Monday, 30 December 2013

border controls

Conservative activists urge PM to keep border controls

Bulgarians queue outside the British Embassy in Sofia to apply for visas to work in the UKBorder controls have been extended for the maximum period of seven years

Related Stories

Ninety senior Conservative activists have urged David Cameron not to lift border controls on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants on 1 January.
In a letter to the PM, they argue he could use a clause in EU law to prevent a "hugely disruptive and destabilising wave of mass immigration".
It allows countries to continue with border controls if they have "serious labour market disturbances", they add.
They say the UK needs "space and time" to reduce long-term youth unemployment.
Conservative Justice Secretary Chris Grayling acknowledged there was "massive" public concern about the issue but suggested retaining the restrictions was not feasible as his party's Lib Dem coalition partners would not support the necessary measures in Parliament.
Temporary restrictions
Bulgarians and Romanians gained the right to visa-free travel to the UK in 2007, when their countries joined the EU.

Start Quote

How are local authorities going to be able to support unrestricted new immigrant individuals and entire families without additional financial support or increased local taxation?”
Tory activists' Letter
Since then, temporary restrictions have been in place meaning Romanians and Bulgarians have been able to work in the UK only if they are self-employed, have a job offer, or are filling specialist posts for which no British worker can be found.
These restrictions will be dropped on 1 January, having been extended to the maximum period of seven years.
Mr Cameron has said the government "can't stop these full transitional controls coming to an end".
But the letter, written by Conservative Grassroots chairman Robert Woollard and "backed by local association chairmen, former chairmen and other senior activists", says they "respectfully disagree" with the government's position.
It says a "safeguard clause" written into the EU accession treaty for the two countries "allows for the re-imposition of temporary restrictive measures in any member state if it is 'undergoing or foresees serious labour market disturbances'.
Graphic: Eastern European workers in the UK
"Long-term UK youth unemployment - at 21% - is the third highest within EU and OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] countries," it adds.
'Social unrest'
The letter says it is therefore logical for the UK "to unilaterally exercise its opt-out on immigration matters under the Lisbon Treaty and extend the original restrictions to 2018 to allow the UK economy the space and time to reverse the long-term high youth unemployment trend".
"You must be aware that this is an untenable political position given the widespread opposition of the British people," it continues.
"It is also an unsustainable economic position in view of the huge pressure already placed on public services at a time when the country is still facing acute challenges within the economy."
Andrew LansleyCommons Leader Andrew Lansley says there will be no imminent Immigration Bill debate
The letter says: "How are local authorities going to be able to support unrestricted new immigrant individuals and entire families without additional financial support or increased local taxation?
"The fiscal position is simply untenable, irrational and grossly unfair - and may lead to social unrest."
Mr Woollard adds: "As a matter of urgency we urge you to call a special sitting of Parliament and bring forward a vote on Nigel Mills MP's proposed amendment to the Immigration Bill at the soonest."
More than 60 MPs have signed the Tory MP's amendment to extend the controls until 2018. But earlier this month, Commons Leader Andrew Lansley announced the bill would not be debated until next year - after the controls expired.
David Cameron has said the idea of freedom of movement within the EU, one of its most important principles, needs to be reconsidered as "massive" population shifts in the past decade have put pressure on countries across Europe.
'Massive concern'
Mr Grayling told the BBC that immigration controls were just one aspect of the UK's relationship with the EU that the Conservatives would change if they were governing on their own, instead of in coalition.
"David Cameron has said very clearly he would like to see tougher rules in future and we have always said we would have implemented tougher rules in the past," he told Radio 4's Today.
The Lib Dems and Labour were "happy with what we have got", he claimed, and only a majority Conservative government would be able to address issues "causing massive concern to the people of this country".
"We do not have a majority... the Conservative Party would not be able to get through the House of Commons some of the things that we would like to do in changing our relationship with the European Union."
Ministers have refused to predict how many migrants might arrive from Romania and Bulgaria.
With eight other EU countries - including France, Germany and Spain - lifting restrictions at the same time, they say such forecasts are difficult.
The government is tightening the rules on benefit claims by EU citizens who come to the UK and on Monday, it also announced that overseas visitors and migrants were to face new charges for some NHS services in England.
Meanwhile, a senior Romanian official has said he expects between 2,000 and 3,000 members of the minority Roma community to come to the UK after 1 January.

