Labour lost touch with public and members - Ed Miliband

Labour leader Ed Miliband is to admit his party's leadership lost touch both with its own members and the public.

In a speech in Wrexham to his national policy forum, he will propose reforms aimed at making the party less insular and its decision-making more open.

He will say the last Labour government did not listen to concerns over issues like immigration and housing benefits.

The Tories say Labour ignores the way its leader is elected. They criticise the trade unions' role in that process.

In his speech to party activists and trade unionists, Mr Miliband is expected to unveil a series of proposals.

Its annual conference will be opened up to campaign groups and charities - who will be allowed to speak from the floor in debates although they will not get to vote on policies.

Local Labour parties will be allowed to organise petitions on issues which they feel ought to be debated at national level, and if they can demonstrate enough support, those issues will be placed on the agenda at future meetings of the policy forum.

There will also be a new code of conduct for the party's candidates and politicians to ensure they meet voters regularly and are transparent about their expenses.

And following on from an idea trialled in Oxford and Birmingham, local parties across the UK will get extra resources if they sign up more supporters.
Looking outwards
Mr Miliband is also expected to cite the decision under Prime Minister Gordon Brown to abolish the 10p starting rate of income tax, which saw millions of low earners lose out.

In his speech Mr Miliband is expected to say: "'Old Labour forgot about the public. New Labour forgot about the party.

“Start Quote

The party was trying to tell us what the people wanted us to know ”

End Quote Ed Miliband

"And, by the time we left office, we had lost touch with both.'

Turning to the policies of the last Labour government, he will say: "We went from six people making decisions in a smoke-filled committee room to six people making the decisions from a sofa in Whitehall. Sometimes less than six.

"But the party was trying to tell us what the people wanted us to know. They were telling us about immigration, about housing benefits and about the 10p tax. We didn't listen."

He will go on to defend plans to scrap elections to the shadow cabinet. The move to take sole responsibility for frontbench appointments has been criticised by some backbench MPs who feel they will be distanced from the party's top team.

Mr Miliband will say shadow cabinet elections sees the party "look inwards not outwards".

"I want us to be an alternative government," he will say. "The only election members of the shadow cabinet should be worrying about is the general election."

BBC political correspondent Iain Watson said it is understood that Mr Miliband does not intend to address the party's leadership rules highlighted by the Conservatives, which allowed him to be elected with the help of union votes, despite more party members favouring his brother, David.

He has already said these will be revised as part of a series of changes which will go to the party's autumn conference, under the banner Refounding Labour.

Newsnight online 'chat' with Lulz Security hacking group

The Lulz Security hacking group that has claimed attacks on high-profile targets including the CIA and Sony in recent weeks has exclusively told the BBC's Newsnight programme that it wants to target the "higher ups" who write the rules and "bring them down a few notches".

Lulzsec has claimed a new scalp - releasing confidential material taken from the Arizona police department.

The anonymous hacking group says they've not been knocked off course, or successfully exposed, by rival hackers who claim to have named them online - apparently because they object to their agenda.

This agenda seems to evolved. When they started out, two months ago, they said they were mainly hacking "for laughs".

In an online Q&A, Whirlpool, the spokesman for Lulzsec, who describes himself as "captain of the Lulz Boat", agreed that their goals now go beyond that: "Politically motivated ethical hacking is more fulfilling".

We weren't able to talk to Whirlpool in person, but met in cyberspace in a private online chat room. In those circumstances it's almost impossible to verify with absolute certainty who you are speaking to, but Newsnight was able to verify that this person had access to the @Lulzsec Twitter feed.

Here are some other edited highlights from the online chat, which began with a question about the Antisec movement to which Lulzsec seem recently to have aligned themselves.

What is Operation Antisec in your own words?

Operation Antisec - our energy has manifested from single-drop personal operations to a global hacker movement against the common people who deem themselves oppressors, namely the world governments... Our Lulz Boat has gathered allied ships in Anonymous and several rogue hacker groups, including prominent Brazilian, Iranian, and Spanish groups.

We saw the Arizona material should we expect more today?

We're hoping to load payload bay #1 with delicious booty and release more material early next week, preferably Monday.

What do you mean by "who deem themselves oppressors"?

Those who materialise rules to govern the oceans aren't corrupt in nature, but they soon realize that nobody will question rules that they put out, so they use this system to abuse the public. People fear new rules, people fear the "higher-ups", and we're here to bring them down a few notches.

Is it the wrong rules? Or the wrong people making the rules? Would you be ok with rules, but more transparency also?

Rules are rules and we, as a people, are OK with dedicated individuals to moderate them (politicians, officials, etc) - and that's fine. However, when our boat wants to sail into a book store, we're not going to pay Apple for a mobile reading device and subsequently purchase an application allowing us to read books, and then purchase the rights to read the book in text format. Copyright laws - a no-no. Copywrong is a constant enemy of the seas.

So copyright is one of your issues, but that's not why you attacked Arizona police. Can you explain?

Our hit on the Arizona police was to expose the corruption and racial profiling of their battle fleet. In one of the e-mails leaked, they refer to Mexicans as "illegal aliens" and that they need to build a bigger and bigger wall to keep them out. We have hundreds more documents ready to drop on similar corrupt states.

Cheque guarantee cards check out

It is the final weekend for the cheque card. Forty-one years after they were first introduced, they finally become defunct on Thursday, 30 June.

No longer will you have to ask a tradesman to write your card number on the back of a cheque.

No longer will there be a guarantee from the bank that the payment will be honoured.

Many people are unhappy about the change, but the banks say such payments have almost died out anyway.

They point out that the number of people using cheque cards has been falling for years.

"In the last five years, the numbers have dropped off by 65%," says Jemma Smith, of UK Payments.
Who uses them?
Cheques themselves will continue for at least another seven years, but without the backing of a guarantee.

Last year, at least 95 million were written with a guarantee number on the back, although that was only about 7% of the total.

Many people still rely on them for paying tradesmen, such as plumbers, carpenters, window-cleaners and electricians.

For many of those tradesmen, the guarantee card is important for preventing fraud and making sure that they get paid.

"Many people will write out a cheque, whether or not they've got money in the bank," says Charlie Mullins of Pimlico Plumbers.

As a result, he fears his business will lose out when the guarantee system comes to an end.

"No cheque card means cheques may not clear. It's going to be absolute chaos to do away with it," he says.

Mr Mullins also worries that many people will switch to using cash to make payments instead, which might encourage people to try and avoid paying VAT.
How do they work?
Most cards have a limit of either £100 or £50 to their guarantee.
“Start Quote

This is about preventing confusion, and tackling a growing fraud risk”

End Quote Jemma Smith UK Payments.

If the sum written on the cheque is less than that, the bank guarantees to honour that cheque, even if the customer does not have sufficient money in his or her account.

If the sum is greater than the guarantee, the bank offers no protection at all, even for the guaranteed amount.

What will market forces mean for universities?

The forthcoming White Paper for higher education looks set to be the turning point for the growth of private institutions offering undergraduate degrees in England.

Even before AC Grayling unveiled his controversial plans for the private, £18,000-a-year, New College of the Humanities, Universities Minister, David Willetts, had said he was looking forward to "new liberal arts colleges", specialist institutions and "global higher education providers" entering the UK system.
Narrowing gap
But what exactly is meant by a "private" university?

Perhaps the simplest definition is an institution without public funding, unlike traditional universities that receive government grants for both teaching and research.

Yet the dramatic shift from teaching grants to tuition fee income at mainstream universities means the difference between public and private is narrowing fast.

