sees as US hegemony and western meddling in sovreign states. "The Russians think Assad's days are over and they are thinking about how to safeguard their position in the region," Ghassan Ibrahim, a Syrian dissident based in London, told Reuters. "Syria is their only door into the region and it gives them influence. They need to protect it. But do they have enough power to manipulate Assad (to step down)?"

Writing in the Rossiskaya Gazeta, Russia's former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov on Monday suggested the UN security council resolution was part of a western conspiracy. Its ultimate aim, he suggested, was to remove the Assad regime in Syria so as to isolate Iran, which the US believes is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

"The United States and its NATO allies want to exploit the situation that arose in the spring of 2011 in the Arab world with the aim of getting rid of Arab regimes it dislikes," Primakov - a veteran of previous Russian "peace initiatives", including to Saddam Hussein in 1991 - said.

The inclusion of Fradkov, the head of Russia's SVR foreign intelligence agency, in Russia's mission is intriguing. Leaked WikiLeaks cables describe him as a leading member of Russia's security elite, and a "pragmatic hardliner who shares a world view of Soviet xenophobia and distrust of the west."

The US, meanwhile, said it had closed its embassy in Damascus over what it said were security concerns.The US state department said that the Syrian government was informed that the embassy had been closed and the American ambassador, Robert Ford, and the 17 staff remaining in Damascus had left the country only after all of them had crossed into neighbouring Jordan by road.

US officials say the Syrian security forces are so stretched by the uprising that they are not able to sufficiently protect the embassy. Those concerns were heightened by two car bomb attacks on state security offices in Damascus last month.

Judge tells 21 companies to bar access to material deemed religiously offensive, or face China-style action

Google and Facebook have removed content from some Indian websites after a court warned that India would crack down "like China" if they did not take steps to protect religious sensibilities.

The two are among 21 companies ordered to develop a mechanism to block material considered religiously offensive after private petitioners took them to court over images deemed offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians.

Individuals have brought two cases against internet companies in India, fuelling fears about censorship in the world's largest democracy.

"[Our] review team has looked at the content and disabled this content from the local domains of [Google] search, YouTube and Blogger," said a Google spokeswoman, Paroma Roy Chowdhury.

At the heart of the dispute is a law India passed last year making companies responsible for user content posted on their websites, and giving them 36 hours to take down content if there is a complaint.

Last month, the companies said it was impossible for them to block content. Roy Chowdhury declined to comment on what had since been removed, and a Facebook representative said only that the company would release a statement later.

A New Delhi lower court hearing one of the cases, a civil suit brought by an Islamic scholar, told the companies on Monday to put in writing the steps they had taken to block offensive content, and submit reports within 15 days.

"Microsoft has filed an application for rejection of the suit on the grounds that it disclosed no cause of action against Microsoft," a spokesperson for the company said. "The matter is sub judice and no further comments can be given."

That suit was brought by a scholar, Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasm, who runs a website called fatwaonline.org, which gives answers to moral questions.

Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft have appealed in the Delhi high court against a separate criminal case successfully brought by Vinay Rai, a journalist.

The high court has yet to rule on their appeal, but the sitting judge warned in January they were responsible for content on their websites and said he could, "like China", block sites if the company failed to put its house in order.

In the Rai case, the court ordered the companies to stand trial for offences relating to the distribution of obscene material to minors, after being shown images it said were offensive to the prophet Muhammad, Jesus and various Hindu gods and goddesses as well as several political leaders.

"If the companies have actually removed some content, they should put in place a mechanism to do it regularly, instead of waiting for a court case every time," Rai said.

Fewer than one in 10 of India's 1.2 billion population have access to the internet, but that still makes the country the third-biggest internet market after China and the US. The number of internet users in India is expected to almost triple to 300 million over the next three years.

Despite the new rules to block offensive content, India's internet access is still largely uncensored, in contrast to the tight controls in place in neighbouring China. But, like many other governments around the world, India has become increasingly nervous about the power of social media.

While civil rights groups have opposed the new laws, politicians say posting offensive images in a socially conservative country with a history of violence between religious groups presents a danger to the public.

Chief executive Sir David Higgins says six senior managers will forgo payouts this year and money will be used to improve safety

The head of Network Rail has become the latest taxpayer-funded executive to be forced to waive a bonus after his company announced that he and five fellow senior managers would not be seeking a payout this year.

Sir David Higgins, the chief executive of the state-backed company, was one of six Network Rail bosses who were due to discuss a possible "incentive scheme" at an annual general meeting on Friday. Higgins was expected to collect a £340,000 bonus in addition to his £560,000 basic salary.

The announcement on Monday followed immense pressure from Labour and ministers for executives in publicly owned companies to waive bonuses, following a public backlash over large payments made at a time of stringent government cuts.

