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• Pressure mounts as No 10 spin doctor's ex-colleague speaks
• Tessa Jowell says phone was hacked 28 times
• Prominent figures to sue Met for lack of warning Andy Coulson, the No 10 communications chief, found himself in the direct line of fire in the News of the World phone hacking scandal tonight when a former colleague alleged that he issued direct orders to journalists to carry out the illegal practice. As the former cabinet minister Tessa Jowell revealed that her phone had been targeted on 28 occasions, Coulson stood accused of presiding over a "culture of dark arts" which encouraged phone hacking. The hacking scandal blew up again this week after the New York Times published a lengthy article including the claim that Coulson freely discussed the use of unlawful news-gathering techniques during his time as editor of the tabloid. Coulson resigned as editor of the News of the World after its royal reporter and a private investigator were jailed. He denies any knowledge of phone hacking. Downing Street and Scotland Yard, which is facing criticism for failing to investigate the allegations properly, were facing pressure last night as: • Tessa Jowell, the former culture secretary, told the Independent that her phone had been hacked into on 28 occasions. • Lord Prescott, who is joining forces with three other public figures to sue police over a failure to warn them they had been targeted by the private investigator at the heart of the scandal, said he has evidence that Glenn Mulcaire targeted him on behalf of News International. • Alan Johnson, the former home secretary, is to invoke his rights as a former cabinet minister to review official papers relating to the case from his time in office. • Brian Paddick, a former deputy assistant commissioner with the Met who is seeking a judicial review of the alleged failure of his former force to tell him his name had been found on a list of public figures whose phones may have been targeted, called for Coulson to be interviewed by police. The figures spoke out as a former News of the World journalist quoted by the New York Times repeated his claim tonight that he had been ordered by the former editor to hack phones. Sean Hoare told BBC Radio 4's PM: "There is an expression called the culture of dark arts. You were given a remit: just get the story. Phone tapping hadn't just existed on the News of the World … I have gone on the record in the New York Times and said I have stood by Andy and been requested to tap phones, OK, or hack into them. He was well aware the practice existed. To deny it is simply a lie." The government last night commented on Hoare's admission that he was sacked from the title at a time when he was struggling with problems with drugs and alcohol. Alan Duncan, the international development minister, told Radio 4's Any Questions: "What they are seizing on today are the words of someone who had an alcohol and drug problem who was sacked by the paper." No 10 is standing by Coulson. Sources close to him said that Hoare had contradicted himself in the interview. But Labour piled pressure on the government and Scotland Yard in the wake of the New York Times investigation. Alan Johnson is to review government papers from his time in office in the wake of quotes in the New York Times article from unnamed detectives alleging that their investigation had been cut short because of Scotland Yard's close relationship with the News of the World. Johnson said that he considered summoning the police inspectorate because he felt "uncomfortable" with the investigation's progress. He decided against this after "reassuring conversations" with senior officers at Scotland Yard. The government, which has been rattled by the renewed focus on Coulson, last night blamed Labour for stoking the saga. Alan Duncan said: "The Labour party, in a concerted campaign through Lord Prescott and Alan Johnson, has piled in to attack Andy Coulson about something that happened years ago in order to try to attack the government. This was looked at by News International lawyers, by a parliamentary select committee, by the police and the CPS. All of them concluded there was no case to answer." Ed Miliband, the Labour leadership contender, said: "These are very serious allegations. If I was prime minister and Andy Coulson was working for me I would demand to know from Andy Coulson the truth. I don't see how he can stay working in Downing Street unless he clears this up and says whether his former colleagues are telling the truth or not." The News of the World said: "The New York Times story contains no new evidence – it relies on unsubstantiated allegations from unnamed sources or claims from disgruntled former employees that should be treated with extreme scepticism given the reasons for their departures from this newspaper. We reject absolutely any suggestion there was a widespread culture of wrongdoing at the News of the World." A Met police spokesperson responded to Johnson's statement:. "In July 2009, the [Met Police Service] examined whether any new evidence had emerged in the media or elsewhere that justified reopening the investigation. The clear view, subsequently endorsed by the director of public prosecutions with leading counsels' advice, was that there was no new evidence and consequently the investigation remains closed."

• News of the World phone-hacking scandal
• Newspapers & magazines
• Newspapers
• News of the World
• National newspapers
• Andy Coulson
• Conservatives

Nicholas Watt Peter Walker
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Exclusive: Education secretary had claimed that more than 700 'free schools' could be established due to high demand Michael Gove, the education secretary, will next week be forced to announce a dramatic scaling back of the Tories' landmark plans to create a new generation of schools run by parents and voluntary groups. Labour tonight accused the education secretary of presiding over a "chaotic shambles" after it emerged that as few as 20 free schools are on track to open in September 2011. In June Gove hinted that 700 could be established. Ed Balls, the shadow education secretary, said: "This is another embarrassment for the education secretary's flawed, unfair and unpopular school reforms. Michael Gove took over a successful department which has helped to deliver record improvements in school standards over more than a decade, but in just a few months he has managed to turn it into a chaotic shambles." Gove said in June that he had been inundated with expressions of interest from establish a new tier of free schools. "More than 700 expressions of interest in opening new free schools have been received by the charitable group the New Schools Network," he told MPs. The announcement next week will echo Gove's claim in the summer that more than 1,000 schools had applied to become academies. In the end just 32 are opening this term. The reduced number was a blow to Gove, who rushed through legislation to allow existing schools to obtain academy status by the start of the academic year. The free schools are due to start opening in a year's time. One senior Tory said: "Michael clearly massively underestimated the challenge he had decided to undertake." Cameron regards schools reform as one of the key elements in his plans to create a "big society" in which power is devolved to the grassroots. Gove is relaxed on the grounds that it normally takes between three to five years to establish a new school. While relatively few free schools will open next year, many more are in the pipeline and will open in due course. A source close to Gove said: "Under the last government only a couple of parent-promoted schools were created over 13 years. Now, within just four months … there are teachers, parents and community groups who have prepared high quality proposals for free schools starting as early as 2011. There are a significant number of proposals in the pipeline and an announcement will shortly be made about those at the front of the queue who are planning to open next year."

• Education policy
• Michael Gove
• Schools

Nicholas Watt
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State of emergency declared after earthquake with magnitude of 7.0 strikes 19 miles west of Christchurch A powerful 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck New Zealand's South Island last night, causing widespread damage to buildings, although there were few injuries. Christchurch mayor Bob Parker declared a state of emergency four hours after tremors rocked the region, warning that continuing aftershocks could cause masonry to fall from damaged buildings. The quake hit 19 miles west of the city, on the south of the island, at 4.35am local time. Residents reported collapsed buildings and bridges, as well as power cuts. Christchurch, which has a population of around 400,000 people, was then rocked with a series of sharp aftershocks. No deaths have been reported so far but doctors at Christchurch Hospital said they had treated two men with serious injuries. One was hit by a falling chimney and was in intensive care, while a second was seriously hurt after being cut by glass, a hospital spokeswoman said. Other minor injuries have also been reported. "There is considerable damage in the central city," police inspector Mike Coleman told New Zealand's National Radio. Police Inspector Alf Stewart told the station that some people had been arrested for looting. "We have some reports of people smashing [shop] windows and trying to grab some property that is not theirs … we've got police on the streets and we're dealing with that," he said. Colleen Simpson, a Christchurch resident, said panicked neighbours ran into the streets in their pyjamas. She said some buildings had collapsed, there was no power and the mobile telephone network had failed. "There is a row of shops completely demolished right in front of me," she told the Stuff news website. Another person from Christchurch, Kevin O'Hanlon, said the jolt was extremely powerful. "I was awake to go to work and then just heard this massive noise and 'boom'," he said. "It was like the house got hit. It just started shaking. I've never felt anything like it." Bruce Russell, 50, said that although he lives in Lyttelton, a port town to the south of Christchurch, which is on firmer volcanic ground, the earthquake had been "very alarming". "We were woken up at 4.30am and it swayed like a ship at sea," he said. "It was very alarming. We have no power, which is a problem across [Christchurch]. We're listening to reports on a wind-up radio. It's still very frightening." Russell said he had not experienced an earthquake on this scale before. There have been local reports that some people many have been trapped in damaged houses. Video footage showed some cars crushed by heaps of fallen bricks. Authorities were advising residents to stay inside until given the all-clear. Residents have been asked not to flush toilets because of potential damage to the city's sewerage system which could lead to contamination. Christchurch airport was also closed as a precaution while runways were safety checked. Despite tsunami fears by residents, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said "no destructive widespread tsunami threat existed, based on historical earthqake and tsunami data". New Zealand lies above an area of the Earth's crust where two tectonic plates collide and the country records more than 14,000 earthquakes a year – but only about 150 are usually felt. Schoolchildren in the country regularly undertake earthquake drills.

• New Zealand
• Natural disasters and extreme weather

Jo Adetunji
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In the first of a three-part investigation, Rory Carroll reports from the gateway to America, at the centre of drug cartel violence that has claimed 28,000 lives The events which have no name scythe through the valley like invisible reapers. They slice east to west, west to east, a homicidal pendulum. No one sees anything. The pair of human heads left in a coolbox on the corner of the plaza? A mystery. The 18 houses burnt in a single night? An enigma. The doctor and his family who disappeared? A rumour. This much residents do tell you: Juárez valley stretches along the Rio Bravo and used to grow cotton. It roasts by day, shivers by night. Lob a stone over the river and it lands in Texas. Beyond that, conversation tends to dry up. Of the slaughter, of the reason this has become one of the deadliest places on the planet, residents have little to say. At most they refer to "the situation", "the things happening" or, simply, "it". Manuel Robles, curator of the valley museum in the hamlet of San Agustín, can talk about dinosaur fossils and Apaches but not unfolding history. Pressed, he rubs rheumy eyes, gazes out the window and falls silent. Finally he says: "If I tell you, tomorrow I won't be here. They'll kill me." It's as close as you get to an acknowledgment that this valley of a dozen villages and towns, once home to 20,000 people, has detached from Mexico and entered a realm beyond any map. There is no state here, no rule of law. There are killings and beheadings and burnings and no one sees anything. The official explanation is that the Sinaloa cartel is challenging the homegrown Juárez cartel for a venerable gun and drug trafficking route to the United States. Just as Billy the Kid coveted this trail, so do modern outlaws. It is perhaps the loneliest corner of what is termed Mexico's drug war. More than 500 people are estimated to have died here in the past four years, a per capita toll far worse than Iraq or Afghanistan. Nationwide 28,000 have died. As violence raked up and down the valley, exterminating entire families, an exodus began. By the time a church was torched and anonymous notes warned of an imminent bloodbath most were gone, leaving blackened, boarded-up ghost towns. Nature, at least, is thriving: weeds festoon carcasses of abandoned pick-up trucks. The cemetery outside Guadalupe, the biggest town, is a scorched, desolate place with fresh mounds. "Four in the past week, all young ones," says Ignacio Montes, 66, the gravedigger. A cloth hangs from his baseball cap. He indicates a family plot: Omar Amaya, mayor, killed in 2006, aged 33; his father, Apolonio, also mayor, killed in 2007, aged 59; Omar's sister Aglae, aged 29, and mother, Maria, aged 57, both killed in 2008. "They go after the relatives, you see," says Montes. During a burial in 2008 gunmen ambushed mourners, killing the dead man's daughter and wounding his granddaughter. "It doesn't stop," says Montes. He recently found a 16-year-old boy's battered body dumped on a grave. Victor Luque, 53, is the acting mayor of Guadalupe. His predecessor was assassinated two months ago, the town's fourth murdered mayor. Urbane, courteous and elegant in a white guayabera, Luque agrees to an interview. What is going on in the valley? "I really don't know." Who is doing the killing? "I really don't know." Who is responsible for security? "I really don't know." How many people have fled? "I really don't know." The mantra almost becomes a joke. The mayor shrugs, smiles. He knows this exchange is ridiculous. He floats a metaphor. The "situation", he says, is "a perfect storm". There is a local expression: "Hasta que el viento tiene miedo". Even the wind is afraid. In this town hall, with its black ribbons, bleached peach paintwork and near-empty offices, terror is in the heavy stillness. Momentarily dropping the charade, Luque mentions he has no bodyguard. "What would be the point? If they decide to kill you then there would be two bodies instead of one." Who would "they" be? The mayor smiles again. "I really don't know." But someone knows a lot about the valley. During the Guardian's tour there was barely another vehicle or soul in sight. Yet the next day the guide's family received an anonymous phone call detailing our entire itinerary – who we met, what we discussed, even places where we slowed but did not stop – with precision. Mexico's agony is ritually explained as a turf war between drug cartels. Group A versus Group B versus Group C. A savage conflict, but the mayhem, according to authorities, is a sign of cartels' desperation. Slowly but surely the state is prevailing thanks to brave soldiers and police. "My government is absolutely determined to continue fighting against criminality without quarter until we put a stop to this common enemy and obtain the Mexico we want," President Felipe Calderón, who declared war against cartels in 2006, said in recent newspaper advertisements. Juárez valley suggests otherwise. It is proof of profound failure, says Gustavo de la Rosa, the state human rights commissioner. "It is abandoned, a land without law." One reason, he says, is a lack of political will. "There are few votes there so politicians ignore it. The place has gone back to the 1880s." In fact the state is present in the form of the army, which has cameras and checkpoints with sandbags on the only road in and out. The soldiers' presence, however, prompts the question: why did they watch thousands of residents flee – convoys of furniture-packed trucks – and do nothing. "What's the point of them?" says José Sereseres, 84, a lone soul in a cowboy hat on the main street of Caseta village. If there is a pattern to the slaughter it is that Sinaloa is exterminating suspected Juárez cartel members and their relatives. Rocio Gallegas, an editor at Juárez's main newspaper, El Diario, says the security forces must have intelligence about what is happening. "It's not possible that they don't know." Authorities did catch José Rudolfo Escajeda, the Juárez cartel's valley enforcer, but a Sinaloa commander, nicknamed Quitapuercos – pig killer – is believed to remain free. It suggests, say some, that the army is tacitly backing Sinaloa. A similar pattern emerges in Juárez city. On the surface things looks normal. Shops and schools are open, there is rush-hour traffic and fast-food restaurants are packed at lunchtime. The scythe, however, is busy. More than 6,000 have been murdered since 2008, a shocking total for a city of just 1.3 million. Last month was the bloodiest yet: 363 dead, according to El Diario's count. It is less immediately obvious than in the valley, but the city is ebbing away. Many offices and houses are empty and have "for sale" signs outside. About 10,670 businesses – 40% of the total – have shut. A study by the city's university found that 116,000 houses have been abandoned and 230,000 people have left. Juárez is the main gateway between Mexico and the US. Railways and roads converge here, as do smugglers. "Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States," the dictator Porfirio Diaz observed in the 19th century. With the US the world's biggest market for illegal drugs the quip still holds. Just as in the valley, security forces in the city are an oxymoron. Their absence breeds insecurity, their presence breeds insecurity. They prey on the population, kidnapping and extorting in cahoots with criminal gangs, according to multiple complaints filed to the human rights commission. In an opinion poll published last week 39% of people cited official corruption as the main driver of violence. Narco-trafficking – despite government claims and media echoes – was cited by a mere 14.6%. It is a disturbing finding. Here in the broiling desert heat the boundary between warring criminal groups and the state, a comforting delineation within the drug war, blurs and shimmers. Soldiers and police – and elected officials – fight with, as well as against criminal gangs. "Our security forces are infiltrated and there are links between criminal groups and certain politicians," says De La Rosa, the human rights commissioner. "The way they work is to strengthen each other and the phenomenon is getting worse. There are some politicians who flaunt their connections." A large man with a rumpled shirt, snowy beard and hair pulled into a ponytail, the commissioner resembles a hippy Santa Claus but is a tough, shrewd operator. He investigates human rights abuses with a small team of young assistants; one of the few state agencies credited with working as it should. For protection De La Rosa sleeps across the border in El Paso and travels to Juárez every day with 12 bodyguards. In between fielding phone calls on the latest atrocities and rumours he coaxes testimony from frightened families. He is an outspoken critic of a government strategy that, he says, allows crooked politicians and financiers to go free. "There are untouchables." When thousands of army troops deployed in 2008 the violence briefly abated. A well-placed source from city hall, a sophisticated, cultured man, smiles at the memory. "It was a cleaning. And it worked." What he means is death squads took out mid-ranking narcos, including crooked police. The campaign has never been officially admitted. "But the cleaning stopped after a few months," rued the official. "That was a mistake." The authorities did not anticipate how quickly criminal gangs would rebound and co-opt security forces, he said. Police have replaced the army on the streets. They are seen as ineffectual at best, predatory and murderous at worst. Business owners who spoke on condition of anonymity accused officers of treating the city as booty. "If you don't pay, you risk disappearing, that's the game," said one car showroom manager. Despite shake-ups, municipal and state police are still regarded as loyal to the homegrown cartel, a tradition going back decades. Federal police, outsiders brought in for the drug war, have become linked with the Sinaloa interlopers. Last month 250 officers roughed up and arrested their own commanders, accusing them of siding with narco-traffickers. A mutiny of the honest, say optimists; a row over "cuota", the levy the force charges on civilians, say others. Arrest statistics fuel suspicions of favouritism. Of 81,128 drug-related arrests until the end of July some 24% were from Sinaloa, the oldest and mightiest cartel. The motive, apart from pay-offs, supposedly would be to end turf wars by promoting one cartel's hegemony. Calderon indignantly denies favouritism, but the nature of violence in Juárez suggests local commanders – with or without approval from Mexico City – have cut deals with Sinaloa. The Juárez cartel, fearing extinction, has lashed back at the black-uniformed "federales" who allegedly back their rivals. An urban guerrilla onslaught has killed about 40 officers since April. The campaign includes drive-by shootings, kidnappings, car bombs – and a surreal request to the FBI to investigate their Mexican counterparts. On a particularly hot morning last week a patch of asphalt on Bulevar Ampliacion Cuatro Siglos revealed a new cartel tactic: it started with a bloodied, naked foot, continued with chunks of leg, then a trunk, then arms, hands and finally, 200 metres further, a head on the bonnet of a black Nissan. The quartered remains of federal police officer Hector Mendoza Guevara, aged 25. There was a placard: "This is what happens to those who help Chapo." Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is the boss of Sinaloa. Any police force would be shaken by the sight, but the grisly tableau's arrangement seemed designed to instill terror in young officers from parts of southern Mexico where superstition and belief in sorcery are common. Those at the scene were ashen. "Get away! Fuck off!" one screamed at onlookers. In Juárez good news passes for this: the federales are so busy trying to stay alive that they recently suspended their extortion rackets, according to business owners. The force spokesman declined interview requests for this article. With killings averaging about a dozen a day, and businesses fleeing, the city edges ever closer to the Hobbesian dystopia of the valley 50 miles east. Each day brings fresh horrors. Two men stabbed and left to die face-down in a dump. Six people incinerated in a van. Two cyclists gunned down on the street. A child shot on the family porch. That was just one day. Before lunch. "It amuses me when various experts in the US or Mexican government, or in the media, try to explain what's going on," said Charles Bowden, a veteran chronicler of the border and author of Murder City: Ciudad Juárez and the Global Economy's New Killing Fields. "The thing about Juárez is you can't see a pattern to the violence anymore. Killings are everywhere. They cross all class lines. You can't make sense of it." There are an estimated 500 gangs in the city, many drawn from slums where parents work in sweatshop factories that pay $40 (£26) a week. Some gangs are independent, some work for the cartels, some work for the police and some have no idea whom they work for. They just take orders over the phone from unknown bosses. Few murders are investigated let alone solved. Even when suspects are arrested and paraded before TV cameras they are, according to numerous media investigations, often freed days later for want of evidence, prison space or judicial will. "It's like a war in which no one remembers how it started. No one controls the killing now, it's got a life of its own," said Bowden. Unable to staunch the flow of blood, Calderón has sought to redefine it, claiming that 90% of those killed are involved in narco-trafficking. A general urged the media to report each death not as another murder victim but "one less criminal". Given so few homicides are properly investigated it is unclear how the president, general or anyone can know such things. Miguel Morales has no doubt he would have been classified as a criminal. The 24-year-old, who would only speak under a pseudonym, was, after all, a thief and a junkie and haunted street corners where gangs peddled drugs. As his fixes progressed from pills to cocaine to heroin his body weight shrivelled to 50kg, a spectre. One of Juárez's estimated 80,000 addicts, his death – he had numerous scrapes with gangs and police – would have caused not a blip. He recounts all this in a matter-of-fact tone at a rehabilitation centre which has become his home. Then his eyes blaze. "My story would have been buried with me." What angers him is not the prospect of dying so much as dying anonymous, forgotten. "Everyone has a story." This is his. Morales was from a middle class home but, shy and awkward, with a clumsy body and goggle eyes, jealous of a brother's effortless success, he started smoking cannabis at 14 to get through weekends. He progressed to harder drugs, dropped out of business college, lived rough, begged, stole, got high. Somehow he found a way back and now, clean, lives in the rehab centre. He mops the floors and gives talks to new arrivals. "It's not much of a story is it?" he smiles. "But I'm glad I can tell it." In numbers: Four years of bloodshed 28,000+ Number murdered since Felipe Calderón launched his crackdown on cartels in 2006 84,000 Number of weapons confiscated $400m+ Amount of suspected drugs money confiscated 963 Number of clashes between security forces and drug gangs (nearly one a day) 50,000+ Troops and federal police involved in the operation $13bn Estimated annual profit made by Mexican drug traffickers 90% Proportion of cocaine consumed in the US that comes from Mexico