The cut in teaching grants goes a long way towards creating a level playing-field for private universities, which rely almost entirely on fee income.

But who are these private providers?

AC Grayling's private humanities college will prepare students to take University of London degrees

Some operators are in it for profit. These are mainly big US companies that have either bought their way into the UK market or are working in partnership with public universities. But others are charities or not for profit.

Currently there are five private providers that have their own UK degree-awarding powers - Buckingham University, the College of Law, IFS School of Finance, Ashridge Business School and BPP University College.

Last year, BPP University College became the first for-profit provider to be granted university college status in the UK.

It is owned by a US-based company, the Apollo Group, which paid £368m for it in 2009.

BPP is looking to expand in the UK and has confirmed it is holding talks with at least three public universities to run their business operations.
Rising fees
But there are many more private providers that offer non-UK degrees. These include up to 70 overseas universities with UK bases. They are mainly American universities, catering for US nationals on study-abroad programmes.

However, some recruit UK students and, from 2012, their fees will be much more in line with the £9,000 to be charged by most English universities.

Richmond American International University, for example, charges £9,500 for UK undergraduates for degrees validated by both the US system and the Open University.

Another London-based American university, Regent's College, offers undergraduate, liberal arts degrees to UK students at annual fees of around £13,000.

A small number of UK students at both these universities are already eligible for government loans for tuition fees.

A third business model, and probably the most common, involves private providers working in various forms of partnership with conventional UK universities.

For example, Kaplan Open Learning offers undergraduate and professional degrees, taught online to mostly part-time students, in partnership with Essex University.

Kaplan is a for-profit global education company wholly owned by the Washington Post Company.

But partnership may be too strong a term in some cases. For example, the New College of the Humanities will not initially have its own degree awarding powers.

Instead, its students will take University of London degrees, available under an international study programme to students around the world - many of whom receive teaching from other institutions.

Libya unrest: Football stars defect to rebels

A group of 17 leading Libyan football figures have announced their defection to the rebels.

They include the nation's goalkeeper, Juma Gtat, three other national team members, and the coach of Tripoli's top club al-Ahly, Adel bin Issa.

Mr Gtat and Mr bin Issa announced the group's defection to the BBC during a late night meeting in the rebel-held Nafusa Mountains in western Libya.

It comes on the heels of defections by military officers.
Propaganda blow
At their hotel in the town of Jadu I met goalie Juma Gtat relaxing in his room.

"I am telling Col Gaddafi to leave us alone and allow us to create a free Libya," he said as we sat on his hotel bed in front of other players.

"In fact I wish he would leave this life altogether," he added with a laugh.

In football-mad North Africa, the defections are clearly a propaganda blow for Col Gaddafi. But he has always resisted any pressure, political or military, to leave office.

And he has some advantages on the various battlefields in this war across Libya.

Here, in the rebel-held Western Mountains, in besieged Misrata in the centre, and in the east, the long-time Libyan leader has most of the heavy weapons - such as multiple rocket launchers and tanks.

The rebels mostly have small machine guns and, in some cases, only ancient rifles.

The longer-range rockets and artillery at Col Gaddafi's command mean he can often pin the rebels down to their positions.

Mr bin Issa, told me he had chosen to come to the Western Mountains "to send a message that Libya should be unified and free".

"I hope to wake up one morning to find that Gaddafi is no longer there," he added.

Desert units
Sports stars matter in the battle for public opinion. But the rebels still need to win some decisive military victories if they are to advance.

In the Western Mountains, they have managed to seize most of the high ground, taking control of a series of towns.

I have travelled from Wazzin, hard on the Tunisian border, to the rebel stronghold of Jadu.

Although some of the towns in between have suffered serious attacks, they remain in rebel hands.

But troops loyal to Col Gaddafi hold the plains and valleys below.

The colonel also holds the capital, its approaches, and large parts of this mainly desert country.

So far, most of the attention has of course been on the heavy fighting for coastal cities, where most of Libya's population live.

But Col Gaddafi also has arms caches and military units deep in the Sahara Desert - some of which have not yet been deployed.

Social-web wave hits emerging Asia

Indonesia has the second highest number of Facebook users in the world, after the US

Power of Asia

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• The 'eccentric' Mr Liu

As the emerging economies of Asia come online in earnest, the web's ability to bring people together is proving its most appealing aspect.

Whether they are raising a voice of opposition in the Singapore elections, organising rallies against corruption in India or helping victims of the earthquake in Japan locate their loved ones, online communities are giving people a space to band together and speak out.

In some cases, Asian nations are overtaking their Western counterparts as the "friendliest" countries.

In Indonesia, almost 80% of internet users engaged in a social activity such as managing a social-network profile, writing a blog or using a microblogging service, such as Twitter, in a one month time period, according to GlobalWebIndex.

The Philippines and Malaysia are not far behind, with 79% and 73% respectively. Compare that with 55% in the US and 48% in the UK.

In the more mature markets in east Asia, they have their own domestic social-media players, such as Mixi in Japan and Cyworld in South Korea, which have dominated the social space.

China is an exception in that although it is still a developing internet market, local sites like RenRen, which is similar to Facebook, and Sina Weibo, a Twitter equivalent, are most popular.

It is not exactly a fair competition, as the government blocks access to Facebook and Twitter.
'Virtual bridge'
Indonesia has the second most users on Facebook of any country in the world, after the US, according to monitoring site Socialbakers.com.

Even though broadband infrastructure is limited and smart phones are not as prevalent, people are finding ways to connect online.

EU tells crisis-hit Greeks to unite for new bail-out

EU leaders have urged all Greek politicians to support new spending cuts and tax hikes, saying there is no alternative if debt-laden Athens is to qualify for a second massive bail-out.

The second rescue is being negotiated in Brussels. It is expected to be about 120bn euros (£107bn; $171bn).

"There will be a new programme for Greece, on which the Greek parliament will have to vote next week," said Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The UK says it will not contribute.

EU leaders held a second day of summit talks in Brussels on Friday dominated by the Greek debt crisis, which threatens the stability of the 17-nation eurozone.

"In the case of Britain I sought assurances that Britain wouldn't be pulled into a eurozone package for Greece, and I've received those assurances," UK Prime Minister David Cameron said.

Ms Merkel reiterated: "We will do everything to stabilise the euro."

She spoke of the Greek opposition needing to "fulfil its historic responsibilities".

Separately, the leaders agreed that Croatia should join the EU. The target for Croatia's accession is July 2013. "There are no reservations, as we had with Bulgaria and Romania," Ms Merkel said.
EU pressure on Greece
The BBC's Matthew Price in Brussels says Europe's exasperation with Greece's economic woes is all too clear.

In their summit conclusions the EU leaders called on "all political parties in Greece to support the programme's main objectives", saying "national unity is a prerequisite for success".

Our correspondent says it was a direct challenge to the Greek opposition, which has threatened to reject the budget cuts when they are put to parliament next week.

For weeks Athens has been gripped by huge street protests and strikes by Greeks opposed to the tough bail-out conditions. Many of them think Greece is being sacrificed to save the euro.

Click to play

 

The BBC's Tim Willcox spoke to protester Dimitra Milona who said she was fighting for "real democracy"

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said his Pasok (Socialist) government was committed to pushing the austerity plans through parliament.

The government is proposing additional spending cuts worth 28bn euros over five years.

Italy bank shares dive on credit rating alert

Shares in leading Italian banks fell sharply after the credit ratings agency Moody's said it may downgrade their status.

Moody's report, published late on Thursday, put 16 Italian banks and two government institutions on review for a possible mark-down.

Shares in the country's biggest bank, Unicredit, lost 5.5%.

