Guardian Unlimited

Top forecaster says Britain would face long recession as key Greek politician frames crisis as people v capitalism

A Greek exit from the single currency threatens to plunge Britain into a second recession equal in ferocity to the record postwar slump of 2008-09, according to the expert responsible for the government's economic forecasting.

Robert Chote, chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, who was speaking to the Guardian as world financial markets staggered to the end of a week that rekindled memories of the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, warned that there was risk that a fresh downturn would do irreparable damage to the UK. Britain has made up less than half the ground lost when output plunged by more than 7% in 2008-09, and Chote said there was a risk that "you go down and you never quite get back up to where you started".

In a separate exclusive interview, Alexis Tsipras, the increasingly powerful 37-year-old Greek politician now regarded by many as holding the future of the euro in his hands, told the Guardian that he was determined "to stop the experiment" with austerity policies imposed by Germany. He described the tax increases and spending cuts as a "crime against the Greek people".

The leader of the Syriza party, whose success in last month's general election has led to political paralysis in Athens and a second general election, said he wanted Greece to stay in the euro, but was fighting capitalism. "On the one side there are workers and a majority of people, and on the other are global capitalists, bankers, profiteers on stock exchanges, the big funds. It's a war between peoples and capitalism ... it is the international financial system, and more especially banks, that are gaining most".

The head of the UK's OBR said the deepening crisis in the eurozone could force him to tear up his forecasts, made only two months ago, that Britain would post modest growth of 0.8% this year. "The concern is that you end up with an outcome in the eurozone that creates the same sort of structural difficulties in the financial system and in the economy that we saw in the past recession, and that has consequences both for hitting economic activity in the economy, but also its underlying potential," said Chote.

With economic output in the UK still 4% below its peak level when the recession began in early 2008, the prime minister and the governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King, have expressed concern in recent days about the vulnerability of Britain to the eurozone.

Chote said he was particularly concerned about the possibility that a second deep recession would leave permanent scars. "That means not just that the economy weakens and then strengthens again ? it goes into a hole and comes out ? but that you go down and you never quite get back up to where you started."

Shares in London closed down for a third week, with the jittery mood in financial markets pushing the FTSE 100 below 5,400 for the first time this year. German and French stock markets were also depressed, with even the much-anticipated stock market debut of Facebook in New York failing to lift spirits.

Greece's caretaker prime minister, Panagiotis Pikramenos, said the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had suggested in a phone call to the Greek president, Karolos Papoulias, on Friday that Greece hold a referendum on its continued membership of the single currency alongside next month's elections, in an apparent attempt to encourage voters to back mainstream parties who support the current austerity programme.

The German government said that no suggestion of the kind had been made. But the Greek government was insistent, and said that Pikramenos had rejected the suggestion because he does not have the power to call a referendum.

Merkel's finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said the eurozone crisis could last two more years, while financial market speculation that Greece's days in the euro were numbered cast a shadow over the annual gathering of leaders of the G8 western industrial nations at Camp David. Canada's prime minister, Stephen Harper, voiced his frustration at Europe's leaders, demanding tough action to tackle the crisis.

In Brussels, the European commission denied comments by Europe's trade minister, Karel de Gucht, that preparations were being made for Greece's departure from the single currency.

Meanwhile, analysts at Deutsche Bank predicted that the weak state of Ireland's banks could result in the former Celtic tiger requiring a second bailout, and in Spain there were reports that the government would call in Goldman Sachs to help sort out its banks after 16 suffered credit downgrades on Thursday.

In an echo of the months leading up to the Lehmans collapse, Mike Smith, chief executive of Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, said the turmoil in the eurozone meant Australian banks were being frozen out of money markets when seeking funds.

Chote said there were so many uncertainties around what might happen with Greece and the eurozone that trying to produce firm predictions was not "particularly helpful".

But the OBR has tried to quantify the impact of a disorderly sovereign debt restructuring in the eurozone on Britain ? and the figures make grim reading. Britain would be plunged into recession for two years, according to the OBR analysis, published in its most recent economic and fiscal outlook report. There would also be deflation and unemployment would reach almost 11% by 2013-14, with debt subsequently reaching more than 90% of GDP.

Chote said these projections were of limited value because the eurozone crisis could develop in so many different ways. "For example, one issue would be, do difficulties in the eurozone make it cheaper or more expensive for the UK government to borrow?" he said. "If it makes investors more nervous about risk in general, it might make it more expensive. If they see the UK as more of a safe haven, it might make it less expensive."

Social network giant ends day at $38.23 (£24), up just 0.61% from its starting price after share sale got off to a messy start

Facebook's first day as a public company ended with the company narrowly avoiding the embarrassment of its stock dipping below the $38 (£24) starting price, in one of the most frenzied share sales in history.

Shares in the social network giant ended the day at $38.23, up 0.61%, having soared 11% earlier in the day. A record 566m shares traded hands as the company joined the Nasdaq stock market where it is now valued at $104bn, more than the combined worth of Goldman Sachs and Nike.

Mark Zuckerberg, the company's 28-year-old founder and Facebook's largest shareholder, saw the value of his holding reach $20.4bn by the time the market closed.

The sale got off to a messy and inauspicious start. Early trading was delayed until 11.30am as the exchange systems seemed unable to cope with the scale of the initial public offering (IPO) and failed to send electronic reports back to traders and firms to confirm that shares had been bought or sold. After the market closed, CNBC reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking at the Nasdaq trading problems.

When trading eventually did start, more than 82m shares were traded in the first 30 seconds. The share price soared 11% before quickly collapsing to close to the $38 offer price.

Dealers speculated that Facebook's army of bankers had stepped in to stop the shares falling below $38, a move that would have landed the social network with a public relations disaster on its first day as a public company.

Sam Hamadeh, founder of the analyst PrivCo, watched the day unfold at the Nasdaq exchange. "It was stunning," he said. "I have not seen anything like it in 20 years of watching this market."

He calculates that the banks who underwrote the share sale stepped in and bought $300m worth of shares to stop Facebook dipping below $38, a move that would have marked Facebook as a "busted IPO".

"It doesn't matter so much to Facebook, they raised their money but
it's not a great start," said Hamadeh, who said he believed Facebook was worth $24-$25 a share. "And that's being generous."

Before the shares started trading the estimated price reached $45, triggering a wave of sell offs that Nasdaq could not handle, said Hamadeh. Nasdaq did not return calls for comment. He predicts that the shares will fall further next week. "The banks can't support this thing forever," he said.

For now the share price is not Zuckerberg's primary concern. "Of course the money means something to him," said David Kirkpatrick, author of the Facebook Effect. "But he's not doing it just for the money and he assumes that rather than focus on the money, he should focus on making sure Facebook does well. He is highly analytical in everything he does, extremely disciplined. He is not going to be watching that stock price every day, I can tell you that."

Facebook's stock market debut had begun with Zuckerberg - wearing his trademark navy blue hooded top - remotely ringing the opening bell for the New York-based stock exchange from outside his California headquarters as staff cheered him on. Forbes calculated that as he did so, he was the world's 23rd richest man ? two places above Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

However, the riches generated by Facebook went wider. At $38 a share Facebook created 88 people with fortunes of over $30m, according to Wealth-X, an analyst that monitors high net worth individuals. If the price reaches $43, there will be 265 Facebook millionaires worth more than $30m.