• Mexico
• Drugs trade

Rory Carroll
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Cricket council rebuts conspiracy charge as players accused of spot-betting scam are interviewed by police under caution The International Cricket Council today defended its decision to charge three Pakistan cricketers under its anti-corruption code. The three men, accused of an alleged betting scam, were today formally interviewed by police under caution and later released without police charges. Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Asif and Test captain Salman Butt were interviewed separately at Kilburn police station in north London. Afterwards, their lawyer, Elizabeth Robertson, said they had attended voluntarily and at no time were they under arrest. She said the men would continue to co-operate fully with police and the ICC, which has charged them under its anti-corruption code and provisionally banned them from playing in any match. Despite the ICC charges, police have yet to decide whether there is enough evidence to charge the players with conspiracy to commit fraud. The council's anti-corruption and security unit is conducting its own, parallel investigation. ICC investigators will not question the players until they receive permission from the police. They are finalising an "information sharing protocol" to pool evidence. The police seized money and mobile phones from the players last Sunday and are investigating any possible link between bank notes found in their possession and the money handed to a middle-man as part of the sting by the News of the World, which made the allegations. Before any prosecution, Scotland Yard would have to prove that any money they received from Mazhar Majeed was taken in return for deliberately bowling no-balls. The players have told friends they are prepared to tell detectives they did receive payments from Majeed, but this was entirely proper because he was their agent. Majeed, who was arrested last weekend by police over the News of the World allegations, and by customs over money-laundering allegations, is responsible for organising the three players' sponsorship deals. At least one of them did not have a UK bank account. Majeed has represented members of Pakistan's test side in this role for several years. Last night, the ICC moved to suspend the trio provisionally after charging them with "various offences" under its code of conduct. Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the recently appointed chairman of the anti-corruption unit, and Haroon Lorgat, the ICC chief executive, insisted the offences were not "the tip of the iceberg". But Lorgat conceded that the sport faced its worst crisis since the Hansie Cronje match-fixing affair a decade ago. Pakistan high commissioner Wajid Hasan this morning accused the ICC of "playing to the public gallery" by suspending the three cricketers. He said: "I have heard the press briefing by two ICC Representatives today. I have also learnt that ICC has taken Amir's name off from the list of players of the year. What happened to the general principle of law – innocent until proven guilty? "After the shocking, arbitrary and high-handed suspension of the three cricketers through the ICC's uncalled-for action, nothing is coming to me as a surprise. My apprehensions that there is a rat in the whole affair are being strengthened." He said the ICC had "no authority" to intervene and has previously claimed the players were "set up" by the News of the World, which is expected to publish further revelations on Sunday. On the same day, England will face Pakistan in the first of two Twenty20 matches in Cardiff. Lorgat insisted that the proper processes had been followed and denied Hasan's claims." I certainly wouldn't subscribe to the view that there is some sort of conspiracy around Pakistan cricket. "This particular incident with the three players is unrelated to the challenge that we've got in keeping Pakistan involved as a full member of the International Cricket Council," he said. The country has been unable to play at home since a terrorist attack on the Sri Lanka team bus in Lahore last year.

• Pakistan cricket betting scandal
• Pakistan cricket team
• Cricket
• Pakistan

Owen Gibson Vikram Dodd
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President Hamid Karzai's brother calls for US to guarantee deposits amid fears collapse would threaten police and army salaries Officials in Afghanistan are resisting US pressure for a wide-ranging clean-up of Kabul Bank, which is mired in allegations of corruption that have engulfed some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country. The stand-off came as the bank's third-biggest shareholder, Mahmoud Karzai – the elder brother of President Hamid Karzai – called for a US bailout of the stricken bank. The central bank on Tuesday ordered that the chairman and chief executive of Kabul Bank, who are both large shareholders in the bank, should step down from their positions and a government official be appointed to manage the bank. But western officials with intimate knowledge of the financial drama said the US treasury wanted to see much stronger action. That would include bringing the bank into line with international norms, not least the appointment of a fully independent board capable of standing up to overmighty shareholders. Such independence would risk bringing to light allegations that members of the country's business and political elite have, for years, apparently got away with using deposits of thousands of ordinary Afghans to fund lavish lifestyles. The bank's funds are said to have been used to invest in loss-making enterprises and, allegedly, the re-election campaign of President Karzai. In the words of one foreign official, the US treasury is anxious to "rip the lid" off the cowboy capitalism that has been allowed to flourish at Kabul Bank. But sources close to the negotiations say the central bank is under intense pressure to resist US demands. "What [the US treasury is] asking for is not completely unreasonable, from a prudential regulatory perspective," said one official. "But there are lots of assets off the books. The hunch is that shareholders would like to continue to use bank assets how they want, rather than bring it into line with international best practice." The central bank's spokesman could not be reached by phone today. Earlier in the week Abdul Qadir Fitrat, the bank's governor, said the removal of Sher Khan Farnood as chairman and Khalilullah Frozi as chief executive had been a long-planned decision to bring to an end the situation where the two largest shareholders controlled all the operations. But western officials and banking industry sources say the government was forced to clean up the bank's suspected dubious practices after infighting between the two men threatened the bank's future. The collapse of the institution that manages the salaries of the country's police and army would create havoc, as well as hitting the Afghan economy. Mahmoud Karzai, a minority stakeholder with 7% of the shares, said he welcomed a full audit of the bank and that he was concerned about three problems that may have occurred under Farnood and Frozi: lending over the bank's limits, lending to shareholders and investing outside the country in "risky businesses". When asked whether he thought anyone should go to jail if fraud is uncovered he said, "I don't think so because that would create chaos. Maybe there should be fines or something like that." But he said he would never let the bank be taken over: "It's an independent bank owned by the shareholders and we will not allow the government or anyone else to take it over." Karzai had earlier told the Boston Globe that "America should do something" and the US treasury should agree to guarantee the bank. But when contacted by the Guardian he was anxious to sound a note of confidence, and said that with the bank's $400m in cash he did not think a bailout would be necessary. He said he only floated the idea of the US paying money because he held the American embassy and US newspapers responsible for starting the panic when they reported Kabul Bank had made $300m in losses, which he strongly denied. But Karzai conceded that it had already suffered a bank run, with almost $160m withdrawn in the last two days alone – a huge amount considering Afghanistan's tiny banking sector. Despite efforts by Karzai and the finance minister to assure customers, the test will be whether the panic continues when banks open tomorrow. With so many of the bank's assets unlikely to be easily sold for cash a bailout could be huge, perhaps requiring $600m, in the estimate of one bank executive. The financial scandal is a huge embarrassment for Afghanistan, with many leading figures linked to the unorthodox bank whose brazen business practices were allowed to flourish despite a modern banking law drawn up by foreign experts. In a country that lacked any banking infrastructure in late 2001, the bank mushroomed into Afghanistan's largest financial institution by attracting depositors who had never had bank accounts before, allegedly in part by running a lottery system where account holders had the chance to win large prizes. Sources claimed those deposits were then used to fund enterprises belonging to shareholders or their families, while investors wanting to set up legitimate businesses often got nowhere.

• Afghanistan
• Hamid Karzai
• Banking

Jon Boone
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Iran's president urges Palestinians to continue armed resistance against Israel at al-Quds Day rally Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, today launched an angry attack on "doomed" US-brokered Middle East peace talks and urged the Palestinians to continue armed resistance to Israel. Ahmadinejad used the annual al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day rally in Tehran to scorn the Obama administration's efforts in launching the first Arab-Israeli negotiations in nearly two years. "What do they want to negotiate about? Who are they representing? What are they going to talk about?" the hardline Iranian leader said of the Palestinian negotiating team in Washington. "Who gave them the right to sell a piece of Palestinian land? The people of Palestine and the people of the region will not allow them to sell even an inch of Palestinian soil to the enemy. The negotiations are stillborn and doomed." Iran supports Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian movement that controls the Gaza Strip and opposes talks by Mahmoud Abbas, the western-backed PLO leader who is based in the West Bank. Its armed wing claimed responsibility for killing four Israeli settlers near Hebron on Tuesday. Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other groups have vowed to carry out more attacks. "The fate of Palestine is determined in Palestine and through the resistance of the Palestinian people, rather than in Washington, Paris and London," Ahmadinejad said in his live TV broadcast. Iran's al-Quds Day event was founded in 1979 to mark the solidarity of the Islamic revolution with the Palestinians, and is held on the last Friday of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan. Iranian state media reported that millions of people turned out in Tehran and elsewhere for al-Quds rallies. But the regime took pre-emptive measures to silence opposition supporters who have managed to exploit previous official holidays to show their defiance. The few foreign journalists based in Iran operate under severe restrictions. Mehdi Karroubi , one of the two reformist candidates defeated by Ahmadinejad in last summer's presidential race, was prevented from joining the Tehran rally. Karroubi's website reported that Revolutionary Guardsmen and basij militiamen had surrounded his home while supporters of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, smashed windows and beat up one of his guards. Mir-Hossein Mousavi, leader of the defeated Green movement – who claims his victory was "stolen" by Ahmadinejad – condemned the attack. He said it proved the government's "enmity against Israel is an excuse" for attacking opposition leaders. "Karroubi and figures like him and other freedom-seekers are the real enemies of authoritarians," he said. Iran's opposition has not managed to hold any big demonstrations in recent months. Last February, it cancelled plans for a rally on the anniversary of the 1979 revolution. Since the election, the authorities have detained thousands and tried scores on charges of fomenting unrest, with more than 80 sentenced to prison and 10 to death. The chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, Hassan Firouzabadi, warned meanwhile that Iran would retaliate against Israel's nuclear facility if Israel attacked its nuclear activities. "Our developed weapons can hit any part of the Zionist regime [Israel] ... We hope not to be forced to attack their nuclear facility," Firouzabadi told the semi-official Mehr news agency. Iran denies it intends to build nuclear weapons but is under UN sanctions to force it to stop enriching uranium.

• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
• Israel
• Palestinian territories
• Hamas
• Iran
• Middle East

Ian Black
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New system finds underpayments through PAYE, with workers who moved jobs or accepted benefits most likely to suffer Tax bills demanding up to £5,000 in extra payments will drop on the doormats of around a million people before next April after a new computer system found widespread underpayments by employers through the PAYE system. Employees who moved jobs or accepted company cars or cash benefits from their employer were the most likely to be caught by the new system. It aims to reconcile information held on different systems inside HM Revenue and Customs. The tax authority found millions of taxpayers regularly paid more or less tax than they should after it switched on a new system to trawl through 40m tax records. Around two million people will discover they are owed money by the tax authority, although they will be owed much smaller amounts. Repayments will total £1.8bn compared to extra tax bills of £2bn, leaving HMRC £200m better off. Officials said tonight that an initial review of 600,000 tax records found 44,500 taxpayers had paid the wrong tax in the previous year. They said 15,000 would be told to pay extra tax while another 30,000 would receive refunds. A spokesman said the tax authority was confident the sample could be used to show the effect on 40m PAYE taxpayers. Around 80% of bills will be less than £2,000 and will be clawed back through the PAYE system, while larger payments will be recovered separately. The spokesman added: "The vast majority of the 40 million people who pay through PAYE deductions are correctly taxed, but because circumstances change during the year there will always be a minority who have paid either too much or too little." However, HMRC's new system has already come under fire from tax advisers who claim it led to thousands of people receiving the wrong tax code and inflated bills. The Chartered Institute of Taxation said earlier this year that many people received the wrong information. It accused HMRC of using out-of-date information to support the claims it made for extra tax. It said: "Many [taxpayers] are being given wrong information, and unless they spot it and tell HMRC, their employer will receive the wrong information too, and they could get a nasty shock when they open their April pay packet and see it is as much as a hundred pounds lighter than they are expecting." The HMRC spokesman said taxpayers could dispute extra tax charges by claiming on a ESC19 form that they had supplied information in good faith and retrospective bills should be dropped.

• Tax

Phillip Inman
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About 54,000 jobs lost, far fewer than the 100,000 expected, easing fears of a second US recession Barack Obama pledged to bring forward a raft of fresh measures to boost American jobs growth after the White House received a fillip from better-than-expected employment figures for August. Seeking to put pressure on Congress to provide an additional stimulus for the struggling US economy, Obama said he was looking at tax breaks to encourage businesses to hire labour, as well as infrastructure programmes, investment in green energy and an extension of middle-class tax cuts. "I will be addressing a broader package of ideas next week," he told reporters in the White House Rose Garden after the eagerly-awaited non farm payrolls for August showed a drop of 54,000, half the drop that Wall Street had been fearing. The fall in payrolls was the result of 114,000 workers hired temporarily for the US census being laid off, with private jobs registering a 67,000 gain. "We are confident that we are moving in the right direction. But we want to keep this recovery moving stronger and accelerate the job growth that is needed so desperately all across the country," Obama said. However, the data will probably do little to take the political heat off Obama over his handling of the economy, or improve the Democratic Party's chances in November's mid-term congressional elections. Job creation last month was insufficient to keep up with growth in the US labour market, with the result that the unemployment rate edged up from 9.5% to 9.6%. Meanwhile, there were warning signs of a slowdown in the service sector, which accounts for three-quarters of the output of the US economy. The non-manufacturing Institute for Supply Management (ISM) recorded a drop in the index from 54.3 to 51.5, the lowest reading for seven months. Any reading above 50 indicates that output is expanding. Analysts said the jobs data would provide breathing space for the Federal Reserve, which has been considering extending quantitative easing. "It (the jobs report) is inconsistent with fears that a sharp slowdown in the economy is under way. This report, together with other recent data, will convince the Fed to refrain from launching a new asset purchase program at this month's meeting," said Dean Maki, chief US economist at Barclays Capital in New York.

• US unemployment and employment data
• Global recession
• Economics
• Global economy
• US economy
• United States

Katie Allen
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In his only live TV interview since his memoirs were published, he tried to convince the audience of his motivations for the Iraq war Tony Blair tried to bury his "toxic legacy" last night by flying to Ireland to appear on The Late Late Show. In his only live TV interview since his memoirs were published, he tried to convince the audience that he acted against the one million people who marched in opposition to the war in Iraq in 2003 because he simply couldn't take decisions "based on those that shout most". Blair was greeted by about 50 protesters at the RTE studios – although they were easily outnumbered by the number of squealing teenagers who had gathered for another set of guests on the show – The X Factor twins Jedward. During the interview, he was asked how he felt that morning drinking his coffee in Downing Street, with a million protesters outside. "Look it's not them that give you pause for thought. You should have pause for thought all the way through. In the end you have to decide this way or that, there is, unfortunately no third way." "Yes I had to listen to people who were opposed but there were also people in favour of the decision I took including, incidentially many many Iraqis." He denied he had "blood on his hands" and said he didn't believe he was a "war criminal" showing a flash of exasperation when asked to explain why people thought that he was. Interviewer Ryan Tubridy sought the advice of Jon Snow ahead of the interview but was warned it would be difficult to extract anything 'revelatory' out of Tony Blair. It is believed Blair chose Ireland for his only live interview since his memoirs because he felt he would get a better hearing because of the peace he secured in Northern Ireland. "When we finally got the whole lot together literally weeks before I left office in 2007 and there was Martin McGuinness sitting with Ian Paisley and it was such a strange and extaordinary sight and it was one of the few times in politics I felt really proud actually."

• Tony Blair
• Ireland

Lisa O'Carroll
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Portuguese TV presenter among six convicted over child prostitution at Casa Pia state-run orphanages One of Portugal's most famous television presenters and a former ambassador were among six men found guilty yesterday of involvement with a paedophile prostitution ring that exploited children from state-run orphanages. The guilty verdicts handed down to TV presenter Carlos Cruz and the five others exposed the truth of more than three decades of rumours about systematic abuse of young boys at the 230-year-old Casa Pia network of orphanages. It was only when Joel, a former orphanage boy, came forward in 2002 and accused some of the country's best-known names of being involved that Portugal woke up to full horror of the scandal. Members of Portugal's media, civil service and professional elite were alleged to be regular abusers of the boys, some younger than 14. Even well-known politicians were involved, it was initially rumoured. A flood of accusations from boys who had passed through the Casa Pia system followed. Some 32 boys alleged at least 800 crimes. The case pitted the orphanage boys against a group of well-educated, influential people – including a former ambassador to Unesco, a lawyer, a doctor and Cruz. Yesterday, eight years after they dared to speak out, the boys finally won their case. The four men and two former orphanage employees received sentences of between just under six years and 18 years. Carlos Silvino, a 53-year-old Casa Pia worker who confessed to 600 crimes and gave evidence against other defendants was sentenced to 18 years. "The court recognised that we were telling the truth," said Bernardo Teixeira, one of the victims. "It's a happy ending for us. The paedophiles are going to jail." The court ruling was hailed as a victory by those fighting for children's rights in Portugal. "The stories that I heard were the most terrible of my life," said Catalina Pestana, who was put in charge of the Casa Pia orphanages after the crimes were first reported in 2002. "I think Portugal, the country, all of us, won a lot from this process. Now, when a child accuses an adult, nobody will look with the same lack of attention that they did for many years." The court case lasted six years, bringing additional outrage about the slow way in which Portugal's legal system worked. The case was already in court when three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared while on holiday with her family in the Algarve in 2007. Portuguese police were, at the time, defensive about claims, particularly those made in the British press, that they had a history of mishandling cases involving children. Buried in the case paperwork are allegations that Casa Pia was known to paedophiles internationally and that some flew in to abuse children from the orphanage, according to at least one source familiar with the case. Portuguese media provided live running coverage of the reading of the sentence. The judges said they were giving only an abbreviated version of events, with a much fuller judgment due to be made public next week. The senior member of the three-judge panel, Ana Peres, began by warning those present that the abuse they described would be graphic and shocking. "Some of the accounts could be considered pornographic," she said. Cruz, 68, who was once voted Portugal's most popular man, had paid for sex with a 14-year-old, the judges declared. He also abused at least one other boy. The father of two was known as "Mr Television" after several decades as a national star. He was sentenced to seven years in jail. A doctor, Ferreira Diniz, was also sentenced to seven years and a former ambassador, Jorge Ritto, 74, to six years, and the former Casa Pia ombudsman, Manuel Abrantes, to five. They were found guilty of abusing several young boys. The court found that boys had been regularly taken to a house in the eastern town of Elvas during the 1990s to meet the paedophile clients. Abuse had also taken place in Lisbon. Some of the victims who gave evidence were present to hear the verdicts. Psychiatrists said several of the victims had tried to kill themselves after denouncing the abuse to the police. One threw himself from a second-floor window. Lawyers said their clients would almost certainly appeal. "It seems inevitable that we will have to appeal," said Cruz's lawyer, Antonio Serra Lopes, before the sentence was read out. "This is the first round."

• Portugal

Giles Tremlett
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Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: 'Cyril was a colourful politician who kept the flame of Liberalism alive'

Obituary: Cyril Smith The gentle giant of Rochdale, Sir Cyril Smith, has died aged 82 after a career in parliament which helped to rescue the Liberal party from the political fringe. Outsized in every way, he defected from Labour in the late 1960s, bolstering the Liberals at a crucial time. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: "Cyril was a colourful politician who kept the flame of Liberalism alive when the party was much smaller than it is today … I think we can safely say there will never be an MP quite like Cyril Smith again." The UK's heaviest-ever MP when his weight, the result of a medical condition, reached more than 190kg (29st) in the 1970s, he carried immense clout in the north-west. As a Labour councillor he played a leading part in defeating the celebrity broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy who fought Rochdale for the Liberals at a byelection in 1958, and he was a popular mayor in 1966. Smith never married and when elected Rochdale mayor in 1966 he chose his mother Emma, a cleaner at the town hall, as mayoress, while his brother Norman acted as driver, adviser and right-hand man. He never moved from Rochdale nor could see the slightest reason to do so, holding that it was the best place with the best people for anyone to born, settle down and in due course die. In 1972 he went to the Commons with a landslide victory in Rochdale in another byelection.His off-message interventions sometimes embarrassed party leaders, including sallies in favour of capital punishment and against too much involvement with Europe. But the populism involved, abetted by his music hall appearance and debating style, won many new and often unexpected supporters. This regional affection led him to call the Commons "the longest running farce in the West End" and he had no truck with metropolitan elites or the prospect of a seat in the Lords. He accepted his knighthood for public services in 1988, however, after receiving an MBE 22 years earlier. Smith started political life as a Liberal, giving up his job in Rochdale tax office after making a speech in support of the party, which led his manager to say: you can be political or a taxman but not both. Smith left to work in a mill office and then a small engineering firm, but focused on local politics. He joined Labour in 1952 on the advice of Liberal friends who reckoned their own party doomed. Smith never reached the summit of national affairs. His distaste for Labour meant that he was not central to James Callaghan and David Steel's Lib-Lab pact in 1977-8. But he served as Liberal chief whip and employment spokesman before retiring from Westminster in 1992. Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, called him "a towering figure in local politics," while Paul Rowen, the Liberal he defeated in May, said: "Cyril was an amazing ambassador for our town". Norman Smith said: "Cyril passed away peacefully at a nursing home with family members around him. I couldn't have wished for a better brother."

• Politics past

Martin Wainwright
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Remark came in context of an attack on China's animal welfare record, with singer having been criticised on a number of previous occasions for negative race comments

Read Simon Armitage's interview with Morrissey in full

Tom Clark: Morrissey, this joke isn't funny anymore For almost three decades, indie rock icon Morrissey has made almost as many enemies as devoted fans willing to hang on his every melancholy-drenched lyric. Described by one high court judge as "devious, truculent and unreliable", the former Smiths frontman is no stranger to controversy and criticism. But tomorrow he reignites a simmering row about his views on race in an interview in Guardian Weekend magazine, in which he describes Chinese people as a "subspecies" because of their treatment of animals. Morrissey, a vegetarian and animal rights advocate who last year abandoned the stage at the Coachella festival in California because of the smell of cooking meat, described the treatment of animals in China as "absolutely horrific", referring to recent news stories about animals in Chinese circuses and zoos. He told interviewer Simon Armitage: "Did you see the thing on the news about their treatment of animals and animal welfare? Absolutely horrific. You can't help but feel that the Chinese are a subspecies." A spokesman for Love Music Hate Racism, which received a donation of £28,000 from the singer in 2008 after his apparently anti-immigration comments made in music magazine NME convulsed the media, said it would be unable to accept support from Morrissey again if he did not rescind or dispute today's comments. "It really is just crude racism," said Martin Smith. "When you start using language like 'subspecies', you are entering into dark and murky water. I don't think we would, or could, ask him to come back after that." Armitage said Morrissey was typically and deliberately provocative throughout the interview. "I thought at the time it was a dangerous thing to say into a tape recorder. He must have known it would make waves, he's not daft," he said. "But he's provocative and theatrical, and it was one of dozens of dramatic pronouncements. I'm not an apologist for that kind of remark, and couldn't ignore it. But clearly, when it comes to animal rights and animal welfare, he's absolutely unshakable in his beliefs. In his view, if you treat an animal badly, you are less than human. I think that was his point." Morrissey said in a statement tonight: "If anyone has seen the horrific and unwatchable footage of the Chinese cat and dog trade – animals skinned alive – then they could not possibly argue in favour of China as a caring nation. There are no animal protection laws in China and this results in the worst animal abuse and cruelty on the planet. It is indefensible." His latest comments are not the first time the singer has provoked accusations of racism. Some of his song titles and lyrics have attracted criticism, including the tracks Bengali in Platforms – "He only wants to embrace your culture/And to be your friend forever/ … Oh shelve your western plans/ … life is hard enough when you belong here" – and National Front Disco. In 1992 NME accused Morrissey of "flirting with disaster" and racist imagery after wrapping himself in the union flag while on stage in Finsbury Park, north London. In the same year, the singer, now 51, was quoted in Q Magazine stating that he did not want to be "horrible or pessimistic" but he didn't "really think, for instance, black people and white people will ever really get on or like each other. I don't really think they ever will." While in 1994 he told Select magazine that the National Front should be given a clear voice or platform in order for them to be "less of a threat". The war of words with NME continued in 2007 after Morrissey, who lived in Rome at the time, was quoted in an interview with the magazine apparently criticising levels of immigration after being asked if he would ever consider moving back to England. "With the issue of immigration, it's very difficult because, although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears," he said. "If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won't hear an English accent. You'll hear every accent under the sun apart from the British accent." At another point in the interview he stated: "England is a memory now. The gates are flooded and anybody can have access to England and join in." Morrissey issued a writ for defamation against the magazine and its then editor Conor McNicholas, saying the publication had "deliberately tried to characterise me as a racist … in order to boost their dwindling circulation". He vehemently denied the accusations of racism. "I abhor racism and oppression or cruelty of any kind and will not let this pass without being absolutely clear and emphatic … Racism is beyond common sense and has no place in our society," he said in a statement. Simon Price, a music journalist who has followed Morrissey's career closely, said his die-hard fans who have idolised him for more than 25 years would be unlikely to desert him, but others would be "appalled, if not exactly surprised". The singer appeared to have left little room for explanation in his controversial comment, he added. "What are the apologists going to say this time? It looks like in his old age Morrissey has forgotten to include the ambiguity, like he has done in the past. Maybe he just doesn't care any more." He added: "For Morrissey's hardcore fan base, no matter what he says he can do no wrong, but this is not going to make those in the media feel favourably toward him and lots of doors will be shut to him that maybe had been ajar in the past."

