Tony Blair: “This is a moment of huge opportunity, not just for Egypt”
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Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has described events in Egypt as a “pivot” that could move the “whole of the Middle East” towards democracy.
Mr Blair, who is now a UN Middle East peace envoy, said deposed President Hosni Mubarak had been “a force for stability in the region”.
But he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr show that events in Egypt were a “huge opportunity” for change.
He also warned against “hysteria” about the Muslim Brotherhood.
Some US conservatives have warned that the Islamist group, which is Egypt’s largest opposition party, could take over the country and end its peace treaty with Israel, with consequences for the whole region.
But Mr Blair said the “sensible” approach to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was “not to be hysterical about them,” adding “they are not terrorists or extremists”.
“The public would expect us to be looking for some of this money if we became aware of it”
Richard Alderman Serious Fraud Office
But he also said the international community should “not be complacent” about the Muslim Brotherhood either, adding they are “not the type of political party that you or I would recognise”.
Above all, he said the West had to move from “commentating on this situation” to “engaging” with what he said was a wider process of change across the Middle East.
Mr Blair, who along with the US, was a close ally of President Mubarak when he was in power, said that although he had been a force for stability who had boosted Egypt’s economy, forces for change in Egypt had been “held back” under his rule.
Mr Blair told Andrew Marr: “This is a moment of huge opportunity, not just for Egypt, and … although I see all the uncertainties, you have to manage this process of change very carefully, I think the military council will do that, by the way.
“Despite all those challenges, this is a moment when the whole of the Middle East could pivot and face towards change and modernisation and democracy and that would be a huge benefit for all of us.”
He acknowledged the situation in Egypt had been “fantastically destabilising” for the Palestinian Authority but added that if a “benign” new administration was established in Cairo it could help to support modernising elements within Palestinian politics.
Mr Blair said the Middle East “can either go towards an open-minded, modern type of democracy, let’s hope that it does, or it could be swung into something narrow and extreme and closed-minded”.
He added: “I think there’s every possibility that we get the first and not the second and our purpose as the West should be to engage insofar as possible to bring about that more benign scenario.”
It comes as the government faced calls to freeze any assets of Mr Mubarak’s assets being held in the UK.
Business Secretary Vince Cable said that there was a need for “concerted international action” to tackle the issue.
He said he was “not aware” Mr Mubarak and “enormous assets” in the UK but warned the government would act against any British bank that was involved in helping the former president improperly move funds in order to protect his private wealth.
Mr Mubarak is reported to have amassed a family fortune worth billions of dollars held in British and Swiss banks and tied up in property in London, New York and Los Angeles.
The Swiss authorities have already announced that they are freezing his assets held in their country.
The director of the Serious Fraud Office, Richard Alderman, indicated that they were already tracking the assets of Mr Mubarak and the deposed Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
“The public would expect us to be looking for some of this money if we became aware of it, and to try to repatriate it for the benefit of the people of those countries,” he told The Sunday Times.
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A man and a woman and two children, believed to be from the same family, have been found dead in Leicestershire.
A man, 32, was found dead at Watermead Country Park on Friday evening.
The bodies of a 24-year-old woman, a boy aged three and a girl aged two, were found at a house on Saturday afternoon in Mowmacre Hill, Leicester.
The deaths of the woman and children at the Jersey Road property are being treated as suspicious. Police said they were not looking for anyone else.
Leicestershire Police said none of the bodies had so far been identified.
A spokesperson from the force said: “No causes of death have been established at present, but the deaths of the woman and children are being treated as suspicious.
“Enquiries are at an early stage, but officers are not looking for anyone else at this time.”
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Dundee United face Celtic at Tannadice for the first time since a controversy-filled clash in October.
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The French Open will continue to be played at Roland Garros after officials rejected proposals to move the Grand Slam event to another venue.
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A 20-year-old man is charged with the murder of a teenager during a disturbance in a Midlothian street.
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Martin Johnson warns England they must improve if they are to beat defending Six Nations champions France in their next match.