The sale reaped enormous rewards for Facebook's co-founders and early backers. Co-founder Dustin Moscovitz is now worth over $5bn. Elevation Partners, an investment firm that counts U2 singer Bono among its partners, holds shares worth over $1.6bn.

Facebook's IPO is the most hotly anticipated share sale since Google's in 2004. Google's stock started trading at $85 and ended the day at $100.34. Google's shares now sell for over $620.

As with the Google IPO, there has been a lot of scepticism about Facebook's ability to turn its phenomenal number of users into a business able to support a $100bn-plus valuation. Facebook's revenues were $3.7bn last year. Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, had revenues of close to $29bn and is valued at half Facebook's current value.

The social network now has over 900 million people on its service and will soon top a billion. For its fans, Facebook is the defining company of the 21st century. "His impact on the world will be as least as big as Bill Gates and probably already has been," said Kirkpatrick.

Kirkpatrick has spent many hours with Zuckerberg writing the only authorised history of the company. He said Zuckerberg had a "laser focus" on business and planned to spend Friday working rather than watching the share price.

"He really doesn't believe in paying attention to that stuff. He's much more focussed on product development, on penetration of the service around the world," said Kirkpatrick.

The sale comes amid what some are calling a new bubble in tech companies. Facebook's IPO follows a mixed set of share sales from other social media firms including Groupon, the online coupon company, and Zynga, the games firm behind Words With Friends and Draw Something.

Facebook itself has driven up the bubble, according to some, by spending $1bn on Instagram, a profitless photo-sharing application.

Earlier this week Pinterest, a social site that lets people "pin" pictures and content to create collections of interest, raised $100m at a price that valued the company at $1bn.

"There is a frenzy going on. I think this is a bubble," said Alan Patrick, co-founder of technology consultancy Broadsight. "Short term I can see that Facebook can be valued at $100bn on sentiment. People believe that it is going to make a lot of money. But sentiment doesn't last."

He said Facebook had yet to prove that it could make money on mobile devices, the fastest growing way in which people access Facebook.

However, the share sale comes in a week when General Motors announced it was dropping its own Facebook ads and said they were not working. GM is one of the world's largest advertisers and spent $1.83bn on US ads last year, according to Kantar Media, an ad-tracking firm.

Nigel Morris, chief executive of ad giant Aegis Media Americas, said: "We handle a number of clients who are advertising very successfully on Facebook. For others we are evaluating the right approach. The issue for Facebook is not whether revenues will grow, it's whether they will grow fast enough to justify this valuation."

Whatever the future for Facebook, its founders and early investors were certainly celebrating. Co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who is now worth over $2.7bn, congratulated Zuckerberg on his Facebook page: "Congrats to everyone involved in the project from day one till today, and I especially wanted to congratulate Mark Zukerberg (sic) on keeping tremendous stead-fast (sic) focus, however hard that was, on making the world a more open and connected place."

Eurozone set to dominate talks, with Obama caught between two competing visions of how to solve crisis

Barack Obama was caught between two competing European visions of how to solve the financial crisis at the G8 summit when David Cameron rejected outright a French proposal to raise ?57bn (£46bn) through a tax on financial transactions.

The eurozone crisis is set to dominate four days of intense diplomacy which began in Washington Friday morning and continued through a meeting of G8 leaders at the presidential retreat Camp David on Friday evening. Discussions will continue there on Saturday and onto a Nato meeting in Chicago.

In talks at the White House, only hours before the Camp David summit, Obama met the new French president François Hollande for a one-to-one conversation in which he explored the possibility of a new approach to the eurozone crisis based on a pro-growth, stimulus strategy. Obama has been pressing for such a strategy for the last three years and has a potential ally in Hollande.

The White House welcomed what is sees as a change in the debate since Hollande's election that tilts the balance slightly more in favour of a growth strategy.

The French president is proposing a EU-wide financial transaction tax (FTT) that could raise up to ?57bn a year that could be used to stimulate the 27-nation bloc.

After meeting Obama, Hollande was scheduled to meet David Cameron in Washington before flying to Camp David.

However on arriving in the US, Cameron said: "On the financial transactions tax I'm very clear, we are not going to get growth in Europe or Britain by introducing a new tax that would actually hit people as well as financial institutions. I don't think it is a sensible measure I will not support it."

Cameron pointedly backed Hollande's conservative rivial Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidential election and refused to meet Hollande in London during the campaign. However, the prime minister has now been trying to forge an alliance with the new French government to press Germany to do more to solve the euro crisis. The FTT is proving a sticking point between them.

In his meeting with Obama, Hollande hinted at a compromise over his election pledge to pull French combat troops out of Afghanistan early. The US and Britain fear a premature exit by France could also send other countries rushing to the exit ahead of the 2014 deadline for withdrawal.

At the White House, Hollande insisted he was standing by his pledge but left the door open for a compromise. He said he was committed to providing assistance on Afghanistan security but in a different way and this would be discussed at the Nato summit held in Chicago Sundayand Monday. It is thought Hollande and Obama discussed French troops switching to a training role.

Obama was looking for a good relationship with Hollande, hoping to enlist him as an ally in support of the US push for a pro-growth/stimulus approach to the eurozone crisis.

The two appeared to get along, with Obama teasing Hollande about having studied fast food. Hollande said he had nothing against "cheeseburgers", prompting Obama to add lamely that cheeseburgers "go very good with French fries".

The G8 leaders were set to discuss national security issues such as Syria and Iran over dinner night and aid for the developing world morning. But the bulk of the time was being devoted to the European crisis.

It is the first time a US president has gathered so many leaders at the relatively small Camp David venue. Most meetings normally involve invitations to just one or two others. With space at a premium, each of the G8 leaders has been assigned a cabin and they will gather for discussions around a communal dining table.

As well as Hollande, Cameron and Germany's Angela Merkel , there will be Canada's prime minister Stephen Harper, Italian prime minister Mario Monti, the Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda and Russian prime minister Dmitri Medvedev, who is attending in place of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Although there is little motivation in either the G8 or Nato for military intervention in Syria, Cameron is to call for more military observers to be sent to Syria. He is offering to send a senior Ministry of Defence official at colonel rank to act as chief of staff to General Robert Mood, the chief military observer at the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS).

In a speech in Washington that kicked off the weekend of diplomacy, Obama announced $3bn (£2bn) in new money to help tackle hunger, mainly projects to help small farmers in Africa. Crucially, however, the cash is to come from the private sector. There has been no announcement yet about whether there will be any funds from the G8 countries on top of the $22bn they committed in 2009 to deal with hunger over the following three years.

Obama said it was important the G8 focused on "the urgent challenge that confronts some 1 billion men, women and children around the world ? the injustice of chronic hunger". He added: "As the wealthiest nation on earth, I believe the United States has a moral obligation to lead the fight against hunger and malnutrition, and to partner with others."

Oxfam expressed concern that Obama's announcement "focuses too heavily on the role of the private sector to tackle the complex challenges of food insecurity in the developing world". It called on the G8 to commit substantial funds.