• Morrissey
• China
• Animal welfare
• Animals
• Celebrity
• Race issues

Alexandra Topping
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Two are brothers, they have an average age of 45, and viewed from a certain angle they look like the world's strangest rock band. But can one of them save Labour? It's a Thursday afternoon in one of the less splendid corners of York. David Miliband is addressing an audience of 150 or so people in a clump of Victorian buildings called the Priory Street Centre . He cuts an impressively authoritative figure, though he has a habit of talking in aphorisms that could simultaneously mean everything or nothing. One of his favourites gets crowbarred into a conversation about New Labour's fondness for treating its own members with borderline contempt. There's an idea in there somewhere, but it comes out sounding positively Alan Partridge -esque: "We've got two ears but only one mouth – we talk twice as much as we listen, but we should listen twice as much as we talk." For the time being, Miliband still travels in a car provided by the Foreign Office, with two security staff – who, he says, will shadow him until the intelligence goes quiet enough to suggest he is no longer a terrorist target. So it is that once the York meeting is done, five of us squeeze in and make our way to a hustings in Hull. In the car, Miliband (1/3 at Paddy Power ) has a pop at some of his fellow leadership candidates for "trashing the record" and implicitly includes his brother Ed – though, despite stories about escalating fraternal tensions, he won't be drawn much further. He's more bellicose than any other candidate in defending past controversies such as market-based public service reform, and shrugs off a question about his tendency to use arcane jargon via the New Labour trick of affecting to interview himself: "Is it important to always simplify and reduce and explain more clearly? Yes. Am I going to say that intellectual thought isn't very, very important? No." He also talks, with restrained emotion, about the rare occasions when he can spend time with his two young children: "I'm probably seeing less of them now than when I was foreign secretary. Everything in my mind is directed to next Thursday, when I go on holiday." As he says, his recent political manoeuvres have involved one very tough choice, when he passed up the job of EU foreign minister to devote himself to Labour politics – and, by implication, his bid to be leader. So, how did he feel when little brother decided to stand against him? "Well, it wasn't in doubt to me. By the second half of last year, I knew he would. There wasn't a sort of revelatory moment. The point about a dawning realisation is, it doesn't have that 'How did you feel?' moment. I think that…" A long pause. "One's first feeling is, 'What's this going to do to our family, our relationship?' There's a worry you could have there." He stops talking for 12 seconds; when he does speak, his syntax is suddenly shot to pieces. "I think you have a sense of er… [five seconds]… the courage that it represents, putting yourself up for that. And, er… [six seconds]… I suppose those were the… What were my feelings? Those would be those." At the hustings, there have been moments when his gestures and body language have been quite big brotherly, I tell him. "What do you mean?" Well, when your brother has made a point you haven't liked, you've occasionally eye-rolled. "I don't think I've eye-rolled. I'm sure that every candidate would say that there've been occasions when other candidates have said things that they don't agree with. I don't think it should be different because it's your brother." If he became leader, how would that be for you? "We'd have to see. Dunno. Dunno." That's not quite, "I'd be happy and willing to work with him." "Yeah, but I mean… we'd make the best of it. That's all you can do. You make the best of it." Viewed from a certain angle, they might be the world's strangest-looking rock band. Their average age is just under 45, two of them are brothers, and one of their fellow MPs has said they remind him of the cartoon gang in Top Cat : Choo-Choo, Fancy-Fancy, Brain, Spook and Benny The Ball(s). For three months, all five leadership candidates have pinballed around Britain, sitting out more than 50 hustings meetings, doing their thing on no end of local radio stations, and pestering people for their votes. Gordon Brown 's snap decision to give up the Labour leadership resulted in the strange spectacle of five people deciding to run, and only then finding the time to come up with the reasons for having done so. Week in, week out, they make their pitches to a political tribe whose collective mindset is disoriented, to say the least: the elder Miliband on the right, Abbott on the unabashed left, and the other three hovering in between, serially issuing their various criticisms of the governments in which they served, and attempting to map out their versions of both Labour's grim present and its future. It has just scored its second-lowest share of the vote since universal suffrage. Despite a reported surge in applications after the election, it has lost over half its membership since 1997, and every leadership gathering I attend points up a big hole: there are usually plenty of eager twentysomethings and pensionable veterans, but a notable lack of anyone roughly the same age as most of the candidates – proof of what Labour's spell in government did to the thousands of left-leaning people who were observers rather than insiders. Given the chance, those party members who remain involved will pour out their anger and unease about the last government's record, though they are also furious at the way the Con-Dems now cast the previous 14 years in terms of wasted chances and reckless spending. When asked if one of the rather boyish frontrunners can somehow revive Labour, many of them seem uncertain, but they still desperately want to believe. For now, though, it is still deeply unsettled by the sudden passage from government to opposition: a change symbolised by the sight of Ed Balls – until recently, not only the education secretary, but arguably the prime minister's closest political confidante – sitting in a rusting H-reg Rover saloon, wheezing its way around Bristol. The day we meet, Westminster is in the midst of Michael Gove 's wobble over the cancellation of school buildings, and no local media outlet must be left untroubled by Balls' outraged take on things. Every 10 or 15 minutes the Rover stops, a phone appears, and away he angrily goes. Such are his main selling points as a potential leader: ire and energy, all endlessly focused on the Tory foe. The in-car conversation reaches the heights of bathos in the Fishponds area of Bristol, where Balls is once again given his orders. "Ten minutes with Jack FM ," says an aide, and Balls is off, with narrowed eyes and fire-spitting purpose: "The apology shouldn't simply be to MPs, but the schools that have been misled… This is a moral issue… it's a huge blow to our children." Once we've visited an infants school and the gleaming Bristol Metropolitan Academy , Balls (50/1 at Bet365 ) pauses for breath – and another radio interview – outside a rum-looking hotdog stand. By way of talking up his empathy with Labour's activists, he thinks back to Gordon Brown's time at Number 10 and recalls regularly clashing with conservative elements who apparently formed a misery-spreading cordon around the PM: "People saying, 'We're quite worried about editorials in the Times.' " He piles into the idea that the Brown government's demise was down to Labour's supposed problems with Middle England: "Go to Southampton, go to the Medway Towns, go to Stevenage. Why did we lose? Because low-income voters thought we weren't on their side." Inevitably, we also spend a lot of time chewing over his close association with the Brown clique's reputation for the more brutal aspects of the political game: internecine nastiness, off-the-record "briefings", you name it. Plenty of people will presumably snort with derision at his protestations of innocence, but Balls is sticking to them, claiming that he himself has been a victim of such disreputable behaviour. "It's not true," he claims. "What I did do was… well, back in the early parts of the decade, we had a big argument about foundation hospitals … and if Polly Toynbee rang me up, I would say to her, 'These are my concerns', but I don't think, if you went to any of the columnists or any of the political editors and said, 'Did he ever ring up and, off the record, encourage people to write stories about other people or their policies?'… I was never involved in that ." More productively, he opens up about his stammer (a hidden, or "interiorised" problem – as of September, Balls will be a patron of the British Stammering Association ) and the childhood travails caused by his surname. Balls is a common enough surname in Norfolk, he tells me – but when his family moved, the prank calls rarely let up. "There was a moment in a World Cup finals – 1982, probably. The phone rang – I'm 15 – and some kid goes, 'Is your name Balls?' And I say, 'For fuck's sake – it's the semi-final of the World Cup – get a life!' And from that moment on, I don't think it ever bothered me again." Do you think it's counted against you, politically? "No. What, my name? No. Do you?" Well, it's one theory (in a recent thread on the Guardian's website, some wit chewed over the idea of a Balls premiership, and the possible headlines – "Bush meets Balls", "Balls to Europe", etc). "That's never occurred to me," he says. Four weeks later, I meet Andy Burnham (66/1 at Ladbrokes ) in Glasgow at the start of a campaign-closing British tour aboard what his people have rather grandly called a battlebus, whose expense may or may not have been covered by a recent £10,000 campaign donation from the Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher . In fact, it is a 16-seat affair of the kind familiar to indie bands and stag-nighters – appropriate, perhaps, given that whereas the Milibands are abstemious-verging-on-the-monkish, Burnham and his aides seem entirely comfortable with the notion of the end-of-the-day visit to the bar. Burnham has come here, with family in tow, after a five-day break in northern Scotland, which was presumably long overdue. His campaign, after all, has taken place in the most anxious circumstances: at the start of the summer, just as he began the long weeks away from home, his Dutch-born wife Marie-France underwent a pre-emptive double mastectomy. Her sister was killed by breast cancer, and her mother and another sister have had treatment for the same disease. "It's been very tough," Burnham says. " Very tough. Looking back on it, I don't think you could have a combination of two more difficult things: one intensely private, one intensely public. "It's been harder for her, let's be absolutely clear about it," he goes on. "But – it sounds corny – she believes in me, and she's prepared to make the sacrifices now. But it's also quite clear that when the campaign is over, she wants me to give the time to the kids that I need to. And her." Just for a moment, one of the rules of the campaign interview – never seriously to countenance the prospect of defeat – seems to have been suspended, though not for long. With a forced smile, he sticks on the obligatory coda: "But I will do that as leader." Burnham's history as a New Labour insider goes back to the very start: 1994, when he took a job as one of Tessa Jowell 's researchers. But, to the odd gasp of incredulity, he has pitched his campaign as that of an anti-elitist insurgent, talking up his working-class upbringing near Warrington and bemoaning his old colleagues' bedazzlement with wealth, glamour and influence. If Burnham has defined himself against a fair share of New Labour's old culture, his stance doesn't cross over into any hefty critique of its actual record (indeed, on such issues as the Iraq war and Labour's civil liberties transgressions, he is pretty much unrepentant). Still, taking him at his word, I suggest he must have spent a good deal of his working life going quietly mad – and he answers by thinking back to his time as a young Labour functionary. "I never related to the elitist feel it often had," he explains, "or the arrogance there was at the heart of Millbank. It didn't feel to me like that was what the Labour party should be like at close quarters." What – rude, overconfident? "Public school, at times. I'm not attacking anyone individually. But the conversations I used to sit in, and hear – when I related it back to, say, my brothers, they would just have thought: 'Who are these people? What's going on here?' "I can remember, way back, working in 1997, and feeling no joy at all in the election campaign. That wasn't what I expected. I just didn't like the atmosphere… We'd been told that we were now going to be on the side of business, and people took that to extremes. It was like people were celebrating the harshness of the change that had been made." At the austere headquarters of the Scottish TUC , around 25 people show up to hear Burnham talk, somewhat ramblingly, about his quest to somehow rebuild a broken, confused party "from the bottom up". By the end, if they are not exactly carrying him out of the door, he seems to have cemented his bond with a few of them. The woman next to me, for example, tells me about her potential support for the shadow health secretary, tightening her face into a grimace. "The thing is," she says, "I'm really not sure about the Milibands. They're a bit too… London ." It takes me an age to get to Diane Abbott (150/1 at Victor Chandler ), all unreturned calls and claims from her volunteers that they're having trouble "pinning her down". We finally meet in east London, at the home she shares with her 18-year-old son James – the focus of now legendary controversy over Abbott's decision to send him to the private City Of London School – who has just got back from Ghana, where he has been studying for the International Bacalaureate . In the downstairs toilet are letters from around the world, congratulating her on becoming Britain's first black female MP, as well as her matriculation photograph from Newnham College, Cambridge, in 1973. In it, she squints at the camera from behind thick-rimmed glasses of the kind once known as "gig-lamps"; more importantly, hers is only black face in the picture. Abbott sits in front of a noticeboard whose mess of items includes freshly delivered campaign leaflets for Balls and the elder Miliband. To her right is an open copy of Parliamentary Socialism, the 1961 book by David and Ed's famous Marxist father Ralph – research, apparently, for an article for the Fabian Society . When I point it out, she smiles, mischievously. "The whole point is, if you read the book, and you know David and Ed's politics, it's quite an interesting contrast." "When people suggested I run," she tells me, "I just didn't think it was the right idea. But it became apparent that we really were going to have an extraordinarily narrow field of candidates… Andy Burnham didn't get all his nominations until the last minute, which no one noticed. So you'd have had three candidates, all of whom were male, all of whom had been special advisers, and none of whom had done anything else, and two of them were brothers. You just thought, 'This is very strange .' " Her other motivation, she explains, was the early noises-off from some contenders about one issue in particular: "I was very concerned about where the debate was going on immigration. You had Ed Balls, who is intelligent enough to know better, trying to say that immigration lost us the election – and then Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham were following behind, and I thought it was madness.' " She bats away my suggestions that, what with her Cambridge education and the fact that James's godfather is the fallen ex-Tory MP Jonathan Aitken , she might not be quite the Westminster outsider she'd have people believe ("People try and undermine the candidacy, and say, 'Oh, she's not a real leftwinger' – and they're forced to snatch at things"). Later on, when I suggest she should perhaps be rejoicing at the contest's obvious leftward shift, she says this: "The others use the language of the left. But you do have to compare what they say to what they did when they were ministers. That's the thing; you can't get away from that." When in July the Radio 4 Today programme broadcast an item about the leadership race, Abbott was questioned about sending her son to private school, and how awkwardly it sits with many Labour supporters. The result was a long and very weird spell of dead air. "I'm not unwilling to talk about it," she says now, with some irritation. "It's a myth that I won't talk about it." Why stonewall the question on the radio, then? "I wasn't stonewalling. They didn't tell me they were going to talk about that, actually." So it was that, despite happily talking about the same subject at a hustings in Canary Wharf, Abbott's most memorable moment on the campaign was 11 unbearable seconds of silence. Ed Miliband (9/4 at Ladbrokes ) and his closest aide, a former Radio 1 Newsbeat reporter named Polly Billington, are on the platform of Watford Junction railway station en route to Coventry. The Gang Of Five have just done a two-hour BBC 5 Live hustings in Stevenage, where Miliband's luggage has been mistakenly left behind. Worse still, Billington seems to have mislaid her iPhone. "When all around you are losing their heads," offers Miliband, "it's because you haven't heard the news. My dad used to say that." At Coventry's University Hospital , he does a question-and-answer session with staff. Up the road in suburban Bedworth, we're welcomed to a garden tea party. After a down-the-line appearance on Newsnight , an achingly long day ends in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza hotel in Birmingham. Miliband drinks cranberry juice and frets over a Guardian story about the two brothers' exchange of views in Stevenage over Iraq (headline: " Miliband brothers battle it out over Iraq war "); he also mulls over his relationship with his 14-month-old son Daniel, or the current lack of it (another son is due this month). "Since the election, I've had an afternoon here and there. If I'm not away, I do see him every day, but I see him in the mornings, at least half an hour. It's not a lot of time. But I'm not looking for sympathy, you know what I mean?" One thing, I tell him, has been bothering me. He is not the only potential Labour leader who has made noises about rediscovering the party's soul and restoring its mission. Right up to taking over in 2007, his old boss and mentor Gordon Brown did a similar thing. And I wonder: given that he was so involved with the preparation for Brown's largely miserable time at Number 10, how did it feel, watching as all those hints came to so little? "Well, I suppose all of us who were around Gordon take our share of responsibility for that. I think the reasons are complex…" Up to writing this year's Labour manifesto, he was centrally involved in a failed political project. What's to say the same thing won't happen again? "I'm a different person. And, you know, the one thing you do as potential leader, is you take responsibility for yourself and what you do. I'm not going to slag off Gordon in this interview…" He eventually finds his thread. "You've got to tell people what you believe, and what you want to happen. I think I've said that much more explicitly, certainly than I have before, but also more than Gordon did." So to the obvious: what was going through his head when he decided to run against big brother? "I think it was difficult… What I did, was to remove all the other obstacles to standing: Do I really want to do this? Do I want to put my family through this? Am I confident of my position? Then you've got to come to the conclusion: am I not going to stand because David's standing?" Which, arguably, would have been reason enough. "But I think that would have been very untrue to myself: 'I've got something to say, and I want to stand, but I'm not going to do it, because I've got a member of my family standing.' " He must have had worries about it. "[Cagily] Yeah." What were they? "The impact on our relationship. The impact on my mum. The effect on the wider family. But I suppose I take quite a philosophical view about this, which is… maybe philosophical's the wrong word, but provided we kept it as a friendly contest, and provided whoever won, we accepted the result, obviously… it was absolutely possible for us to get though this with our relationship intact." Their mother, Marion Kozak is, like their late father, well to the left of her sons. How is she finding it? "She's fine. We don't have any deep, long discussions. She's sort of staying out, and rightly so." You seem more able to flesh out the differences between you and your brother than you did at the start of all this, I say. "Yeah. It's an evolutionary process, whereby people's pitches become clearer. And yeah – I think for reasons that I understand, he's very keen to defend the record. But I think I'm more willing to say where we went wrong, and to be quite specific in saying that we need to change on the economy, that markets are too powerful, that in relation to the state, we were too overbearing on civil liberties. Those are quite specific critiques. It's not just, 'We made a mistake'. And the reason they're important is not because I want to dump on the record. But it leads you into an analysis about where we need to go in the future." Which brings us to what happens next. On 25 September, the Labour party conference begins in Manchester, with an announcement of the winner. Unless something insanely unexpected happens, one or other Miliband is all but certain to get the job. Then the really onerous stuff starts: somehow reviving a disoriented and crestfallen party, and battling a confident and hyperactive government. Earlier that day, in the ticket hall at Watford Junction, Ed Miliband had been collared by a man and his daughter who seemed very pleased to meet him – so pleased, in fact, that I rather got the impression he was a member of the Labour tribe. "He said, 'We're in a real mess,'" Miliband tells me. The faintest flicker of unease passes across his face. "He meant the country, I think."

