News: World

The Senate majority leader's wife is hospitalised with broken neck and broken back after her car was hit by a truck

Sad news this evening for Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, with his wife Landra and his daughter Lana in hospital in Washington DC with serious injuries, after the car they were travelling in was hit by a truck.

Senator Reid's office put out a statement:

"Senator Reid's wife, Landra, and daughter, Lana, were involved in an accident earlier today. They are being treated at a Washington-area hospital. While driving on a Washington DC highway, their vehicle was rear-ended by a semi-truck. Mrs Reid has a broken nose, broken back and broken neck. Lana has a neck injury and facial lacerations. Both Mrs Reid and Lana are conscious, can feel their extremities, and according to doctors their injuries are non-life threatening. Senator Reid has been to the hospital and appreciates the support he and his family are receiving from Nevadans and his colleagues in the Senate."

After going at the hospital with his family, Senator Reid returned to the Senate, to deal with "dramatic" developments in on-going healthcare reform meetings. A spokesman said Reid would return to the hospital after the meeting tonight.

• Democrats
• US Congress
• US politics
• Nevada
• US healthcare
• United States

Eliza Manningham-Buller's apparent lack of awareness of alleged US mistreatment of "war on terror" suspects is baffling (The ex-spy boss says she didn't know about torture, 11 March). Does she not read the newspapers, watch television or indeed even delve into her own agency's intelligence reports?

From the Binyam Mohamed case – just one case among many – we know that the security service was told by US officials that Mohamed was kept shackled, deprived of sleep and threatened with being "disappeared" by his US interrogators. Meanwhile, members of the security service themselves "interviewed" nine British nationals at Guantánamo in 2003. Did what they heard there ring no alarm bells?

Even a quick perusal of numerous Amnesty reports from 2002 onwards could have alerted Manningham-Buller to the issue. We shouldn't have to rely on speeches from former members of the security service for a full picture of this period. Instead we need an independent and wide-ranging inquiry into all aspects of the UK's alleged involvement in human rights abuses like rendition, secret detention and torture.

Kate Allen

Director, Amnesty International UK

• Listening to the assertion of wise monkey "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" Eliza Manningham-Buller claiming not to know about the torture of detainees, I can't help feeling that I would like the head of my intelligence service to have the intelligence to know that other intelligence services, such as the CIA, might not always tell the truth.

Christopher Orlik

Bristol

• MI5
• Binyam Mohamed
• Torture
• CIA
• Guantánamo Bay
• Human rights

So Zoe Williams reckons "there's a world of difference between a man who thinks he looks cool with a tough dog, and a young man ... encouraging it to be vicious" (Comment, 11 March). Really? I didn't notice the difference when my neighbour's pit bull/boxer cross tried to separate my cat from its head while he sat there smirking; I just wanted the vicious bastard and his dog to find a new home miles away from me.

However, I did notice the difference when I worked with a guy who told us all, seriously and proudly, that he was teaching his two young staffs to react aggressively to the word "paki". The working class (Ms Williams mentioned council estates first), of which I'm from, is not one huddled, oppressed mass forever at the mercy of the "establishment". There are evil idiots among them, and if you don't believe me you are welcome to come and spend a day on my street, among the empty Stella cans, pizza boxes and dog mess.

Name and address supplied

• Two points on the government's plan to enforce microchipping of all dogs and third-party insurance to compensate victims (Man bytes dog, 9 March). 1) Microchipping is not an accurate way of tracing the owner of a dog, as it can be sold and not re-registered. 2) You cannot realistically force dog owners to take out insurance. There would have to be some kind of annual dog licence check.

Just enforce the current law which says: "Possessing an unregistered pit bull terrier type dog is unlawful and if you have such a dog you are committing a criminal offence." Technically these types of dog can only be allowed out in public if they are muzzled, chipped and registered. If not, the police can take the dog and the owner will have to go to court to prove the dog is not a danger or it will be destroyed. I see at least eight every time I take my dog for a walk in my local park. How have so many pit bull types been allowed to exist? 