Fears 'pay-to-stay' scheme will drive thousands out of housing association and council properties

The government is introducing measures that could drive thousands of families out of social housing by removing any subsidy for their rent.

In what is being billed as a "pay to stay" scheme, Downing Street has swung behind plans to introduce a new household income threshold above which social tenants must pay full market rent. The government is expected to say that rent subsidy will be capped at a household income of £60,000, meaning, for example, a couple on £30,000 each could see their rent rise by about £70 a week.

The scheme, applicable to all housing association and council properties, is explicitly designed to make social housing primarily available to the poor.

The housing minister, Grant Shapps, has referred to the idea before, but Downing Street's embrace of the proposal means it will now go ahead with a consultation paper next month.

The government says it is necessary to remove an unfairness in the system and to allocate scarce housing resources more efficiently. Critics will say the scheme will give wealthier families an incentive to buy their property at discounted rates, removing social housing from the market.

The government has been accused of driving some poor tenants from properties in wealthier inner-city areas by introducing a higher rent, set at 80% of the market rent. It has also introduced a so-called spare room tax, so that under-occupying social tenants of working age are docked £14 a week for one spare bedroom and £25 a week for two. No tenant will receive more than £500 a week in welfare payments, a measure that will affect larger families on housing benefit.

The welfare cap is, in polling terms, one of the most popular policies the government has introduced, and the new £60,000 household income cap for social housing tenants is likely to win equally wide support.

A No 10 source linked the two measures, saying: "It's not right that high earners benefit from taxpayer-funded housing subsidy. Just as we have introduced a cap on housing benefit and welfare payments to make the system fairer, now we're acting on social housing too."

Government sources added that social housing should be regarded as a precious asset to be devoted to those most in need, not a cheap option for those who can afford competitive rents or their own property.

The government consultation, due to be launched next month by Shapps, will suggest a range of options for the threshold, with the lowest at £60,000.

Ministers have been looking at a range of proposals to make social housing more flexible, including the removal of so-called lifetime tenancies, replacing them with fixed-term tenancies. Social housing tenants can also no longer pass their homes to their children.

Government research shows that as many as 6,000 social rented homes in England are lived in by people who earn a combined income of more than £100,000, including Bob Crow, leader of the RMT union. At the proposed £60,000 threshold, ministers estimate as many as 34,000 social rented homes in England alone would be affected.

It is being stressed that no one would be evicted from their home, simply that they would have to pay higher rents.

The government claims the economic subsidy provided by sub-market rents for social housing is worth £3,600 a year on average, or £69 a week.

The total cost of this annual subsidy for those above the £60,000 threshold is £122.4m, and the annual subsidy for a £100,000 threshold is £21.6m.

Social rents are set on the basis of a formula linked to size of the property, its value and local earnings.

Labour has always argued that social housing should be for a mix of tenants and not seen as the preserve of the poor. The Liberal Democrats have curbed some government housing reforms, but could arguably support the measure as a legitimate restriction on middle-class welfare.

However, social housing has been increasingly taken up as an option by young professionals unable to afford to own their own home. The cost of the cheapest quarter of homes is now more than six times average household income and eight times in London.

The overall social housing budget was cut by more than 50% in the 2010 spending review, to £4.4bn, and the number of people on council waiting lists is now 1.8m, an 80% increase in the last decade.

In a report this week, Shelter, the Chartered Institute of Housing and the National Housing Federation said the government was failing on five of its 10 key indicators: affordability of the private rented sector, help with housing costs, homelessness, housing supply and overcrowding.

Former Oxford University student who became Burmese pro-democracy leader to make first trip abroad in 24 years

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy leader and Nobel peace prize winner, is to visit Britain next month in her first trip outside the south Asian state for 24 years. She will address both houses of parliament as a guest of the British government, as well as receiving an honorary degree at Oxford University, where she studied in the 1960s.

She will also visit her sons and grandchildren, whom she has rarely seen.

The visit follows David Cameron's trip to Burma last month and represents a possible sign of a rapid shift to democracy in the country. Aung San Suu Kyi is also expected to visit Ireland and Norway in week-long visit starting on 18 June that is likely to be a celebration of her personal courage and the shift away from repression in Burma.

Western governments will want to hear from her directly on how they can best foster the shift to democracy, and whether the military government is willing to follow reform to its logical conclusions.

She has not travelled abroad partly due to having been under house arrest for 15 of the past 22 years and partly due to her fear that if she left the country, the Burmese military authorities would not let her back in. She remained in Burma even when her husband, Michael Aris, was terminally ill with cancer, fearing she might not be readmitted. Aris died in 1999.

Aung San Suu Kyi, whose father negotiated Burmese independence from Britain, was released from house arrest in November 2010 and was elected to parliament. Her UK-based sons have travelled to Burma recently to see her.

Invited to Britain by the prime minister on his visit to Rangoon, she replied: "Two years ago, I would have said thank you for the invitation, but sorry. Now I am able to say 'perhaps' and that is great progress."

Aung San Suu Kyi gained a degree in PPE in 1969 from St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she is an honorary fellow. Cameron said he would be honoured to welcome her back to her "beloved Oxford" for the first time since she left the city in 1988.

He met her in Burma in the house where she was held under arrest for 15 years. He was the first British prime minister to visit the country since it became independent in 1948.

The American government followed the European Union this week by announcing it was suspending sanctions against Burma. On Friday night, Cameron, at a meeting of the G8 at Camp David, urged world leaders to make a commitment to ensuring that aid and trade benefit all the Burmese people.

Britain is the world's largest bilateral aid donor to Burma, but Cameron made clear that Britain would continue its policy of not giving aid directly to the Burmese government until further progress was made on reform. He will urge G8 leaders to make the same commitment in their final communique, and said he would promise to be held accountable for this commitment next year when Britain chairs the G8.

Acting on the advice of the Burmese opposition, he also proposed a new Commission for Responsible Investment in Burma. The advisory body would establish business principles when trading or investing in Burma.

The commission would bring together representatives from the World Bank and the OECD, companies and key figures who have campaigned on human rights.A No 10 spokesman said: "For decades, Burma has suffered under a brutal dictatorship. It is desperately poor, but it does not have to be this way. There is a government there that has started down the road to reform. The G8 needs to encourage that process so that we do not lose the opportunity for change in Burma."

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, lifted sanctions against Burma on Thursday when its foreign minister, Wunna Maung Lwin, paid his first official visit to Washington in decades.In a country of 60m people, experts claim there will be many investment opportunities covering energy, mining, infrastructure and tourism. The country has large gas resources, but little infrastructure to extract energy.

The International Monetary Fund has estimated Burma's GDP at a little over $50bn. Neighbouring Thailand, with a population of about 67 million, has a GDP of $348bn.

Some human rights activists have said the west is going too far in lifting sanctions, but there is also a desire to win western investment and prevent the country from becoming a client state of China.

Octavius Black, founder of Parent Gym, says 'dream' is to offer classes to all parents of children entering primary school

An important player in the government's trial of parenting classes has said he wants to give free lessons to the mothers and fathers of every child in the country entering primary school.

