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Pakistan floods crisis ‘not over’

Children at a camp for flood victims along the road from Dadu, in Pakistan's Sindh provinceOxfam says hundreds of thousands of people remain homeless six months after the floods
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Six months after Pakistan’s worst monsoon floods in 80 years, Oxfam says the crisis is far from over and could even get worse.

The UK-based agency says malnutrition levels in the south have soared, and the aid community has only “scratched the surface of human need”.

At least 170,000 people remain in relief camps and swathes of land are still under foul water in the south.

Pakistan’s government is to halt most emergency relief efforts this month.

The UN appeal for $2bn (£1.26bn) to rebuild Pakistan remains only 56% funded.

Oxfam’s report, Six month into the floods, is warning that this could put at risk large numbers of people who still need help.

Neva Khan, head of the aid agency in Pakistan, said: “Oxfam is currently helping nearly 1.9 million people – one of our biggest programmes worldwide – but this is dwarfed by the number of people who are in need.

“The aid community has done a tremendous amount, but given the immense scale of this disaster we have only scratched the surface.”

Amid sub-zero winter temperatures, there were more than 200,000 cases of chest infections such as pneumonia reported in the second week of January alone, says Oxfam.

The UN says 170,000 flood victims remain in relief camps.

Oxfam says the total number of homeless people is much higher when taking into account those living in tents beside wrecked homes, or with friends and relatives.

The aid agency also says that malnutrition levels also remain stubbornly high.

And it warns that another food crisis looms because so many crops were lost in the disaster and most farmers missed the next planting season.

Oxfam says that if it provided land for labourers, investing more in disaster management and other measures, Pakistan could “salvage a new beginning from the debris” of the flood disaster.

Although the death toll from last summer’s deluge was relatively low – claiming about 1,750 lives – between 14 and 20 million people were affected.

The floods started in the mountainous north and surged south, destroying 1.2m homes and damaging about 14% of Pakistan’s land under cultivation.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Is social mobility good?

Woman alone in a barWhat would Kant say to social climbers?

While getting on in the world and gaining status is a priority for many, philosopher Mark Vernon says thinkers like Aristotle have mulled over questions such as whether social mobility is good for centuries.

Is social mobility good? The immediate response would be yes, of course.

Who could argue against lifting people out of poverty, rewarding individuals according to merit, and ensuring equal opportunities for all? Surely, a more socially mobile world is a more just world.

This is why BBC Lab UK has devised a class survey to test if the traditional class divisions still apply.

The moral upside of social mobility is particularly clear in a Kantian approach to ethics.

German philosopher Immanuel Kant was very clear that an enlightened culture is one that does not rely on inherited traditions, authorities and social structures. To be enlightened is to question and challenge such aristocracies, be they aristocracies of wealth, politics or the church. Social enlightenment brings justice in its wake.

Which class are you?

Acacia Ave street sign, symbol of middle class life

The class test takes about 25 minutesCovers wealth and job type, as well as interests and social circleAims to find out if traditional divisions of working, middle and upper still applyTake the class survey More tests from BBC Lab UK

It also enables the individual to take responsibility for their own lives, and not be weighed down by cultural constraints. It’s the kind of justice that spreads freedom throughout society, based on just deserts rather than birthright.

But there’s a price to pay for social mobility that other ways of looking at ethics highlight.

The utilitarian approach to life, associated with philosopher Jeremy Bentham, always returns to a single question – what makes for more happiness in the world?

Does social mobility achieve that? Well, it might.

But social mobility also produces dislocation. People migrate to cities and find themselves isolated from their family, and constantly having to make new friends – relationships that might be fun but not very deep. They may be richer, but are they happier?

The new meritocracy

There’s another problem. In a socially mobile world, life’s rewards are no longer the preserve of elites, but are distributed according to merit.

Eton College boys

Broadcaster Andrew Neil says the meritocracy – politics at least – is grinding to a haltToday’s politicians increasingly come from privileged stockHis documentary Posh and Posher is on BBC Two, 26 Jan at 2100 GMTAndrew Neil on those who run the country

So what happens if you feel you don’t receive your fair share of life’s rewards? You’ve now only got yourself to blame. In an elitist world, you could blame your birth. In a socially mobile world, what you get is more likely to be thought of as what you deserve.

There’s another concern. It’s raised by the third approach to justice, that of virtue ethics, associated with Aristotle.