More on This Story

Related Stories

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites

Saturday, 7 December 2013

oldest

Leg bone gives up oldest human DNA

Sima de los Huesos remains The Pit of Bones has yielded one of the richest assemblages of human bones from this era

The discovery of DNA in a 400,000-year-old human thigh bone will open up a new frontier in the study of our ancestors.
That's the verdict cast by human evolution experts on an analysis in Nature journal of the oldest human genetic material ever sequenced.
The femur comes from the famed "Pit of Bones" site in Spain, which gave up the remains of at least 28 ancient people.
But the results are perplexing, raising more questions than answers about our increasingly complex family tree.
The early human remains from the cave site near the northern Spanish city of Burgos have been painstakingly excavated and pieced together over the course of more than two decades. It has yielded one of the richest assemblages of human bones from this stage of human evolution, in a time called the Middle Pleistocene.

“Start Quote

We need all the data we can get to build the whole story of human evolution”
End Quote Prof Chris Stringer Natural History Museum
To access the pit (called Sima de los Huesos in Spanish) scientists must crawl for hundreds of metres through narrow cave tunnels and rope down through the dark. The bodies were probably deposited there deliberately - their causes of death unknown.
The fossils carry many traits typical of Neanderthals, and either belong to an ancestral species known as Homo heidelbergensis - or, as the British palaeoanthropologist Chris Stringer suggests - are early representatives of the Neanderthal lineage.
DNA's tendency to break down over time means it has not previously been possible to study the genetics of such ancient members of the human family.
But the recent pace of progress in sequencing technology has astonished many scientists: "Years ago, geneticists said they wouldn't be able to find DNA that was older than 60,000 years old," said co-author Jose Bermudez de Castro, from the National Research Centre for Human Evolution (CENIEH), a member of the team that excavated the fossils.
"Of course, that wasn't true. The techniques have advanced hugely."
Siberia to Iberia
Professor Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London describes the significance of the discovery
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, under the supervision of Prof Svante Paabo, have been helping drive those advances. The success reported in Nature was the result of applying techniques developed for sequencing the degraded DNA found in Neanderthal fossils to even older specimens.
Prof Paabo, the institute's director, said: "Our results show that we can now study DNA from human ancestors that are hundreds of thousands of years old," adding: "It is tremendously exciting."

Smart spiral

Zip, Ladder, DNA beads, typewriter, phone cord
Is DNA the 'smartest' molecule in existence?
How does DNA testing work?
The scientists were able to stitch together a near-complete sequence of mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA (the genetic material contained in the tiny "batteries" that power our cells) from the ancient femur. But comparisons of the genetic code with that from other humans, ancient and modern, yielded a surprise.
Rather than showing a relationship between the Spanish specimens and Neanderthals, which might be expected based on their physical features, the mitochondrial DNA was most similar to that found in 40,000 year-old material unearthed thousands of kilometres away at Denisova Cave in Siberia.
The Denisovans were a sister group to the Neanderthals, with distinct genetic characteristics. Identified only by DNA extracted from a tiny finger bone and tooth, they are, as some researchers have remarked, "a genome in search of a fossil" because there are no substantial remains representative of this group.
By using missing mutations in the old DNA sequences, the researchers calculated that the Pit of Bones individual shared a common ancestor with the Denisovans about 700,000 years ago.
Muddle in the middle
Sima de los Huesos The Pit of Bones is difficult to access but has ideal conditions for DNA preservation
So there are several possibilities as to how Denisovan-like DNA could turn up in Middle Pleistocene Spain. Firstly, the mitochondrial DNA type from the pit came from a population ancestral to both the Spanish hominids and to Denisovans.
Secondly, interbreeding between the Pit of Bones people (or their ancestors) and yet another early human species brought the Denisovan-like DNA into this western population. Prof Bermudez de Castro thinks there may be a candidate for this cryptic ancestor: an earlier human species known as Homo antecessor. One million years ago, antecessor inhabited the site of Gran Dolina, just a few hundred metres away from the Pit of Bones.
Prof Chris Stringer, from London's Natural History Museum, told BBC News: "We need all the data we can get to build the whole story of human evolution. We can't just build it from stone tools, we can't just build it from the fossils. Having the DNA gives us a whole new way of looking at it."
DNA Techniques developed to sequence Neanderthal DNA can be applied to older fossils
However, he points out, mtDNA is a small and unusual component of our genetic blueprint, from which only limited conclusions can be drawn. For example, no sign of the interbreeding we now know took place between Neanderthals and modern humans remains in the mtDNA of modern people.
To get the full picture, scientists had to sequence nuclear DNA (that kept in the nuclei of cells) from Neanderthals and compare it with that in present-day populations. Likewise, the true relationships between the Pit people and other ancient populations may only be known if and when nuclear DNA is available.
This will be a challenge given the age of the Spanish fossils, but their good state of preservation - largely a product of the fairly constant temperature inside the cave - gives hope.
"That is our next big thing here, to sequence at least part of the nuclear genome from the individual in the Sima de los Huesos," Svante Paabo told BBC News.
"This will answer definitively the question of how they are related to Neanderthals, modern humans and Denisovans."
Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter

More on This Story

Related Stories


Friday, 6 December 2013

health emergency

Food poverty 'now a health emergency'

Food bankThe use of food banks has been rising, according to reports

Related Stories

Food poverty in the UK has now become such a big problem that it should be seen as a "public health emergency", a group of health experts says.
In a letter to the British Medical Journal, six leading public health figures warned poor nutrition could lead to a host of problems.
It comes amid reports that people are struggling to feed themselves.
The UK Red Cross has started asking for food donations for the first time since World War Two.
And in October the Trussell Trust, which runs 400 food banks, said the numbers of people it was helping had tripled to 350,000 in the past year.
The letter also cited research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that indicated the amount of money being spent on food by households had fallen by over 8% in real terms over the past five years.
Families with young children have been hit the hardest.
The study also suggested that much of the savings had been made by people buying cheaper, processed food.
'Alarming developments'
The BMJ letter, signed by academics and pubic health directors, said this had "all the signs of a public health emergency".
It warned malnutrition, particularly during childhood, could have lifelong effects including increasing the risk of cardiovascular disease and other chronic illness.
David Taylor-Robinson, a population health scientists at the Medical Research Council and one of the authors of the letter, added: "It is clear people are increasingly struggling with their food bills.
"We need to start monitoring this and treating it as a public health problem."
Chris Mould, the executive chairman of Trussell Trust, said he wanted the government to set up an official inquiry because "these alarming developments point towards serious trouble for the nation in the years ahead unless urgent action is taken now".
But a government spokesman said action had been taken to help people with the cost of living, including increasing the tax-free personal allowance and freezing council tax and fuel duty.
He added: "The benefits system supports millions of people who are on low incomes or unemployed and there is no robust evidence that welfare reforms are linked to increased use of food banks."

More on This Story

Related Stories

Friday, 15 November 2013

Syrian rebel 'beheaded in case of mistaken identity

Syrian rebel 'beheaded in case of mistaken identity'

An photograph purportedly showing Ahrar  al-Sham fighter Mohammed Fares (left)Members of Harakat Ahrar al-Sham recognised Mohammed Fares (left)
An al-Qaeda affiliated rebel group in Syria is reported to have asked for forgiveness after beheading a fellow rebel in a case of mistaken identity.
A video recently posted online showed members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) brandishing the severed, bearded head of a man.
They said was an Iraqi Shia caught fighting on the government side.
But other rebel fighters watching the video recognised the man and said he was one of their commanders.
Prayers
The video shows two ISIS fighters in Aleppo province - one holding a knife - brandish a severed, bearded head, denouncing their victim as an Iraqi volunteer for President Bashar al-Assad's forces.
They decry his immorality, saying he is a heathen - one of those who have threatened rape of men as much as women.
Horrifying videos like this stream out of Syria every day from the rebel and government side - each with the aim of sowing terror.
What makes this one stand out is that other rebels watching the video recognised the beheaded man.
Members of the hardline Islamist rebel group, Harakat Ahrar al-Sham, said he was not a government fighter at all, but one of their own. They said he was a commander called Mohammed Fares.
The story appears to be that he was wounded in the recent battle for Base 80, south of Aleppo, with government forces and was being taken for medical treatment by rebel fighters.
But he seems to have thought he had been captured by government militiamen from the much feared shabiha. The militia is dominated by Alawites, members of the president's heterodox Shia sect.
Mr Fares is reported to have offered prayers that would have made him seem a Shia rather than a Sunni - and therefore on their side.
This was heard by ISIS fighters, and in the growing atmosphere of sectarian hatred, he was then subjected to his savage fate.
The Daily Telegraph quoted ISIS spokesman Omar al-Qahtani as conceding the error.
According to the newspaper, he alluded to a saying by the Prophet Muhammad that Allah forgives those who kill a believer by mistake.