• Labour party leadership
• Labour

John Harris
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The differences between organic and conventionally farmed pork are about a whole lot more than just taste If there's one thing I find almost as tiresome as climate change deniers, it's organic bashers. "It's cruel, it is. They're not allowed to treat animals even when they're sick, except with herbs and that. And the animals are forced to stay outside, even when it's snowing. My mate's friend lives near an organic pig farm, and he says it's a scandal the way they treat their animals – they're wandering about outside, covered in mud and everything…" It's all bollocks, of course. And in case you're ever on the receiving end of this kind of ignorant rant, allow me to clarify. Almost all the same veterinary interventions are available to organic farmers as to conventional ones. What doesn't happen often – because it isn't usually necessary in the natural, extensively outdoor environment of organic farming – is the automatic dosing of whole flocks and herds with strong prophylactic antibiotics and other drugs. Rather, the animals are treated according to their needs and symptoms. Having said that, if an organic farmer has a persistent worm problem in his sheep, say, he may decide to treat the entire flock, but they will then not be allowed to go to slaughter for three times longer than in conventional farming. This is an extra precaution to ensure that the medicines involved do not enter the human food chain. Given concerns about the possible long-term effects of agricultural antibiotics in our meat (not to mention chemical pesticide residues in fruit and veg), it's hardly surprising so many of us buy organic these days, though the argument over whether organic ingredients "taste better" or "are healthier" is so often poorly expressed (on both sides, to be fair). The issues for me are animal welfare (organic standards are the highest we have), chemical residues (almost nonexistent in organic produce) and the protection of our environment (land under organic, chemical-free cultivation is the only insurance we have against the polluting, soil-degrading effects of industrially produced agrochemicals). Of course, farming organically doesn't make you a good farmer or a good stockman any more than farming conventionally makes you a bad one. You can be incompetent within either system. But what's vital about organic farming – and especially the Soil Association certification system that upholds it – is that it gives us one of the very few food labels that actually mean anything. And that's why I'm proud to support Organic Fortnight , which began yesterday. For me, now's a good time to restate my commitment to this massively important approach to growing our food, and to acknowledge and applaud the fantastic work done over the last 15 years by the Soil Association's director Patrick Holden , who steps down later this year. I'd urge you to go to one of the events (especially the Organic Food Festival in Bristol next weekend ), visit an organic farm or just enjoy a spectacularly tasty organic lunch. I'm cooking pork this week, because pigs (along with chickens, about which I've said plenty) are the most intensively farmed – and, I'd say, most abused – of all our farm animals. In the intensive system, these intelligent, complex creatures are routinely treated with such an indifferent disregard for their natural behaviour that it can only be described as cruel. (If you've seen Tracy Worcester's remarkable film, Pig Business , you'll know just how bad it can be.) Organic pigs, by contrast, flourish in conditions that allow them to express a full range of natural behaviours. They are kept in family groups, have access to soil and vegetation, they can root in the earth and wallow in the mud. So this week, if you're buying pork, I really hope you'll choose organic. And that you'll enjoy every morsel. Pork and Puy lentil salad Vary the vegetables depending on what you have to hand. Fennel, roast baby carrots or beetroot, broad beans or peas all work well. Serves four. 150g puy lentils
2 unpeeled garlic cloves, bashed
1 bouquet garni, made from 2 sprigs thyme and 2 parsley stalks tied together with a bay leaf
½ small onion
4 free-range eggs
150g french beans, topped
200g leftover roast pork, roughly shredded
250-300g cherry tomatoes, halved
Handful of rocket (optional)
1 small handful chopped parsley
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
For the vinaigrette
1 garlic clove, peeled and minced
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp red-wine vinegar
3 tbsp olive oil Rinse the lentils and put them in a pan with the garlic, bouquet garni, onion and enough cold water to cover by about 5cm. Bring to a boil and simmer for 25 minutes until the lentils are just tender, or according to the package instructions. Meanwhile, make the vinaigrette. Whisk together the garlic, mustard and vinegar with a pinch of salt, then whisk in the oil until emulsified. Drain the lentils and toss them, while still warm, in the dressing. Place the eggs in a pan of hand-hot water, bring to a boil and simmer for six minutes. Drain and plunge into iced water. Cook the beans until just tender in boiling, salted water, then drain and refresh under the cold tap. When the lentils are room temperature, toss with the pork, beans, tomatoes, rocket and parsley. Adjust the seasoning. Peel the eggs, halve them and arrange over the salad. Slow-cooked aromatic shoulder of pork I call this deliciously tender, succulent slow-roast pork "Donnie Brasco" because you put it in the oven and "fugeddaboutit". Leftovers are great in all manner of salads, pasta sauces and sandwiches. Serves six-plus. 1 boned, rolled shoulder of pork (aka a spare rib joint), about 2.5-3kg
5 large garlic cloves, peeled
5cm piece fresh ginger, peeled
2 tsp chilli flakes
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tbsp brown sugar
½ tbsp flaky sea salt
1 tbsp sunflower or groundnut oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
For the five-spice mix
2 star anise
2 tsp fennel seeds
½ cinnamon stick
4 cloves
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 glass white or red wine Heat the oven to 230C/450F/gas mark 8. With a craft knife, score the pork rind in parallel lines about 1cm apart and to a depth of 0.5-1cm (or get the butcher to do it for you). Grate the garlic and fresh ginger into a small bowl, and mix to a paste with the chilli, ground ginger, sugar, salt, oil and soy sauce. Pound the five spices in a mortar (or grind in a clean coffee grinder) and mix a tablespoon into the paste (the rest will keep in an airtight jar in a cool, dark place for a month or so). Put the joint skin-side up on a rack over a large roasting tin. Using your fingertips, rub just over half the spice rub into the scored rind. Roast the joint for 30 minutes, then remove from the oven and, using oven gloves or a thick, dry, cloth, carefully turn it over to expose the underside. Using a knife or wooden spoon (the meat will be very hot), smear the remaining spice rub over the underside of the meat, which should now be facing up. Pour the glass of wine and a glass of water into the roasting tin, cover with foil (you won't get any crackling, but you will get "chewling" – tender, chewable skin with a lovely, spicy flavour) and turn down the heat to 120C/250F/ gas mark ¼ and return to the oven for five to six hours, turning it skin-side up and basting with the fat and juices in the tin about halfway through. To serve, don't so much carve the joint as scoop the tender, melting, aromatic meat on to warmed plates. Pork tonnato An unconventional take on the classic veal tonnato – it turns leftover roast pork into a quick and delicious lunch or supper. Serves four. 120g tinned tuna in oil, drained (I use Fish-4-Ever )
50g tinned anchovies, drained and chopped (again, I use Fish-4-Ever)
2-3 tbsp good mayonnaise
1 lemon
1-2 tbsp capers, rinsed
1-2 tbsp finely chopped parsley (optional)
2 thick slices leftover roast pork per person Flake the tuna into a bowl and mix with the anchovies, mayo, a good squeeze of lemon juice and a few gratings of the zest. Smear this over the pork, then sprinkle with capers and parsley, if using, and serve. Go to rivercottage.net for the latest news from River Cottage HQ.

• Pork recipes
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Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
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'I knew immediately who he was. It was the same face I'd been carrying around with me for over a decade' As a child growing up in London, I was blissfully unaware of other worlds less safe and secure than my own. That all changed when I was about 12. Leafing through National Geographic, I started reading a feature about some ancient ruins in Cambodia that looked very beautiful. But what really caught my attention was an article next to it about the country waking up from the nightmare of the Khmer Rouge . Seeing those images of victims' skulls and mass graves was a defining moment for me. I couldn't believe there were countries where crimes such as this could happen – what really terrified me was finding out that members of the Khmer Rouge still hadn't been brought to justice. I started to read up about the country; how Pol Pot 's regime had wanted an agrarian revolution where life would be very simple, which had instead resulted in horror and bloodshed. Nearly 2 million people had been killed outright or died as a result of torture, overwork or starvation in the latter half of the 1970s. More than half a decade later, still fascinated, I went to art school, but dropped out after a year, realising there was only one thing I wanted to do – to travel to Cambodia to make sense of it myself. On my second day in the country, I made a beeline for a memorial site at Tuol Sleng prison , an interrogation centre where confessions were forced out of alleged spies and saboteurs. The man in charge, Comrade Duch, had personally overseen the torture and execution of at least 14,000 people. It was Duch's portrait in the prison that fuelled my interest in tracking him down. I thought if there was anyone who could explain how these atrocities had come about, it was him. Over the next few years, I worked in Bangkok as a photographer, making trips back to Cambodia, always carrying a photo of Duch to show defected Khmer Rouge members. I never believed I'd find him. But in 1999 I made a breakthrough. By chance, on another assignment, I travelled to a nearby Khmer Rouge area that had just opened up. I was wandering around when a small, wiry man in an African Refugee Committee T-shirt came and introduced himself as Hang Pin. I knew immediately who he really was. It was the same face I'd been carrying around with me for more than a decade. Duch was a little bit greyer, but there was no doubt in my mind. We had a fairly banal conversation – he was interested in my camera, and I tried to appear as nonchalant as I could. This was no ranting, cold-eyed madman; he was garrulous, friendly, disarming. He told me he was a humanitarian aid worker and lay-preacher, converting Cambodians to Christianity. Surreptitiously I took a photograph, but it didn't seem the right time to confront him. I wondered if he might still be a killer. Later, I returned to the village with Nate Thayer – the last western journalist to have interviewed Pol Pot. We talked to Duch about land mines and his planned church, but he dodged any leading questions about his past. It was only when he asked to see Nate's business card that we realised Duch had suspicions of his own. "Nic," he said, "I believe your friend has interviewed Pol Pot." "That's right," I said. Duch gave a deep sigh: "I believe it is God's will you are here," he said. It was almost as if he'd always expected this day to come. After that he talked openly about what had happened and said he was very sorry. I'd spent 10 years pursuing a "monster", and found instead a wizened old man who appeared to be contrite and displaying humanity. We showed him confessions from Tuol Sleng prisoners, and he identified his handwriting on them. A few days later, Duch simply gave himself up to the Cambodian authorities, but it took another decade for him to be tried through a United Nations-backed tribunal. Found guilty of crimes against humanity , he faces 35 years in jail. My part in this process has been very small; finding him was an accident, and the chain of events since has had nothing to do with me. It wasn't my plan to bring him to justice; I simply wanted to see for myself how this man – a former mathematician and teacher – had become one of the most notorious mass murderers of the 20th century. • As told to Chris Broughton. Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@guardian.co.uk