Intesa Sanpaolo, Italy's second-largest bank, and Monte Paschi also dropped. Trading was suspended in some banks.

Other factors weighing on bank shares included fears that Italian banks could be forced to raise more capital as a result of imminent stress tests.

Credit ratings help investors to determine the strength of an institution or company.

They affect the rate of interest a borrowing organisation must pay. The weaker the credit rating, the higher the cost of borrowing.

Moody's put Italy's public debt on review for possible downgrade amid concerns about low growth and high public debt, which at 120% of gross domestic product (GDP) is one of the highest in Europe.

Greece's debt is 150% of GDP.

Do Smurfs provide a model for a good society?

Smurf fans around the world are celebrating the birthday of the famous cartoon strip's creator and awaiting a new blockbuster movie adaptation. But could the blue creatures offer a model for society?

There is a place where the neighbours are always willing to lend a hand, where everyone has a certain skill and is willing to employ it, without personal reward, for the benefit of everyone.

Before you think about checking out property prices in the area, bear in mind that the neighbours are blue, stand three apples high and live in mushroom-like houses.

The Smurfs, created in 1958 by the Belgian artist Pierre Culliford also known as Peyo, have proved hugely popular.

Their original name is Les Schtroumpfs, a word born during a meal Peyo was having with his friend in which, having temporarily forgotten the word "salt", Peyo asked him to pass the schtroumpf.

The two continued to talk, in French, using that word instead of recognised terms, and so the concept was born.

Smurf statistics

• Merchandise and marketing has accrued a cumulative business worth about $8bn (£5bn)
• More than 40m music CDs sold
• 500m figurines
• 8m DVDs
• 6bn sweets sold in France (2% of market share)
• 50m comics and magazines

Later Peyo, already a successful artist whose father was English and mother Belgian, introduced little blue imp-like creatures into his existing stories about a medieval page and his sidekick, called Johan and Peewit.

The Smurfs - as these creatures are called in English, having been taken from the Dutch name De Smurfen - were an instant hit and following pleas from children, Peyo began a dedicated comic strip.

In 1981, Hanna-Barbera began to produce a cartoon series that resulted in 256 episodes, dubbed into some 30 languages and still being shown on more than 120 television channels around the world today.

Peyo died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve in 1992, but his family's work - his son Thierry runs his studio - continued.

Saturday is Global Smurfs Day, an event which celebrates the birthday of Peyo. It's also intended to whip up interest in the forthcoming Smurfs movie, due to be released in August starring Hank Azaria as Gargamel and Katy Perry as the voice of Smurfette - the first of a trilogy of films.

IMPS is run by Veronique Culliford and William Auriol

Each Smurf is known by their particular skill - Handy for the one who's good at DIY, Brainy for the clever one, Barber for the one who cuts hair etc. They're all organised by Papa Smurf, the eldest and wisest one, and their village is run as a collective without any use of currency.

Devoid of any particular cultural cues, the Smurfs have proved popular around the world.

How Macbeth became a prison drama

Out, out brief candle: Belt Up Theatre's Macbeth was a cut-down version of Shakespeare's tragedy

What are the challenges of staging Macbeth in an underground Victorian prison? How do the actors work alongside the ghosts of history?

Belt Up Theatre recently brought Shakespeare's bloody tragedy to the subterranean House of Detention, Clerkenwell.

The company, based in York, specialises in site-specific theatre and likes to place its audience at the heart of its productions.

Its stripped-down and candle-lit version of Macbeth was performed with an all-male cast in April and May 2011.

Here, Alexander Wright, the play's director, reflects on the experience - and scares - of taking drama into a dungeon.

Alexander Wright - co-artistic director of Belt Up Theatre

I was watching a play the other day and there was a line that asked: "Do buildings hold memories in their walls?" It's an interesting question for those of us who put on site-specific theatre.

The promenade production involved the audience moving around the corridors

Our four-man production of Macbeth was at The House of Detention in Clerkenwell. It's been a prison, a workhouse, a bomb shelter.

You go through a tiny wooden door and down some steps and you find yourself in the basement of what was this prison.

It's been on [TV's] Britain's Most Haunted. We had various people leave messages of our YouTube videos saying: "You won't get out of there safely!" and "Spirits will attack you!"

None of us are religious or spiritual or superstitious, but we were all terrified. As a kid I was scared of things hiding behind my curtains. I've got over that, but when I walked into this underground prison those fears were reawakened.

On the first day of rehearsals we thought we'd spend the time trying to get used to the space - to get a sense of ownership.

I told everyone to go off on their own and spend time looking around.

When you spend time in that labyrinthine system of cells, you think about the people who were locked in there in the dark, those who were attached to the shackles on the walls.

When you turn the lights off, it's pitch black. When you talk or shout, it echoes.

It was terrifying, but it was also humbling.

We realised we didn't deserve ownership over this space - where hundreds of people had been incarcerated, or died.

I found myself talking to the walls. I said "thank you" for letting us - as theatre-makers - come into this place where all these real events happened.

I stood near a cell and there was a breeze running down my right-hand side.

And as I said "thank you" to the walls, that breeze disappeared. For the rest of the time I felt entirely comfortable.

And every day I went in to turn the lights on, I said: "Thank you for letting me be here." Not because I was scared of ghosts - just because I felt like I wanted to make peace with that space.

And then we extended the run for a week and I didn't say "thank you".

Loads of horrible things happened.

There we were, doing Macbeth on Friday the 13th in a haunted prison.

Macbeth jumped through a gate - just as he had done in every show - but this time he caught his head on a rusty bar and landed on his back on another metal bar.

We had to cancel that last three shows.

It's an experience that changed my opinion of how you make theatre in a place which isn't your space, and belongs to history.

This article is based on a speech given by Alexander Wright at the Theatres Trust conference "Converting Spaces - Creating Theatres" at the Pleasance in London on 14 June.

Belt Up Theatre's Macbeth was produced by SJC Productions and Jethro Compton Ltd at The House of Detention, Clerkenwell.

US man charged with sexually abusing Haitian boys

A US man who ran a centre for impoverished boys in Haiti has been charged over claims that he forced them to perform sex acts for food and shelter, prosecutors have said.

Matthew Andrew Carter, who operated the Morning Star Center, has been charged with four counts of child sex tourism.

Investigators said the 66-year-old "preyed upon" impoverished boys and performed acts that "defy belief".

Mr Carter was arrested in Miami on 8 May and pleaded not guilty on Thursday.

Mr Carter, who also went by the names William Charles Harcourt and Bill Carter, had operated the Morning Star Center in Port-au-Prince since the mid-1990s and lived there with Haitian boys, according to court documents.

"The acts that the defendant is charged with committing, quite simply, defy belief," Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer said in a news release.

He added: "As charged in the indictment, he preyed upon and terrorized impoverished Haitian children who were in dire need of the services offered by the Morning Star Center - the very children he was purporting to help."

The facility was originally established to provide shelter, food and education to Haitian minors, court documents said.

Mr Carter is charged with four counts of child sex tourism, or travelling in foreign commerce to engage in illicit sex with minors.
'Preying upon children'
At the time of his arrest in May, 14 boys were living at the Morning Star Center, with three spending their weekends at the facility.

“Start Quote

Few crimes are as despicable as the ones committed against these children in Haiti”

End Quote John Morton Director, ICE

The court documents claimed that Mr Carter had sex with at least eight boys, sometimes for years until they became adults and left the centre.

Carter also allegedly forced the boys to shower with him and asked them to perform sexual acts on him in his bedroom, according to a US investigator who interviewed several of the youths from the facility.