Octavius Black, a multimillionaire contemporary of David Cameron at Eton, said he wanted to introduce his Parent Gym programme nationwide after it was included in a government trial of free parenting classes launched by the prime minister.

Cameron said the classes should be taken as seriously as driving lessons and insisted the idea to train 50,000 parents in how to bring up their children was not an example of the nanny state but "the sensible state".

Black founded the Parent Gym programme, which runs in 22 schools in the most deprived areas of London, using profits from the sale of his Mind Gym "brain workout" sessions to corporate clients. His training method has been backed by the London mayor, Boris Johnson, and involves nine two-hour sessions for parents. Themes include communication, managing relationships, play and learning, parenting styles, rules and routines, and creating a supporting and nurturing home environment.

Parent Gym is one of 15 organisations that will deliver the lessons for mums and dads as part of a trial which is expected to reach over 50,000 parents. Others include Barnardo's, Save the Children and the National Childbirth Trust.

From this week parents in Camden in north London, Middlesbrough and the High Peak area of Derbyshire can pick up a £100 taxpayer-funded voucher for the service from branches of Boots.

Cameron said the classes would provide "clear, professionally-led advice on everything from teething to tantrums".

Black said on Friday: "Our absolute dream is to provide Parent Gym to every parent whose child comes into reception [class] across the nation."

Labour this week questioned the government's decision to include Parent Gym on the list of trial providers because of "the close friendship between Octavius Black, Michael Gove and David Cameron".

"It is important that we understand what discussions Mr Black had with fellow members of the Tory government's inner circle on this policy," said Kevin Brennan, the shadow schools minister.

Black's lawyers have said he had no discussions with Cameron or Gove during the tender process. Parent Gym has also said it does not intend to make any money from the programme and will provide the classes free of charge, donating the £100 voucher to local schools.

The Parent Gym coaches are trained in the Mind Gym method, which the company says is "grounded in robust science".

The government believes its parenting programme could save taxpayers money in the long run. "The evidence shows very clearly that if we wish to give each child the chance to fulfil their potential, the foundation years before the age of five are absolutely critical," said the Department for Education. "Support during this time is both one of the most effective types of intervention, and the most cost effective."

Academic research has suggested formal training for parents could be effective in reducing future social problems but there is a lack of long-term evidence.

A recent study led by the National University of Ireland involving academics from England and Wales examined the impact of parental training on 636 people involving children aged from three to 12. It concluded "group-based parenting programmes improve childhood behaviour problems and the development of positive parenting skills in the short-term, whilst also reducing parental anxiety, stress and depression". The cost of around £1,700 per family was "modest when compared with the long-term social, educational and legal costs associated with childhood conduct problems".

Attacks were beyond our abilities, says rebel leader, as officers who fled describe regime plots before blasts

Military defectors in northern Syria have denounced claims that al-Qaida was behind a series of deadly bombings in Damascus, contradicting the UN secretary general's assessment that the terror group is taking a lead in the insurgency.

The defectors were speaking before Ban Ki-moon's claim on Thursday that al-Qaida was responsible for a deadly blast outside one of Syria's top intelligence services on 10 May, which reportedly killed 55 people and wounded 372.

"A few days ago there was a huge, serious, massive terrorist attack. I believe that there must be al-Qaida behind it," Ban said at the UN headquarters in New York. "This has created again very serious problems."

The defectors, interviewed by the Guardian in villages in the Jisr al-Shughour and Jabal al-Zawiya areas this week, alleged that Syrian security forces had caused many of the blasts.

Nine defectors, some of them officers who had fled recently, relayed first-hand accounts of plots they had witnessed being planned or executed that were later blamed on "armed gangs" or al-Qaida.

All have provided details of the plots they say took place and are willing to provide testimonies to international investigators. They say they are reluctant to put their names to their allegations, fearing reprisals against their families.

Another man, who was serving in the destroyed intelligence headquarters known as the Palestinian branch, and who was injured in the 10 May blast, gave an account of regime compliance to his family and friends. The man, a guard at the headquarters' prison, had returned to his village two days earlier after receiving treatment.

"He told us that three days before the bomb the Alawite officers started disappearing and so too did all of the important prisoners," the man's brother said. "The cameras were also taken down and the important files were removed. The only people left in the building when the explosion happened were Sunni officers and guards or some prisoners."

The injured guard initially agreed to discuss with the Guardian his version of what took place, but promptly left the interview trembling and weeping.

"He knows the price we will all pay if he speaks out," the brother said.

A non-commissioned officer who fled the feared air force intelligence on Tuesday said he had been responsible for the removal of cameras from the street outside the Palestinian branch a week before the explosion.

"This was the most secure part of Damascus," he said in Jabal al-Zawiya village the following night. "Nothing can happen there without someone knowing."

He said that despite removing the cameras, he had had no prior knowledge of a blast. He did claim to have witnessed an irregular mass transfer of staff from another security building that was blown up in late December, the first of the alleged al-Qaida attacks on the capital.

"I was working very near that area that morning," he said. "They put an emergency car with a flashing light out the front of the building and there was a prisoner inside [the car]. It was impossible to get near the area for two hours before the explosion."

Another officer, who defected in February, said he witnessed a van being loaded with explosives in al-Mustama military camp in northern Syria. "They then put prisoners in it and took it into town and exploded it," the officer said. "For five days before, we knew [the explosion] was going to happen. But when I heard that they had killed the prisoners too, I left."

A fourth officer, who served in the air force intelligence branch in Damascus and fled in January, said he had seen a car loaded with explosives being driven from his building by guards who were transporting prisoners.

"They told me to go to a checkpoint near Midan [a suburb of the capital]. They said the car would come to the checkpoint and I was to intercept it. The guards got out of the car around 400 metres from the checkpoint and 200 metres later we stopped the car and arrested the men inside.

"I left the military after that," he said. "I could not take it any more."

Across the swath of northern Syria visited by the Guardian this week, anger at the idea of al-Qaida being responsible was evident among the Free Syria Army and locals. "Show me one man from al-Qaida and I will buy you lunch," said Firas Abu Hamza, a rebel commander in Jabal al-Zawiya. "There are no [Gulf] Arabs here helping us and there are no weapons coming in.

"This is our fight and our fight alone," Abu Hamza said. "We will accept weapons, but we will not accept al-Qaida. It is totally impossible in this community for them to be there without us knowing.

"Have you seen those explosions in Damascus? They are massive, sophisticated, beyond our capabilities," he said. "We tried to blow up a tank near a bridge last week with urea and sugar and barely damaged the tank. It is clear that a state is behind this."

Islamist cleric could be released on stringent conditions while courts take months to settle issue of deportation

The radical Islamist cleric, Abu Qatada, who faces deportation to Jordan as a national security threat, is to apply to be freed on bail at the end of the month.

The Judicial Communications Office said that the date for Qatada's bail hearing had been set for 28 May at the special immigration appeals commission in London.

Qatada, whom a Spanish judge once described as Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe, was briefly freed in February on the most draconian bail conditions ever imposed, including a 22-hour curfew.