• Cambodia
• Pol Pot
• War crimes

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'I soon learned never to express hunger around them and to eat in secret, thereby developing an inextricable emotional link between what I ate and my ability to be loved' In my head I am thin. I just haven't quite got there yet. As I was growing up, it was made clear that the fat me wasn't welcome, that a thin person was expected and awaited, and impatiently so. Of my parents' four children, I was always known as the "fat one". They had longed for a girl, following two boys born in quick succession, and were thrilled when I finally arrived. As I well know, having longed for a daughter myself, when one dreams of having a girl one does not picture a fat one – no one does. Hopeful parents picture a sweet, pretty (regrettable, but true), adorable little thing who'll be cuddly and affectionate in the way boys, post-babyhood, are rarely expected to be. As retold by my parents, their close friends and relatives, for the first few years I duly fulfilled the hopes and dreams they'd harboured when hankering for a daughter: I was cheeky, vivacious and "utterly charming". If the photos are anything to go by, I wasn't particularly pretty, and certainly not thin. I was a solid toddler, as one might expect since I'd weighed 11½ pounds (5.2kg) at birth. Clearly my personality made up for the fact that my looks weren't as fine as they might have hoped for. All well and good – except when I started to get plump at around nine years old. I have no memory of suddenly eating more or exercising less; there is no logical explanation for the increase in size. I wasn't enormous, but I was plumper than my peers and my siblings, and this began to concern my parents greatly. I recall once complaining to my father about the discomfort I experienced when the tops of my thighs rubbed together, causing sore, red patches, to which he replied, characteristically obliquely, "Try pushing yourself away from the table." At the time, as children tend to, I took him literally. On one memorable evening it was made clear to me I needed to deal with my weight and, moreover, that my parents found it intolerable. The whole family sat down for a supper of mince and mashed potatoes. (In itself this was memorable, since we very rarely ate all together. In the 60s, when I grew up, adults always ate separately, differently and inevitably better than kids.) Before we began eating, Dad stood up, looking a bit uneasy, cleared his throat and announced, "Arabella won't be having potatoes because she's fat." I remember feeling overcome with rage and indignation – why should I be punished for something that was out of my control? I only ever ate what my siblings ate. It wasn't my fault if my body processed it differently. I wasn't doing this on purpose to annoy my parents. However, it would appear this was exactly what my parents thought was going on. My oldest brother, Andrew, protested on my behalf, drawing attention to his own (albeit very slight) plumpness. "That's different, you're a boy," my father said. Our parents were highly educated, left-leaning and shared many social values, including our mother's distaste for housewifery – while Dad expected to enjoy a well-run home, he did not expect it to be at the cost of Mum's intellect or sense of fulfilment – yet neither of them saw any paradox in separating a boy's physical requirements from those of a girl. The message was loud and clear: girls need to be pretty, boys don't. Needless to say, neither of them then went on to educate me in the ways of dieting or exercising more. In order not to annoy them and be more lovable, I simply needed to be less fat. Unsurprisingly, this method did not work. I soon learned never to express hunger around them and to eat in secret, thereby developing an inextricable emotional link between what I ate and my ability to be loved. From then on, if I eschewed pudding, potatoes and biscuits in their presence, they were pleased and congratulatory – they did love me more. If I ate anything "bad" in front of them, the reaction was guaranteed: a flamboyant roll of the eyes, heavy sighs or loud cries of, "Do you do this on purpose to annoy me?" or "Have you any idea just how fattening that is?" My mother's favourite line was, "Watching you eat is like having hot knives stuck into my eyes!" The link between worthiness and abstinence – or, in reality, thinness – was unmistakably demarcated. This belief has never been more evident than it is today. Society prizes a girl for being thin more than anything else she might bring to the table. With this pressure in mind, and acutely aware of the trap into which my parents had fallen (I know they loved me, but they also never denied loving me more the less I weighed), when I had children, I made a decision to avoid investing food and eating with anything other than love and ease. And that's when I found out that feeding your children is a minefield – much harder than one might think before becoming a parent and, I reluctantly admit, even harder if you have a girl when you yourself are a girl with "eating issues". I'm not letting my parents off the hook, but I now know that attempting to nurture a healthy and relaxed approach to eating is hard. My parents' generation's benchmark was simple: Fat Equals Bad. These days not only do we have that message shoved down our throats, we are also bombarded with horror stories of child obesity and the huge rise in popularity of sedentary children's activities (favoured because they'll be abducted if they're allowed to play out, so we're led to believe), plus the five-a-day fruit-and-veg diktat. (I literally break into a sweat if their bedtime approaches and I've failed to meet the target – many is the night I've tried to persuade them to eat a selection of crudités in bed.) Little wonder it's harder than ever to foster a stress-free approach to eating. And this is particularly true for women, to whom the relentless task of providing family meals almost always falls. Women are told we need to be thin to "count", while at the same time being charged with ensuring our children eat well but not too much; that a chocolate biscuit or two is OK, but eating the whole packet is not; that being skeletal is neither healthy nor attractive. Simultaneously, we must also aim to develop in them, the next generation, an egalitarian attitude to size and gender. It's a tall order. We have to be on high alert all the time. I've got a boy and a girl; their parents are a boy and girl (me). The boys eat more than the girls, yet aren't overweight. My 11-year-old son never thinks about what effect eating might have on his body – if he wants something, he eats it. So far, food has no emotional value for him at all. And that's just how it ought to be. My daughter, who is 12, thinks about fashion as much as most girls of her age. She eats well and healthily, the same food as her brother, but less of it. Their father and I have avoided saying anything negative when more ice-cream, chocolate, biscuits, cake, is inevitably demanded. "Everything in moderation" is the aim; nothing is off limits, just the amount. So far, so good. But I don't know what I'd do if one of my kids began to gain weight. Naturally I'd look to myself first, and check what and how much I was providing; but what if the weight gain was the result of food they were eating outside the home, for example, chips with their mates on the way home from school? In an ideal world, I'd bite my tongue and ride this phase out, hoping it was just that – a phase. During which a loving parent, desperately trying as I am not to attach any emotional value to food, is required to stand by and let their child make their own mistakes. But I can't say that would be right, either. I wish my parents hadn't made me feel that how I looked was linked to how much they loved me. But I do also see how hard it must be to see your child pile on the pounds and trust they'll find their own way back to a healthy weight. Being able to be around food and never wonder if there'll be enough for you, never to worry if you'll be judged for what and how much you're eating – to be able to expect and enjoy good food and to feel entitled to it – is a fantastic gift. But, like any gift worth having, in the first place someone has to give it to you. • The Real Me Is Thin, by Arabella Weir, is published by Fourth Estate, priced £16.99. Order a copy online for £11.99 with free UK p&p, at the Guardian Book Shop .