More on This Story

Monday, 11 November 2013

Mood of 'realism' about future deal at climate talks

Mood of 'realism' about future deal at climate talks

UN meetingThere were tense discussions over consensus with the Russian delegation at the end of last year's meeting in Doha

Related Stories

Negotiators from around 190 countries are meeting in Warsaw to try to advance steps towards a global climate agreement.
Participants say there is a growing sense of realism about the scale of what can be achieved in any new deal.
But there are concerns that the process could become bogged down in procedural wrangling after Russia asked for a review of voting procedures.
The meeting comes amid new warnings about global levels of warming gases.
This will be the 19th annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Start Quote

It's a recognition that where the rubber really meets the road is at the domestic level, and the agreement needs to reflect that”
Elliot DiringerCentre for Climate and Energy Solutions
At the meeting in South Africa in 2011, delegates adopted what's termed the Durban Platform which stated that a new international agreement should be negotiated by 2015 and come into force by 2020.
Pragmatic approach
Now in Poland, negotiators are coming to terms with the emerging shape of that deal.
"There is a fair degree of convergence emerging about the character of a new agreement," said Elliot Diringer from the Centre for Energy and Climate Solutions, a long-time observer of the negotiations.
"This reflects a greater sense of realism among the parties about what can accomplished in this process."
climate protestorsClimate campaigners believe the recent IPCC report settles the science over global warming
The delegates have been scarred by the experience in Copenhagen in 2009, when ambitions for a comprehensive deal foundered, despite the intense efforts of President Obama, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others.
What's emerging now is a looser agreement whereby countries set their own targets, but are subject to some form of review by other nations.
"The sort of model that's emerging for Paris, this acceptance of the notion that commitments will be self defined, it's a recognition that where the rubber really meets the road is at the domestic level, and the agreement needs to reflect that," said Elliot Diringer.
The meeting comes after a series of studies indicating the scale of the climate challenge. The fifth assessment report from the IPCCpublished in September suggested that without concerted political action the accepted 2C threshold to dangerous climate change would be passed sometime in the middle of this century.
Just this week the World Meteorological Organization reported that concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were higher than ever. While the UN Environment Programme detailed the yawning gap between what nations have pledged to do and where the world needs to be in 2020 to avoid the worst impacts.
According to the UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres, Warsaw is a pivotal moment to advance momentum towards a deal.
"We still have time and the means to limit warming to 2 degrees C. And the international process must push forward now to build the foundation for an ambitious universal climate agreement in 2015," she said.

Stumbling blocks

There are several issues that delegates have been divided on that could stall or derail momentum. Here are three of the most important.
Loss and damage - A key issue for developing countries which are looking for some form of compensatory mechanism for future damages caused by climate change. Developed countries are willing to provide assistance but are reluctant to set up a legal framework. A decision is due in Warsaw.
Money - Finance is always a rumbling source of discontent and in Warsaw countries must clarify how they will meet the goal of providing $100bn in climate finance annually by 2020.
MRV - It stands for the measuring, reporting and verification of pledges to cut emissions. Delegates in Warsaw will have to make a decision on how developing countries will verify their undertakings.
But there are a number of difficulties on the road to Paris where the 2015 meeting will be held.
Russia has emerged as a potential problem for the process as they have tabled an amendment on decision-making at the COP.
The process works on the basis of consensus but the Russians believe their objections were overruled at the meeting in Doha last year.
"Decision-making in the UNFCCC process has suffered evident setbacks over the past few years," the Russian delegation wrote in a statement.
It goes on to state that the voting system within the meeting needs to be addressed to rebuild confidence.
Climate cliff hanger
The Russian concerns led to stalemate at a sub-meeting in June. There are worries that this might continue to hamper progress in Warsaw, where delegates will be keener than ever to avoid a breakdown.
"This has been haunting the process even before the Russians brought it up," said Norine Kennedy, who will be representing US business at the meeting.
"We've had a succession of COP cliff hangers and one or two countries always get rolled over in the effort to find consensus and last year that was Russia.
"The consensus question will have to be faced sooner or later and it's better they do this now than in Paris," she said.
Another key question is the shifting nature of development. Where once the UNFCCC was neatly divided into developing and developed nations, with the richer ones making all the cuts in emissions, there is now a greater push for every country to bear some of the load.
But not everyone is keen on this.
"I saw some comments from the Chinese side, saying they are going to insist on a common but differentiated responsibilities point, said Norine Kennedy.
"That will be a hard fought fight and it will lurk behind most of the interventions we will hear over the next couple of weeks."
Follow Matt on Twitter.

More on This Story

Related Stories

The BBC is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites