MPs back new phone-hacking inquiry 

Pressure mounts on Andy Coulson, as MPs call on the powerful standards and privileges committee to summon witnesses such as Rupert Murdoch to give evidence

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch should be called to give evidence to a new inquiry into the News of the World phone-hacking row, MPs were told today as they agreed to refer the issue to the Commons' most powerful committee.

Amid calls from MPs of all parties for parliament to stand up to the "red topped assassins" of the media, the government backed a motion for hacking to be investigated by the standards and privileges committee.

Tom Watson, a former Labour minister, told MPs that Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, should both be called as witnesses by the committee following their refusal to appear at a previous inquiry held by the culture committee on the same issue.

The decision to launch the new inquiry piles pressure on David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, the former News of the World editor, who has repeatedly denied any knowledge of the illegal eavesdropping for which ex-royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed in 2007.

Labour's Chris Bryant, who tabled the motion after discovering his own phone had been hacked, urged MPs not to be "supine" in the face of allegations that their voicemails were illegally intercepted.

Earlier this week, the home affairs select committee launched its own inquiry into the practice of phone hacking. But Bryant said a separate investigation should be held by the standards and privileges committee because of the power it wields to subpoena witnesses to attend.

The committee should use that power and refuse to let witnesses get away without answering questions, said Bryant.

Earlier this year, the culture, media and sport select committee published a highly critical 167-page report condemning the "collective amnesia" and "deliberate obfuscation" of News of the World executives who gave evidence to them.

The report said it was inconceivable that only a few people at the paper knew about the practice of illegally hacking the phones of public figures.

Watson told MPs said the committee should call the "DCMS select committee refuseniks

Global economic growth forecasts cut 

Major world economies may be slowing faster than thought

Pope policing costs could hit £1.5m 

Pope Benedict's four-day tour involves more trips to different sites than any previous state visit, says senior police officer

The pope's tour of Britain next week will require an unprecedented policing operation that could cost as much as £1.5m, senior officers said today.

Meredydd Hughes, the chief constable of South Yorkshire police who is co-ordinating the operation, said no previous state visit had involved so many trips to so many different sites.

Pope Benedict, who is due to arrive in Edinburgh next Thursday, will travel to Glasgow, London and Birmingham over the course of his four-day visit.

As visiting dignitaries seldom venture outside London, said Hughes, the papal itinerary meant that the visit "needed an extra element of co-ordination".

Although he could not put an exact figure on the cost of the policing operation, Hughes said he expected it to total at least £1m.

"There will be changes to plans through the hurlyburly of running operations," Hughes said. "We will know the cost after the event. The total cost is £20m

Russian suicide bomb attack kills 16 

Vladimir Putin says attack in relatively quiet Vladikavkaz was designed to 'sow enmity between our citizens'

At least 16 people were killed today and more than 100 injured when a car bomb ripped through a market in the relatively quiet southern Russian city of Vladikavkaz, in what appears to be the latest suicide strike by Islamist militants.

Police said the bomber drove into the crowded marketplace at 11.20am local time, then blew himself up. The bomb hidden in the boot contained the equivalent of 40kg of TNT, officials added.

Investigators said the suicide bomber drove a Volga saloon which he bought on Wednesday in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia. The car's previous owner who was being interrogated said he had sold it to an unidentified man.

Officials said 114 people were injured, with 108 treated in hospital. The death toll rose to 16 when an 18-month-old boy died in intensive care. His three-year-old sister was critically wounded, the health ministry said.

Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, condemned the attack as "monstrous". The prime minister, Vladimir Putin, said the attack was designed to "sow enmity between our citizens". He called on Russia's substantial Muslim population to make a "decisive contribution" in the fight against extremism.

Russia is fighting a rampant Islamist insurgency across the Muslim-dominated North Caucasus. Bomb attacks and shoot-outs take place daily, with Ingushetia, Dagestan and Chechnya the epicentre of the violence. But the republic of North Ossetia and its historic capital Vladikavkaz have been relatively immune. Its inhabitants are predominantly orthodox Russians, lending a sectarian dimension to the bombing.

