What Would Durkheim Do?

Julia Gillard could return to power after one of three independent MPs holding key to next government announces support

The Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, today edged closer to retaining power when an independent MP said he would back her centre-left Labor party to form the country's first minority government in almost seven decades.

A bloc of three independents will now decide whether Labor governs for a second three-year term or whether a conservative Liberal party-led coalition forms the next administration after the country's elections, on August 21, failed to deliver any party a majority.

The conservative coalition needs the backing of all three independents to reach a 76-seat majority in the 150-seat House of Representatives, while Labor needs only two.

Independent Andrew Wilkie, who has negotiated outside the bloc of three, announced his backing for Labor at Parliament House after meetings with Gillard and the Liberal leader, Tony Abbott.

"I have judged that it is in fact the ALP that best meets my criteria that the next government must be stable, must be competent and must be ethical," he told reporters.

Wilkie said he expected that his fellow independents were now more likely to support Labor after figures showed the coalition had overstated savings from their election promises by billions of dollars.

Abbott said his coalition has the best economic credentials to govern despite the figures, which were released by the three independents yesterday.

Senior Liberal MPs have stuck by the accuracy of their figures and explained that the discrepancies with official calculations by government ministries were "a difference of opinion" on methodology and underlying assumptions such as future interest rates.

Abbott said the discrepancies did not compromise his negotiations with the three independents.

"There are a whole lot of issues in play here and an, at times, arcane argument about costings is by no means the most important," Abbott said. "The bottom line is that there are two competing economic records here."

He said that when Labor was elected in 2007, it had inherited $60bn (£35bn) in assets, which it turned into a $90bn debt through economic stimulus spending.

The three independents had requested briefings from Treasury and Finance ministry bureaucrats on confidential estimates of competing election pledges.

They said the questions of which party had the best economic blueprint, and which might have misled voters, were key factors in deciding whether to back a Liberal-led coalition or a Labor government.

The independents released Treasury documents contradicting Abbott's claim that Australia's bottom line would be $11.5bn better under his conservative coalition in three years, when both sides of politics have promised to return the budget to surplus.

The Treasury found the improvement could be as little as $900m.

• Australia
• Julia Gillard

Actor says in interview her husband was told nothing was wrong for months before a tumour was discovered on his tongue

Catherine Zeta-Jones has admitted having a hard time watching her husband, Michael Douglas deal with throat cancer, and said she is furious with doctors for not detecting his disease sooner.

Douglas, the Oscar-winning star of Wall Street and a veteran of Hollywood movies and television, said that he spent months seeking attention for persistent throat and ear pain only to be told nothing was wrong until August.

The son of actor Kirk Douglas announced on 16 August that doctors had found a tumour in his throat and that he would undergo radiation and chemotherapy, which he has now started.

"It makes me furious they didn't detect it earlier," Zeta-Jones told People magazine. "He sought every option and nothing was found."

Zeta-Jones, herself an Oscar winner for Chicago, has been married to Douglas for 10 years and the couple have two children together, Dylan, 10, and Carys, 7.

Douglas, 65, is now undergoing radiation and chemotherapy five days a week, every three weeks, to rid himself of a walnut-sized tumour at the base of his tongue.

Zeta-Jones said she can't stand the thought of watching her husband undergoing chemotherapy and radiation and loosing his strength as he battles the disease.

"I know maybe I should be stronger, but emotionally I just don't want to see that," she said, later adding: "The hardest part is seeing his fatigue, because Michael is never tired."

Douglas made his first post-announcement TV appearance on Tuesday on The Late Show with David Letterman, and told the talkshow audience that although his cancer was late "stage four", doctors say he has an 80% chance of recovery.

He told People magazine that he was optimistic about his odds. "I'm treating this as a curable disease," he said. "It's a fight. I'll beat this." But he admitted that he was uncertain about the future, and noted that "you just never think it's going to be you".

Still, after months of feeling the pain creep up on him, of having a dry throat and hoarse voice, the news of his cancer came as little surprise to both Hollywood stars.

"It wasn't a huge shock. I knew something was up. He knew something was up," said Zeta-Jones.

And while she is furious about the lack of an early diagnosis, Douglas seems more understanding. "Without having to blame anybody ... these things sometimes just don't show up," he said.