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Garrett was best known for playing Frank Sinatra’s sweetheart in the 1940s musicals
Betty Garrett – a US actress, singer and dancer – has died in Los Angeles, aged 91, her son has said.
Garrett Parks said she died at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, most likely from an aortic aneurysm.
Garrett was best known for playing Frank Sinatra’s sweetheart in two MGM musicals in the 1940s.
Her movie career was brief, partially because she was blacklisted due to her and her husband Larry Parks’ past ties with the Communist Party.
Garrett later moved on to TV, becoming well-known for her roles in the 1970s sitcoms.
Over the years, she also had sporadic roles on Broadway.
Garrett and Parks stayed married until his death in 1975.
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Some protesters had wanted to stay on Tahrir Square until a timetable of reform was drawn up
Egypt’s army is clearing Cairo’s Tahrir Square of protesters who have been camped there for 20 days, vowing not to move until reforms are implemented.
The square was the focal point of the uprising that led to President Hosni Mubarak’s departure on Friday, drawing crowds several hundred thousand strong.
But by Sunday morning their numbers had dwindled and traffic was flowing again.
US President Obama has welcomed the new military leadership’s pledge to work towards civilian rule.
In a statement read out on state TV on Saturday, the army said it had asked the current government to stay on until a new one was formed.
The military also reaffirmed the country’s commitment to all its international treaties.
Although there were reports of scuffles between soldiers and die-hard protesters in Tahrir Square on Sunday morning, the BBC’s Jon Leyne says the operation to clear the area was being conducted unprovocatively.
A hardcore of protesters had wanted to stay until a full timetable of reform was drawn up.
In a statement on Egyptian state television, the military promised to hand over power to an elected civilian administration
Several hundred remain marooned on a traffic island in the heart of the square, adds our correspondent, but it feels like the tide is slowly coming in on a beautifully-constructed sand castle as they are squeezed out.
Throughout the weekend, an army of volunteers and municipal workers has cleared away debris from the streets.
Earlier, Mr Obama “welcomed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces’ announcement today that it is committed to a democratic civilian transition, and will stand by Egypt’s international obligations,” a statement released by the White House said.
The announcement, which was read by a senior officer on state TV, implicitly confirms that the country’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel will remain intact.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu also welcomed the announcement, saying the treaty was a cornerstone of Middle East stability.
Meanwhile the authorities banned three senior officials close to Mr Mubarak – former Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif, former Interior Minister Habib al-Adli and current Information Minister Anas al-Fekky – from foreign travel, saying they were under investigation.
Mr Mubarak resigned on Friday after 18 days of protests, being flown to his luxury residence in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh having handed power to the high command, a body composed of high-ranking generals.
The military statement said the current government and regional governors would “act as caretakers”, looking to guarantee “a peaceful transition of authority in a free democratic framework which allows an elected civilian authority to rule the country, to build a free democratic country”.
Later state media reported that the high command’s leader, Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, had met Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq and other senior officials to discuss “the immediate return of life to normality”.
He discussed with Interior Minister Mahmoud Wagdy the rapid return to duty of the police, who left the streets in the early days of the protests, reports said.
The police force in Egypt was widely perceived as an instrument of repression under Mr Mubarak.
The military has managed to give the impression of being above politics, a unifying force for the nation, but the opposition wants an early and clear indication that this country is heading in a new direction and not simply swapping one dictatorship for another, says our correspondent.
The demonstrations were triggered by widespread unrest over unemployment, poverty and corruption.
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A 22-year-old man dies following a road accident in Limavady.
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Nicky Henderson believes his horse Kid Cassidy was ‘extremely lucky’ to have escaped death after two other horses died in the paddock at Newbury on Saturday.
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Somali pirates use mother ships to operate far from the shore
A Nato warship has captured a suspected pirate mother ship off Somalia, Nato’s counter-piracy mission has said.
It said Denmark’s warship fired warning shots on Saturday, forcing the vessel to stop and its crew to surrender.