Prosecutors said those who agreed to his requests were given schooling, clothing, books, compact disc players and cash.

"This defendant preyed on innocent Haitian children living in severely depressed conditions, making his conduct particularly deplorable," said Attorney Wifredo Ferrer.

Mr Ferrer added that instead of using the facility to "provide sanctuary to needy children", the Michigan resident used the facility to "manipulate, abuse and sexually exploit them".

"Few crimes are as despicable as the ones committed against these children in Haiti," said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent Director John Morton.

A public defender assigned to represent Mr Carter has not commented on the case.

If convicted, Mr Carter faces up to 105 years in prison.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez eyes second term

President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has finally announced what most Argentines were expecting.

She would, she said at a televised event, be running for a second term as president in elections on 23 October.

The announcement, just days before the Saturday deadline to submit declarations, came as a surprise to almost no-one, having been long anticipated in political circles and the Argentine media.

But leaving it so late gave rise to speculation she might have had doubts.

It had been expected her husband and predecessor as president, Nestor Kirchner, would try to be her successor.

But his death last October, of a heart attack at the age of 60, put paid to any such plans.
Key backers
There have been rumours about President Fernandez's own state of health after she pulled out of a number of official engagements.

Her daughter, Florencia, was said to be reluctant for her mother to stand again.

And analysts say Mr Kirchner's death left a huge hole in Argentine politics, felt by his allies and his enemies alike, but most profoundly by his still grieving widow.

Even before she declared her intention to run, President Fernandez was comfortably ahead in the opinion polls.

“Start Quote

Our society votes for individuals and not for long-term politics ”

End Quote Federico MacDougall Poltiical consultant

Such was the control and influence she and her late husband exerted on the governing Peronist Party that no credible alternative leaders have risen through their ranks.

Even if Ms Fernandez had been reluctant to stand, her supporters would not have allowed her to entertain such thoughts for long since they believe her victory to be a near certainty.

The president is unpopular in the capital, Buenos Aires, where her party rarely does well, but she enjoys greater support in the populous industrial belt around the city.

Ms Fernandez can also count on the backing of several key provincial governors.

She has won praise for her continued battle for human rights and for social programmes in the fight against poverty.

However, she has a poor relationship with the media, especially the powerful Clarin group, and critics say the government is sometimes ineffectual in conveying its message to the public.
Failure to unite
The opposition is split six ways.

Eduardo Duhalde is a former president, and Ricardo Alfonsin, of the opposition Radical Party, the son of a former president.

Alberto Rodriguez Saa is the brother of an ex-president who lasted just a week in office.

Power couple: Nestor Kirchner's death robbed the president of her closest adviser

Hermes Binner is the left-wing governor of Santa Fe province, while Jorge Altamira is uniting a number of other leftist groups.

India and Pakistan in nuclear confidence-building vow

Senior diplomats from India and Pakistan have agreed to discuss new nuclear confidence building measures, after two days of talks.

The talks in Islamabad between the countries' foreign secretaries are a prelude to the Pakistani foreign minister's visit to India in July.

Relations plummeted after Pakistan-based militants attacked the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay) in 2008.

But earlier this year, leaders vowed to resume their dialogue.

India and Pakistan will work to build confidence over their nuclear and conventional weapons capability, a joint statement said.

It also said that a meeting of experts would be held "to consider additional measures... to build trust and confidence and promote peace and security."

Any concrete agreements will be made when the foreign ministers meet in July but it is now clear what is on the agenda for that encounter, the BBC's Mark Dummett in Delhi says.

India and Pakistan have also agreed to look at ways of strengthening cooperation on counter-terrorism and improving ties between the two halves of Kashmir.

Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan in its entirety but has been divided since 1948. It has been the cause of two wars between the countries.

There remains a huge amount of mistrust between the nations, but for now it seems both governments appear committed to improving relations, our correspondent says.
Cricket diplomacy
Relations between the nuclear-armed rivals have been slowly improving in recent months, although talks ended in acrimony last July, with the two sides indulging in a public spat over Kashmir.

These are the first talks between the two countries since March, when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hosted his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani for the cricket World Cup semi-final in the Indian city of Mohali.

At the time Mr Singh said cricket had been a "uniting factor" and that the sides should cast aside "ancient animosities".

India put peace talks on hold after the Mumbai attacks of 2008 when gunmen killed 166 people in an attack on India's commercial capital.

After initial denials, Pakistan acknowledged that the attacks had been partially planned on its territory and that the only gunman captured alive was one of its citizens.

Despite charging seven people in connection with the attacks, the Pakistani authorities have yet to convict anyone.

Bollywood sets sights on wider market

IIFA hosts, Riteish Deshmukh and Boman Irani, give the BBC and exclusive backstage tour of the stadium, ahead of the big night

As some of the biggest names in Indian cinema gather in Toronto this week, the Indian International Film Academy (IIFA) hopes its annual awards ceremony will help boost its presence in the North American market.

So far the IIFA's nomadic three-day festival and awards event, created to raise the global profile of Bollywood, as India's Hindi language cinema is popularly known, has travelled from cities in Europe, including London and Amsterdam, to the UAE, Africa, and south and east Asia.

Now, 12 years on, for the first time it is being held in the Americas.

Some 200 Indian actors and film makers, along with 40,000 fans, are converging to witness a lavish spectacle of song, dance, and fashion, not too far removed from the average Bollywood film.

Toronto, home to a prestigious international film festival of its own, is seen as a fitting launchpad for world cinema hoping to gain a foothold in the US market. Ultimately Bollywood producers have an eye on closer collaboration with Hollywood - a fact that is not lost on Canadian officials.

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"Is it worth pointing out that Slumdog [Millionaire] premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival? Then went on to sweep the board at the Oscars and put Bollywood on the map," says Michael Chen, Canada's Tourism Minister.

Prestige is not the only reason that Bollywood film makers would wish to make their mark here. North America is responsible for 25% of the industry's overseas box office revenues.

In an economic climate where DVD sales are down, and piracy and illegal downloads are on the increase, this industry is looking to reach different audiences.
Early years
India is the world's largest producer of films. In 2009, it produced a total of 1,288 feature films. By contrast Hollywood produces an average of 500 per year.

Hindi cinema is just a portion of India's annual film production, making up about 235 films in 2009. However, it remains the single most popular and influential, in India and beyond.

Named after its birthplace, Bombay, since renamed Mumbai, Bollywood dates its first feature film to 1910. It wasn't until the 1950s, however, when Indian films were exported to the West.

Dentists learn with virtual drill

To the high-pitched sound of numerous drills, students get to work removing a decayed tooth.

Their patients need not be afraid though, as these want-to-be dentists are practising on 3D virtual-reality jaws, not the real thing.

The 14 work stations lined up in a lab at Europe's largest dental school, King's College London, use a technology that allows the student to learn how much pressure they should use when drilling.

The device, called HapTEL (haptics in technology-enhanced learning), received the excellence in education innovation award at the Medical Futures ceremony earlier this month.

The project is a collaboration between dentists from Guy's Hospital, technical developers from Reading University and Birmingham City University, and e-learning professionals from King's College London.

How it works

The virtual-reality jaw opens wide for a student to develop his skills.

The drill is based on haptics, a tactile feedback technology through which the user can sense touch and force in a virtual-reality environment.

The hub at the centre of the work station is based on that used in the gaming industry.

A foot pedal, recycled from an old dental chair, allows the student to operate the drill.

The work station lets the student feel the difference between drilling hard enamel and softer decayed tooth and helps them learn how much pressure is needed.