But he was re-arrested and returned to a maximum security prison in April when the home secretary, Theresa May, ordered a new attempt to send him back to Jordan. The attempt was made hours before Qatada's lawyers lodged an appeal to the Strasbourg human rights court, which then blocked his removal.

The pre-emptive move by the home secretary prompted a Westminster row with claims that she had got the date wrong over when the deadline for appeals against his removal had expired.

However the European court of human rights rejected that appeal last week clearing the way for a renewed attempt to send him back to Jordan. The home secretary, who has secured assurances from Jordan that he will not face a trial based on evidence obtained by torture, has acknowledged that it will now be up to the British courts to settle matter ? a process likely to take months rather than weeks.

There is a possibility that Qatada, who has already spent more than six years in detention in Britain as an international terror suspect, could be freed once again on draconian bail conditions if there is no immediate prospect of his removal.

Conservative party co-chairman says race played role in recent sexual abuse case in Rochdale

A small number of men of Pakistani heritage believe "white girls are fair game" for sexual abuse, the Conservative co-chair Sayeeda Warsi said on Friday.

In remarks which place her at odds with the Labour MP Keith Vaz and some women's groups, Lady Warsi made clear she believed race lay at the heart of the recent sexual abuse case in Rochdale.

"There is a small minority of Pakistani men who believe that white girls are fair game," Warsi told the London Evening Standard after the jailing of nine men for their part in a child sexual exploitation gang. "We have to be prepared to say that. You can only start solving a problem if you acknowledge it first."

Warsi, who is Britain's first Muslim to have a full cabinet seat, spoke out after the nine men from Rochdale were jailed for a total of 77 years at Liverpool crown court last week for sexually abusing young girls. The victims, the youngest of whom was 13 when the abuse began, were passed around the group of men for sex after being plied with food, alcohol and drugs.

Vaz, the former Europe minister who is now chairman of the commons home affairs select committee, said he did not believe the crimes were a "race issue".

But Warsi, who was prompted to speak out after her father condemned the abuse as "stomach-churningly sick", took a different view in her Evening Standard interview. "This small minority who see women as second class citizens, and white women probably as third class citizens, are to be spoken out against," she said.

The Tory co-chair also made clear that Muslim leaders needed to condemn the men's behaviour. "These were grown men, some of them religious teachers, or running businesses, with young families of their own. They knew this was wrong. Whether or not these girls were easy prey, they knew it was wrong.

"In mosque after mosque after mosque, this should be raised as an issue so that anybody who is remotely involved should start to feel that the community is turning on them. Communities have a responsibility to stand up and say: 'This is wrong, this will not be tolerated'."

The intervention by Warsi puts her at odds with some women's groups in addition to Vaz. Speaking on the day the men were sentenced, Vaz said: "It's quite wrong to stigmatise a whole community."

Vaz's remarks were echoed by Marai Larasi, co-chair of the End Violence Against Women Coalition, who told the Guardian last week: "An excessive focus on some cases of sexual exploitation with a primary focus on ethnicity rather than the exploitation itself is misleading and fuels racist attitudes which ultimately won't help women and girls."

Warsi said she spoke out after her father Safdar, who arrived in Britain from Pakistan in 1960 with £2 in his pocket, told her to speak out. Over dinner shortly after the men were sentenced, Warsi's father asked her what the government was going to do.

The Tory co-chair recalled in her interview: "Dad then said: 'Well, what are you doing about it?' I said: 'Oh, it's not me, it's a Home Office issue'."

Warsi's father called on his daughter to do better. "He said to me: 'Sayeeda, what is the point in being in a position of leadership if you don't lead on issues that are so fundamental? This is so stomach churningly sick that you should have been out there condemning it as loudly as you could. Uniquely, you are in a position to show leadership on this.' I thought to myself, he's absolutely right'."

Warsi, who praised the British Muslim Forum and the Muslim Council of Britain for a "fantastic" response in the wake of the sentencing, said the authorities should not allow cultural sensitivities to prevent investigations involving minority ethnic communities. "Cultural sensitivity should never be a bar to applying the law," she said.

If the authorities failed to act in an "open and front-footed" way it would "create a gap for extremists to fill, a gap where hate can be peddled".

This contrasted with Vaz, who warned that the criminal justice system should not "dance to the tune of the British National party."

Warsi has recently faced criticism from Conservative MPs who believe that she is one of the cabinet's weak links. But Warsi shored up her position last week with a strong performance in front of the Conservative 1922 committee.

Coastguards recover body of man believed to be one of three fishermen who went missing after boat vanished in Channel

Coastguards have recovered the body of a man believed to be one of three fishermen who went missing, feared drowned, after their boat vanished in the Channel.

The 50-year-old wooden vessel, the Purbeck Isle, disappeared in choppy seas off Portland Bill, Dorset.

A Dorset police spokesman said: "The body of a male has been recovered from the sea by the coastguard ? at approximately 5.30pm today. This is believed to be one of the missing fishermen from the vessel Purbeck Isle."

An air-and sea-search was launched involving three navy ships and a coastguard helicopter, but they could find no trace of the boat or any wreckage until they found the body, which has not yet been identified.

The three men have been named locally as skipper David McFarland, 37, and crewmen Jack Craig, 22 and Robert Prowse, 23. Prowse's mother, Maxine, said: "I'm just listening to the news now and waiting. He's a hard-working lad. He has a lot of friends."

Coastguards are examining a sonar image of an object of a similar size to Purbeck Isle on the seabed 55 metres (180ft) down, taken by a survey ship. A spokesman, Fred Caygill, said: "What we have is an image from 55 metres down, but it can't be clearly identified. We had a survey ship in the area with a sonar and it scanned the seabed. It did give us an image from about 10 miles south of Portland Bill, but it is impossible to decipher."

According to local people the crew had been potting for whelks. Ron Brown, a skipper, highlighted the dangers, saying: "If you are pulling in pots and one gets stuck, it can pull the boat down and then if a wave hits you and everyone is on deck, there might not be time to raise the alarm."

Dave Pitman, another skipper, said: "They were working with whelking pots as I understand it. They were moving the gear from one place to another, which is a normal operation. We just all hope they are safe."

Andy Alcock, the secretary of the Weymouth and Portland Fishermen and Licensed Boatmen Association, said: "There was a liferaft on board and there is a chance the men are in that and have been blown up and down the Channel and are awaiting rescue."

The alarm was raised late on Thursday afternoon when the 11-metre (36ft) boat failed to return to port in Weymouth. There had been no word from the fisherman for nine hours since they left the harbour at 8.30am. Coastguards tried to contact the crew by radio but were met with silence. Two British naval vessels including the type 42 destroyer HMS York and a US navy supply vessel joined the search .

Cruise ship will be pulled upright by cranes on to platform, refloated and towed to Italian mainland for breaking up

The firms charged with raising the wreck of the Costa Concordia have set out in detail how they will refloat the ship in what is described as the largest maritime salvage operation ever undertaken.

The 114,500 tonne vessel, which capsized four months ago and is sitting on its side in shallow water yards off the tiny Tuscan island of Giglio, will be pulled upright by cranes on to a submerged platform, refloated and towed to the Italian mainland for breaking up. The operation is due to start within days.