Jo Sanderson

London

• Animals
• Crime

One option to get round the problem of a high-speed rail line painting a long grey "blight corridor" across the Chilterns and either Oxfordshire or Buckinghamshire (The fate of the Chilterns reveals the limits of localism, 8 March) would be to stitch the HS2 into another existing blight corridor. This was done successfully a decade ago in the routing of HS1, or the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Only at a few places did CTRL/HS1 leave the noisy environs of either an existing railway or one of the motorways.

For nearly 10 years I have been promoting an HS2 route that follows closely the M1, M45/A45 and (further north) M18 and A1(M) on the east side of the Pennines, and M6 Toll and the west coast mainline to the west side. As with HS1 there are a few tricky places, but there are simple solutions such as a two-mile tunnel under the M1 as it threads through Luton. The only objection I have heard is that the M1 corridor is "rather heavily populated"; this objection implies that a route that goes through open countryside, blighting it with noise, is acceptable – well, just you wait and see. The citizens of Buckinghamshire fought off an airport at Wing/Cublington three decades ago, and I can sadly foresee them fighting off this railway too.

And as for Heathrow, well, to me the simplest solution is to extend the Heathrow Express line from Terminal 5 to run beside the M25, using part of the Egham to Weybridge line, and so provide a link into the Woking-Basingstoke-Southampton electric 100mph line. True, it would only be suitable for trains like the shorter Eurostars, but it would provide a service direct to Terminals 1, 2, 3 and 5, linking in via HS2 at Cricklewood.

Peter Stephens

Wootton, Bedfordshire

• Not to connect the proposed high-speed rail network directly to Heathrow airport would be another major missed infrastructure opportunity for this country (Rail route towards Birmingham revealed for high-speed network, 11 March). We now have a chance to build a modern multi-modal transport hub, which would significantly boost London's business competitiveness and accessibility. It is not rocket science to understand the travel efficiencies inherent in taking passengers via the airport, rather than having them traipse from one connection to another with baggage in hand.

It is a mystery why we struggle in the UK with the idea of integrated transport planning. Rail and air (and road) are not competing transport systems, but complementary elements in what should be a comprehensive multi-faceted network.

Demand for air travel will continue to grow and we need to build on recent investments at Heathrow with a third runway and high-speed rail link. Our challenge is to offer business and leisure travellers a better experience and protect the UK's competitive advantage. Not servicing Heathrow directly by the high-speed rail would be to fail in that challenge.

Frank Wingate

Chief executive, West London Business

• High-speed rail is something we really need. The use of trains to go anywhere is wonderfully sound for the environment. So could someone tell me why my partner and I this week paid £75 each for a return to London, plus a £40 taxi fare to the station because there is no bus service at the time I needed the train. I sat on the train, packed to capacity, thinking that I could have taken the car, paid for a day's parking, the congestion charge and dinner for two, and still been better off.

Eean Wyatt-Lees

Salisbury, Wiltshire

• Which infrastructure development do you think would add more value to your life/business: (a) a high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham, to be extended to Scotland in due course, which will benefit a few people, cutting their travel time by 20 minutes; or (b) extending optic fibre cabling to 95% of homes and businesses so we can have genuine high-speed broadband of the calibre that Korea is already building.

The costs are roughly the same. If we are going to invest £60bn in the UK infrastructure, I think it is a no-brainer that we should apply it to the digital communications future, not the historic infrastructure that made the Victorians great. Tell your MPs (of all parties) before they make a stupid mistake.

Stephen Milton

St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex

• Rail transport
• Rail travel
• Channel Tunnel
• Heathrow third runway
• Broadband

There are two big decisions about high-speed rail. First, is it needed in Britain? And second, if it is, where should it go?

In many regards, yesterday was just another bad day for British transport. Rail maintenance workers decided to strike. Signallers may join them and shut the network over Easter. British Airways remained at loggerheads with its employees. The London tube network was digesting the news that it now has a £460m shortfall in its modernisation programme. Everyone expects cuts in transport spending, if not in the next budget then the one after that.