Prof Margaret Cox, who led the project, says: "When the students first learn, they lean very heavily on the drill and go straight through the tooth to the gum - which would be disastrous in a real patient. They also take ages. This allows the student to learn both skill and speed."

The student wears glasses that produce a 3D jaw on the computer screen. Panels on the edge of the glasses, and a head tracking camera, allow the jaw image to move relative to the student's head position, allowing them the real-world experience of examining the teeth from different angles.

Sadhvik Vijay, a second year student, says: "When you first come into dentistry everything is very alien to you, the way you position your hand, the tiny movements that you need to perform procedures - it is difficult.

"This allows you to repeat a task over and over again, it gets ingrained into your muscle memory, and improves your manual dexterity."

Type 2 diabetes in newly diagnosed 'can be reversed'

An extreme eight-week diet of 600 calories a day can reverse Type 2 diabetes in people newly diagnosed with the disease, says a Diabetologia study.

Newcastle University researchers found the low-calorie diet reduced fat levels in the pancreas and liver, which helped insulin production return to normal.

Seven out of 11 people studied were free of diabetes three months later, say findings published in the journal.

More research is needed to see whether the reversal is permanent, say experts.

Type 2 diabetes affects 2.5m people in the UK. It develops when not enough insulin is produced in the body or the insulin that is made by the body doesn't work properly.

When this happens, glucose - a type of sugar - builds up in the blood instead of being broken down into energy or fuel which the body needs.

The 11 participants in the study were all diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes within the previous four years.

They cut their food intake drastically for two months, eating only liquid diet drinks and non-starchy vegetables.
Fat loss
After one week of the diet, researchers found that the pre-breakfast blood sugar levels of all participants had returned to normal.

MRI scans of their pancreases also revealed that the fat levels in the organ had decreased from around 8% - an elevated level - to a more normal 6%.

Three months after the end of the diet, when participants had returned to eating normally and received advice on healthy eating and portion size, most no longer suffered from the condition.

“Start Quote

It offers great hope for many people with diabetes.”

End Quote Prof Keith Frayn University of Oxford

Acoustic 'cloaking device' shields objects from sound

Scientists have shown off a "cloaking device" that makes objects invisible - to sound waves.

Such acoustic cloaking was proposed theoretically in 2008 but has only this year been put into practice.

Described in Physical Review Letters, the approach borrows many ideas from attempts to "cloak" objects from light.

It uses simple plastic sheets with arrays of holes, and could be put to use in making ships invisible to sonar or in acoustic design of concert halls.

Much research has been undertaken toward creating Harry Potter-style "invisibility cloaks" since the feasibility of the idea was first put forward in 2006.

Those approaches are mostly based on so-called metamaterials, man-made materials with properties that do not occur in nature. The metamaterials are designed such that they force light waves to travel around an object; to an observer, it is as if the object were not there.

But researchers quickly found out that the mathematics behind bending these light waves, called transformation optics, could also be applied to sound waves.

"Fundamentally, in terms of hiding objects, it's the same - how anything is sensed is with some kind of wave and you either hear or see the effect of it," said Steven Cummer of Duke University. "But when it comes to building the materials, things are very different between acoustics and electromagnetics.

"The thing you need to engineer into the materials is very different behaviour in different directions that the wave travels through it," he told BBC News.

In 2008, Dr Cummer first described the theory of acoustic cloaking in an article in Physical Review Letters, and earlier this year a group from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign demonstrated the first practical use of the theory in an article in the same journal.

That work showed acoustic invisibility in a shallow layer of water, at ultrasound frequencies above those we can hear.

Now, Dr Cummer and his colleagues have shown off an acoustic cloaking technique that works in air, for audible frequencies between one and four kilohertz - corresponding to two octaves on the higher half of a piano.

The cloaking shell is made of easily-manufactured sheets of plastic with holes through them

It works by using stacked sheets of plastic with regular arrays of holes through them. The exact size and placement of the holes on each sheet, and the spacing between the sheets, has a predictable effect on incoming sound waves.

Jewish bodies found in medieval well in Norwich

The remains of 17 bodies found at the bottom of a medieval well in England could have been victims of persecution, new evidence has suggested.

The most likely explanation is that those down the well were Jewish and were probably murdered or forced to commit suicide, according to scientists who used a combination of DNA analysis, carbon dating and bone chemical studies in their investigation.

The skeletons date back to the 12th or 13th Centuries at a time when Jewish people were facing persecution throughout Europe.

They were discovered in 2004 during an excavation of a site in the centre of Norwich, ahead of construction of the Chapelfield Shopping Centre. The remains were put into storage and have only recently been the subject of investigation.

Seven skeletons were successfully tested and five of them had a DNA sequence suggesting they were likely to be members of a single Jewish family.

DNA expert Dr Ian Barnes, who carried out the tests, said: "This is a really unusual situation for us. This is a unique set of data that we have been able to get for these individuals.

"I am not aware that this has been done before - that we have been able to pin them down to this level of specificity of the ethnic group that they seem to come from."
'Ethnic cleansing'
The team has been led by forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black, of the University of Dundee's Centre for Anthropology and Human Identification.

Find out more

• History Cold Case: The Bodies in the Well will be on BBC Two at 2100 BST on Thursday 23 June 2011
• Professor Sue Black, Dr Xanthe Mallett and Professor Caroline Wilkinson will delve deeper into the mystery and attempt to recreate the faces of those found in the well

• Read more about the programme
• Catch up on BBC iPlayer

Professor Black, who went to the Balkans following the Kosovo war - where her job was to piece together the bodies of massacred Kosovan Albanians - said this discovery had changed the direction of the whole investigation.

Regarding the nature of the discovery, Professor Black said: "We are possibly talking about persecution. We are possibly talking about ethnic cleansing and this all brings to mind the scenario that we dealt with during the Balkan War crimes."

'Super sand' to help clean up dirty drinking water

Contaminated water can be cleaned much more effectively using a novel, cheap material, say researchers.

Dubbed "super sand", it could become a low-cost way to purify water in the developing world.

The technology involves coating grains of sand in an oxide of a widely available material called graphite - commonly used as lead in pencils.

The team describes the work in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces.

In many countries around the world, access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities is still limited.

The World Health Organization states that "just 60% of the population in Sub-Saharan African and 50% of the population in Oceania [islands in the tropical Pacific Ocean] use improved sources of drinking-water."

The graphite-coated sand grains might be a solution - especially as people have already used sand to purify water since ancient times.
Coating the sand
But with ordinary sand, filtering techniques can be tricky.

“Start Quote

Given that this can be synthesized using room temperature processes and also from cheap graphite sources, it is likely to be cost-efficient”

End Quote Mainak Majumder Monash University, Australia

Dr Wei Gao from Rice university in Texas, US, told BBC News that regular coarse sand was a lot less effective than fine sand when water was contaminated with pathogens, organic contaminants and heavy metal ions.

While fine sand is slightly better, water drains through it very slowly.

"Our product combines coarse sand with functional carbon material that could offer higher retention for those pollutants, and at the same time gives good throughput," explained Dr Gao.

She said that the technique the team has developed to make the sand involves dispersing graphite oxide into water and mixing it with regular sand.

"We then heat the whole mixture up to 105C for a couple of hours to evaporate the water, and use the final product - 'coated sand' - to purify polluted water."
Cost-efficient

"Super sand" is made using regular sand - and it could become a low-cost way to purify water

The lead scientist of the study, Professor Pulickel Ajayan, said it was possible to modify the graphite oxide in order to make it more selective and sensitive to certain pollutants - such as organic contaminants or specific metals in dirty water.