• Catherine Zeta-Jones
• Michael Douglas
• Cancer
• United States
• California

Bernanke led the economy through the tumultuous months of the most severe recession since the 1930s, as the Fed took extraordinary measures to inject hundreds of billions into the battered financial system

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is set to appear before a panel investigating the financial crisis to give his take on the meltdown and his views on potential systemwide risks posed by large financial institutions.

Bernanke led the economy through the tumultuous months of the most severe recession since the 1930s, as the Federal Reserve took extraordinary measures to inject hundreds of billions into the battered financial system.

And he said last week the central bank is prepared to make a major new investment in government debt or mortgage securities if the economy worsened significantly or if the Fed detected deflation – a prolonged drop in prices of wages, goods and assets like homes and stocks.

Bernanke's scheduled appearance Thursday at a hearing by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission comes as the congressionally appointed panel approaches the end of its yearlong investigation of the roots of the economic disaster. Sheila Bair, the chairman of Federal Deposit Insurance, also is testifying before the panel.

At a session on Wednesday the commission examined the danger of having banks deemed "too big to fail" and their potential to topple the financial system. The former chief of Lehman Brothers, Richard Fuld, testified that the Wall Street titan could have been rescued in the autumn of 2008, but federal regulators refused to help – even though they later bailed out other big banks.

Panel chairman Phil Angelides said there appeared to be "a conscious policy decision" by the regulators not to rescue Lehman.

Under the landmark financial overhaul law enacted in July, regulators are empowered to shut down financial institutions whose collapse could threaten the system.

Bernanke has said that a key lesson learned from the crisis is that the Fed cannot focus solely on the soundness of individual banks, and must cast a watchful eye on the health of the financial system as a whole. The central bank already has moved to conduct bank examinations that take a broader-picture approach, he says.

Bernanke could be asked by panel members about the Fed's handling of the Lehman Brothers episode and Fuld's accusations. Thomas Baxter, general counsel of the New York Fed, insisted at Wednesday's hearing that the Fed lacked the legal authority to provide a government guarantee of Lehman's obligations to its trading partners or other aid the firm sought. Hundreds of billions worth of collateral would have been needed to secure a guarantee of that magnitude, and Lehman did not have it, Baxter said.

Bair, the FDIC chief, has been one of the most vocal critics of the "too big to fail" approach that brought the government rushing in to bail out big banks in the crisis.

"Never again should taxpayers be asked to bail out a failing financial firm," Bair told community bankers in a speech in March. "It's time that the big players understand that they sink or swim on their own."

Bair took on a high profile and gained popularity outside Washington early in the crisis, as she pressed for more government intervention to help struggling homeowners. That opened a rift with then-President George W. Bush's treasury secretary, Henry Paulson.

• Ben Bernanke
• US economy
• Financial crisis
• Global recession
• United States

In a new book, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking argues that the universe is the work of physics, not God. Do you agree?

President Barack Obama meets with Middle East leaders in Washington before opening direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians scheduled to begin 2 September

Children dress as Hindu god Krishna during festivities to mark Janmashtami at a school in Mumbai

• Physics, not creator, made Big Bang, new book claims
• Professor had previously referred to 'mind of God'

God did not create the universe, the man who is arguably Britain's most famous living scientist says in a forthcoming book.

In the new work, The Grand Design, Professor Stephen Hawking argues that the Big Bang, rather than occurring following the intervention of a divine being, was inevitable due to the law of gravity.

In his 1988 book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new text, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, he said new theories showed a creator is "not necessary".

The Grand Design, an extract of which appears in the Times today, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have been created out of chaos.

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," he writes. "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

In the forthcoming book, published on 9 September, Hawking says that M-theory, a form of string theory, will achieve this goal: "M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find," he theorises.

"The fact that we human beings – who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature – have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph."

Hawking says the first blow to Newton's belief that the universe could not have arisen from chaos was the observation in 1992 of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. "That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single sun, the lucky combination of Earth-sun distance and solar mass – far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.

Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. Writing in his bestseller A Brief History Of Time in 1988, he said: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God."

Hawking resigned as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University last year after 30 years in the position.

• Stephen Hawking
• Physics
• Religion
• Science and nature
• Creationism

Officials to examine weapons inspector's post mortem files this week before making recommendations to attorney general

The attorney general's office is examining files relating to the death of David Kelly, a move which could herald a full inquest into the weapons inspector's death.

Officials acting on behalf of Dominic Grieve, the government's senior law officer, had requested the Ministry of Justice to supply reports of Kelly's post mortem examination, and now have them.