It was the most serious attack in North Ossetia since the Beslan school siege in 2004, in which 331 people died, most of them children. Schoolchildren in the republic were sent home today. Security was also bolstered in Moscow, with traffic police instructed to look out for vehicles with North Caucasus plates.

The blast follows another major terrorist strike against civilians in March, when two female suicide bombers from Dagestan blew up the Moscow metro.

Experts said today's attack may have been a response to the killings over the summer of several rebel commanders by security forces. "It appears to be part of a strategy by radical groups to attack soft targets and kill civilians," said Dr Cerwyn Moore of Birmingham University, an expert in political violence in the North Caucasus.

"Their aim is to destabilise the region and retaliate for federal successes in countering the insurgency in the North Caucasus."

Radical groups viewed North Ossetia as a staunch ally of the Kremlin and an outpost of Christianity, Moore said, as well as a staging post for federal attacks during Moscow's second Chechen war.

Moore said the choice of North Ossetia, and the timing of the attack, may reflect infighting within the insurgency. Rebel leader Doku Umarov stepped down in August and was replaced by Aslanbek Vadalov, a veteran Chechen field commander. Umarov has now ousted Vadalov again as head of the self-styled emirate.

Vadalov's supporters are believed to have been behind an attack last month on the home village of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's Moscow-installed president. These latest attacks could indicate that radical and moderate factions are vying for power within the hierarchy of Islamist insurgency, Moore said.

Vladikavkaz

MEPs denounce French Roma policy 

Liberal resolution with 337 majority rebukes Nicolas Sarkozy for deporting Roma and destroying their camps

Nicolas Sarkozy has been accused by the European parliament of stirring up racism through his anti-Gypsy campaign in a highly unusual vote against a leading EU country that has humiliated the centre-right dominating the politics of Europe.

A parliament resolution denouncing the French government's policy of deporting Roma families and demolishing their encampments was carried by a much bigger majority than expected

Manila police may have shot hostages 

Bullet trajectories suggest some victims were hit by friendly fire during botched assault on hijacked bus

Some victims of a botched rescue of hostages on a tourist bus in the Philippines may have been hit by police fire, the country's top law enforcement official said today .

Eight tourists from Hong Kong were killed and three seriously wounded after a policeman who had been sacked hijacked their bus on 23 August to demand his job back. The hostage-taker was also killed when police stormed the bus after a standoff that went on for hours and was shown live on television around the world.

The justice secretary, Leila de Lima, said bullet trajectories and the hostages' wounds indicated that some of the passengers may have been hit by friendly fire. She did not say, however, whether any of the shots fired by police were fatal and said investigators were waiting for a complete ballistics report before drawing any final conclusions.

The details of the investigation emerged as President Benigno Aquino said he had already apologised for the attack and was focusing on easing tensions with China and Hong Kong, where officials criticised the handling of the day-long crisis.

"Let me just say that this incident will not define this administration," Aquino said in a televised news conference.

Aquino, facing his first major test barely two months after taking office, said he would concentrate on preventing a repeat of the incident. The public and the media have questioned why the president wasn't more visible and involved.

"The first thing I will admit is I am not perfect and I can learn," Aquino said. He later went to a restaurant near the downtown Manila park where the hostages were held to meet officials, but said he did not want to be "backseat driving" or looking over the shoulders of those handling the crisis.

Aquino said that there was a point during the haphazard assault on the bus when he lost patience with police commandos. "Every mistake that I saw, I pointed out. That was perhaps my way of being 'hands on."

He said a police special action force trained for hostage rescue had not been deployed as promised. Instead, a local Manila police Swat team was used.

Television footage showed that the team was unprepared and took about an hour to break into the bus instead of just seconds, Aquino said.

The Chinese embassy said in it expected the Philippines to come up with "a comprehensive and fair report, which tells the truth [and] upholds justice".