Another team member, Dr Mainak Majumder from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said it had another advantage - it was cheap.

"This material demonstrates comparable performance to some commercially available activated carbon materials," he said.

"But given that this can be synthesized using room temperature processes and also from cheap graphite sources, it is likely to be cost-efficient."

He pointed out that in Australia many mining companies extract graphite and they produce a lot of graphite-rich waste.

"This waste can be harnessed for water purification," he said.

Diamonds are a downturn's best friend

Glimmer of hope ... Sotheby's head of jewellery, Hamish Sharma, with a pair of Bulgari diamond and emerald earrings and a 24-carat diamond necklace. Photo: Peter Rae

Retail may be in the doldrums, but resale at the top end of town is booming, with Sotheby's banking on record results for its fine jewellery auction in Double Bay on Monday.
''The level of interest we've had in this auction is the highest ever,'' Sotheby's Australia head of jewellery, Hamish Sharma, said.
''Telephone and absentee bid registrations are tracking well ahead of what we've had in the past and I'm pretty confident we'll have our best ever result.''

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A diamond necklace with a top estimate of $550,000 is the centrepiece of Sotheby's Important Jewels auction comprising 224 lots worth $2.2 to $3.1 million including a South Sea pearl necklace with a top estimate of $220,000, 40 Bulgari pieces and others from the likes of Cartier and Tiffany & Co.
Monday night's auction follows a record result for Sotheby's jewellery auction in Melbourne in April, which generated over $1.4 million in sales.
''The market at the moment is quite value-conscious, so, if you can get that combination of value, quality and design, then you will do well,'' Mr Sharma said.
He claimed auctions offered the opportunity to buy baubles at ''up to 80 per cent off what the retail price would be'', and increasingly appealed to 30-something professional women looking for an investment as well as a pretty piece of jewellery.
''You see a lot of young solicitors in their mid-30s that come to the (auction) viewings who are looking to treat themselves if they've had a promotion, a bonus or have pulled off a big deal,'' Mr Sharma said.
''It becomes a memento of their achievements but in a few years they'll also have quite a nice little nest egg that they've had the pleasure of using and owning but that has also helped create them some assets.''
Most of the auction's vendors are still alive, although in some cases children have submitted pieces owned by their late parents.
''Sometimes it's about a change of lifestyle, '' Mr Sharma said.
''For example, the lady with the diamond Bulgari necklace had a sea change and she doesn't wear it anymore, so she said 'Let someone else enjoy it'.''
While there are plenty of ''entry level'' pieces in the realm of $600 to $900, Mr Sharma says the true jewellery connoisseurs will aim high.
''Diamonds are always desirable, as are vintage pieces and anything rare by a famous house like Cartier or Bulgari.''

$15m Stradivarius violin smashes record

A 1721 Stradivari violin. Photo: Reuters

A rare Stradivarius violin has smashed the world record after selling for more than $15 million at a London auction with all proceeds going to help victims of Japan's devastating earthquake and tsunami.
An anonymous bidder at the Tarisio auction house paid £9.81 million ($15.07 million) for the 1721 "Lady Blunt" Stradivarius, over four times the previous auction record for a Stradivari violin.
The exquisite instrument was owned for 30 years by Lady Anne Blunt, granddaughter of the celebrated English poet Lord Byron, and is "in much the same condition as when it left its maker's hands", expert WE Hill said.

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The violin was acquired by the Tokyo-based Nippon Music Foundation in 2008, and 100 per cent of the funds from the sale will be channelled to victims through the group's Northeastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami Relief Fund.
The violin was one of 21 string instruments held by the foundation, which loans instruments free of charge to top class musicians around the world.
Around 600 violins made by Italian master craftsman Antonio Stradivari are still in existence.
"The Nippon Music Foundation sees the instruments in its care as irreplaceably important," the group said before the sale.
"However, it has decided that the extremity of the disaster in northeastern Japan is something that overrides such feelings and is therefore selling the instrument to aid the people of that area," it said.
The March 11 disasters left some 26,000 dead or missing and obliterated whole towns and villages on the northeast coast.

Splashing the cash

What do fast cars and conspicuous spending habits say about us? Photo: Rob Homer

The racier the car, the racier the hormones.
That's what research results say about some men when it comes to conspicuous spending and their desire for sexual dalliances.
The series of studies, Peacocks, Porsches and Thorstein Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption as a Sexual Signaling System, was conducted with almost 1000 test subjects and published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

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Veblen, an American economist and sociologist, popularised the term "conspicuous consumption" of the leisure class more than 100 years ago and pooh-poohed its contribution to productivity.
Researchers found that just as peacocks flaunt their tails before potential mates, men may flaunt flashy possessions to charm potential dates. Notably, not all men use this ploy - just those with short-term sexual relationships on their mind.
"The studies show that some men are like peacocks. They're the ones driving the bright-coloured sports car," co-author Vladas Griskevicius, assistant marketing professor at the University of Minnesota, said in a statement.
In one of the studies, women viewed two biographies for a man. They each were 32 years old, had a master's degree, worked for a Fortune 500 company as a senior analyst and enjoyed bicycling, movies and music. The only difference being that one drove a Porsche ($US58,000 ($55,185)) and the other a Honda ($US15,655 ($14,895)).
The man with the Porsche was preferred over the Honda man as a date but not for marriage. Women inferred from a man's flashy spending that he was interested in sex without commitment, the study concluded.
"When women considered him for a long-term relationship, owning the sports car held no advantage relative to owning an economy car," said Daniel Beal, assistant professor of psychology at Rice University. "People may feel that owning flashy things makes them more attractive as a relationship partner, but in truth, many men might be sending women the wrong message."
And this is not a two-way street, the studies found. While men may use conspicuous consumption as a short-term mating call, the researchers discovered that women are not inclined to do the same.
SHNS

A pooch townhouse for posh pups

American cocker spaniel 'Vasco' poses with a decorative bowl In Paris. Photo: AP

A three-story town house on Paris' exclusive Place Vendome, with sumptuous interiors hung with plush red velvet and dazzling gilded chandeliers - it's an address fit for a king.
Or his dog.
The property in question is actually a miniature poodle-sized replica of a tiny Paris townhouse, handmade for discerning pooches with deep pockets and a taste for the finer things in life.

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L'appartement Place Vendome was designed for pooches with money to burn.

The 1.22-metre-tall dog house - complete with a canopy bed and velvet-lined drawers for storing Rex's accessories - is the jewel in the crown of Puppy de Paris, a new luxury canine comfort line crafted by prized French artisans.
Other offerings in the line by Frenchwoman Karin Fainas include "Le Canape Place de la Madeleine", a velvet bed painted with scenes from Parisian bakeries and fitted with lion's paw feet in hand-cast silver, and a doggy bowl in gold-dipped bronze that looks more like more like a crown than something you'd intentionally fill with Pal.
"I used to work in fine jewellery, and my clients would inevitably have little dogs in tote," said Fainas, a 41-year-old with elegant features and close-cropped hair. "They were always telling me, 'What about my dog? You should make beautiful things for him, he deserves them just as much as I do."'
So Fainas set about doing just that.
She drew on the contacts she'd made through her now-shuttered jewellery line to assemble a stable of French artisans. Though Fainas comes up with the general design, she outsources the manufacture of her products to these craftspeople, each of whom specialises in a single aspect of production.
A bronze-caster makes the doggy beds' gold leaf-covered lion's paw feet using a centuries-old method.
A woman who fashions made-to-measure jewellery boxes for Place Vendome's tiniest houses handles the upholstery, stretching and folding the canine couches' fabric coverings just so.
The velvet itself is the work of family-owned house that has been churning out France's finest fabrics for more than 160 years - though this particularly velvet is treated with Teflon for dog-proof easy cleaning.
The gilded handles that adorn the "Appartement de Place Vendome" dog house are made by a house that was founded in 1885, with an archive of fancy doorknobs and elaborate closures that stretch back to the epoch of Louis XIV.
"I'm really adamant about these products being 100 per cent made in France, down to the smallest detail," said Fainas.
The Made in France label comes with a price: from €9800 ($13,322) for the dog bowl to €14,800 ($20,120) for the Haussmannian master apartment house. The little couches are €11,800 ($16,041).
For dog lovers with enough disposable income, the label's hefty price tags are not a problem.
"For lots of people, their dogs are their constant companions and best friends," said Fainas. "So there's literally no doubt they're worth it."
AP

Is it time to be tie-free?