The move came after a group of prominent legal and medical experts called for a full inquest into the 2003 death of the scientist. A spokeswoman for the attorney general said the files had arrived in the office this week after being requested "quite a while ago".

Officials will examine the documents this week before making recommendations to the attorney general, who has the power to order a full inquest.

An inquest at the time was suspended by the then lord chancellor, Lord Falconer, ahead of the Hutton inquiry, which investigated the circumstances of Kelly's death. The inquiry concluded he had killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist. However, it applied a less stringent test than would have been used in an inquest, where a coroner has to be sure "beyond reasonable doubt" that a person intended to kill themselves.

Last month, nine experts including Michael Powers, a QC and former coroner, and Julian Blon, a professor of intensive care medicine, said in a letter to the Times that they believed that the official cause of death, haemorrhage from the severed artery, was "extremely unlikely".

"Insufficient blood would have been lost to threaten life," they said. "Absent a quantitative assessment of the blood lost and of the blood remaining in the great vessels, the conclusion that death occurred as a consequence of haemorrhage is unsafe."

• David Kelly
• Hutton report
• Iraq

In the latest instalment of the cartoonist's showcase, Ben Jennings turns his eye to the publication of the former PM's memoirs

Direct dialogue begins between leaders in Washington as Barack Obama heralds 'moment of opportunity' to clear way for two-state solution

The Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, begin direct talks in Washington today after Barack Obama launched his initiative to forge a Middle East peace agreement within a year, which he described as a "moment of opportunity that may not soon come again".

The US president said that he recognised the task would be difficult after so many failed efforts, and that passions and mistrust ran deep. But he said that the occupation and accompanying conflict were unsustainable.

"The purpose of the talks is clear. These will be direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. These negotiations are intended to resolve all final status issues. The goal is a settlement negotiated between the parties that ends the occupation which began in 1967, and results in the emergence of an independent democratic and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with a Jewish state of Israel and its other neighbours," he said. "We are under no illusions. Passions run deep. Each side has legitimate and enduring interests. Years of mistrust will not disappear overnight ...

"After all, there's a reason that the two state solution has eluded previous generations. This is extraordinarily complex and extraordinarily difficult. But we know that the status quo is unsustainable."

The president said that it was in the national interests of all involved, including the US, that the conflict be brought to a peaceful conclusion. But he warned that the US could not impose a solution or want it more than did the parties themselves. Obama also called on Arab states to back the process, saying that they claimed to want to see an independent Palestine, but did little to support it – his statement implying that the Arab states should move toward recognising Israel.

The talks were overshadowed before opening by the killing of four Jewish settlers in the West Bank on Tuesday. Obama said that "terrorists who want to undermine" the push for peace would not be allowed to weaken negotiations.

Netanyahu said the deaths reinforced Israel's determination to ensure its security is at the forefront of the negotiations.

Obama held bilateral meetings with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders, before hosting a White House dinner for all four. Tony Blair, the envoy for the quartet of the US, UN, EU and Russia, was also expected to be at the dinner. Direct negotiations between the two sides begin today at the state department with the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the US Middle East envoy, George Mitchell.

The White House initiative has been met with wide scepticism in Israel and the occupied territories over whether the other side is ready for peace, particularly given the rejection by hard-right members of Netanyahu's cabinet of compromises such as dismantling settlements. But it has also drawn warnings that the talks may be the last chance to agree a two-state solution before either a new wave of violence or the continued expansion of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied territories makes such an agreement impossible.

The talks are seen as a test of Israeli and Palestinian claims to be ready to finally forge an agreement. But they are also a measure of Obama's willingness to take the political risks necessary to keep the negotiations on track. The US administration has angered some of Israel's supporters by breaking with its predecessors in describing the failure to resolve the conflict as a cause of continued instability in the Middle East and a threat to America's national security.

Some involved in previous peace negotiations are concerned Obama has failed to distinguish his push from the failed efforts of the past. "People don't think there's an Obama-specific approach," said Daniel Levy, a former adviser to an earlier Israeli prime minister and an architect of the Geneva Initiative peace plan. "There isn't a way of going about it that this administration has made its own and has wrapped its arms around. You're seeing a very similar approach to what we've seen in the past – an approach that didn't deliver."