"This is the largest refloat in history," said Captain Richard Habib, head of US salvage firm Titan Salvage, which has teamed with Italian company Micoperi to mount the operation, set to cost more than $300m (£190m) according to the ship's operator Costa Crociere.

"It's not impossible but it is unprecedented," said Habib. "The technique is standard but the next largest vessel with which we have attempted this type of salvage was a 35,000 tonne ship in Alaska," added Guidotti Alvaro, an assistant project manager with the salvage team.

While attempting to steer close to Giglio on the night of 13 January, the Costa Concordia's captain, Francesco Schettino, struck submerged rocks which tore a long hole in the port side, allowing water to rush into lower decks.

As the vessel listed, Schettino steered the ship on to shallow rocks, where it grounded and tilted slowly on to its starboard side, frustrating efforts to lower lifeboats.

During a confused evacuation, 32 of the 4,200 passengers and crew died, many wearing life jackets and trapped in waiting areas which filled suddenly with water as the vessel listed. The bodies of two passengers, an Indian and an Italian, have yet to be found.

"We hope to complete our sad search during the recovery of the vessel," said Franco Gabrielli, the head of Italy's civil protection agency, at a press conference in Rome during which the salvage plan was outlined.

Within days, the team will start building a 40m square undersea platform on the seaward side of the ship where the rock shelf slips away to deeper water. A massive panel of empty metal boxes will then be soldered to the ripped, exposed, port side of the ship.

Two cranes fixed to the platform will be used to roll the vessel into an upright position on the platform.

As the metal boxes tilt into the water, water will be pumped into them to help the ship's movement, while cables attached to the land will ensure the ship does not slide off the platform.

"The rolling of the vessel and the subsequent refloating will be the most risky moments of the operation," said Habib. Asked if he had a plan B should the scheme fail, he replied: "We think it is going to work."

Once upright, the team will attach another panel of metal boxes to the starboard side. Water will then be pumped from the boxes, prompting the ship to float. It will then be towed to an unnamed Italian port to be demolished.

"We aim to get it upright at the start of this winter and refloat in early 2013," said Habib.

The ship is punctured by the collision as well as by holes blown by divers searching for bodies. But the team will not attempt to patch those holes or drain the ship.

"We don't need to seal the ship since the boxes give it sufficient buoyancy," said Alvaro. "It's just like a cargo ship except the cargo is water," he added. The team will however remove the large chunk of torn-off rock which became embedded in the hull at the moment of the collision.

Habib said the team would monitor the waters around the vessel for signs that detergents and decomposed foods on board were leaking out. "So far, testing has shown the waters around the vessel are clean," he said.

A Dutch salvage company has pumped out the fuel tanks of the Costa Concordia, averting fears of a spill into the surrounding protected marine park.

After the removal of the 60 poles set to be fixed in the seabed for the platform, the team will replant marine fauna. "We will clean up the seabed," said Gianni Onorato, president of Costa Crociere.

He said 64% of the passengers who fled the ship have accepted the firm's compensation package of between ?10,000 and ?17,000 (£13,700). Six per cent had instead filed lawsuits, he added.

Captain Schettino is under house arrest, accused of causing the collision, multiple manslaughter and abandoning ship before all passengers were evacuated. The next hearing in his trial is scheduled for 21 July.

Onorato said sailing close to shore was "part of the package to help passengers see where they are", but added that Costa Crociere was using new software to check captains were not straying too close. Bookings, he added, were up year on year.

Joyce Banda's promise to repeal homosexuality laws welcomed by gay rights campaigners across Africa

Malawi's new president has pledged to lift the country's ban on homosexuality, breaking ranks from much of Africa where such activity remains a crime.

Joyce Banda, who came to power in April on the death of her predecessor, said in her first state of the nation address on Friday: "Indecency and unnatural acts laws shall be repealed." She described the measure as a matter of urgency.

Elsewhere in the speech, Banda said her government wanted to normalise relations with "our traditional development partners who were uncomfortable with our bad laws".

But repealing a law requires a parliamentary vote and, although Banda's party commands a majority, it is unclear how much support the move would have in this socially conservative nation.

Malawi was widely condemned for the conviction and 14-year prison sentences given in 2010 to two men who were arrested after celebrating their engagement and were charged with unnatural acts and gross indecency.

The president at the time, Bingu wa Mutharika, pardoned the couple on "humanitarian grounds only", while claiming they had "committed a crime against our culture, against our religion, and against our laws".

Mutharika died from a heart attack in April. Banda, who was vice-president, stepped in to serve out his term, which ends in 2014. She has hit the ground running with a cabinet reshuffle, the sacking of the police chief and sweeping reforms to break from Mutharika's autocratic rule.

Her audacious plan to legalise homosexuality was welcomed by the campaigner Gift Trapence, executive director of the Centre for the Development of People. "If that's what the president said, Malawi is going in the right direction in terms of human rights and meeting international human rights standards, and saying people are equal irrespective of sexual orientation," he said.

Banda has previously demonstrated her liberal attitudes on the issue, he continued. "When she was vice-president she was invited to address a group of religious leaders and she spoke in favour of including LGBT communities in HIV interventions."

Trapence said Banda's stand offers hope in a continent where homosexuality is criminalised in 37 countries. "It has come at the right time as the African Union is coming to attend a summit in Malawi. This sends a good message to the African heads of state who will attend."

Trapence said the gay couple whose engagement caused a storm, Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza, were no longer together. Chimbalanga gained asylum in Cape Town, South Africa, while Monjeza is serving a three-year prison sentence for theft.

"They will be happy at this decision," he added. "They will look back at how they suffered and were incarcerated and have a smile that at least they did something to influence the sodomy laws under which they were convicted."

Wapona Kita, one of Malawi's leading human rights lawyers, said he welcomed the president's announcement. "She has done the right thing. The repeal of this bad law is long overdue."

The law is "unconstitutional against international human rights standards", he added.

Undule Mwakasungula, executive director of the Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation, said: "This is good news for us as we have been advocating for these sodomy laws to be reviewed or repealed as part of all the bad laws. Now that president Joyce Banda has indicated that the sodomy laws will be part of the laws to be repealed, this is very welcome development."

In South Africa, the only African country with laws protecting gay rights, activist Mark Heywood said Banda would have international support. "I hope that she is persuasive enough in her own country," he told the Associated Press. "It's really important for other African countries other than South Africa to move in this direction. Symbolically, I think it is very important for Africa."

A report this week from Kenya and Uganda by the watchdog Human Rights First found that African homosexuals who fled persecution in their countries were abducted, beaten and raped in the places where they sought asylum.

It cited examples including two refugee women in Uganda who were abducted and raped because they had been assisting LGBT refugees, five cases of "corrective rape" of lesbian or transgender male refugees in Uganda and a gay Somali teenager in Kenya who was doused in petrol and would have been set on fire if not for the intervention of an older Somali woman.

Human Rights First, a US-based non-governmental organisation, called on Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, to help make sure that LGBT refugees gain access to safety and protection from violence.