The virtue ethicist would want to ask whether a socially mobile world rewards certain kinds of ability more than others. For example, someone with skills in banking or sales can do pretty well in a market society such as ours. But someone with skills as an artist or a mother may well find it hard to make ends meet.

Further, the virtue ethicist asks, does a socially mobile world actually undermine certain roles that are great goods – such as the arts or being a mother?

These things contribute to the common good. They are part of any just, flourishing society. And yet, social mobility may sideline them by not appreciating them.

This is not to say that a virtue ethics approach is against mobility.

What it would suggest, though, is that a good society needs to have ways of rewarding individuals that contribute things of moral, not just material, worth.

That might be a society which funds the arts, encourages the humanities as well as sciences, and doesn’t forget that what goes on in the home matters at least as much as what goes on in the marketplace.

Mark Vernon, the author of Philosophy For The Curious and Ethics For The Curious, will tackle more modern dilemmas throughout the week. Tomorrow, should victims have a say in sentencing criminals?

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Egypt protests face net clampdown

Riot police use water cannons to disperse anti-government demonstrators in downtown CairoRiot police used water cannons to disperse demonstrators
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Egypt appears to have clamped down on web services, such as Twitter, that have been used to help organise anti-government protests in Cairo.

Twitter confirmed that its service has been blocked in Egypt on Tuesday from around 1600GMT.

A Swedish mobile video site called Bambuser also reported that it had been blocked around the same time.

However, the Facebook page used to co-ordinate many of the protests has remained online.

Facebook has not said whether it has implemented any technical measures to keep the site up and running.

The social network, which has more than 600m users, recently was forced to intervene when it emerged that political protest pages in Tunisia were being hacked and passwords stolen, seemingly at the behest of the former government.

The site implemented a series of technical measures to counter the attacks, including encrypting all requests for the site from within Tunisia.

Details of the blocks in Egypt began to emerge on Tuesday afternoon, as thousands of people joined a “day of revolt” against the government of President Hosni Mubarak.

Initially it was unclear whether state authorities were blocking internet access or if mobile networks were simply overloaded by the numbers of people gathering in the streets.

Water cannons fired at protesters in Cairo

The BBC’s Jon Leyne, who is in Cairo, said the protests like this in Egypt were rare

Twitter were at first unwilling to comment, instead directing people towards Herdict, a website created by a group at Harvard University, which collects reports of websites that are down.

The site has seen a small spike in the number of reports about Twitter from Egypt.

But overnight, Twitter issued a statement..

“We can confirm that Twitter was blocked in Egypt around 8am PT today. It is impacting both Twitter.com and applications.”

The block had previously been confirmed by BBC readers and telecom operator Vodafone Egypt, which sought to reassure customers that it was not responsible.

“We didn’t block Twitter – it’s a problem all over Egypt and we are waiting for a solution,” it said.

Some Twitter messages – many tagged #jan25 to show they were in support of the demonstrations – seemed to have got through via text messages and some third-party applications.

Bambuser, a service that allows people to stream live video from a phone to a website or a Facebook page, also said that it had been hit by the ban.

“We are working hard to ensure access resumes for the Egyptian community and stand by them in their quest for the right to protest,” it said.

In support of the protests, a collective of online “hacktivists” known as Anonymous claimed to have taken down the Egyptian interior ministry’s web page.

Anonymous came to prominence for its cyber-attacks on the websites of companies it deemed to be anti-Wikileaks.

It has since turned its attention to supporting the protests in Tunisia and Egypt.

The group uses so-called “denial-of-service” attacks, that seek to swamp websites with large volumes of traffic, until they are knocked offline.

The group was one of many that also offered advice to the protesters on how to evade blocks on sites and services.

However, some sites appear to have escaped the block.

Google-owned video sharing website YouTube, which has been used to share film of the protests, has seemingly not been blocked.

Protesters are also turning to other digital tools to help.

For example, a map has been set up by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, for people to report arrests, and harassment during the protests.

The digital blocks come as the government issued a ban on street protests.

Public gatherings, protests and marches are all now prohibited, the country’s official news agency reports.

Cairo map

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This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

‘Large device’ examined in alert

The Army are examining a suspicious object on the Antrim RoadThe device was found on the Antrim Road

Police believe dissident republicans are behind a suspected “large improvised explosive device” found on north Belfast’s Antrim Road.

An alert started after calls claiming to be from dissident republican group Oglaigh na heireann.

Police said they cannot confirm yet if the device is a real bomb or a hoax.