Levy warned that "the script for now is still being written more by the Netanyahu government than the Obama administration"; the White House would have to be very careful not to be seen as "Israel's lawyer" (as Aaron David Miller, a former US negotiator in the conflict, once put it) by exerting more pressure on the Palestinians than the Israelis, because it appears Abbas is in the weaker position and more likely to fold and make an agreement possible.

The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said an agreement was inevitable at some point. The question was whether it could be reached within Obama's deadline of a year. "[Palestinians and Israelis] know that, if not this year, next year, or in 10 years' time, it will be a two-state solution on the 1967 lines, Palestine next to the state of Israel. The difference in time here is how many lives of Israelis and Palestinians will be saved," he said.

• Israel
• Palestinian territories
• Middle East
• Mahmoud Abbas
• Binyamin Netanyahu
• Barack Obama

You report Tony Blair as "admitting" that the "intelligence Saddam possessed a WMD programme 'turned out to be incorrect'." It depends on what intelligence the former prime minister was reading (Iraq: the nightmare he didn't see coming, 1 September).

Saddam's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who was the former director of Iraq's military industrial programme, defected to Jordan with his brother in August 1995, and there was debriefed by US and British intelligence, alongside UN WMD investigators, about Saddam's weapons programmes.

"I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons, biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed," Kamel told them. "Were weapons and agents destroyed?" asked the investigators. "Nothing remained," he replied. This interview was even reported in the Guardian (1 March 2003).

When asked by the then Labour MP Llew Smith, who opposed the war, a few days after the invasion began about the Kamel interview, Blair said, "Following his defection, Hussein Kamel was interviewed by the United Nations Special Commission and by a number of other agencies. Details concerning the interviews were made available to us on a confidential basis. The UK was not provided with transcripts of the interviews."

We know, however, that Blair was fully conversant with the content of the interviews, citing verbatim extracts to parliament. He selectively told MPs a few days before the invasion: "Kamel also revealed Iraq's crash programme to produce a nuclear weapon in the 1990s. Iraq was then forced to release documents that showed just how extensive those programmes were."

Blair can assert all he likes that the "intelligence" turned out to be incorrect. It depends on what intelligence he chose to believe.

Dr David Lowry

Stoneleigh, Surrey

• I am always suspicious when journalists write of admissions rather than claims by politicians. So it is with Nicholas Watt writing that Blair "admits to shedding many tears at the loss of so many lives" in Iraq. If Blair was making a claim that diminished rather than enhanced his reputation, then to say he had "admitted" to something would be appropriate. But if he is making a claim that humanises himself, in spite of all that we now know, then to say he has "admitted" to anything is to participate in his self-exculpation.

Mark Elf

Dagenham, Essex

• That Blair didn't anticipate the chaos that occurred following Saddam's overthrow demonstrates his intellectual paucity with regard to any understanding of Iraqi history. The millions who marched against Blair's war were clearly better educated.

Ged Peck

Luton, Bedfordshire

• Iraq
• Tony Blair

Our consciousness paves the way for our spirituality, but there's little consensus

In finger-wagging style, Mary Midgley warns that "serious scientists know that their enquiries are endless; any answers always raise a swarm of new questions" (Serious scientists know that they cannot explain all the major puzzles of existence, 28 August). But who ever said otherwise? Well, I did apparently.

She quotes from my 1995 book, Soul Searching, selecting passages to back her assertion that I believe that science can provide "a sufficient explanation for everything that is or might be". What she fails to say is that in these passages I was describing how things looked to overconfident natural philosophers at the end of the 18th century, and how this set the stage for a Romantic reaction and in particular for spiritualism and psychical research.

True, I wrote that "two hundred years later this ambitious [Enlightenment] programme for a self-sufficient science has succeeded beyond the dreams of its inventors. Across great swaths of nature ... the major puzzles of existence have been pulled to pieces in the hands ... of all-conquering and -consuming scientific rationality."

But I went on: "Yet equally, two hundred years later, the majority of ordinary people have remained as faithful as ever to the earlier ways of thinking." And this was precisely my point. For most people scientific explanation remains unsatisfying. Indeed almost everybody has a Midgley – and a Newton – inside them, protesting that there has to be more to life, the universe and everything than we can ever know.

Midgley asserts: "Humphrey is convinced that something called science has indeed solved the mind-body problem." But if she had read further she would have found me saying: "All but a few contemporary psychologists agree that there will eventually prove to be some sort of satisfactory theory of mind-brain relationship … But at present there really is very little consensus about the form, let alone the substance, of this theory-to-come."