Seldom-used law that put loyalist Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair behind bars in 1990s is used to charged 47-year-old man

Anti-terrorism laws used to jail top loyalist Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair have been used to charge a suspected republican dissident. The 47-year-old from the Lurgan area of County Armagh will face charges of "directing acts of terrorism" ? a relatively little used piece of legislation that put Adair behind bars for several years in the 1990s.

The suspect and two other men, aged 41 and 42, will appear before magistrates on Saturday morning. All three men face charges of conspiracy to murder, conspiracy to cause an explosion, the preparation of terrorist attacks and collecting information of use to terrorism.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said the charges "are a result of an investigation led by police into dissident republican terrorist activity".

A PSNI spokeswoman said the police had worked closely with colleagues in MI5 and the Public Prosecution Service to reach a point where charges had been brought.

The arrests in Lurgan centre on a suspected unit of the Continuity IRA, which has a small but active presence in the North Armagh area. The terror group was responsible in March 2009 for murdering the PSNI officer Stephen Carroll.

The "directing acts of terrorism" charge is highly controversial and has been criticised by some civil liberties groups in the past. Under the legislation, a suspect can be arrested and held on remand and then face charges on the word of a senior police commander from the rank of superintendent who will tell the court if the person detained is believed to be directing terrorist organisations.

Meanwhile, police have charged a further two men with a number of serious offences linked to the investigation into dissident republican activity.

The men aged 33 and 34 were arrested in Carrickmore and Omagh, Co Tyrone, last Saturday.

Both have been charged with possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, attendance at a place used for terrorist training, and preparation of terrorist acts. They are due to appear at court in Omagh on Saturday morning.

A 37-year-old woman and a 46-year-old man arrested in Pomeroy and Toome last Saturday as part of the same investigation remain in custody.

Chen Guangfu says Chinese authorities tried to make him reveal how his sibling escaped from house arrest

The brother of blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has told reporters how he was chained to a chair and beaten for three days to make him reveal how his sibling escaped from house arrest in the Shandong countryside.

Chen Guangfu described his ordeal in an interview with a Hong Kong magazine as his son, Chen Kegui stood accused of attempted murder for fighting back against a similar beating.

A team of independent lawyers who have offered to represent the defendant were dismissed by the authorities and told not to speak about the case.

Chen Guangfu told a reporter from iSunAffairs.com that local officials came to his home after his brother fled late last month from his home village of Dongshigu to the US embassy in Beijing.

"They put me on a chair, bound my feet with iron chains and locked my hands with handcuffs behind my back," he said, according to a transcript of the interview released to the BBC.

"They pulled my hands upwards forcefully. Then they slapped me in the face," he said.

"They first asked me if I knew what this was about. I said 'I don't know', So they beat me and slapped my face. Only on one side, not the other. And they trampled my feet."

He tried not to implicate others by initially claiming all the responsibility for the escape. But he said the interrogators seemed to know who had been involved so it was ultimately impossible to resist.

His wife, Ren Zongju, also described how officials attacked her son.

"They started fighting inside the house. So many people were beating him. His face was bleeding, and his legs. His trousers were ripped," she was quoted as saying. "He said to me 'Mum, I need to get out immediately'. We had 1,000 yuan... So I picked it up and gave it to my son."

The report is difficult to confirm. Journalists have been turned away from Dongshigu and neighbouring villages. But it fits with Chen Guangcheng's telephone statement to a US congressional hearing earlier this week in which he reported a "pattern of abuse" against his relatives.

The blind activist is now in a Beijing hospital, where he is being treated for colitis and injuries sustained during his escape. Under a deal between the US and Chinese governments, he expects to be given permission to study in New York. US authorities say visas for Chen and his family have been prepared. The Chinese side has told him that passports and travel permission will be ready in 15 days.

"I am not worrying. For sure I can get my visa within two weeks," Chen told the Guardian on Friday. "My worry now is for my family. The local police have confessed that they beat [my nephew] Chen Kegui so his fight back is just self-defence."

It is unclear which family members will be allowed to travel to the US with the activist. Although his wife and two children are certain to go, an official said there were also discussions about whether his mother might join them.

Chen's mother is now 78, and suffers from arthritis and coronary heart disease. According to Chen, local officials previously prevented her from getting medical treatment and followed her when she went out to buy food. But now, she is free to walk around in the village and chat to neighbours.

The activist says he is in daily phone contact with her, but that she does not want to go to New York because she is concerned about those that would be left behind. "She is worried about my extended family, especially her grandson, my nephew Chen Kegui," he said.

A senior lawyer defending the activist described to the Guardian last week how he lost his hearing in a beating by a senior state security official after he tried to visit Chen Guangcheng in hospital.

Former special adviser Adam Smith and lobbyist Frédéric Michel to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry next week

The two men at the centre of the row over Jeremy Hunt's handling of the News Corporation/BSkyB deal ? his former special adviser Adam Smith and lobbyist Frédéric Michel ? are to give evidence to the Leveson inquiry next week.

Lord Justice Leveson will also be hearing evidence next week from former Labour cabinet ministers Tessa Jowell, Alan Johnson, Lord Mandelson, Lord Reid and Lord Smith, broadcasters Andrew Marr and Jeremy Paxman, and phone-hacking campaigner Tom Watson MP.

Adam Smith and Michel will appear on Thursday. Adam Smith resigned as culture secretary Hunt's special adviser last month, after 163 pages of emails written by Michel when he was News Corp's head of European public affairs in 2010 and 2011 were released by the company to the Leveson inquiry.

Those emails, written over several months, appeared to show that Hunt's office was passing information about the minister's BSkyB bid approval process to the company during 2010 and 2011. Michel repeatedly described information he had obtained to his boss, James Murdoch, as emerging from Hunt himself.

The culture secretary denied there was an inappropriate relationship between himself and News Corp. Adam Smith resigned when it emerged that the bulk of Michel's contact was with him rather than Hunt directly.

Hunt said that the volume and tone of the Adam Smith/Michel communication could not be justified, but insisted that he oversaw the Sky bid correctly in a quasi-judicial manner. The culture secretary is also expected to appear at the inquiry.

In February Michel was promoted to News Corp's senior vice-president of government affairs and public policy for Europe, based on Brussels.

James Murdoch described Michel as the firm's "PO box" for correspondence between government ministers and the Murdoch empire during his Leveson inquiry evidence in April.

"On various levels, he was the liaison with policymakers," Murdoch said, describing Michel as a diligent employee. News Corp insiders saw him as a "James Murdoch acolyte".

Former Labour culture secretary Jowell, the MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, received £200,000 from News International after settling her civil claim for breach of privacy over News of the World phone hacking. Of this, £100,000 was paid to a charity of Jowell's choice.

Jowell will be giving evidence to the inquiry on Monday, along with Mandelson, who is likely to be asked about his dealings with journalists, editors and executives from News International and other national newspaper publishers during his time as Labour's director of communications in the 1980s, and from 1997 as a cabinet minister.

Lord Smith, another former culture secretary, will be appearing on Tuesday along with Johnson, the former education, health and home secretary, and Watson, the Labour MP who has doggedly pursued Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation over the scandal.

BBC presenters Marr and Paxman are up on Wednesday, along with Reid, the former Labour defence and home secretary, and Stephen Dorrell MP, who oversaw media policy as heritage secretary in John Major's Conservative government in the mid 1990s.