US President Barack Obama addressing a college crowd in Ohio without a tie. Photo: Reuters

David Koch does it in the morning, Mark Zuckerberg's been doing it for years and Barack Obama does it on the hustings.
Going tie-less, once considered daring, is now de rigueur for many CEOs, politicians, and across our TV screens where often commentators and presenters appear with their necks exposed.
The look that's slowly evolved as the IT industry has loosened up the workplace, is a way of getting personal but without dropping the patina of authority.

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---------------------------------------------
What not to wear: top tie rules
---------------------------------------------
Where the tie once symbolised the separation between work and home, its absence suggests a bloke at ease with himself, like he's lounging around at work.
It makes men on TV appear much more like us, as if we're all on the same level, bringing the relationship between the presenter and the audience a bit closer, says Dr Helen Caple, a lecturer in media, communications and journalism at the University of NSW.
Caple sees the informality as suggesting a more familiar, but not a more casual, relationship with the audience.
"You can still look smart and formal without wearing a tie. I wouldn't associate the tie with being a symbol of authority and control," she says. "Its absence doesn't detract from that authority, but I would baulk at them wearing a T-shirt."
Professor Theo van Leeuwen, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Sydney's University of Technology, says the absence of the tie is actually a new uniform, not a breakaway from the old one, and its purpose is to draw us in.
"It is a strategy to lure you in, to make us more comfortable about (the presenters') role and make them feel one of us. Anybody who has power has to try and legitimate it in some way."
Van Leeuwen says TV news is increasingly being personalised with its official voice downplayed, but the relationship with the audience hasn't changed.
"The newsreader is still the newsreader and brings with them the authority of the news," say van Leeuwen, who, like the university's senior management, lawyers and investment bankers, still wears a tie to work.
Sporting an open neck is a show of power, van Leeuwen says, and CEOs dispense with ties because they can.
"If you're more powerful you might have a choice. But it creates a lot of confusion because if you have a lower role you might have to wear the uniform."
At the request of more than 60 clients, workers at Adelaide sales and marketing consultancy Patrick Baker and Associates now meet with clients without wearing ties, and with their jackets slung over a chair.
"The exchange of ideal flows much more; everyone opens up much more," says marketing director Steve Davis.
"The tie does create a formal atmosphere like a priest wearing robes to separate them from the flock, and that's not conducive to a client opening up," he says. "But we're still in crisp business shirts and cufflinks - we still wear pants."
In a world where how you wear your tie is highly nuanced - undo the top button and you may look a little undone, playful or rebellious, or even hard at work - van Leeuwen says it's no wonder it's being increasingly rejected by younger men.
David Jones spokeswoman Dianna Young says the focus in the last 12 to 18 months has shifted from the blue and grey-striped corporate tie to a fashion tie with more patterns and colour.
"People are wearing ties differently because there's not just a corporate focus, there's more a fashion focus, particularly with the younger customer and their interest in skinnier ties."
Leith Testoni, managing director of men's fashion label Zanerobe, agrees, explaining that men are dressing down the suit by taking off the tie, while dressing up their streetwear by putting it back on.
But for Testoni, there's no choice.
"If you want to look your best, a tie still looks fantastic."
FACTBOX
From Sunrise to the White House, men are ditching the tie. Here's who following the trend:
- US President Barack Obama
- US presidential contender Mitt Romney
- Seven Sunrise presenter David Koch
- Ten presenter George Negus
- ABC presenters Steve Cannane (The Drum) and Michael Rowland (ABC News Breakfast)
- Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
- Apple CEO Steve Jobs
- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
- Boeing CEO Jim McNerney
- Coca-Cola CEO John Brock
 AAP

Wines to partner food

A touch of protein unlocks the magic of these unconventional savoury reds.
After tasting new-release samples of non-mainstream red varietals, I was shocked to find two wines I didn't particularly like were the most pleasure with dinner.
The wines were produced by Italian consultant winemaker Alberto Antonini, from Australian-grown grapes. Both were deliberately made in a non-fruity, savoury style that is the polar opposite of most conventional Australian red wines. But, as Antonini says, they're designed to be served with a meal, not drunk on their own.
The wines are Pizzini Nebbiolo (King Valley, $48) and Greenstone Rosso di Colbo Sangiovese 2008 (Heathcote, $29). Both would be challenging to Australians accustomed to more typical, fruit-forward local reds, at least until a plate of protein-rich food enters the picture.

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''I am only interested in making food wines and food wines are all about tannin and acidity,'' Antonini says. ''You have to have a wine that cleans the palate between mouthfuls of food and soft, fruity wines don't do that. Acid cleans away the fats and tannin cleans the proteins.''
It's easy to understand how acid clears fat from the palate; less easy to understand what happens between tannins and proteins.
Antonini says tannins in red wine polymerise when they come into contact with the proteins in food - that is, they join together to form larger molecules, which have a softer, more-rounded, more-agreeable mouth-feel.
Try it yourself. Pour a young barolo and drink it on its own. It's grippy, tannic, astringent, hard work. Now eat some cheese or meat and try it again. It's transformed, apparently by magic. A by-product of this process is that more flavours are unlocked by the reaction. Food in the mouth always modifies wine's flavour and structure.
Antonini and his Australian viticulturist, Mark Walpole, were introducing their Greenstone wines: shiraz and sangiovese, and a monastrell (mataro) rose´ (the deliciously savoury '09 is $25).
The wines come from a 20-hectare vineyard at Heathcote, which was planted by a syndicate including these two men and English importer David Gleave, of Liberty Wines. The wines are vinified at Kooyong, on the Mornington Peninsula, by talented winemaker Sando Mosele, who shares the Italian sensibility for wine and food.
Back to the tasting and the Greenstone Rosso di Colbo. As with Tuscany's famous Brunello di Montalcino, if the wines don't come up to par they are declassified into a cheaper wine called Rosso di Montalcino. That's what happened at Greenstone in 2008.
This is a most unusual wine. In my tasting I thought it very developed, with a brick-red colour, rather volatile and oaky (although Walpole reassures me it's low in volatile acidity) and almost devoid of primary fruit. There ought to be a more savoury word than savoury for this wine. I enjoyed it despite its strangeness. And when I had a glass with sausages at dinner, I liked it even more.
Even more surprising was the Pizzini nebbiolo. Antonini has been consulting to the winery since the late 1990s. Pizzini's various Italian varietals, including sangiovese and arneis, have been strongly influenced by Antonini.
The wine looks unpromising in the glass, with its rather weak, tawny-brick red hue. Again, it smells very savoury. Not very alluring nor complex. But, with protein on the dinner plate, it became a different wine: flavoursome, appealing, full of interest, even showing a hint of fruit sweetness. It's a wine for drinking, not judging.
The Greenstone vineyard was always going to produce wines different from the Heathcote mainstream. Walpole had a stroke of brilliance that set the scene for a more elegant style of red. He decided to plant vines in east-west rows, instead of the customary north-south.
''You can immediately taste the difference,'' he says. ''We pick our grapes earlier, with high natural acidity and brighter flavours.''
The vines were planted more densely than usual for the region, which not only gives more intense flavour but helps accelerate ripening. The final clincher for Antonini was Heathcote's limestone soils, common in France and Italy but rare in Australia.
''Most of the world's great wines are grown in calcareous soils,'' he says. ''Heathcote is one of the few calcareous places I saw in Australia.''
The Greenstone shirazes (the 2008 is $33) are very good, especially next year's release, 2009, while the sangioveses are arguably even more exciting. The 2007 ($65; sold out) was acknowledged as a new benchmark for Australian sangiovese. Unfortunately, there is never much of it and the lovely '09 is destined for export. We'll have to wait for the 2010. Until then, the '08 Rosso di Colbo will stimulate plenty of argument. But I rather like it.
huon@huonhooke.com