However, Midgley, it seems, has no interest in such a scientific theory anyway. For her, "our problem here is to understand the relation between our inner and outer life … and how to face life as a whole". Strangely enough, I entirely agree. In my own more recent writing, such as Seeing Red, I have begun to argue that the explanation for why consciousness evolved lies in its very mysteriousness and the effect this has on our world-view.

Since Midgley has quoted at such length from a book I wrote 15 years ago, let me answer with these words from the cover of my new book Soul Dust: "Consciousness, [Humphrey] argues, is nothing less than a magical-mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads. This self-made show lights up the world for us and makes us feel special and transcendent. Thus consciousness paves the way for spirituality, and allows us, as human beings, to reap the rewards, and anxieties, of living in what Humphrey calls the 'soul niche'." I invite Mary Midgley to review it.

• Religion
• Philosophy
• Atheism

Obama must push for a settlement that is fair to the Palestinians if the deadlock of weariness and obstinacy is to be broken

We have been here before. Once again, Israelis and Palestinians are preparing for talks aimed at agreeing on the two-state solution which has for so many years appeared to be the obvious, indeed the only, template for peace. Once again, Arab countries have been summoned to do what they can to help. Once again, an American president is putting his prestige on the line in the hope that American pressure on both sides can tip the balance. And once again, expectations are low.

The optimism which fitfully and misleadingly marked the Oslo-initiated peace process is a distant memory. The parties come to the table in Washington today in a mood that mingles weariness, obstinacy, ennui and despair. The leaders are weak. The Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has lost Gaza to Hamas, which opposes the talks and which also remains a force in the West Bank, a fact that it demonstrated in its deadly attack on a settler vehicle this week. Even though life in the West Bank is more secure and its economy more lively than it has been for a long time, Abbas can count on little popular support for the negotiations. What he could deliver or, more exactly, what he could deliver and still stay in charge, is far from clear.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, appears to have a dim perception that the settlement-led policies of the past have ceased to be viable, and some developing ambition to be the Israeli leader who reaches the peace agreement with the Palestinians which has eluded others. But he shows no readiness to make real concessions and oscillates between fear of his old supporters in the settler lobby and anxiety about alienating the United States, a recipe for prevarication and procrastination. His foreign minister, Ehud Barak, who bears considerable, although not sole, responsibility for the failure of the Camp David negotiations in 2000, and who may have learned some lessons, was talking this week of the need to divide Jerusalem with the Palestinians.

Perhaps that is a good sign, but it is hard to believe that the present Israeli government, left to itself, will ever be able to depart from the familiar pattern of wanting too much in return for too little which has vitiated negotiations in the past. So in the end it depends on what Obama can do. It is not only a question of whether he has the will and is ready to risk the political capital needed to push the parties to a settlement. It is whether he has the will to push for a settlement that is fair, or at least halfway fair, to the Palestinians. The temptation to lean harder on the weaker party is always difficult to resist, but, unless it is resisted, any settlement which emerges will not last long.

• Barack Obama
• Israel
• Middle East
• Palestinian territories
• United States

Country's chief prosecutor reopens case against WikiLeaks founder, overruling decision of Stockholm chief prosecutor

A senior Swedish prosecutor reopened a rape investigation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange today, in the latest twist to a puzzling case in which prosecutors of different ranks have overruled each other.

Assange has denied the allegations and suggested they are part of a smear campaign by opponents of WikiLeaks – an online whistleblower that angered Washington by publishing thousands of leaked documents about US military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan on 25 July.

The case was dismissed last week by Eva Finne, chief prosecutor in Stockholm, who overruled a lower-ranked prosecutor and said there was no reason to suspect that Assange, an Australian citizen, had raped a Swedish woman who had reported him to police.

The woman's lawyer appealed against the decision. Director of public prosecution Marianne Ny decided to reopen the case, saying new information had come in on Tuesday. "We went through all the case material again, including what came in, and that's when I made my decision," [to reopen the case] Ny told The Associated Press by phone. She declined to say what information she had received or whether Assange, who was questioned by investigators on Monday, would be arrested. An arrest warrant issued on 20 August was withdrawn within 24 hours.