Also appearing on Thursday with Michel and Smith will be Lord Brooke, another former Tory heritage secretary in the early 1990s.

? To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".

? To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.

Bodies of six babies were found in suitcase in Bangkok hotel room, Thai police say

A British citizen has been arrested in Bangkok on suspicion of smuggling human infant corpses for use in black magic rituals after the bodies of six babies were found in a suitcase in a hotel room, Thai police have said.

Chow Hok Kuen, 28, a British citizen born in Hong Kong of Taiwanese parents, was arrested in Bangkok's Chinatown and was being held for possession of human remains, according to reports.

The bodies belonged to babies aged between two and seven months, Wiwat Kumchumnan, sub-division chief of the police's children and women protection unit, told Reuters, though other reports suggested they were aborted human foetuses rather than dead full-term babies. Photographs obtained by Reuters appeared to show corpses too small to have survived to term.

Some of the remains had been covered in gold leaf, said police, apparently for use in black magic rituals.

Chow was staying at a hotel in Khao San Road, Bangkok's backpacker area, but the bodies were found in a separate hotel, after police received a tipoff that infant corpses were being offered to wealthy clients through a website advertising black magic services.

The authorities said the remains were bought from a Taiwanese national for 200,000 baht (£4,000) and could have been sold for six times that amount in Taiwan, where it is thought they were to be smuggled.

Black magic rituals are still practised in Thailand, where street-side fortune tellers offer ceremonies to reverse bad luck.

Kuen faces one year in prison and a 2,000-baht fine if he is found guilty.

The Foreign Office said it was aware of the man's arrest, but would not confirm his name or any details of the allegations against him.

"We can confirm the arrest of a British national in Bangkok on 18 May," said a spokeswoman. "We stand ready to provide consular assistance."

Egyptians vote next week in first round of contest whose outcome is unknown ? not just in terms of who will be elected

Egypt's first free presidential election has been a long time coming. Ever since the 1952 revolution and the overthrow of the monarchy its leaders have come to power by military coup or in carefully staged polls whose result was always clear long before any ballots were cast.

Now a genuine contest with an unknown outcome is being fought at rallies, on billboards and leaflets from Aswan to Zagazig. Cliff-hanging drama, bitter rivalries and high stakes have combined into a riveting story that is being closely watched as the most populous ? and formerly the most influential country in the Arab world ? prepares to move to civilian leadership.

An unprecedented live TV debate between the frontrunners, Amr Moussa and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, was remarkable for the sheer ordinariness of their sparring about healthcare and campaign financing, rather than for any political virtuosity or verbal pyrotechnics.

Hosni Mubarak ? forced to step down last February after 30 years in office, and now on trial ? would never have locked horns with the two token opposition candidates who were allowed to challenge him in 2005, when he won with 88.6% of the vote.

Having played a pioneering role in the Arab spring ? its own revolution inspired by the events in Tunisia ? Egypt's fledgling democracy is coming to life amid bouts of violence and suspicions that even the election itself could yet be postponed. This is just one big uncertainty in what blogger Issandr El Amrani calls "an almost comically uncertain political transition".

Not least is the question of what powers the president will have since a new post-revolution constitution with his job description has yet to be written. Linked to that is the position of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (Scaf), guardians of the state since Mubarak quit.

Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and his colleagues have pledged to step down by 1 July after a probable runoff round in mid-June between the two candidates who come out on top next week. What role the generals will play is one of the biggest issues facing Egypt.

Strikingly, all the leading candidates have so far been deferential in their statements on the military and their jealously guarded status, secret budgets and economic empire. That suggests they will continue to wield considerable power behind the scenes, whoever ends up occupying the presidential palace.

Excitement seems to be greater for the presidential race than for the parliamentary elections, which produced a sweeping majority for the Islamists who were kept out of power under Mubarak ? 40% for the Muslim Brotherhood and another 25% for hardline Salafi fundamentalists.

That result, as commentator Rami Khouri argued, reflected "the citizenry's trauma of the previous decades of state dominance or even oppression, including large-scale theft and corruption". Parliament's performance has been underwhelming, not least because the military has clipped its wings. So, 18 months after the dramas of Tahrir Square, the presidential battle is seen by many as the one that matters ? a choice between stability and uncertainty, between head and heart.

Moussa, Mubarak's former foreign minister, comes close to the pejorative description of being a "fuloul" (remnant) of the old regime, though in fact he left it in 2001 to head the Arab League, where he acquired global recognition and a claim to statesmanship he uses to taunt his rivals as inexperienced amateurs.

Unabashedly secular, Moussa emphasises the need for urgent practical measures to tackle the economy, health and illiteracy ? still a shocking 20-30%.

At 75, he is the oldest candidate, an advantage when recurrent terms smack of the bad old days. "No one who takes office now will be given a second chance because expectations are so high," says the journalist Abdullah Hamouda.

Aboul Fotouh, an independent Islamist who broke away from the Muslim Brotherhood to run on his own, has proved popular and dignified, stressing that he is seeking to appeal to "all Egyptians".

Supporters range from liberals suspicious of any "regime remnants" to Salafists whose own candidate was disqualified. The Brotherhood ? still by far the best-organised and disciplined political force in Egypt ? is running Mohamed Morsi, an uninspiring figure whose main problem is countering the impression of cynical opportunism when the organisation reversed its previous decision not to field a candidate, especially after doing so well in the parliamentary elections. Observers of different stripes predict that one likely outcome is the Brotherhood ordering its members to back Moussa.

In any event, given the dominance of Islamist MPs, experts say the new constitution looks likely to shift from a powerful presidency to a French-style system where executive power is split between an elected president and a prime minister chosen by parliament. Under different scenarios, Khairat al-Shater, the Brotherhood's disqualified presidential candidate, could well end up in that job.

Egypt's sheer size ? its population is about 85 million ? and historic weight in the Arab world invests this election with special significance. Many believe that Saudi Arabia, angry at the US abandonment of Mubarak and unsettled by the phenomenon of Islamists entering democratic politics, would like to influence the result. Last week Riyadh loaned more than $1bn to Egypt's central bank to help ease pressures on the country's badly depleted foreign currency reserves. It is unclear whether the timing was entirely coincidental.

But ordinary Arabs everywhere have been reacting with enthusiasm rather than calculation as they watch the drama unfold in the country many know as Umm ad-Dunya ? "Mother of the world". Last week, as Moussa and Aboul Fotouh debated and scores died in suicide bombings in Damascus, one Syrian tweeted poignantly: "We're so late in Arab revolutions. While Egypt does a new, awesome thing, we are bombed to pieces."

Immediate worries include the risk of electoral fraud or a bombshell like a Mubarak acquittal between the two rounds, or some sudden manoeuvre by the Scaf. Tantawi, speaking reassuringly during a military exercise on Wednesday, promised a contest that would be a "model of a free and fair vote".

Overall though, the greatest danger may be of exaggerated expectations that will breed disappointment.

"Too many Egyptians think that 1 July is a magic moment when there will be a president and a new government," said one veteran observer. "It could take a lot longer than that."