Faced with all this, only a visionary or a fool would stand up in parliament and announce plans for a £30bn, 330-mile, 225mph rail line, whose construction would not even begin until 2017, and whose completion will take much more than a decade. Yet that is what Andrew Adonis, the transport minister, did yesterday, and he deserves much congratulation for it. The case for high-speed rail is strong, but not so overwhelming that the line will be built without committed people arguing that it should happen, as Lord Adonis has done late in this Labour government and someone else will have to do if there is a Tory one. A thousand small cares could still knock the project off course, as well as one big one – paying for it, which is a subject all parties skirted around yesterday. But the principle of a new line has been established, and the government has set out detailed plans for its construction. This train, as British Rail used to boast, is getting there.

There are two big decisions about high-speed rail. First, is it needed in Britain? And second, if it is, where should it go? The answer to the first question produces remarkable consensus. High-speed rail is not just about travelling faster, and not just about links to London. It will join cities reliably and with much greater capacity than ever before, soaking up growth in transport demand while freeing up space on the existing network for commuters and freight. It is the alternative to more roads and planes, but it will also allow travel on routes badly served by existing transport lines – such as Leeds to Birmingham, or Nottingham to Scotland. That is why cities, political parties, environmental groups, unions and business are all in favour.

The subsequent question, about the route, is less easy to answer. Lord Adonis has been desperate to built a pre-election consensus around his particular plans, and the Conservative party, which backed high-speed rail before Labour, has been just as desperate to avoid joining it. This is a pity, since the detailed route published yesterday by the HS2 company makes sense, if the trains are to head west from London towards Heathrow before turning to the north. They include city centre terminals, proper interchange with the new Crossrail scheme and a reasonable compromise between environmental intrusion in the Chilterns and a direct line to the north. The Conservatives want a route from London that would come nearer Heathrow, which sounds attractive but would also be slower and more expensive to build. Nor – since the trains would run only near the airport, not under it – would it allow seamless travel to the air terminals. Under the HS2 scheme announced yesterday there will be easy connection to a 10-minute Crossrail shuttle to Heathrow; the Tory alternative is worse.

The next step will be to consult on the route, and changes will be made, although they cannot be large without simply directing the consequences of construction into someone else's backyard. The route cannot be put underground without greatly adding to the cost. It will be narrower, less polluting and less noisy than the M40 and A413 roads which already cut through Buckinghamshire, but to the people most affected by the line that will not be much compensation. Nonetheless, the government must introduce a hybrid parliamentary bill and begin the debate on its financing. This line will make Britain a better place. No one will regret building it when it is open. The hard part will be getting from here to there.

• Rail transport
• Transport
• Transport policy

Black Tory candidate Loanna Morrison has some outspoken views, but it's her comments on immigration that are really raising eyebrows

The trail starts in the 1990s, when relations between black communities and the authorities were a sorry tale and the Voice newspaper was at the forefront of the struggle. To lighten the mix, the paper had a celebrity column written by Loanna Morrison. She was always vivacious and obviously well-connected.

And here she is again, sitting on her sofa and explaining to me why she has found herself as a black Tory. She'll carry the Conservative banner against Simon Hughes in Southwark and Bermondsey. And wow. She's very Tory. On Europe: "We don't want to be some region of Europe." On race: "Black organisations should not exist. We don't need them." On the economy: "Why aren't we talking about cutting tax?"

But it's her stance on immigration that has made her a darling among some hardline Tory activists – which is OK, one supposes – but also to some outside the party. And that is less welcome. But then, if you write articles that begin "'Britain is full,' declares Nick Griffin at every opportunity, and he is right", that will happen.

Still, she's cool with it. "I was just articulating what a lot of people have been telling me on the doorstep, a lot of them minorities," she says of the piece which ran on the website Conservativehome. "People say the country just doesn't need any more immigrants. White voters tell me I can say the things they can't. I tell them that I am as annoyed as anyone else."

Black Tories were once an exotic and sorry breed. Viewed with disdain by their community, never fully accepted by the party, it seemed a lonely existence. Loanna, originally from Jamaica but "very British", says that's changed; and, true enough, there are quite a few now in winnable seats. "I can never understand why black people vote socialist," she snorts. "We are natural conservatives. I suspect it is just habit."