• Family
• Health & wellbeing
• Obesity
• Women
• Children

Arabella Weir
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What does it feel like to be the only person to survive a plane crash, a boat wreck or an ambush? Sole survivors tell their stories In February 2009, 24-year-old Nick Schuyler went fishing with three friends in the Gulf of Mexico. An attempt to salvage a stuck anchor capsized the boat, and the four men were forced to cling to the hull to survive. When rescuers found the upturned boat after 43 hours (see picture, above), he was the only one still alive . It was going to be our last fishing trip. I knew Marquis [Cooper] and Corey [Smith] from the gym – I was their personal trainer and we'd become good friends – but the following week Marquis was moving away. We'd been fishing once before and I didn't enjoy it that much – the anchor of Marquis's boat got stuck and we'd had to cut it free. But we decided to go out one last time. One of Marquis's friends couldn't make the trip, so at the last minute I invited my best friend, Will [Bleakley], from my college football team. On the morning of 28 February, we motored three hours out to sea. We knew there was a cold front coming in, and the sea was rough, but we weren't planning to stay out that long. I got sick on the way out though, and I was really cold, even in my winter ski jacket, so at about 4pm we decided to pull up anchor and head home early. The anchor was stuck again. 'We're not going to lose another anchor,' we said to ourselves. So we decided to floor the engine and see what happened – the line would either snap or become loose. In fact, the line got really tight, and then the back of the boat shot down and the boat flipped over. The four of us were thrown in. The water was so cold, we were in complete shock. Our first thought was to try to flip the boat back over. We were as strong as oxes, but in rough seas and with no leverage, it was never going to happen. So we hung on to whatever we could at the back of the boat and waited to be rescued. Corey had a waterproof watch, and we knew Marquis's wife would call the coastguard if the boat wasn't back by a certain time. We thought they'd rescue us by 2am at the latest. The seas got worse, you couldn't see where the waves were coming from. Then it got darker and colder; you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. We didn't know it at the time, but the rescue helicopters had been delayed by the bad weather. When we finally saw them, after about 10 hours, they flew straight over our heads. They were looking for a little white boat upon thousands and thousands of whitecaps. By that time, Marquis was deteriorating. He wasn't wearing much clothing and his body was so cold. We didn't know the symptoms of hypothermia , but his eyes were at the back of his head, he was slurring and foaming at the mouth. Eventually he lost consciousness. Then Corey developed the same symptoms. The hypothermia made him aggressive and he started pulling on Marquis. I struggled to hold on to Marquis for about an hour, but he died in my arms, and eventually we had to let him go – otherwise, we were going to lose Corey at the same time. That was by far the hardest thing I've ever had to do. It wasn't long before Corey started to struggle. I was holding on to his jacket, but he kept trying to jump off the boat. Eventually he got away from me. We were yelling at him, but one of the side-effects of hypothermia is that you think you're hot and take off your clothes. He took off his life jacket and just swan-dived into the sea. Will and I were alone. We tried to keep each other going. The sun was coming up and we told each other we were bound to get rescued, but the weather kept getting worse and the waves higher. The helicopters and planes couldn't see us. We spent the whole day fighting to hold on to each other and the boat. Will was a strong swimmer, and he was able to dive under the boat to get supplies – sports drinks and pretzels – but when he got back he wouldn't eat. He was developing the same symptoms as Corey and Marquis. He didn't get aggressive, just very weak, and I knew it was just a matter of time. I felt helpless. To watch these three athletes, my friends, go out that way, it was the hardest thing. But I knew I wasn't going to quit. I tried to keep the image of my mother in my mind – I thought about her attending my funeral. I knew I wanted to live to tell people what had happened. After a few hours on my own, I started hallucinating and caught myself yelling. My heart rate got really slow and it was hard to breathe. I knew I was dying. I thought about cutting myself, trying to write something on my arm. I just wanted to tell the story. I didn't even see the rescue boat until it was right beside me, and then I couldn't believe it was real. I had been on my own for 18 hours; in the sea for 43 hours in total. I've thought a lot about why I survived. I was in the best shape of my life, and I was wearing my winter jacket, so I was better insulated. But a lot of it was luck: it could have been any one of those guys. And to be saved, to see my family again – it was the most bittersweet feeling imaginable. I knew there were three families who were still hoping their sons would be found. The worst was having to tell them what had happened. But still the search carried on, and I had to sit there in hospital, knowing they wouldn't find anyone alive. I lost roughly 40lbs [18kg], tore my groin and my hip, and the ends of my big toes might always be numb, but that's not a big deal. I've had survivor's guilt, particularly at first. And there were lots of rumours afterwards – about us giving up, about inexperienced boating. So I wrote a book, Not Without Hope – not only to honour my friends but to get closure, for myself and for the families. They've dealt with the grief in their own ways, but I'm the only one who knows the truth. It would be different if I'd been able to save somebody. But to come out of that water on my own, knowing I'd lost three friends – it's very hard. Bahia Bakari was the sole survivor of Yemenia Airways flight 626 , which crashed into the Indian Ocean near the north coast of Grande Comore, in the Comoros islands, on 30 June 2009. A schoolgirl from the outskirts of Paris, now 14, she was on her way to the Comoros for her summer holidays with her mother, Aziza Aboudou, who was among the 152 passengers and crew killed. She spent nine hours in the water, clinging to a piece of wreckage. Suddenly, the lights started flickering, and the passengers became more and more anxious and panicked. The hostesses told us not to worry, that this happened sometimes because of bad weather; it was nothing. Mummy seemed calm, confident, she was smiling at me. She ran her hand through my hair. I turned my head to the window and pressed my face really hard against it, trying to see what was happening outside. A sudden loud whistle ran through the cabin. My head was like in a vice. There was a deafening noise of crumpling metal. I felt myself sucked out by a superhuman force. There were several explosions. I felt a big shudder, like an electric shock, run through my body. It anaesthetised me. Then I didn't feel anything, no pain. I plunged into a black hole. I tried to open my eyes. How much time had passed? How long had I been unconscious? I was in water, underwater. My lungs were blocked up. I couldn't breathe. My body drifted up to the surface, I got my head out. I breathed in, at last. My lungs were burning, I was coughing and spitting; my throat was on fire. My left eye hurt terribly. I was alone in the middle of the sea. My clothes were heavy, my shoes weighed a tonne. I moved my hands and legs to keep my head above water; my shoulder hurt, and my hip. It was a black night, no moon, but I saw four pieces of white debris not far away from me. I managed to swim to one, and tried to climb up on to it. I couldn't stay sat on it; it was smaller and less stable than I thought. And I couldn't pull my legs up; they hurt too much. The waves were huge; three times as tall as my dad. I was exhausted, I just wanted to sleep. So I rested my head on the debris. I thought about my mother. I thought she must have arrived at the airport by now and be wondering where I was. She must be really angry with me, that I'd managed to fall out of the plane into the sea just before we landed – I hadn't listened to her, again. I should have done my seat belt up tighter, and not looked out of the window, not leaned over so far. And she must be worried to death about me. I closed my eyes. When I woke up, it was dawn. The sea was more and more agitated. I was terribly thirsty, and I couldn't feel my legs. But I was still clinging on to my piece of debris. I saw land, not too far away, green and yellow. I shouted for joy and tried to paddle towards it, but I realised it was actually getting farther away. I lost sight of the land. It wasn't until the boat had found me and I was in the hospital in Moroni the following day, 1 July – after my uncle Joseph had been in to see me – that a psychologist came. She was a white lady. She told me I was the only survivor of the plane crash, that I was lucky to have escaped, but that one day, perhaps in 10 years, I would feel guilty to have lived. I didn't understand her. I had fallen from the plane, I knew that. But why was she talking to me about a crash? Then I had an awful premonition. 'Why isn't mummy here with us?' I asked. She said: 'You know, I don't think they found your mother. They only found you.' The coldness of those words, the offhandedness, almost destroyed me. In the sea, on my piece of debris, I had really believed I was the only one to fall out of the plane. Mummy couldn't have disappeared; mums don't disappear. The woman carried on talking, but I wasn't listening. And yet, little by little, I began to understand: I wasn't the only one to have fallen from the plane – everyone, passengers, captain, crew, they all fell. Mummy, too. Even so, it wasn't until much, much later, back in France, with Daddy and my brothers and sisters, that I understood I would never see her again. In June 2005, US Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell took part in Operation Red Wing in Afghanistan, to capture or kill Taliban leader Ahmad Shah . When three goat herders discovered their hiding place, the men voted to let them go. Shortly after, they were ambushed. Nineteen men were killed in the resulting gun battle – Luttrell was the only survivor. Wounded, he hid in a nearby village for six days before being rescued. We were on a ridge watching the target when they came up behind us and started firing. I don't know why I survived. I'd put my foot one way, and step. And someone else would do the same thing and get hit. That's one of the things about being a lone survivor – you don't know why. My skill level wasn't superior to anyone else's. I wasn't in any better shape than anyone else. We were all hit multiple times. I just outlasted it. So many guys were hit so many different times, they just bled out. I watched all my guys die, but somehow I managed to crawl to safety. I escaped to the mountains. I must have been on my own for a day and a half – it's a blur really. I was dehydrated and bleeding to death. Eventually I was found by some local villagers. They took me in. At the time I didn't know why, but I discovered it's a tradition in that village. They take in travellers, people who are injured, and give them food, shelter and do everything they can to keep them alive – that includes defending them against enemies. I had gunshot wounds, broken bones, lacerations from the trees and rocks, but they took care of me until I was eventually rescued on 4 July. I've never questioned why I survived, but I'm doing everything I can to repay the people who helped me in my recovery. I started the Lone Survivor foundation , and I work with a campaign called When They Come Back We Give Back , which helps veterans returning from conflict situations. I remember the guys I lost every day – I play the scenario in my head every time. But I'm alive, and I don't take that for granted. Captain George Burk was the sole survivor of a military plane crash in 1970. The 13 other crew members were killed. He had 65% burns and spent 18 months in hospital. He has dedicated his life since to motivating others. It was like sticking a needle in a balloon. Shortly into the flight, the window glazing cracked, there was a boom and the plane decompressed. We pitched nose down, the windows blew out. The noise was deafening. Papers, clothing, everything was being sucked out of the windows. There were 14 of us on board. Our crew chief was trying to hold the door on and my boss was flying the aircraft, but the left side of the cockpit was split open. Next to him was Daryl Robinson, or Robbie. His head was off his shoulders. I sat back down, buckled my seat belt and assumed the survival position. My life didn't flash in front of me, but the last thought I remember having was, 'I hope my insurance policies are intact.' My children were six, four and two. I knew I was going to die, but the mind has this numbing mechanism. I was aware of everything, but I felt it wasn't really happening. I remember the impact. The bending, breaking and shearing of metal. I was thrown violently back against the seat, then forward, breaking my nose on the seat in front. I had no sensation of blood, though; my adrenaline was pumping. The next sensation was as though someone had dumped a large bucket of scalding hot water on me. Everything went black. I opened my eyes. I was face down outside the plane, my hands were charred and black, and the skin on my left hand was hanging off. I remember looking at my feet and finding it rather unique that my right shoelace was tied and my left one was gone. I looked around me. I could see our crew chief, he was badly burned and dead. Near me was another body – Bob Ward, I knew him quite well. I remember thinking, if I sit here I'm going to die. I felt a terrible pain in my back, but I managed to walk. I was just praying to God to not let me die in this field alone, without a chance to say goodbye to my family. All the things that I thought were important – about my career and whether or not people liked me – was nothing; it didn't mean anything. I started to go into shock and lay down under a tree. I knew I was dying. I felt like I was being stung by millions of bees. The bad cop in my head told me to close my eyes and go to sleep, the good cop was saying, if you close your eyes, you're going to die. I don't want to die. Focus, focus, focus. I held pictures of my children, their mother, my parents in my head. I could have closed my eyes so easily. I heard voices coming towards me. I forced myself to my feet, waving my arms, then fell back down in a heap. A firefighter leaned over me. I heard his voice crack as he said, 'Oh my God.' When I got to hospital, my total body surface was 65% burned, with a little more than 50% third-degree burns; the fingers on my left hand had burned down to the bone. I have no recollection of digging my way out of the plane through a crack in the fuselage, but apparently that's how I got out. I had a broken nose, a skull fracture, two fused bones in my neck, four cracked ribs, a fracture in my spine and my left shoulder is still separated. I was in hospital for months – it was a miracle I got out of intensive care. Much later I found there had been problems with the pressure system on that aircraft before. It had been polished for inspection so often that perhaps the buffing had compromised the rivets. There were no support groups in those days, and I didn't know about post-traumatic stress disorder or survivor's guilt . I didn't have anyone to talk to. Everyone on the flight and most of the guys I knew in the burns unit had died. I asked my doctor, 'What am I supposed to do with the rest of my life? Why me?' And he told me I had experienced the will to survive – he said I had to find my purpose. It's been tough, and I still have my moments. I haven't been physically pain-free for 40 years, but it's the pain inside your head that will kill you; the guilt. I've tried to live my life in a way that honours the men who died, my family and the doctors and nurses who didn't give up on me or let me quit. I've realised that we're here for a reason – to make a difference – and that's what I've tried to do. To turn a negative into a positive. • Bahia Bakari's story is extracted from Moi Bahia, la miraculee by Bahia Bakari and Omar Guendouz, published by Jean-Claude Gaweswitch. Edited and translated by Jon Henley. Charlotte Northedge
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With all the Roman ruins and Petra, it's tempting to focus on Jordan's historic sites, but its nature reserves and their chic eco-lodges shouldn't be missed Yellow grit, the depressing mesh fences of army barracks, and long chains of oil tankers coming in from Saudi Arabia. This was the Middle East as imagined by people who don't know anything about the Middle East, and there had been nothing else in hours. Road signs said "Iraq ahead". "Don't fall asleep!" laughed our driver, Ahmed. "Maybe I keep going, and you wake up in Baghdad!" At last, something green. Palm trees. Then houses, a mosque, and a black basalt fortress. We had reached the point of the eastern desert of Jordan where the sands turns black with volcanic basalt rock. A trickle of travellers make it out here – 100km from Amman and well off the tourist trail between Petra, Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea – to see several desert castles, built in the seventh and eighth centuries by the Umayyads, one of those empires no one remembers, although they were once the biggest in the world, governing five million square miles that stretched from Spain to present-day Pakistan. What brought us to the desert was the same thing that attracted the Umayyads (and before them the Romans, the Nabateans, and neolithic people): an oasis, the desert's only water source. The Azraq wetland, an area of pools surrounded by tall grasses, bullrushes and reeds, is one of Jordan's six nature parks, established by the country's Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature. A million migratory birds used to stop here every year – filling the sky until they blocked out the sun. But no more. Since the 1980s the site has been in a state of environmental disaster as the Azraq water basin which feeds it has also been pumped to supply the population. "One in every four glasses of water drunk in Amman comes from Azraq," say the boards in the visitor centre. Diagrams showed how the pools have shrunk to 0.4% of their original area. Azraq may not be the paradise garden it once was (though the RSCN is fighting to get it back), but it's a fascinating stop-off after the castles. We explored the pools on wooden walkways, and spotted ducks, egrets and a cormorant from an adobe hide. To encourage visitors to Azraq, the RSCN has turned a 1940s British field hospital into a lodge, decorated with period trunks, black and white photographs of Bedouin, plus a 1956 Land Rover. The barracks contain stylish tiled bedrooms with flagstone floors and cacti-studded desert views. This forward-thinking way of combining eco-tourism with conservation has been put into practice in all of Jordan's six nature parks, which cover a range of landscapes – forests at Ajloun and Dibeen, the Rift Valley's canyons at Dana biosphere reserve, mountains and rivers at Mujib near the Dead Sea coast, and desert grassland at Shaumari, near Azraq. Travellers dashing between the country's main attractions typically pay scant attention to these nature parks, but they are one of Jordan's best assets. I made them the focus of a 10-day tour of the country with my mum, but because Jordan's so small it was perfectly viable to include the major historic sites too. Our first port of call in Amman – before its Roman amphitheatres, souks and modern art gallery – was the HQ of Wild Jordan, the RSCN offshoot responsible for eco-tourism, and for socio-economic projects that support the rural communities living around the reserves. The architect-designed building on the edge of the capital's starting-to-be-hip district, Rainbow Street, is also a visitor centre, with a sun terrace affording views of the seven hills to which the city clings, a health food cafe and a boutique selling crafts made by people living near the reserves. Oman has its frankincense, Egypt carpets, Morocco leather, Saudi gold, but Jordan didn't have much in the way of traditional crafts. So Wild Jordan has worked with villagers to develop some, using local, sustainable materials – painted ostrich eggs from Azraq, olive oil soap from Ajloun, Bedouin silverware from Dana. Wild Jordan's director, British expat Chris Johnson, met us for a cup of herbal tea and had some exciting news. The government had just agreed to establish nine more protected areas, including three in the Rift Valley, plus two near Wadi Rum and one in Burqu, the black basalt desert we had seen near Azraq. There will be one in the limestone hills and deciduous forest on the border with Syria, another in a sub-tropical wetland south of the Rift Valley, and one at Jebel Masuda, an "amazing" mountain near Petra from which you can enter the famous site through a back route. "We chose the most special and typically Jordanian eco-systems," he said, "but to get nine is exceptional." It had taken a lot of work to persuade the government of the value of conservation, he explained. "They were always hoping to find a raw material that would change Jordan's fate. Feynan and Dana were almost lost to mining. But the minerals would have soon run out. Eco-tourism is more valuable." Now the strategy is to keep tourists in Jordan longer, to explore more of the country. It's easy to do. By early afternoon the next day, we'd left Amman, seen Roman Jerash's dusty amphitheatres and chariot racetracks, walked the dark passageways of Ajloun's crusader castle, and were hiking in the fresh sunshine in the Ajloun forest reserve. It was December, sunny but too cold for the reserve's safari tents, so we holed up in one of its gorgeous wooden cabins with a Calor Gas heater and read under thick blankets until we were called for a delicious dinner of lentil soup, salads and stew. Although sadly there was none of Jordan's lovely red wine, St George – all the eco-lodges are alcohol-free. On our way to the next reserve, we stayed a night in Madaba to see its famous sixth century mosaic map of the Holy Land on the floor of St George's church, and stood the next day on nearby Mount Nebo, where Moses is said to have looked across the Dead Sea to Jericho. "Just close your eyes for 15 seconds now," said Ahmed from the driver's seat as we headed south across flat, barren land on the King's Highway. "One, two..." he counted slowly. We hoped he was keeping his own eyes open. "15! OK!" Before us was the most incredible scene, an immense gaping canyon stretching into the distance. I was dumbstruck. The Mujib is Jordan's answer to the Grand Canyon, but I'd never even heard of it. Here Wild Jordan offers stays in eco-chalets, with swimming and canyoning trips along river trails, but in winter the water is too dangerous, so we had to give it a miss. Instead we spent the next day at the impressive Karak crusader castle, then by the afternoon were at Petra. You don't need to read again about how incredible the rose-red city is, but what I'd underestimated was the staggering beauty of the landscape around it. We did a steep hike up to the Sacred High Place, where rock chasms run off in all directions. You'd need weeks of hard hiking to see all of it. Afterwards we wanted to wash off the dust at a traditional hammam. "There is only a mixed one, if that is OK for you," said Ahmed. We thought it was. But then his mates turned up, and they all unexpectedly joined us in the marble steam rooms, larking about, and then kept "accidentally" bursting in on us while we got changed and had massages. They overstepped the mark, but I read later that Jordanian women would never go to a mixed hammam, so perhaps we were partly to blame. As foreign females we were generally treated with respect, but in Jordan, strict boundaries are maintained between the sexes. Few women work, and they are not expected to make eye contact with male strangers. But Jordan wants to modernise. Queen Rania is pushing for female social development through various charity projects, and Wild Jordan is doing its bit, employing women to make crafts and as lodge staff. But this has to be sensitively managed. "At Ajloun, we developed a calligraphy workshop," Chris Johnson had told me back in Amman. "I visited and had a try, rather clumsily, so one of the female workers guided my hand with hers. The village found out and her family were angry – it was a scandal. She was made to quit her job." But there are success stories, too. The Dana biosphere reserve – a canyon home to 800 plant varieties, 214 species of bird and 45 types of mammal – runs along the Rift Valley to the desert of Wadi Araba. The Bedouin who lived there were no longer allowed to hunt when it was made a nature park, but many were retrained as hotel staff at Dana Guesthouse at the top of the canyon and Feynan Ecolodge, at the bottom, or as nature guides leading insightful treks between them. Our guide, Mohammed showed us caves he'd lived in, wolf tracks, and plants for shampoo, but said he was happy to have left behind the hard Bedouin life. Dana's lovely lodge had simple rooms with polished stone floors, iron beds with thick cream bedspreads, and Bedouin rugs, but the canyon views are its big attraction. In contrast, the dry desert setting of Feynan Ecolodge on the western edge of the reserve wasn't so beautiful, but the lodge itself was magical – lit by candles, and resembling a sandcastle. It is eco to the extreme – solar-powered and vegetarian, with clever water and cooling systems. And it is surrounded by archaeological sites dating back 10,000 years – Nabatean ruins, Roman copper mines, Byzantine churches, neolithic villages. Winter meant we couldn't try the canyoning, but we mountain-biked between the sites, and took tea in Bedouin tents. We also took a tour of Dana village with Hamed, an RSCN guide. "Since the 1980s, tourism has changed life here," he said. "Before, there was no school, no TV, and women had to ask permission to leave the house. Now they go to university." The village had been deserted when people moved to modern homes close to a new road, and its old stone and juniper wood buildings were crumbling. But the RSCN plans to restore them, and is offering free homes, plus jobs in the restaurants, museum and music venue it hopes to create there to entice villagers back. We met Nabil, owner of a third of the village buildings, at his decades-old Dana Tower hotel, a low-cost backpackers' place, and a rival to the RSCN's Dana lodge. Though he was all for the restoration, he wasn't a big fan of the RSCN, wanting more decision-making to be in the villagers' hands: "They take money from tourists and spend it on many things. Not enough money goes to local people." But what Wild Jordan is doing seems far better than other options. Our last stop was the Hammamet Ma'In hotsprings, where King Herod once bathed. Wild Jordan has a Dead Sea visitor centre nearby but no lodge, so we stayed at the posh Evason spa hotel, and swam in pools of 40C under steaming waterfalls. I asked the manager if they employed local women. "No, women do not work in Jordan," he answered, assuring me that the towering hotel – with its $1,600 suites, Thai masseurs, western food, shuttle buses and luxury Sri Lankan fabrics – was eco-friendly. Sure, it had its own spring water, and an organic vegetable patch, but I am certain the lodges in the new Wild Jordan will offer a more authentic experience.