Castro: Communism 'doesn't work' 

Former Cuban president says Marxist model 'doesn't even work for us' in offhand remark to US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg

It was a casual remark over a lunch of salad, fish and red wine but future historians are likely to parse and ponder every word: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us any more."

Fidel Castro's nine-word confession, dropped into conversation with a visiting US journalist and policy analyst, undercuts half a century of thundering revolutionary certitude about Cuban socialism.

That the island's economy is a disaster is hardly news but that the micro-managing "maximum leader" would so breezily acknowledge it has astonished observers.

Towards the end of a long, relaxed lunch in Havana, Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine, asked Castro if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting. The reply left him dumbfounded. "Did the leader of the revolution just say, in essence, 'Never mind'?" Goldberg wrote on his blog.

The 84-year-old retired president did not elaborate but the implication, according to Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert from the Council on Foreign Relations who also attended the lunch, was that the state had too big a role in the economy.

Raúl Castro has been saying the same thing in public and private since succeeding his older brother two years ago. With infrastructure crumbling, food shortages acute and an average monthly salary of just $25 (£16), it has become apparent that near-total state control of the economy does not work.

But for Fidel to acknowledge the fact could be compared to Napoleon musing that the march on Moscow was not, on reflection, a great success.

"Frankly, I have been somewhat amazed by Fidel's new frankness," said Stephen Wilkinson, a Cuba expert at the London Metropolitan University. "This is the latest of a series of recent utterances that strike me as being indicative of a change in the old man's character."

The remark should not, however, be interpreted as a condemnation of socialism, added Wilkinson. "That is clearly not what he means, but it is an acknowledgement that the way in which the Cuban system is organised has to change. It is an implicit indication also that he has abdicated governing entirely to Raúl, who has argued this position for some time. We can now expect a lot more changes and perhaps more rapid changes as a consequence."

Raúl has said Cuba cannot blame the decades-old US embargo for all its economic ills and that serious reforms are needed. Fidel's statement could bolster the president's behind-the-scenes tussle with apparatchiks resisting change, said Sweig.

Agriculture has been a big disappointment. The lush Caribbean island of 11 million people could be a major food exporter but central planning and state-run co-operatives have produced chronic shortages, prompting an old, bitter joke that the revolution's three biggest failures are breakfast, lunch and dinner. Raúl's reforms are not going well: food production fell 7.5% in the first half of the year.

Once propped up by the Soviet Union, Cuba's lifeline is now cheap oil from Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez considers Fidel a mentor.

Chávez swiftly followed another surprise statement of Castro's

British journalist freed in Pakistan 

Asad Qureshi was working on a Channel 4 documentary in March when he was taken by the Taliban in North Waziristan

A British journalist held hostage by the Taliban in Pakistan's tribal belt for almost six months, has been released, the British high commission in Islamabad announced today.

"We can confirm that Asad Qureshi has been released and our consular team are providing him with assistance," a high commission spokesman said.

Qureshi was working for an independent production company on a documentary commissioned by Channel 4 when he was abducted in North Waziristan on 26 March. Also kidnapped were two retired Pakistani intelligence officers, one of whom, Khalid Khawaja, was subsequently beheaded.

The whereabouts of the other, Sultan Amir Tarar, are unknown. He was last seen in a hostage video released on 26 July.

Qureshi, who also has Pakistani nationality, reached Islamabad last night where he was reunited with his family and debriefed by British officials.

Sources close to negotiations said his release had been directly brokered by Qureshi's relatives.

The kidnappers had demanded a ransom of $10m (£6.5m) and the release of several Taliban prisoners in return for Qureshi. It was not clear whether any of their demands had been met.

The Guardian and other media organisations have not previously reported Qureshi's relationship with Channel 4, which the station feared would hinder efforts to secure his release.

In March, Qureshi seemed to be in good company when he travelled into the tribal belt with Khawaja and Tarar, a former ISI officer better known as "Colonel Imam", who were two of Pakistan's most prominent fundamentalist sympathisers.