Most black Tories are centrists, but Loanna sits somewhere to the right of Cameron. She and Margaret Thatcher, still a heroine, would have got on famously.

We spend three hours, talking politics, old friends and incongruities, and at the end, she's still vivacious, still engaging, still Loanna. As for the rest of it, it's a free country. We won't agree on much, but that's life.

• Race issues
• Conservatives

In holding that the aim of science is truth alone, they misrepresent its real aims

George Monbiot is surely right to bemoan the profoundly unsatisfactory state of affairs that exists between science and the public (With complex science, we must take much on trust. The trouble is we can't, 9 March).

Many members of the public instinctively and irrationally distrust, even fear, science. Thus, for climate sceptics, "No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us". And scientists don't help by producing specialised "gobbledegook" so incomprehensible that even scientists "studying neighbouring subjects within the same discipline can no longer understand each other".

The situation might be helped if scientists stopped deceiving us, and themselves, about the nature of science itself, and adopted a more truthful view. At present most of them take for granted the view that the intellectual aim of science is to acquire knowledge of truth, the basic method being to assess, impartially, claims to knowledge with respect to evidence – nothing being accepted permanently as a part of scientific knowledge independently of evidence. But this is nonsense. Physics only ever accepts theories that are unified – that attribute the same laws to all the phenomena to which the theory in question applies – even though many empirically more successful disunified rivals can always be concocted.

This means that physics persistently accepts a substantial thesis about the universe independent of evidence: there is some kind of underlying unity in nature, to the extent at least that all seriously disunified theories are false. This substantial, influential and highly problematic assumption needs to be acknowledged within science, so that it can be criticised and, we may hope, improved. The aim of science is not truth per se, but rather truth presupposed to be unified, or explanatory.

And it goes further. The aim of seeking explanatory truth is a special case of the more general aim of seeking truth that is, in some way or other, important or of value. Values, of one kind or another, are inherent in the aims of science. But values are, if anything, even more problematic than untestable assumptions concerning an underlying unity in nature. Values implicit in the aims of science need to be acknowledged, so that they can be criticised and, we may hope, improved.

Finally, knowledge of valuable truth is sought so that it may be used by people, ideally to enhance the quality of human life. There is a humanitarian or political dimension. But this, again, needs to be critically assessed and, we may hope, improved.

In short, in holding that the intellectual aim of science is truth alone, scientists seriously misrepresent its real, problematic aims, and thus prevent urgently needed critical assessment by scientists and non-scientists alike. More honesty about the nature of science might improve science, and public attitudes towards it – and might even encourage scientists to produce less gobbledegook.

• Climate change
• Climate change scepticism
• Hacked climate science emails
• Philosophy

Transport secretary Lord Adonis has published £30bn plans for a 250mph rail link between London and Birmingham. The proposals, which would revolutionise Britain's rail network, are subject to parliamentary approval and public consultation. Even after that, work won't begin on the route until 2017, with the first stage expected to take 10 years to complete. After that, the government intends to extend the high speed rail network to northern England and Scotland.

Peter Walker hears the views of the people of Wendover in the Chilterns, an area of outstanding natural beauty which the new rail route would pass through.

Transport historian Christian Wolmar says the key question is whether the high speed rail plans would increase capacity.

Guardian columnist Julian Glover says the plan will bring economic benefits to the whole country, while Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Norman Baker believes the consultation process will allow members of the public to be heard, and for their views to be given due consideration.

Since 1996, military abuses have forced 1m villagers to flee their homes, according to UN draft report

• Since 1996, up to 1 million people have been displaced. Entire communities have been forced to relocate and their houses and food supplies burned to prevent their return. Those who refuse forced relocations and choose to hide risk military attack.

• More than 184,000 refugees in neigbouring countries originate from Burma. An estimated 2 million migrants are in Thailand. Thousands of ethnic Chin have crossed the border to the Indian state of Mizoram. Muslimresidents of northern Rakhine state continue to seek asylum in neighbouring countries.

• The presence and conduct of the military are central to the plight of these civilians. Military operations have placed a particularly heavy burden on rural populations affecting their ability to sustain livelihoods.