The road has been closed since 1600 GMT on Tuesday and is likely to remain so until this evening. Up to 100 homes and businesses have been evacuated.

The alert is close to Antrim Road police station.

Army bomb disposal experts are still examining the device and have carried out cntrolled explosions on a suspect car.

PSNI Chief Superintendent Mark Hamilton said: “There’s no way I’m going to be opening the road again until I’m sure that there’s no risk of death or injury to anybody living or working in that area of the Antrim Road.

“We’ve received a number of calls over a 24-hour period and the last one in particular led us to believe we were looking for an unexploded bomb in an unstable condition.”

Ch Supt Hamilton said 40 to 50 families had been moved from their homes, while a children’s home had also been evacuated and people under sedation in a clinic had had to be moved.

He said dissident republicans were likely to be responsible.

“The people we’re dealing with want to wreck this community – they live in this community but they want to wreck it. They want to kill people in the community, they want to kill police officers,” he said.

“If this turns out to be a real device, its madness, because it will have been lying there and hundreds of people will have walked past it.”

‘Disruptive’

Some families who were moved from their homes were put up at Fortwilliam and McCrory Presbyterian Church overnight.

Reverend Lesley Carroll said the alert had been “very disruptive”.

Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly said police had received three coded warnings. But he said the calls were very confusing.

“They said there was a bomb within the distance of some mile along the Antrim Road. That was checked out,” Mr Kelly said.

“In a second phone call, they said it was somewhere on the Antrim Road and in the third phone call it has been narrowed down to somewhere around the Glandore area.

“They said in their latest phone call it was in a dangerous condition. We need to know where that is so that something can be done about it.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

EU prosecutor ‘referendum lock’

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Future UK governments will have to hold a referendum if they want to get involved in a Europe-wide prosecuting authority, a minister has told MPs.

Europe Minister David Lidington offered the “referendum lock” as MPs debated the European Union Bill.

The European Union Bill is meant to prevent the handover of further powers to Brussels without a public vote.

But Labour say it is a “political gesture” to appease Eurosceptic Tories. The Commons debate will continue later.

On day three of the bill’s committee stage on Tuesday, Mr Lidington said the government had already explicitly ruled out taking part in a European Public Prosecutor’s Office in the coalition agreement.

But he said the changes to the EU Bill “would ensure that a referendum would be required in all cases before the United Kingdom could join the European Public Prosecutor or an extension of that prosecutor’s powers, whether that decision was taken before or after that prosecutor had been set up or before or after the powers of that prosecutor had been extended”.

Former Conservative Cabinet minister, and leading Eurosceptic, John Redwood said: “I’m very grateful for that concession which does improve the bill.”

“If the government are so committed not to transfer power then why do we need this bill”

Emma Reynolds Shadow foreign minister

But he added: “Can you not understand that most people think criminal justice is essential for the sovereignty of themselves in parliament and that this same provision should apply for all opt-ins under the criminal justice provisions.

“Why won’t you concede that?”

Mr Lidington said opt-ins on justice and home affairs would be debated on Wednesday.

He also reassured MPs that the government would not ask the public to vote again on an EU treaty change transferring more powers to Brussels if they had earlier rejected it.

“I simply don’t believe that any British government is going to be defeated at a referendum and then come forward and say to its electorate ‘no, you’ve got it wrong, let’s dissolve the people and have a new one’. This really doesn’t make political sense,” he told MPs.

Shadow foreign minister Emma Reynolds, for Labour, said the EU Bill was solely designed to appease Conservative backbenchers – something she said it had failed to do.

“If the government are so committed not to transfer power then why do we need this bill?,” she asked MPs.

“Is it that their own backbenchers don’t trust them to keep to the text of the coalition document. This bill is unnecessary, it’s a dog’s breakfast, it’s a political gesture to calm the fears of the Eurosceptics of those sitting behind the minister.”

Lib Dem President Tim Farron said that although, on paper, the Bill was not necessary, MPs did need to “make a statement which guarantees, if you like, that this place is sovereign and that the public’s power over our membership of the European Union is ultimate and paramount”.

The Bill includes a “sovereignty clause” which is meant to assert the primacy of the Westminster parliament – but some Conservative backbenchers have said it does not do enough to claw back power from Brussels.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Obama hails US ‘Sputnik moment’

US President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union address (26 Jan 2011)Mr Obama said the US was “poised for progress” after the recession
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US President Barack Obama is addressing the US public before both houses of Congress in the annual State of the Union address.