The group's intermediary was "Usman Punjabi", a militant leader who promised access to the main Tehrik-i-Taliban group and its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud.

The US government, which accuses Mehsud of orchestrating a suicide attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan that killed seven spies last December, added him to its list of "specially designated global terrorists" on 1 September.

Khawaja and Tarar's militant links failed them, however, when they were kidnapped by a group calling itself Asian Tigers. Tribal sources said it was a front for Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a vicious sectarian group that has developed strong links to the Taliban in recent years.

In April Khawaja appeared in a video, in which he claimed to have continuing links to the ISI and CIA and to have betrayed extremist militants during the 2007 Red Mosque siege in Islamabad. Khawaja was under clear pressure when making the statement.

Days later his body was found in a ditch near the town of Mir Ali in North Waziristan with a warning note to other "American spies".

The killing hastened efforts to free Qureshi and Imam by their relatives, Channel 4, the ISI and a delegation from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam religious party that held talks with the militants.

There were also unconfirmed approaches by Afghan Taliban to secure the release of Tarar, a legendary figure in Pakistani intelligence sometimes dubbed the "father of the Taliban" for his role in nurturing the militant movement in the 1990s, when he was an ISI officer stationed in western Afghanistan.

The Pakistani and Afghan Taliban are linked, but operate separately. Tarar was last seen pleading for his life in the July 26 video. At Tarar's home in Rawalpindi a woman who identified herself as his daughter said the family had "no idea" about his location or condition. "We still don't know. We have no contact with them," she said.

N Korea awaits next Kim off the rank 

Dictator Kim Jong-il apparently too ill to hold party congress where he is expected to anoint son Kim Jong-un as next leader

North Korea has marked its 62nd anniversary today amid speculation that its dictator, Kim Jong-il, is not well enough to open a rare meeting of ruling party members that could see his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, effectively named the country's leader in waiting.

As North Koreans made pilgrimages to a giant statue of the country's founder, Kim Il-sung, Korea watchers speculated on the precise timing of the congress, the Korean Workers' party's first major gathering for 30 years.

Some had expected the meeting to begin early this month, but new reports from South Korea suggested it had been postponed due to Kim Jong-il's health. The 68-year-old is widely believed to have had a stroke in 2008 and is said to be suffering from kidney trouble and diabetes.

Open Radio for North Korea, a Seoul-based group with a network of informers in the north, attributed the apparent delay to the start of the meeting to Kim Jong-il's physical condition.

"There is no other reason," the station's president, Ha Tae-Keung, told AP. "He has to be in the conference at least five hours, even though he will be sitting most of time. I think he's trying to find a day when he is well enough to do that."

Other groups that monitor the north said the problem could be logistical, with the arrival of delegates hampered by recent floods that have reportedly blocked roads and affected rail services.

Kim had reportedly planned to name Jong-un as his successor in 2012, the centenary of the birth of his own father, Kim Il-sung, but was forced by ill health to speed up the process.

The secretive regime is unlikely to make a formal announcement about the succession: the clearest sign that Jong-un, who is believed to be 27 or 28, has been anointed the third member of the Kim dynasty to rule the communist state will come when, as many expect, he is named to a senior party position.

Jong-un's father took the first steps to power when he was given a senior position in the party at the last congress, in 1980, although he did not become leader until Kim Il-sung's sudden death from a heart attack in 1994.

Local party representatives have been arriving in the capital, Pyongyang, but reports by monitors in South Korea say there is no sign the meeting has started.

An official from the General Association of Korean Residents in Japan, a pro-Pyongyang organisation in Tokyo, told the Guardian that the congress should begin within days. "We have heard nothing to indicate that it has already started," he said. "I expect it will begin by the 15th of this month."

A resident of Pyongyang interviewed by Associated Press Television News suggested the party had decided to open the meeting shortly after the anniversary.