Sixteen suspected pirates on board were then held and a weapons cache seized. Two Yemeni hostages were also freed.
“These ships provide the pirates with a floating base. They pose a great threat to the merchant shipping,” the chief officer of the Danish warship said.
“We have now eliminated one of these threats,” Commander Haumann of HDMS Esbern Snare warship said.
The Nato mission said the incident happened on Saturday morning, when the warship came across a suspicious vessel with two skiffs on deck.
It said it believed the fishing vessel had been hijacked.
The Nato mission – alongside with the EU’s naval force – has been escorting merchant ships in the Gulf of Aden since 2008.
Earlier this week, the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners (Intertanko) said Somali pirates were now using at least 20 seized vessels as mother ships to launch attacks in the region.
Somali pirates have made millions of dollars in recent years by capturing cargo vessels in the shipping lanes around the Horn of Africa and holding the ships and crew for ransom.
Somalia has had no functioning central government since 1991, allowing piracy to flourish off its coast.
Pirates have greatly expanded the areas where they operate in recent years
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Elfyn Llwyd said there was a “mandatory duty” on the government to implement the military covenant
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Veterans are being “stitched up” by ministers’ failure to put the military covenant into law, an MP has said.
Elfyn Llwyd is questioning the government’s commitment to the covenant – the relationship between society and its armed forces.
He said politicians owed military personnel a “duty to ensure their wellbeing upon their return home”.
Mr Llwyd, Plaid Cymru’s leader at Westminster, plans to table a series of amendments to the Armed Forces Bill.
He said: “It is politicians who place these brave troops in harm’s way. We owe them a duty to ensure their wellbeing upon their return home. Anything else is a breach of the military covenant.”
Mr Llwyd said he had been excluded from committee stage of the bill, saying it “smacks of a stitch-up – in the same way as this toothless clause is stitching up veterans”.
“There is a mandatory duty on the government to implement the military covenant,” he said.
“The last Labour government failed pitifully in this respect and we are still seeing increasing numbers of veterans in prison – maybe as high as at one in nine of the prison population.
“This was an opportunity to put veterans’ welfare at the heart of the bill – one that has been badly missed.”
He added: “I fear that this government is about to continue in this failure to our troops.”
Mr Llwyd said his proposed amendments would force the government “to show whether they are serious about implementing the military covenant”.
On Thursday, Royal British Legion director general Chris Simpkins told a committee of MPs that troops found it “pretty depressing” the covenant was not included in the bill as it stands.
A proposal in the bill for the defence secretary to report annually to Parliament on the state of the covenant was no substitute for enshrining the concept in law, he said.
It amounted to “the MoD reporting on itself”, Mr Simpkins added.
Research by probation union Napo in 2009 suggested that 6% of prisoners, or those on probation or parole, were ex-servicemen.
Napo assistant general secretary Harry Fletcher said: “The Armed Forces Bill is an excellent opportunity to introduce measures on a statutory footing to minimise the chances of former armed services personnel ending up in the criminal justice system, with mental health problems or becoming homeless.”
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Mobile themes in Barcelona will be as varied as its tapas
Barcelona will be serving up its sixth Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week and it promises as much variety as the tapas bars that the city is more famed for.
Operating systems, content, devices and even chips will all be on the menu as the Spanish city plays host to more than 50,000 visitors.
The guest list will also be an eclectic mix as mobile old-timers rub shoulders with high-profile executives from outside the sector.
Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Google’s Eric Schmidt as well Twitter’s Dick Costolo and Carol Bartz from Yahoo will all be there.
Nokia and Microsoft are enjoying a new partnership
It represents the ongoing collision between the net and mobile communication, as smartphones get ever more popular, smarter and more powerful.
Mobile analysis firm CCS: Insight predicts that smartphones will exceed the number of PCs in the world by 2013.
It could happen even sooner if Gartner’s figures prove correct. It found that smartphones are already being shipped in greater number than PCs – 100.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2010 compared to 92 million PCs.