Ny added that "it's not entirely uncommon" that such reversals take place in Sweden, in particular regarding allegations of sex crimes. She also decided that another complaint against Assange should be investigated on suspicion of "sexual coercion and sexual molestation". That overruled a previous decision to only investigate the case as "molestation," which is not a sex crime under Swedish law.

Investigators have not released details about either case, though a police report obtained by AP shows both women had met Assange in connection with a seminar he gave in Stockholm on 14 August. The report shows the women filed their complaints together six days later.

Assange is seeking legal protection for WikiLeaks in Sweden, one of the countries in which the group says it has servers. The Swedish Migration Board has confirmed that Assange has applied for a work and residence permit in the Scandinavian country.

"It appears to be highly irregular and some kind of legal circus," Assange told the Swedish tabloid newspaper Expressen.

"I was dumbfounded and concerned as to the integrity of the Swedish judicial process," he said when asked what his feelings were after the investigation was reopened. "I know what I have done with my life therefore I know that these accusations are baseless and disturbing," he said.

WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said it backs Assange. "We hope that he will clear his name and meanwhile the WikiLeaks organisation is going on with its endeavours," Hrafnsson told AP.

WikiLeaks says it intends to publish 15,000 more Afghan war documents in the coming weeks, a disclosure that US officials say could endanger innocent people or confidential informants.

Claes Borgstrom, a lawyer who represents both women, welcomed the decision today: "This is a redress for my clients, I have to say, because they have been dragged through the mud on the internet, for having made things up or intending to frame Assange."

Borgstrom had previously dismissed rumours that the sex allegations were part of a conspiracy against Assange, saying: "There is not an ounce of truth in all this about Pentagon, or the CIA, or smear campaigns, nothing like it."

• Julian Assange
• WikiLeaks
• Sweden

Hostage crisis at Discovery Channel headquarters in Maryland ends with safe escape of all three hostages

A man has been shot and killed by police after taking three people hostage in the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in the US.

Police said all the hostages had escaped safely following the siege, which began when a man entered the building in Silver Spring, Maryland, waving a handgun and with canisters strapped to his chest.

Officers spent several hours negotiating with the man, who was reported to be unhappy with the network's programming schedule.

Montgomery County Police Chief, Thomas Manger, said an explosive device detonated on the gunman's body when they shot him, and they were working to determine whether two boxes and two backpacks he also had with him were explosives.

The man, who is yet to be formally identified, entered the building at around 1pm local time.

Manger said officers were monitoring Lee on building security cameras and tactical officers moved in when they saw him pull out the handgun and point it at one of the hostages.

Police believe the 1,900 people who work in the building were able to get out safely.

While police are yet to name the man, a law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said authorities have identified James Lee, who has a track record of protesting against the Discovery Corporation, as the likely perpetrator.

Visitors to Lee's MySpace profile were invited to see "The idea I had to save the planet" by visiting a website apparently set up by the 43-year-old called savetheplanetprotest.com. It was unclear whether the length posting on the website was recent, but it railed against Discovery Communications at length, calling on it to broadcast "programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility".

Discovery Communications operates cable and satellite networks in the US and elsewhere, including the Discovery Channel, TLC and Animal Planet. The network's schedule includes a programme following the fortunes of a couple whose family included sextuplets and twins and another which follows the fate of a family of nine boys and 10 girls.

Adam Dolan, a sales director in Discovery's education division, said he was heading to lunch with a colleague when he heard there was a situation in the building.

He was told to go back up to the top floor, lock the door and turn off the lights. Eventually the workers were herded down a stairwell and told to go home.

Dolan said: "Everyone was very scared, but at the same time ... I think people were calm and collected and responded as one would expect in this situation."

• United States
• Gun crime
• Television industry

Apple announces social networking service which will display the music interests of friends via iTunes, iPhones and iPod Touch

Having cornered the MP3 player, mobile phone and computer tablet markets with the iPod, iPhone and iPad devices respectively, last night Apple announced its latest expansion – into social media – with Ping.

Ping will be integrated into Apple's latest iTunes software update and will enable users, or "Pingers", to follow musicians, friends and others to see details including what music they're buying and what concerts they're attending.

Steve Jobs, Apple's chairman and chief executive, said the information will arrive in a long stream of updates, similar to the way Facebook and Twitter work.

"Be as private or as public as you want. The privacy is super-easy to set up," he said adding that users can choose to automatically accept followers or decide on a follower-by-follower basis – similar sounding controls to those on Twitter.