The broadcaster showed footage of soldiers and civilians, including women in traditional dress, bowing and offering floral tributes before a giant statue of Kim Il-sung, while party officials paid homage at a museum in the capital where his embalmed body lies in state.

Giant billboards have appeared across the city describing the congress as an opportunity to make the country's "history shine forever".

The party's newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, urged the country's 24 million people to support Kim Jong-il's military-first policy, while state television broadcast patriotic songs and referred to him as a "great, friendly general".

The US said it was monitoring the transition of power in Pyongyang and again urged North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programme. The north walked away from six-party nuclear talks in April 2009 after the UN imposed sanctions in response to a long-range missile test.

The American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said Washington was looking to China, North Korea's only ally, to lead efforts to restart negotiations and "convince whoever's in leadership in North Korea that their future would be far better served by denuclearising".

The US navy, meanwhile, has said it is on heightened alert as North Korea appears to enter a period of political change. "As we go into a period of uncertainty it would be best for us to be ready and to be prepared for any contingency," Admiral Patrick Walsh, commander of the US Pacific fleet, said in Tokyo.

Tensions in the region have increased since the March sinking of a South Korean naval vessel by a North Korean torpedo. Some analysts believe the attack, in which 46 sailors died, was part of attempts by Kim Jong-il to bolster domestic support as he prepares to groom Kim Jong-un for power.

Gay kiss South Africans in car crash 

One dead, the other seriously injured in crash one month after moment of passion was controversially published in newspaper

Theirs was a kiss that stunned a conservative town. When a moment of passion between two men was published on a newspaper front page, it provoked fierce debate in one of South Africa's oldest communities.

In a single photograph Bjorn Czepan and Mark Dean Brown became unwitting symbols for tolerance and gay rights at the predominantly Afrikaner, rugby-playing Stellenbosch University.

Just a month later, there is a tragic postscript. Czepan is dead and Brown is critically ill in hospital after a car crash.

The students were involved in an accident in Woodstock, a suburb of Cape Town, last week, the Cape Times reported. Czepan, from Germany, was killed and Brown is now on a ventilator at the Netcare Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital.

The hospital said a third student, Brian Kline, was admitted late last Thursday night after the crash. Brown and Kline were critical but stable.

The Cape Town University couple's fleeting moment of fame came at last month's annual Soen in die Laan (Kiss in the Avenue) event at the nearby university, when lesbian and gay students decided to join the traditionally heterosexual event.

The photograph was published on the front page of the student newspaper Die Matie, triggering furious debate on social networking sites. Copies were torn up or defaced in protest but there were supportive comments from gay students.

At the time Vanessa Smeets, the paper's picture editor, told the Christian Science Monitor : "We knew it would be controversial, but not this level of reaction, which has been overwhelming. We had planned to use a kiss by an interracial couple but we didn't in the end and settled for this one after checking it was OK."

She said reactions had been mixed. "Most women seem OK, but a lot of Afrikaans men and African men were very unhappy. Some have been using the paper as dart boards, tearing them up."

The image caught the attention of South Africa's lesbian and gay community. Marlow Valentine, community engagement and empowerment manager at the Triangle Project in Cape Town, said today: "It did stir a lot of conversations and for me that is always a plus.

"It was one of those articles that challenge heteronormative ideas. It was a same sex couple expressing their pleasure and joy and love for each other. It is nothing out of the ordinary for someone who is gay or lesbian."

Valentine said the accident was a shock. "It is a sad day when anyone dies young with their life ahead of them. It is ironic that they made this statement just before the accident. You wonder if it was divine providence.

"Stellenbosch is a very conservative town and doesn't like anything out of the ordinary. From a fundamentalist point of view people would say this was punishment. But my view of God is not one of punity.

"I hope people will remember them as a couple who had the guts to stand up and challenge the status quo; that's a positive, not a negative. If articles like that stimulate positive conversations, then the action and the picture were not in vain."

The Cape Times reported that Brown's grandmother Elizabeth flew to the hospital from Pretoria when she heard about the accident. She told the paper she knew nothing about the controversial photograph.