The operating systems that power them are likely to take centre stage in Barcelona as the battle between Google, Apple and Microsoft gears up.
That battle was made much more interesting by the Nokia, Microsoft partnership announced last week.
It will see Nokia turn to Windows as its primary operating system for smartphones, abandoning the ailing Symbian platform.
But Android is still likely to take the MWC crown as unofficial operating system king – for this year at least.
The availability of services such as Twitter have driven smartphone uptake
At past Mobile World Congresses, there has been a huge variety of different handsets on show but these days all phones look the same, thinks Ben Wood, an analyst with CCS: Insight.
“Ask a child to draw a mobile phone and most will draw the same thing – a black rectangle with a touch screen,” he said.
To offset this growing homogenisation of design, some operators will be offering quirky new features to help them stand out from the crowd.
LG will be showing off its much-leaked 3D handset, the first mobile phone designed to view 3D content without the need for glasses.
Gamers will be keen to see if there is confirmation of the increasingly loud rumours about Sony Ericsson’s Android-powered games phone the Xperia Play, dubbed the Playstation phone.
And to illustrate just how powerful the chips that run smartphones are becoming, there will be plenty of mobile add-ons, such as Motorola’s laptop dock companion for its Atrix handset, which will allow the phone to run as a computer using a laptop shell, dubbed a webtop.
With smartphones pushing the limits on capacity-squeezed networks, there will be myriad companies suggesting way to make them more efficient.
Mobiles are becoming as powerful as computers
There will be plenty of excitement around 4G, with lots of operators promising next-generation service even though many will not technically be 4G.
The air will be thick with acronyms such as LTE (Long Term Evolution), Wimax and HSPA+, and for those interested in the nitty gritty, a big debate around which of these technologies are actually 4G.
“The marketing around LTE and other flavours has become increasingly cheeky but consumers don’t really care what it is called,” said Steve Hartley, an analyst with Ovum.
LTE finally coming to market will be one of MWC’s key trends, and the fact that the US market has embraced it will make for interesting column-inches about Europe playing catch-up.
Increasingly mobile operators will look to differentiate themselves by prioritising or offering free access to popular services such as Facebook and YouTube, experts think.
“Google could make a payment to an operator if they so wished, which in turn would allow the operator to market their device as one offering the best experience of YouTube,” said Mr Hartley.
Every Mobile World Congress has a buzzword – more often than not an acronym – and this year it is likely to be NFC – Near Field Communication.
NFC is the technology that allows mobile phones to be turned into payment devices, replacing credit cards, loyalty cards, travel cards and other vouchers.
“All the applications that use a physical card can one day or another be transferred onto the mobile phone,” said Phillippe Vallee, from Gemalto, an NFC technology firm.
Paying for tapas may be about to get a lot easier.
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Japan’s “lost decade” has left a lasting impact
Japan has lost its spot as the world’s second-biggest economy to China, figures out later are expected to show.
Fourth-quarter and full-year gross domestic product figures will be released by Japan at 0850 in Tokyo on Monday (2350 GMT Sunday).
Japan’s economy has been hit by a drop in exports and consumer demand, while China has enjoyed a manufacturing boom.
At its current rate of growth, analysts see China overtaking the US as the world’s top economy in about a decade.
“It’s realistic to say that within 10 years China will be roughly the same size as the US economy,” said Tom Miller of GK Dragonomics, a Beijing-based economic consultancy.
There has been a debate over when exactly Japan was overtaken as the world’s second biggest economy, with some analysts saying it happened in the third quarter of last year.
China has some of the biggest and fastest growing cities in the world
However, the full-year figures should give a more concrete comparison.
According to the International Monetary Fund, Japan’s gross domestic product (GDP) was $5.39 trillion (£3.3 trillion) in 2010. China’s preliminary figure shows its GDP last year was $5.75 trillion.
Japan’s economy is expected to have grown by about 2.8% in 2010, according to the IMF. China’s growth is expected to have hit a much more powerful 10% when the revised figures are released.