The service is available immediately to more than 160 million iTunes users, Jobs said, and will also be available across the iPhone and iPod Touch ranges.

The feature is believed to have been based on the technology Apple acquired with the purchase of the former online music store Lala.com last year.

The iTunes logo will no longer feature a CD – mirroring the change in the program's focus.

Jobs unveiled a range of other upgrades to its products and services, including a new version of Apple TV – which will allow users to stream television programmes and films.

The company is also releasing a revamped range of iPods, including an iPod touch with front- and rear-facing camera, Jobs told an assembled crowd of journalists, bloggers and analysts in California.

Until now the Apple TV device was "never a huge hit", admitted Jobs.

The box originally allowed users to buy films and television programmes, but the latest version, which is smaller and, at $99, much cheaper than its $229 predecessor, will only allow the renting, rather than purchasing, of content.

Users will pay $4.99 for high-definition films on the day they come out on DVD, while the rent of high-definition TV shows will be $0.99, Apple announced.

"We've sold a lot of them, but it's never been a huge hit," Jobs said of Apple TV. The new version will be available within a month.

Jobs also introduced a new design across the range of iPods, including the latest Nano, featuring a rotatable screen and a new Shuffle which sees the return of buttons – its predecessor was voice activated.

The new iPod Touch will have front- and rear-facing cameras, the latter of which will be able to record HD video content, Jobs added.

• Apple
• Computing
• Steve Jobs
• itunes
• Software
• iPod
• iPhone
• Mobile phones
• Telecoms
• United States

Netanyahu says Israelis 'recognise that another people shares this land with us' in White House peace talks with Palestinians

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of his desire to "forge a new beginning" as the Middle East peace talks in Washington got underway tonight with a dinner between leaders at the White House.

"The Jewish people are not strangers in our homeland, the land of our forefathers," Netanyahu said, speaking in the White House's East Room before the dinner. "But we recognise that another people shares this land with us. And I came here today to find an historic compromise that will enable both people to live in peace, security and dignity."

Turning to address Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, Netanyahu said: "Every peace begins with leaders. President Abbas, you are my partner in peace. It is up to us to live next to one another and with one another."

Netanyahu, Abbas and the leaders of Jordan and Egypt made statements after spending the day in one on one talks with Barack Obama, ahead of a full day of talks in Washington on Thursday.

For his part, Abbas called on Israel to stop settlement building and to end its blockade of Gaza. "We will spare no effort and we will work diligently and tirelessly to ensure these negotiations achieve their cause," Abbas said.

Earlier, Obama had described the day's talks at the White House as "very productive," and urged the leaders of Israel and Palestine to "recognise this as an opportunity that must be seized" for lasting peace in the region.

Speaking in the White House's Rose Garden earlier in the day, Obama warned: "This moment of opportunity may not soon come again."

"The hard work is only beginning," Obama said. "Neither success nor failure is inevitable. But this much we know: if we do not make the attempt then failure is guaranteed. If both sides do not commit to these talks in earnest, then long-standing conflict will only continue to fester and consume another generation, and this we simply cannot allow."

It is the first time in two years the Palestinians and Israeli have held direct, face to face talks.

"Passions run deep. Years of mistrust will not disappear overnight," Obama warned:

"Too much blood has already been shed. Too many lives have already been lost. Too many hearts have already been broken. And despite what the cynics say, history teaches us that there is a different path. It is the path of resolve and determination, where compromise is possible and old conflicts at long last can end."

But Netanyahu later said a lasting peace would require "security arrangements that can stand the test of time":

"We left Lebanon, we got terror. We left Gaza, we got terror. We want to ensure that territory we concede will not be turned into a third Iranian-sponsored terror enclave aimed at the heart of Israel."

• Middle East
• Palestinian territories
• Israel
• Barack Obama
• Binyamin Netanyahu
• US foreign policy
• United States

Vice president Joe Biden claims in address to troops that Iraqis' 'darkest days are behind them'

In a giant opaque rotunda built by a dictator, then commandeered by an invading army, the final act of an 89-month war was played out with brass-band pageantry, and a little reflection.

Flanked by the outgoing commander of US forces in Iraq, Ray Odierno, and his replacement, General Lloyd Austin, US vice president Joe Biden marked the end of US combat operations in Iraq in a tightly choreographed ceremony at Saddam Hussein's al-Faw palace.

Biden said that the US presence in Iraq had divided America and proved "that war is the realm of uncertainty".