• Jordan
• Middle East
• Green travel
• Adventure travel
• Petra, Jordan
• Wildlife holidays

Gemma Bowes
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With the opening of the Taj Cape Town, will the city prove the broken windows theory of urban decay? The broken windows theory of urban decay first appeared in the magazine The Atlantic in 1982. Social scientists James Q Wilson and George L Kelling proposed that little problems, such as broken windows, can soon become big ones – squatting, vandalism and violent crime. It's been a seductive idea ever since: that fixing windows, picking up litter and scrubbing graffiti are snowflakes that can trigger an avalanche of regeneration, returning middle classes and Starbucks all round. In South Africa's great cities, the fight is on. Johannesburg has developments in unfashionable areas, such as the boutique shops of 44 Stanley Avenue and the creative hub Arts on Main. I recently witnessed the opening of 12 Decades, the city's first "art hotel" in a renovated building deep in the urban underbelly. Each room takes a decade of Johannesburg's history as its theme; one has apartheid legislation printed in the toilet bowl. A decade ago Cape Town city centre was seen by many as a no-go area: daylight muggings, boarded-up buildings and parking attendants on the make. More than a few windows have been repaired since then, and last weekend there was more evidence of renaissance: the opening of a five-star hotel. The Taj Cape Town is a sister of the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai, recently reopened after the 2008 terrorist attacks. It brings Indian decor and "refined Indian hospitality", and a spin-off of London's Bombay Brasserie, to a once unfriendly corner of the Mother City. As in the US, city centres tend to be more dynamic, beautifully ugly and historically evocative than the safe but bland suburbs. The 177-room Taj Cape Town has plenty of ghosts, as it occupies the former premises of the South African Reserve Bank (1932) and Temple Chambers (1896), combined with a newly constructed tower. Adapting old buildings is one short cut to character. Much of the original banking hall is intact, with its carved clock, sash windows and grand chandelier. Up high are the two balconies where minstrels entertained customers as they queued to make their deposits or withdrawals. In the roof is a curved skylight made with scientific precision: in 1929 the architect James Morris bullied the astronomer royal into measuring the position of shadows month by month so he could maximise the amount of direct sunlight in the hall. This was a gilded age, after all, up to a point. There are four columns that were originally meant to be made of marble imported from Sweden, but after a court case and an outcry from taxpayers, the architect settled for cheaper Portuguese Styros marble in cream and brown. I was among American, Australian, European and Indian journalists invited to the hotel's grand opening last weekend. We had been promised an appearance by Jacob Zuma, who had been over the road at St George's Cathedral, but the president was a no-show, possibly fearful that cutting ribbons at luxury hotels would jar with striking nurses and teachers. From a marquee, we walked up a red carpet, through the old bank's giant bronze gates and local Paarl granite facade. The crowd of faces was mainly white or Indian with a small black minority. There was a speech from Ratan Tata, the Indian tycoon whose Tata Group owns the Taj hotels, about India's affinity with South Africa and references to Gandhi and Mandela. I stood with American and Indian journalists, musing on the significance of this Indian initiative. "There's a sense in the US that our best days are behind us," said the American. "The 20th century was the American century, but now we're in the Asian century with China and India. It looks fairly inevitable." Among the guests was Andrew Boraine, chief executive of the Cape Town Partnership, which has led the renewal campaign. He took us on a guided tour of the immediate neighbourhood, one of the most historically rich in South Africa. People have been living in this region for at least 70,000 years – it's one of the oldest areas of human settlement on the planet. At least two millennia ago, the Khoisan and Khoikhoi people would bring their livestock to what they called Camissa (place of sweet water). The sun rose and the sun set and nothing changed, making it easy to pretend they were alone in the universe. Then one day the aliens came. The Dutch East India Company set up a refreshment station and began taxing the indigenious people. And so centuries of conflict over water and land began here. The company set up a lodge where it is believed that up to 9,000 slaves, convicts and mentally ill people were held between 1679 and 1811. The building later became the Cultural History Museum, which in apartheid terms meant white cultural history. Black culture was put in the Natural History Museum. Just a few minutes' walk away is a public artwork that commemorates the day in 1989 when police fired a water cannon with purple dye at pro-democracy protesters so they could identify and arrest them. One demonstrator leapt on to the vehicle and seized the cannon, turning it on to the police and National Party headquarters. Later a piece of graffiti declared: "The purple shall govern." Parliament, the 350-year-old Company's Garden, the National Gallery, the South African Museum and numerous other sites are all within walking distance. I ambled around St George's, where Desmond Tutu once rallied the faithful against apartheid, and thought myself back in England amid the carved pews, stained glass and stone effigies. The memorials on the wall speak of brief lives: "Remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth. In memory of Adriaan Carl Johannes Bouwer, aged 16, Sunday school teacher, whose life of good promise was cut short by a fatal fall on Table Mountain, September 27th 1883, on the eve of the cathedral confirmation, September 29th. Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not, Psalm 17:5." Another reads: "In memory of Montague Treby Molesworth, lieutenant in the Royal Navy, who died on board HMS Cleopatra March 25th 1844, of spear wounds received on the 23rd in an unforeseen and general attack made by the natives of the west coast of Madagascar on the unarmed crew of the Pinnace under his command while actively engaged in weighing the anchor of their ship ... "In this barbrous outrage, the work of two minutes, and result of a defeated attempt at theft, seven out of 13 brave men lost their lives with their gallant officer. Thus was his bright career arrested ere 24 summers had dawned upon him, yet in that brief space, he had proved himself by his prowess and presence of mind in the moment of danger all a British sailor should be." The Taj Cape Town hotel is on Wale Street, Cape Town, South Africa.

• South Africa
• Regeneration
• Tata
• Cape Town
• Architecture
• Hotels
• South Africa

David Smith
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions More Feeds

For a unique take on the world of fashion, sign up to the Guardian's fashion email and get all the latest news delivered straight to your inbox FASHION DILEMMA
What does it take to get a fashion advert banned? It was only a few weeks ago that Julianne Moore found herself shamefully cast into our Fashion Graveyard for her Bulgari advertising campaign. Now the very same advert - featuring a naked Julianne frolicking with naked lion cubs (have they NO shame?) - has been banned from St Mark's Square in Venice. "An advertisement showing a nude woman on a divan is not appropriate for St. Mark's Square," said mayor Giorgio Orsoni, causing FS to ponder whether it's the nudity or the furniture he's objecting to. In truth the advert is far from being the most tasteless or shocking of recent times - these days nudity and sexual imagery are de rigeur for fashion houses. Once they used delicate sexual suggestion, now they use a sledgehammer, while the irony of extremely expensive clothes being sold by people not wearing any seems not to trouble them one jot. The list of banned adverts is long and not remotely illustrious. Sophie Dahl's Opium advert, pictured above, was one of the most complained about ads in the Advertising Standards Agency history and was banned from UK billboards . In 2001, a French Connection advert of a beautiful young couple getting intimate with each other was so comprehensively banned that the advertising watchdog remarked they were amazed the creators "even had the gall to send the script in". Then there was the Elle Macpherson underwear ad, deemed too controversial for appearing to be taken by a peeping tom, despite the creators insisting it was just arty. Well of course. When is shooting a girl in her underwear through a keyhole not arty? Even less subtle was Tom Ford's Yves Saint Laurent advert [warning: not safe for work viewing] which used full frontal male nudity to sell aftershave . "Perfume is worn on the skin, so why hide the body?" said Ford, with the kind of perverse logic that probably featured in the creation of this oh-so-subtle image for Sisley. Also on the roll call of shame is Diesel's "Be Stupid" campaign , in which girls flash at security cameras or take pictures down their own knickers. If this campaign wasn't dreamt up by someone who describes themselves as "zany" and uses the phrase "I'm not being funny but..." then FS will eat its hat. The decision to ban the ads was thoroughly vindicated by the fact that FHM thought they were pretty good (warning: don't read the comments if you wish to retain the will to live). We could go on, with American Apparel's charmless images, Calvin Klein's naked Eva Mendes and semi-naked group orgy - sorry, art - but well, we'd rather not, thanks. Nor can be bring ourselves to dwell on the ads banned for being merely disingenuous, rather than tasteless - like Louis Vuitton's recent campaign or Kate Moss's fake lashes . Instead we will look fondly back to a more innocent age, when this advert for Jordache was banned for featuring a topless woman, covering herself demurely with her arms. We pine for those times. BANG ON TREND Fashion Statement on tour Exciting news this week, for Fashion Statement is so bang on trend that we will soon be leaving on a specially-commandeered jewel-encrusted jet plane for New York fashion week, where we will be live blogging - yes LIVE blogging - the entire thing. Come back to guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle to read all about it: the latest news, gossip, celebrity spots, hideous frocks, fashion faux pas and utter taste bypasses, all LIVE on the site. Did we mention it will be live, by the way? FASHIONISTA OF THE WEEK FS did a few double takes at this picture. Claire Danes? Little Claire Danes? My how she's grown up. Grown up in sparkling (though rather uncomfortable looking) Giorgio Armani Privé complete with California tan and Hollywood hair. FASHION GRAVEYARD Now we love Mad Men with a passion the Guardian usually reserves only for The Wire or Twitter, but really, this is a hair dye advert gone wrong. We've got the blonde, the brunette, the redhead, all apparently on their way to separate weddings as bridesmaids. FS demands that for the sake of continunity and style, the cast of Mad Men use series stylist Janie Bryant for awards ceremonies as well. QUOTE OF THE WEEK
It's impossible to imagine another designer sitting here, tanned legs folded on a unsteady wooden chair, dipping bits of bread into olive oil, talking and eating at the same time and making it all look so natural and desirable. Elle magazine fawns over Isabel Marant, who performs the staggering act of making talking and eating look natural. Thanks to reader Rose for sending that in to Fashion Statement and quite putting us off our lunch. OUT AND ABOUT
Find out what life is like on the fashion desk of a national newspaper plus what to wear - and what not to wear - this autumn in our very own Guardian Extra event. The event takes place on 8 September in Guardian Towers, aka Kings Place, and you'll even get a glass of bubbly. Full details at guardian.co.uk/extra A new pop-up shop has, well, popped up just behind Carnaby Street, stocking current ethical collections from lovely brands including Lowie, Annie Greenabelle, Pachacuti, Ley Ley jewellery, Monkee Genes, Veja and Good One, with more brands being added daily. All net proceeds from the shop go to the Envionmental Justice Foundation''s work defending the environment and protecting human rights.
Pop Eco, Environmental Justice Foundation, 1st Floor Kingly Court, Soho London W1B 5PW ejfoundation.org Time your visit to the EJF shop for 11 September, when Catwalk Carnaby will be on show. This free catwalk show will be on at 12pm, 2pm and 4pm and feature the latest autumn/winter collections. Shoppers can also enjoy other free fashion activities during the day, including style advice, discounts, DJ sets and even special fashion menus. Full details at carnaby.co.uk SHOPPING NEWS
Shearling jacket hunters, credit cards at the ready: the gorgeous ASOS Revive collection launches today and includes this season's most ubiqutious item (see above). FS also loves the delicate vintage-style slip dresses and underwear. Asos.com

FS loves EggMag so is very pleased to hear that the team will be creating a range of merchandise on their new online shop. 4% of the profits will go to charity, and you will be able to buy greetings cards, re-usable organic cotton shoppers and of course, subscriptions to the magazine, with more items appearing over the next few months. Find it at eggmag.bigcartel.com OFFCUTS Pining for yet more shearling? Check out the Observer fashion team's guide to getting the look She may be a newcomer on the designer scene, but Victoria Beckham has already been nominated for a major award
Hadley Freeman advises you never to wear animal prints , unless you are a mascot for a lame football team For all the latest fashion news, visit guardian.co.uk/fashion . News to tell us? Email kate.carter@guardian.co.uk . Follow us on Twitter .

• Fashion
• Advertising

Kate Carter
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Renaissance artist Raphael's works are shown together for the first time after Vatican loans tapestries to V&A The Renaissance artist Raphael may just have lived long enough to see the series of tapestries he designed for the Sistine Chapel in Rome. He died a few months after they arrived from the weavers in Brussels at the end of 1519. But it is certain he never saw them together with the cartoons he had drawn four years earlier as the basis for the tapestries. No one ever has. Until now. Today staff at the Victoria and Albert Museum were putting the finishing touches to an exhibition of the tapestries, displayed for the first time alongside the cartoons which have been on display at the museum since 1865, and are among its foremost treasures. Curators and workmen were raising four of the heavy 494-year-old tapestries, woven in wool, silk and gilt-metal thread, which have been loaned by the Vatican - at its own suggestion - as an accompaniment toto mark this month's visit to Britain by Pope Benedict XVI. The cartoons and tapestries will be together on show for just six weeks. "No one has ever seen them together before," said Clare Browne, the museum's curator of textiles, who described the tapestries as "among the most extraordinary productions of their era". Watching with barely suppressed excitement was the V&A's expert on Raphael, Mark Evans, who has been studying the works since he was an undergraduate. "When the Vatican rang up in February and offered to loan us the tapestries for an exhibition, to say that my jaw dropped would be an understatement," he said. ". I had always thought the logistical difficulties and political support necessary would make it impossible. This is my opportunity to realise something that has been at the fringes of my thinking for 40 years. I know I will never do anything like this again." The series of 10 tapestries, of events taken from the Acts of the Apostles, was commissioned by Pope Leo X in 1515. Raphael, a busy artist already at work on frescoes for the papal apartments, completed the designs, painted as full-size cartoons, within a year and it was from these that the finest weavers in Europe, based 1,000 miles away in Brussels, wove their work. It is estimated that each tapestry would have taken one loom a year to complete and at least seven were delivered to Rome in December 1519. So highly were they prized, that when Leo X died within two years, deep in debt, some of the tapestries were pawned. Only four of the surviving tapestries are robust enough to have been driven to London. The cartoons themselves, which had been cut into strips so they could be placed under the loom and copied, remained in Brussels until they were bought a century later by Charles I. They have been owned by the royal family ever since and placed on loan to the museum for the last 145 years. Also in the exhibition are Raphael's preliminary preliminary drawings for the designs, loaned from the royal collection. Had Raphael been able to compare his paintings with the finished designs, he would have spotted some intriguing differences. RapThe robe Christ is wearing in the work depicting his Charge to St Peter is a plain white, or pastel colour in the cartoon, but was decorated with gold stars in the tapestry. They went even further in the tapestry known as the Sacrifice at Lystra, showing the aftermath of the healing of a lame man by St Paul; probably believing the man did not figure strongly enough in the crowd, the weavers replaced the crutch Raphael had painted on the ground beside him with a wooden leg instead: the victim apparently having grown a new limb instead of merely having his own restored to muscled health. The Flemish tapestries have greater vivacity than one of the Mortlake copies, also in the exhibition, from 100 years later, which is evidently the product of reverent imitation rather than exuberant flair. Evans said: "You can see the sheer visual intelligence of Raphael in these designs. It is very common today to be snooty these days about brainpower in comparison to emotions, but the painter's great narrative shines through. It is supercharged." hael: Cartoons and Tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, at the V&A South Kensington from 8 September to 17 October. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

• V&A
• Museums
• Pope Benedict XVI
• Catholicism
• Christianity

Stephen Bates
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It is the second time that a group of retailers have produced a prelude to London Fashion Week and this season's aims to be far bigger Fabric is still being delivered, models are being cast, artistic temper tantrums have yet to be unleashed. But, as London Fashion Week designers battle on with their preparations for the event, which begins in two weeks time, the British high street is angling to get in on the catwalk action. So far 23 high street brands have signed up to High Street Fashion Week, which begins on Monday. It is the second time that a group of retailers have produced a prelude to London Fashion Week and this season's aims to be far bigger. The event will feature public fashion shows and tutorials and will begin with "The Glammys". These inaugural awards will be voted for by the public and aim to acknowledge retailers who embrace wearable and relevant fashion for all ages. High Street Fashion Week is an open retail event which focuses on the public, rather than the fashion press and buyers. Although many in the industry remain unenthusiastic, retail guru Jeff Banks insists the event is a positive move. "I don't think the event goes far enough. I've been advocating this for years. London Fashion Week is a puff of smoke. Only 10 or so names who show there are serious businesses. It's about time we got real and did what we are good at." To coincide with the event, John Lewis and Marks & Spencer are also striving to up their designer credentials. M&S is gearing up to stock designs by students from the Royal College of Art which it will sell alongside its Limited Collection. John Lewis, better known for homeware than high fashion, is due to unveil one-off ollaborations with designers including Osman Yousefzada, Terry de Havilland and Philip Treacy at its Oxford Street flagship store before London Fashion Week. The designer stunt coincides with a £10m makeover of the store's fashion department. Peter Ruis, director of buying at the company, admitted that "shoppers already know that our basement is fantastic for food, our ground floor is brilliant for beauty but until now the fashion floor hasn't been as strong."

• London fashion week
• Fashion
• Fashion week

Imogen Fox
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions More Feeds