‘Quite stunning’
The majority of China’s growth has been funded by investment in manufacturing and the expansion of China’s domestic industries and infrastructure.
Driving this has been a surge in exports after China became a production hub for multinational brands that wanted to benefit from low labour costs, and expanding road and rail links.
“There was an emphasis on infrastructure,” said Duncan Innes-Ker of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) in Beijing.
“They were building way ahead of where people thought the demand would be. And because the infrastructure was there, companies went there.”
As China’s economy grew, it created new jobs that saw people leave rural areas and farming, and pursue higher-paying work in the urban centres.
“The key thing was the enormous shift from people working in fields to moving into cities,” said Mr Miller of consultancy GK Dragonomics.
“The urbanisation is a key structural change over the last 30 years.”
At the same time, investment into China from abroad picked up, helping push the value of stocks and property to new highs.
“The level of investment in China is quite stunning,” said the EIU’s Mr Innes-Ker.
“In 2009, we saw almost 25% growth, year-on-year, in real terms of investment. That is unprecedented for a large economy.”
‘Lost decade’
By contrast, Japan has been struggling to come to terms with what many analysts call a “lost decade”.
“The average Japanese person is still much much richer than the average Chinese person”
Tom Miller DK Dragonomics
In the 1980s Japanese products such as electronics and vehicles were in demand globally, and at its peak the economy was growing at more than 7% annually.
But this in turn was fuelling a spending and borrowing spree, and by the 1990s bubbles had developed in the stock and property markets.
“Land value was unrealistic and the government tried to build its way out, debt ratcheted up and the productivity of the economy really suffered,” said the EIU’s Mr Innes-Ker.
Today, there are signs that Japan has manage to turn its economy around, but it is still dealing with the impact of an ageing population and low consumer demand.
(Story continues below)
By the late 1980s Japan’s economy was a powerhouse, with growth peaking at 7.1%. It was being driven by booming electronics and auto industries, and billions of dollars invested in the financial markets. Japanese manufacturers benefited from a relatively cheap labour force.
China’s economic success began in the 1980s. At the start of the decade the household responsibility system was changed to allow families to keep their surplus grain. In 1994, the pricing system was changed to allow freer price movements. These steps and others started opening up China’s economy.
By the 1990s, Japanese land was severely overvalued. Property prices were unrealistically high and there was lots of speculation in the stock and property markets. Then the bubble burst, causing a massive market collapse. Investment started to flow out and brand Japan took a beating.
By the mid 1990s China was well on the path of opening up its economy. Exports were flooding out and China was given the title of “the world’s factory”. Taking advantage of its huge population, China began to move up in the rankings of the world’s top economies.
China’s growth is forecast to slow, but even so economists say it is on track to overtake the US as the world’s No.1 economy in about 10 years. And while it needs to control inflation and prevent asset bubbles most economists agree the economy’s underlying structure is sound, and growth sustainable.
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Chinese manufacturing power may create problems for the economy in coming years
Even so, most economists agree that while China as a whole is growing, and the average person is getting wealthier, comparing only the size of its economy to Japan’s does not paint an accurate enough picture.
“GDP per head in China is about $4,500, but in Japan it’s about $40,000 per head,” said Mr Miller.
“Most people in China are still poor, more people live in the countryside than in cities. The average Japanese person is much much richer than the average Chinese person,” he said.
Tougher times?
And while China may be moving up the economic power table, it is not immune from problems.
Its rapid rate of expansion is accelerating inflation, and analysts are warning of a possible bubble brewing in the property market.
The government, meanwhile, is facing growing international criticism of its currency policy and is accused of keeping the yuan undervalued.
Faced with these problems, economists expect China’s economic growth to slow markedly.
“China ought to keep on growing for a good few years but growth will come down a little bit to 7-8%,” said Mr Miller from GK Dragonomics.
“The bigger you are, the harder it is to keep growing really really fast.”
But even at a slower pace, China should keep marching towards the spot of the world’s biggest economy.
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