Justine Greening, the transport secretary, had taken the unprecedented step of saying she would attend the meeting to oppose the plans. She also planned to tackle the company's "corporate governance" by appointing a special director from the department.

The transport secretary said the firm's decision to rethink a future remuneration scheme was "sensible and welcome".

"I have made it clear to Network Rail at every stage that this proposed package did not go far enough in reflecting the need for restraint," said Greening.

DTI insiders claim that she first told Network Rail's senior figures that they should not expect bonuses in November this year.

"The fact that its executive directors have also chosen to forfeit their annual bonuses to charity is a sign that they have recognised the strength of public opinion," she added.

Labour had accused Greening of failing to use her powers to halt the bonuses altogether. The shadow transport secretary, Maria Eagle said: "It took Labour's intervention to force ministers to take this issue seriously. Justine Greening was still refusing to stand up for the British public and veto this proposed bonus plan when Network Rail managers took the decision for her."

Eagle said the government should now sit down with Network Rail to agree whether a bonus scheme of this scale was appropriate in a company funded by the taxpayer.

"At a time when so many families and rail commuters are being squeezed financially, when fares are rising by up to 13% and the rail network is performing inadequately, it was completely wrong for bonuses of this scale to have been even considered, let alone agreed," she said.

In a statement released by Network Rail, Higgins said the decision to waive this year's bonuses was made last week and that the meeting had been suspended. Instead, future bonus schemes will be discussed at a meeting yet to be scheduled.

The company could not say, however, if Higgins and fellow executives will continue to share in a long-term bonus scheme that could be worth up to £15.6m over the next three years for the rail group's six executive directors. The six will also earn £2.3m a year in salaries plus a maximum of £4.2m in bonuses.

This year's money will instead be diverted to a safety improvement fund for level crossings, Higgins said.

"I and my directors decided last week that we would forgo any entitlement and instead allocate the money to the safety improvement fund for level crossings. I can confirm that remains our intention," he said.

The statement said that the board of Network Rail had decided to recommend to its members that Friday's meeting be adjourned. "The board will take the opportunity to reflect further on how to incentivise performance in the company against the backdrop of the current context. It will continue to consult the secretary of state on wider issues of governance in advance of the government's command paper," it reads.

Network Rail's chairman, Rick Haythornthwaite, said in the statement that Friday's meeting was not to approve a specific annual bonus payment for executive directors, but was supposed to amend a previously approved long-term incentive scheme to ensure additional external scrutiny of performance.

"The issue of annual performance payments would only arise if Network Rail surpassed stretching performance thresholds and would only be decided in May after the end of the financial year."

The development comes a week after Stephen Hester, the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, which is 83% state-owned, waived a bonus package of almost £1m after a public backlash.

More than 20 MPs have signed a Commons motion saying Network Rail had been "found by the Office of Rail Regulation to be in breach of its licence" and had been responsible for "major asset failures, congested routes and poor management of track condition".

Last week, the company admitted health and safety breaches over the deaths of two teenagers killed at a level crossing in Essex in 2005.

Downing Street said ministers were not permitted to interfere in the "day-to-day running" of the firm, which receives £4bn of taxpayer funding a year and is guaranteed by the government.

But it said it would be looking at its corporate governance in the light of "problems" that had arisen.

Industry sources have accused politicians of using the issue of bonuses as a political football. "It is ridiculous. We are at risk of losing some our best brains because of a political witchhunt," the source said.

Civil society groups say trial of 43 NGO workers – including 19 Americans – is politically motivated

Activists and civil society groups in Egypt have reacted with fury to the announcement that 43 NGO workers – including 19 American citizens – will face a criminal trial in what critics of the government say is a politically motivated investigation into the foreign funding of pro-democracy groups.

Judge Ashraf al-Ashmawy confirmed on Monday the case had been referred to the Cairo criminal court, where the NGO workers will face charges of "accepting funds and benefits from an international organisation" to pursue an activity "prohibited by law".

They are also accused of carrying out "political training programmes", supporting election campaigns and illegally financing individuals and groups, the judge said in a statement.

Those involved waited in trepidation for further details. "It's inexplicable," said Julie Hughes, country director of the National Democratic Institute (NDI). "We don't even know what the charges are."

"I'm trying to stay optimistic but I'd be lying if I said this wasn't stressful on me, the organisation, our families. But I'm proud of the individuals working here. We'll hang in there."

Hughes and 18 other Americans – including Sam LaHood, country director of the International Republican Institute and son of the US transport secretary – have been banned from leaving Egypt in relation to the case, which many see as a thinly veiled attack on pro-democracy and human rights organisations.

"This is the continuation of the Mubarak-era attacks on civil society groups and it's worse because it's being conducted by Mubarak-era minister [of planning and international co-operation] Fayza Abul Naga," said Gamal Eid, the head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.