"They were seven and a half years that tested our mettle like no other conflict in recent American history," Biden said of the war that he had supported launching as a senator.

Addressing an audience of American troops and senior Iraqi officers, he offered an upbeat vision of what lies ahead for Iraqis: "I truly believe that their darkest days are behind them."

Privately, some of the Iraqi guests suggested, the victors were writing history perhaps a little too early. But if the rows of Iraqi military brass at the front of the audience had a different view from Biden, or Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who had also flown in, today wasn't the day to express it.

General Odierno, who had spent most of the past seven years in the shadow of his predecessor, David Petraeus, listed many of the headline moments in a war that he had been a part of, as commander of a division, then a corps and, finally, of the whole overall theatre. He was the first US general to hold all three positions in combat.

He named the ousting of Saddam – and his capture seven months later – the 2007 troop surge, and the security agreements that paved the way for a US exit.

But Odierno seemed most proud that only a few people had shot at his forces as they left earlier this month. "That defines a certain level of security," he said.

It will be 15 months before the 49,000 remaining US troops have left the country – until then they will continue what the US calls "stabilisation operations."

With combat operations officially over, US commanders are reluctant to send troops into harm's way, unless – as Odierno says – "something disastrous happens". US policy makers hope that the turbulent and fragile US relationship with Iraq can be consolidated by diplomats, rather than generals.

The ceremony was held in the palace where Odierno had based his command for much of the past few years.

But the opulence of the restored palace was at odds with its violent past: three circular floors full of soldiers and officers gazed down on the speakers who stood on a restored floor that had been shattered by a US bomb during the fall of Baghdad.

The palace was once one of Saddam's favourite lodgings, built on an inlet in a massive man-made lake. The ousted president's favourite hunting lodge was on the other side of the lake and his guest houses scattered all around its foreshore. This was Fantasia in the desert, a place that had somehow always seemed surreal, with thousands of battle trucks, Humvees and soldiers driving by.

Outside the command centre today, US Camp Victory seemed gradually to be collapsing in on itself. Giant staging yards, which not long ago brimmed with weapons of war, were empty. Blast walls lay on top of each other ready to be trucked away, and shop fronts looked abandoned.

Earlier in the day, during a tour of US troops still stationed in Ramadi, Gates underscored why the gains of the past few years may not be enough to assuage the war's critics: "The problem with this war, I think, for many Americans, is that the premise on which we justified going to war turned out not to be valid."

• Iraq
• Middle East
• United States
• US foreign policy
• US military
• Joe Biden

Spokesman says information about Honduran kept secret to protect him following murder of 72 people near US border

Mexican authorities have confirmed that a second migrant survived a massacre of 72 Central and South Americans near the border with the US.

A spokesman for the attorney general's office said a Honduran man also survived.

Authorities previously said that an Ecuadorean survivor escaped and alerted marines, who found the bodies at a ranch in Tamaulipas state.

A spokesman said information about the other survivor had been kept secret to protect him. The Honduran has offered "important information" about the massacre.

Authorities suspect the Zetas drug gang killed the migrants after they refused to smuggle drugs.

• Mexico
• Ecuador
• Honduras

James Lee, named as hostage taker at Discovery Channel building, had a bizarre record of targeting the TV network

James Lee, the man police identified as the gunman who entered the headquarters of the Discovery Channel and took a group of hostages, was a self-styled eco-warrior and author of a manifesto describing humans as "the most destructive, filthy, pollutive creatures" destroying the planet.

Lee waged a one-man campaign aimed at forcing the Discovery Channel to run programmes encouraging human sterilisation and wildlife preservation. In his manifesto, posted online and headlined: "The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet", Lee wrote:

Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

Among his other demands, Lee wanted the channel to stop "encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants" and that TV programmes instead encourage human sterilisation and infertility.

The Discovery network airs series such as Jon & Kate Plus 8, a reality TV show that followed a couple with sextuplets and twins, and 19 Kids and Counting, about a family of nine boys and 10 girls all born to the same parents.

In 2008 Lee was arrested and convicted for holding a week-long protest outside the Discovery Channel building in Silver Spring, Maryland, in which he hired homeless people to form a crowd, and threw around bundles of cash to encourage bystanders to join in.

At the time of his conviction in 2008, Lee was a 40-year-old identified as living in San Diego.

• Gun crime
• US television
• Maryland
• United States