Mr Obama said the US is “poised for progress” after “the worst recession most of us have ever known”.

He said the US is facing a “Sputnik moment” – an opportunity to use international competition to create jobs in science and research.

Republicans have warned that they will reject calls for additional spending.

BBC North America editor Mark Mardell says that, as expected, the president is making a pitch for unity and progress, portraying what is for him a political necessity as a virtue.

But he is also trying to put the depressing wreckage of the recession behind him and conjure a message of aspiration and optimism, our correspondent says.

After making his way through the chamber, greeting members of Congress, Mr Obama began his speech by paying tribute to Gabrielle Giffords, the Congresswoman who was seriously wounded in a mass shooting three weeks ago.

He said the incident had reminded the US public that they “share common hopes and a common creed”.

Following elections in November, both parties now share the responsibility of governing and the people want them to work together, he said.

Mr Obama said technical advances, the rise of nations like India and China and the export of many jobs overseas meant that for many Americans, “the rules have changed”.

He said it was essential to encourage “American innovation” to secure jobs and growth.

The Sputnik moment: Obama is talking about investing in education, research and technology to an audience where more than half of them want to hear cut, cut, cut

The US is facing a “Sputnik moment”, he said, referring to the rise in research and education spending which came after the Soviets beat the US into space with the Sputnik satellite in 1957.

“Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven’t seen since the height of the Space Race,” he said.

“In a few weeks, I will be sending a budget to Congress that helps us meet that goal. We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology – an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.”

Republican lawmakers are expected to criticise the president on his plans for new public spending and investments in education, research and infrastructure.

“A few years ago, reducing spending was important,” Wisconsin Republican Representative Paul Ryan is due to say in the Republican response to Mr Obama. “Today, it’s imperative. Here’s why – we face a crushing burden of debt.”

Mr Obama is also expected to back a plan put forward by Defence Secretary Robert Gates to trim $78bn (£59bn) from the military budget, the Associated Press reported, quoting an anonymous administration official

Mr Obama’s job approval numbers have been on the rise in recent weeks, seen in part as the result of his success in pushing a series of new laws through the so-called lame duck Congress at the end of last year.

“We’ll take a look at his recommendations. We always do. But this is not a time to be looking at pumping up government spending in very many areas”

Mitch McConnell Senate Minority Leader

The State of the Union speech is nationally televised and is historically one of the most watched political events in the US.

The speech comes less than two weeks after a mass shooting in Tucson in the US state of Arizona that injured Ms Giffords and 12 other people and left six people dead.

A seat in Congress was to remain empty in honour of Ms Giffords and family members of some of the victims were to sit with First Lady Michelle Obama.

The Republican Party has already pledged to oppose the president’s plans, and a large, prominent group of the most conservative House Republicans has proposed slashing $2.5 trillion (£1.57 trillion) from the federal non-defence budget over the next 10 years.

The Republicans hold the majority in the House of Representatives and enough strength in the US Senate to block unilateral Democratic action on economic policy, but are unable to dictate their own agenda.

“We’ll take a look at his recommendations,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on Sunday. “We always do. But this is not a time to be looking at pumping up government spending in very many areas.”

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Three killed in Egyptian protests

Anti-government protesters wave Egyptian and Tunisian flags in Cairo, Egypt (15 Jan 2011)Small protests have been held in the capital in the past week to support Tunisia
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Anti-government activists in Egypt are preparing for a rare day of protest, inspired by the recent political upheaval in Tunisia.

Organisers have called for a “day of revolt against torture, poverty, corruption and unemployment”.

But the government has warned they face arrest and is calling its supporters out in a counter-demonstration.

Weeks of unrest in Tunisia eventually toppled President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia earlier this month.

The events in Cairo are being co-ordinated on a Facebook page – tens of thousands of supporters have clicked on the page to say they will take part.

“Our protest on the 25th is the beginning of the end,” Reuters quoted the organisers as saying.

“It is the end of silence, acquiescence and submission to what is happening in our country. It will be the start of a new page in Egypt’s history – one of activism and demanding our rights.”

The BBC’s Jon Leyne in Cairo says event is a direct response to the campaign that ousted President Ben Ali of Tunisia, in which the internet also played an important part.

But there is bound to be scepticism about exactly how many will actually turn up, say our correspondent.

They know they could face a tough response from the police, who often break up protests with violence.

In a statement, the government’s security director in the capital said: “The security apparatus will deal firmly and decisively with any attempt to break the law.”

Egypt’s political opposition is also divided – one leader, Mohamed El-Baradei, has called on Egyptians to take part, but the Muslim Brotherhood, still the most powerful opposition movement, has been more ambivalent.

Egypt has many of same social and political problems that brought about the unrest in Tunisia – rising food prices, high unemployment and anger at official corruption.

But protests so far have only been small-scale and correspondents say a similar political upheaval is unlikely.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

UN proposes Somali pirate courts

Somali pirate, file picSomali pirates are now operating farther offshore

A UN envoy has proposed setting up courts to prosecute pirates in the Somali enclaves of Somaliland and Puntland, and in Tanzania.

Jack Lang, UN adviser on piracy, also said more needed to be done to capture the leaders of the piracy gangs.

Several countries have expressed concern over a lack of ability to deal with pirates in cases where they are caught. As a result, many are released.

Meanwhile, pirates have seized a German cargo vessel north of the Seychelles.

The MV Beluga Nomination had been sailing from Malta to South Korea, but is now being steered by pirates towards Somalia.

The crew, which include a Polish captain, seven Filipino, two Russian and two Ukrainian seamen, had hidden in a safe room after raising an alarm, but after two days the pirates managed to seize control of the vessel.

“Not everything has been done to get to the top and capture the brains behind these crimes”

Jack Lang UN envoy

Incidents of piracy – the majority of which take place off the Somali coast – are growing, and pirates are increasingly operating farther offshore.

Mr Lang, special adviser to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Somali piracy, proposed that pirates be tried under Somali law in courts set up in Somaliland, Puntland in northern Somalia, and Arusha in Tanzania.

“Pirates are becoming the masters of the Indian Ocean,” he said.

He recommended that the specialised courts be created within eight months, and estimated that the project would cost less than $25 million (£16m) over three years.

Two special prisons would also be built in Somaliland and Puntland, each to house 500 people, with another to be built in Puntland at a later date.

Opening of a trial in Hamburg of 10 suspected Somali pirates (22 November 2010)Under international law, sovereign nations have the right to seize and prosecute pirates

Arusha is currently hosting a UN-backed tribunal for suspects from Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.

Somalia, which has not had an effective government since 1991, lacks the legal infrastructure to prosecute pirates, and Kenya, which has hosted some trials, has complained that it was being unfairly burdened.

Mr Lang also stressed the need to track down the “those who order the pirates to carry out their attacks.”

“Not everything has been done to get to the top and capture the brains behind these crimes.”

“There are about a dozen brains. We know their names,” he added, without giving details.

The breakaway enclave of Somaliland and semi-autonomous Puntland are both seen as relatively stable compared with Somalia.

Mr Lang also suggested that all countries should make piracy a criminal offence and impose universal jurisdiction for it.

Somalia has been without an effective central government since President Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991. Its authority has been further compromised since 2006 by an ongoing Islamist insurgency.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Arizona busts Mexico gun-runners

Assault rifles on sale in a shop in Houston, TexasMexico’s drugs cartels get many of their weapons from the US

The authorities in US state of Arizona say they have broken up a gun-running network that was smuggling weapons to Mexican drugs gangs.

At least 17 people have been arrested in and around the city of Phoenix.

The suspects are accused of conspiring to buy firearms, including assault rifles, for Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.

The US is under pressure to curb the flow of guns into Mexico, where more than 15,000 people were killed in drug-related violence last year

A federal grand jury indictment unsealed on Tuesday alleged the suspects had conspired to buy guns and illegally export them to Mexico for use by drug cartels.

They are accused of acting as “straw purchasers” by claiming the weapons they bought from licensed Arizona gun shops were for their own use, when in fact they were destined for the Sinaloa cartel, the prosecutor’s office said.

“The massive size of this operation sadly exemplifies the magnitude of the problem – Mexican drug lords go shopping for weapons of war in Arizona,” the statement added.

The guns included AK-47 assault rifles, a weapon of choice for drug cartel gunmen.

All of those indicted are US citizens or legal residents.

The indictment came a day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited to Mexico to reiterate US support for President Felipe Calderon’s fight against the cartels.

Mexico has long been pressing the US to do more to stop the flow of guns across the border.

Since President Calderon took office in late 2006, more than 34,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico, the government says.

In the same period, Mexico’s police and army have seized more 93,000 guns from alleged drug traffickers. Many of the weapons originate in the US.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.