Source: Good Living

Number of Australian millionaires on the rise

The good life ... Australia has the ninth-largest population of high net worth individuals in the world. Photo: Michele Mossop

It happened in the blink of an eye. Commodity prices surged, the dollar shot higher, the sharemarket rebounded, and the number of Australians who can call themselves ''high net worth individuals'' swelled by nearly 20,000, according to the latest study of the world's wealthy.
According to the World Wealth Report 2011, an annual study by Capgemini and Merrill Lynch, the number of Australians with investable assets worth more than $1 million dollars - excluding primary residence - jumped by 11.1 per cent in 2010. There are now more than 192,000 of them, with a combined wealth of $US582 billion ($553 billion).
The report covers 71 of the world's richest countries, accounting for 98 per cent of global gross national income and 99 per cent of world sharemarket capitalisation.

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According to the report, Australia has the ninth-largest population of high net worth individuals in the world.
Chris Richardson, the chief economist at Deloitte Access Economics, said much of that wealth was generated by Australia's position in the global economy.
"It is absolutely no surprise that the weight of wealth is swinging geographically closer to Australia. You can see it in our trade patterns, you can see it in the export prices that we're getting, you can see it in foreign investment requests being made of Australia.''
But when it comes to the number of high net worth individuals, Australia is a regional munchkin.
The report found that, for the first time since the study began 15 years ago, the number of such people in the Asia Pacific region - excluding Japan - surpassed those in Europe.
With more than 3.3 million people with investable assets worth more than $US1 million, with a combined wealth of $US10.8 trillion, they outweigh Europe's 3.1 million richest, with $US10.2 trillion.

Melbourne to bid for next Bollywood awards

Toronto beat Las Vegas to become the first North American city to host the 12th annual Indian International Film Awards, which kicked off on Thursday, and now Melbourne is vying to be next.
A delegation from Australia attended the opening of the three-day Bollywood extravaganza that is expected to attract some 40,000 tourists to Canada's largest metropolis.

Officials said they would inject tens of millions of dollars into the local economy for hotel rooms, food, security, venues and other expenses.

Also, Indian film crews reportedly shot scenes at Toronto's CN Tower, its ritzy Yorkville shopping district and an indoor hockey rink that will be incorporated into the three-hour awards show.

"Beautiful people having fun in Toronto - that's the money shot that will be seen all over India," former Tourism Toronto executive director Duncan Ross, who spearheaded the city's bid for the IIFA show back in 2006, told AFP.

Melbourne, he said, is hoping to play host to the IIFA in 2014 or sooner.

The event is designed to celebrate the popular Hindi-language film industry and win new audiences abroad.

Launched in 2000 at the Millennium Dome in London, the annual IIFA awards have been held in 11 cities around the world, including Colombo, Macau, Bangkok, Dubai, Amsterdam and Johannesburg.

Tickets sold like hot cakes for this year's ceremony at the Rogers Centre in Toronto; 22,000 were snapped up within minutes of going on sale, said organiser Wizcraft International Entertainment.

Canadian broadcaster Omni Rogers has signed a deal to be the first to broadcast the awards ceremony on a pay-per-view basis in Canada. It will also be packaged and broadcast next month to up to 700 million viewers worldwide.

AFP cjb

Biggest airline order in history: Airbus trounces Boeing in Paris

Planemaker Airbus celebrated a $US72 billion ($A68 billion) haul of orders, including the biggest single airliner deal in history, in a home turf victory over US rival Boeing at the Paris Air Show yesterday.
"This success sets a new record for any commercial aircraft manufacturer at any air show ever," Airbus said, after confirming Malaysia's AirAsia would buy 200 of its A320neo medium-haul jets for $US18.2 billion (12.7 billion euros).
It said this brought Airbus's order book for the week at the Le Bourget aerodrome north of Paris to 730 airliners, including 701 for its new star, the single-aisle A320 in both its original and fuel-efficient "Neo" variant.

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The Airbus A320neo (for New Engine Option) proved popular at the Paris International Air Show.

At catalogue prices, the orders represent hard sales worth $US44 billion and memoranda of understanding for the purchase of aircraft worth $US28.2 billion.
The AirAsia order makes the Malaysian low-cost pioneer Airbus's biggest customer and is the biggest single airliner sale by numbers in history.
Airbus chief commercial officer John Leahy also said that an unidentified firm had ordered 10 of its A380 super jumbos for $US3.75 billion dollars.
By contrast, Airbus's great rival Boeing had a relatively quiet week in Le Bourget, despite being able to show customers its ultra-modern long-haul 787 Dreamliner and the new, longer version of its iconic 747 jumbo jet.
Boeing said Thursday it had logged 142 firm orders and commitments worth more than $US22 billion during the show, most of the confirmed purchases being for the medium-haul 737, the A320's direct competitor.
The US behemoth has never used Le Bourget as a shop window in the same way as Airbus and was not expected to come out ahead.
"They choose to use their shows to make announcements, we choose to use our shows to demonstrate our technology, to connect with our customers and suppliers and to highlight our new airplanes' capabilities," said Randy Tinseth, Boeing's marketing vice-president.
But sales figures for the year as a whole to date show a stark divide. Since January, Airbus has received 725 firm orders and Boeing only 195.
The surprise key to Airbus's success has been the A320 -- an unglamorous single-aisle workhorse now available as the "Neo" or "New Engine Option" which the company boasts is 15 per cent more fuel efficient.
"I have to admit, I largely underestimated the market demand for Neo before this show," the European giant's chairman Thomas Enders said.
With world oil prices hovering around $US100 a barrel, fuel accounts for almost a third of an airline's operating costs, up from about 13 per cent in 2001, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
With the world recovery in travel gathering pace, airlines and plane leasing firms are seeking to renew their fleets with more efficient planes, and the A320neo arrived at the show at just the right moment.
The medium-haul market was formerly dominated by the world's most ubiquitous airliner, the Boeing 737, now at a crossroads in its development.
The US firm has yet to decide whether to give the old favourite new engines, as Airbus has done with the A320, or to develop an entirely new airframe. It has promised to make its mind up by the end of the year.
"We continue to improve the performance of the 737," said Tinseth. "By the beginning of next year, we are going to improve the efficiency of the airplane by another two percent.
"We are leaving our options open. New engine, new airplane -- we will make the decision when the time is right."
Thursday was the last trade-only day at Le Bourget. On Friday and Saturday the deal makers will make way for tens of thousands of visitors come to see aerobatic displays and the latest planes.
AFP