• There have been numerous and frequent reports of civilians being forced to serve as porters and guides for the military, to build and maintain roads, to construct military camps, and to labour for infrastructure projects.

• Cases of rape and sexual violence committed by military personnel, many of them against young girls and adolescents, have been reported by human rights organisations.

• In Shan state the military has burned down over 500 houses and scores of granaries since July 2009, and forcibly relocated almost 40 villages, mostly in Laikha township. Reports say more than 100 villagers, both men and women, have been arrested and tortured. At least three villagers have been killed. This would be the largest forced relocation since 1996-1998, when more than 300,000 villagers in southern and central Shan State were displaced.@ Battles between government forces and ethnic groups in Shan State in August 2009 and along the Thai border region in June 2009 have raised serious concerns about security both inside Burma and its spillover effects in neighbouring countries.

• There is serious concern about the continuing armed conflict in Kayin state, which severely affects the civilian population. It has been reported that in Hsaw Law Kho village, three villagers were killed and over a dozen more tortured by Infantry Battalion No 48 on 5 November 2009.

• The UN urges the government and all armed groups to ensure the protection of civilians, in particular children and women, during armed conflict. Recruitment of child soldiers, displacement of villagers, the use of anti-personnel landmines, and the forced labour of civilians should stop without any delay.

• Burma
• Human rights
• United Nations

A lesbian student at a school in Mississippi wanted to take her girlfriend to the prom. So the school cancelled it

If all those John Hughes movies are to be believed, the senior prom is a highlight of American teenage life. But in a real-life scenario that would have made for a great John Hughes plot, a cowardly school in Mississippi has cancelled its senior prom this year after a female student wanted to bring her girlfriend as her date.

Constance McMillen, an 18-year-old student at Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton, Mississippi, asked to be able to take her date. The school's board objected – and to McMillen wanting to wear a tuxedo – so the American Civil Liberties Union got involved, pointing out the discrimination issue.

How did the school react? By blaming "distractions to the educational process caused by recent events" and cancelling the prom for everyone – which left the rest of the students unhappy. The local Clarion-Ledger newspaper, under the sparkling headline "Mississippi lesbian alleges retaliation after prom date debate", reported McMillen's reaction to the news that the prom had been scrapped:

"That's really messed up because the message they are sending is that if they have to let gay people go to prom that they are not going to have one. A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this, so in a way it's really retaliation."

The ACLU this afternoon filed a lawsuit against the school district:

She was told, according to the lawsuit, that the pair would have to arrive separately and could be thrown out "if any of the other students complained about their presence there together." McMillen was also told she could not wear a tuxedo, according to the suit, because boys are to attend in tuxedos and girls in dresses.

Announcing the cancellation, the school board said: "It is our hope that private citizens will organize an event for the juniors and seniors." A private party would circumvent the legal issues.

The gay-prom-goer issue has arisen in many states in recent years. In conservative Utah, gay students in Salt Lake City can attend a separate prom, sponsored by the Utah Pride Centre. In more liberal California – despite Prop 8 – students at Fairfax Senior High School in Los Angeles elected gay student Sergio Garcia as prom queen in 2009.

A Facebook group, Let Constance Take Her Girlfriend to Prom!, has been started and already has 11,000 fans.

• Gay rights
• US constitution and civil liberties
• United States

The younger Cheney has tacitly sided with the 'birther' movement and is a rising star on the right

For those who miss Dick Cheney, there is always his daughter Liz. A rising star on the right, the younger Cheney is carrying the torch of uncompromising confrontation with those deemed to be a threat to America – from alleged terrorists to Tehran.

Liz Cheney came up through a law firm with close ties to the Republicans before working as an aid officer in US embassies in eastern Europe.

After her father became vice-president, she stepped in to a state department job that gave her control of a programme channelling money to pro-democracy groups in the Middle East.

After leaving the state department, Liz Cheney became increasingly critical of some Bush administration policies for not being hardline enough, particularly towards Iran. Cheney said the US should support Israel if it launched an air strike against Iran's nuclear programme.