Eid also placed some of the blame on the US ambassador to Egypt, Ann Patterson, for announcing that the US government was funding groups in Egypt yet refusing to say which groups were the recipients. Patterson's comments left all civil society groups open to misrepresentation as recipients of US government aid, even though none of the groups under investigation were, Eid said. "We have misgivings over US government aid and we don't take it," he said.

The case against the NGO workers focuses on funding from abroad for activities that, under a 2003 law, require these groups to be registered with the ministry of insurance and social solidarity.

Those in the field point out there is much delay and procrastination by the relevant authorities when groups try to register their activities. "You submit your papers, then they keep asking for more and you don't get anywhere, and in the end you are not registered," said Sherif Azer, deputy head of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights.

NDI submitted a request in 2005 that did not meet with much interest by the authorities and was asked to resubmit its papers by the ministry of foreign affairs last month, Hughes said. "We were given verbal indications that our programmes were well within Egyptian law," she said.

Hughes added "there's been a history of scepticism by the previous regime" of groups promoting democracy but that the NDI had always kept authorities informed of its activities, including the notorious state security apparatus that often intervened in civil society work. The NDI had also recently been accredited by the high elections committee to observe the parliamentary elections, which began in November and have not yet ended.

Civil society groups, especially those that focus on human rights and promoting democracy, have been regularly accused of involvement in foreign plots to weaken Egypt and the allegations are often revived after clashes between protesters and security forces.

As threat of more snow recedes, widespread ice prompts Met Office to issue appeal for people to take extra care when driving

Accidents on ice have closed the A1 Great North Road in Yorkshire, while trains and flights have suffered delays as the UK's weekend snow takes its time to thaw.

Fears of further downfalls have receded but temperatures are expected to remain low in many areas with a gradual north-west/south-east divide expected for much of February, according to forecasters.

Milder but more unsettled weather is settling in across the north-west, where Atlantic weather has driven back the icy easterlies coming from Scandinavia and Russia. By contrast, a cold but clear pattern has developed in the east and south, where most of the transport trouble has been experienced.

The meeting of the two fronts helped to account for particular problems on 25 miles (40km) of the A1 between Allerton Park and Dishforth, where rain from the west encountered very low temperatures from the east overnight. Rapid freezing turned parts of the dual carriageway into an ice-rink in both directions, according to North Yorkshire police, as lorries jack-knifed and bands of freezing fog added to the problems.

No one was seriously hurt but the road was closed north and south at 2.15am, and police have asked drivers to find alternatives. Further south, the stretch of the A1 near Church Fenton, south-east of Leeds, saw lows of -8C (16.5F) and visibility down to less than 100m after 15cm of snow at the weekend.

A spokesman for North Yorkshire police said: "Traffic conditions on the A1 northbound from Dishforth and all the way to Leeming and beyond are treacherous. There have been a serious of accidents which have resulted in the A1 northbound being shut while emergency services clear the scene."

Nine other severe weather alerts are in force in areas where the variable thaw is proving slower, with ice the factor in all cases. The Meteorological Office issued a general appeal for extra care when driving, with patches of ice likely to have escaped the generally successful gritting operations.

Trains and flights are getting back to schedule after many delays and cancellations over the weekend but operators warned a return to normal services might take some time. A broken-down train and electrical supply problems hit South West Trains, with buses laid on for Portsmouth and serious delays for trains to London Waterloo.

Southeastern has also suffered delays to commuter services and a spokesman said: "Low temperatures are set to continue for several days. Please take care when travelling and allow additional time for your journeys."

Heathrow airport's cancellation of half of 1,300 scheduled flights on Sunday was criticised by travellers camped on terminal floors as an over-reaction, with runways getting only 6cm of snow at the weekend. But a spokeswoman said the measures had avoided worse disruption and the transport secretary, Justine Greening, called the action "the right decision".

The spokeswoman said: "We took the decision with airlines and air traffic control to reduce the flight schedule in advance. This allowed airlines to rebook some people on to flights that are departing, and passengers have had better quality information about whether they can fly or not."

Sledgers, skaters and snowballers enjoyed a grand weekend but not without casualties, who include a 55-year-old father flung from his sledge at high speed on a family outing at Terrington in North Yorkshire. He is being treated for spinal injuries at James Cook university hospital in Middlesbrough.

The weather will improve slowly, according to forecasters, with temperatures on Monday likely to reach 10C (50F) along the western seaboard but remaining much lower in the east, at a predicted 1C (33.8F) in East Anglia and 2C (35.6F) further south-east.

The Meteorological Office suggested the north/south divide will settle down this week and for the rest of the month, with milder weather slowly gaining the upper hand. It warned this could lead to more snow as the easterlies reluctantly retreat, but by late February there should be "a gradual trend toward less cold and more changeable conditions in many areas".