But she has been a vocal defender of what her father euphemistically called enhanced interrogation techniques and others describe as torture. Cheney has tacitly sided with the "birther" movement which questions whether Barack Obama is legitimately elected because he is alleged to have been born in Kenya. She told CNN that the movement was in part driven by people being "increasingly uncomfortable with an American president who seems to be afraid to defend America, stand up for what we believe in".

Her increasingly frequent television appearances have fuelled speculation that she is planning to run for political office.

Last year, Cheney's sister, Mary, was quoted in the New York Times as saying: "I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any daylight at all between Liz's and my father's views. It's not because she's been indoctrinated. It's because he's right."

• US politics
• Republicans
• Dick Cheney
• United States

Former president Ejup Ganic seized on extradition request from Serbia, which accuses him of war crimes

A high court judge today released a former president of Bosnia accused of war crimes 18 years ago in a case that has inflamed the Balkans and revived claims of British anti-Bosnian partisanship.

Ejup Ganic, an engineering professor and former president and vice-president of Bosnia, was arrested on 1 March while attempting to fly from Heathrow airport. He was seized on an extradition request from Serbia, which accuses him of war crimes at the beginning of the Bosnian war in May 1992.

Ganic, a regular visitor to Britain and a personal friend of Margaret Thatcher, has been in Wandsworth prison for the past 10 days and was refused bail for fear he would flee the country.

He was released today on £300,000 bail under "stringent" conditions, pending a hearing on the Serbian extradition demand at the end of the month.

The Bosnian president and Muslim leader, Haris Silajdzic, protested bitterly at the treatment of Ganic today after travelling from Sarajevo to London. He saw Paddy Ashdown, the former international governor of post-war Bosnia, and the foreign secretary, David Miliband, to complain that Ganic was being treated disgracefully.

Silajdzic said tonight he was "shocked" that Ganic had been deprived of his medicine, denied consular help and the use of a telephone in Wandsworth. The Bosnian leader demanded an apology from the government, which insisted the affair was purely a legal matter.

Thousands of people have been protesting outside the British embassy in Sarajevo this week demanding Ganic's release. The 64-year-old was investigated years ago by the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, which concluded that there was no case to answer.

The British court decision ordering Ganic's arrest wrongly stated that he was wanted for crimes allegedly perpetrated in Serbia. The alleged crime in question took place in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

The case is highly political, with Serbia issuing indictments against politicians in Bosnia and demanding that Ganic be tried in Belgrade, sparking tit-for-tat extradition calls from Bosnia.

"It appears from the [Hague] investigation that the incident in question did not give rise to a crime at all. On that basis, we say that the Serbian request is not made in good faith as there is no evidence to support it," said Stephen Gentle, one of Ganic's lawyers.

But in Bosnia, where the ethnic divisions between Muslims and Serbs are bitterly entrenched, leading Serbian politicians are relishing the prospect of Ganic's delivery to Belgrade for trial.

"I am sure that Serbia has completely valid proof of Ganic's responsibility for war crimes," said Rajko Vasic, a leader of the ruling party in the Serbian half of Bosnia.

Ganic was arrested on the same day that the Bosnian Serb wartime leader and genocide suspect, Radovan Karadzic, finally mounted his defence in The Hague after having lived as a fugitive in Serbia for 13 years.

The Serbian authorities furnished 800 pages of evidence against Ganic to the British this week. The allegations centre on Ganic's role in an infamous incident at the start of the Bosnian war when Serb forces encircled Sarajevo. It was the start of a 44-month siege during which they killed 10,000 people.

The Bosnian leader, Alija Izetbegovic, was taken hostage by Serb forces at Sarajevo airport when returning from peace talks in Portugal. In Sarajevo, the main Yugoslav army garrison of mostly Serb troops was surrounded. A tense negotiation brokered by the UN traded Izetbegovic for the evacuation of the Yugoslav troops. Ganic, as Izetbegovic's deputy, was in charge.

As Izetbegovic was released, the withdrawing convoy was attacked, leaving some 40 soldiers dead. The Serbian indictment charges Ganic with direct responsibility for 18 soldiers' deaths.

• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Serbia
• Extradition
• Protest