"I don't care much about any of those things," she was quoted as saying. "All I want is for him to get better. I have hardly spoken to him because he is sedated most of the time."

Matthew Gardiner, a friend of Czepan, told the Cape Times: "Bjorn couldn't understand the Soen in die Laan situation could make so much of an impact, but he was also very proud that he had been able to help a lot of people come to terms with their sexuality through that kiss."

Pablo Larraín on Golden Lion contender Post Mortem 

This week Jason Solomons reports from the 67th Venice film festival, where he meets Chilean director Pablo Larraín and discovers more about his film Post Mortem, hotly-tipped for one of the top gongs.

Jason is joined on the Lido by the Guardian's Xan Brooks and Variety film critic Leslie Felperin to sum up this year's festival, battered by ferocious wind and rain but still impressing the critics with its wide range of movies.

Back in the UK, Jason spoke to Stephen Frears about his foray into rural comedy with Tamara Drewe. Frears discusses his admiration for farce in cinema and how he's using high-cut denim shorts to beat Hollywood at its own game.

Tahir Shah's guide to Casablanca 

Author Tahir Shah gives Marcel Theroux an insider's guide to his home city of Casablanca

Venice film review: The Town 

As Ben Affleck and bro vie for attention in Venice, the older one's brawny cops-and-robbers thriller leaves no cliche untrampled

The Affleck brothers

Should I speculate to accumulate? 

I need to upgrade my camera in order to increase my earnings to pay off my debt, but it will use up the remainder of my credit limit. What is a debtor to do?

Work investment. Work investment. Work investment. I can say it a hundred times and my wife will have a go at me for giving in to gadget lust.

Fact is, I need to upgrade the old kit because that's what the market demands. If I'm getting less wedding photography work it's because people are plumping for photographers who can offer the fully monty: bells, whistles and video too. But I can't offer the video because my trusty old Canon doesn't do the latest format of big-screen HD footage.

It certainly makes sense from a diversification point of view. If I don't get a photography booking from a prospective client I can at least wangle a straight video shoot. It's a justifiable business outlay, straight-line depreciation

Guide to dance: Alvin Ailey 

Ailey's American Dance Theater gave black choreography identity and emotional presence

Hugh Muir 

The mayor of London is cuddling up to Ed Balls to distance himself from the coalition's cuts

Seasonal food: blackberries 

They're not real berries and not always black. This is our guide to finding, storing, cooking and eating blackberries

The blackberry has been foraged and enjoyed for a very long time, at least 8,000 years according to the archaeological evidence. They are more highly prized in western Europe than anywhere else in the world, and collected and eaten most enthusiastically of all in Britain, where blackberrying occupies a special cultural niche as a uniquely rewarding leisure activity.

There are now as many as 2,000 varieties of Rubus fruticosus worldwide, if you count the naturally occurring hybrids and commercial cultivars, and none of them produce true berries. Instead, they are "aggregate fruits", agglomerations of individual berries known as drupelets.

The family also includes raspberries, and it's more difficult than you might think to tell the two apart. There are black raspberries and red blackberries, and the only way to be certain is to pick one; the blackberry will come away with the hard centre, or receptacle, retained within the fruit whereas that of the raspberry will be left behind on the plant. The only thing to do then is to eat the berry, and then conduct the experiment again, repeatable results being the cornerstone of empirical scientific research.

In the early season, with cream and a little sugar, the still slightly tart berries make a pleasant change from strawberries. As the fruits swell and ripen into September their sweetness becomes more pronounced and they find other homes in pies, crumbles and cobblers, frequently combined with early apples for a taste which is the embodiment of the changing seasons.

There is traditionally a date after which the berries should not be picked, most commonly taken to be Michaelmas (29 September) but later in some areas, after which time the devil is said to spit or stamp (or worse) on the berries, rendering them unfit. It seems likely that this is a reference to the grey botrytis cinerea mould which envelops the fruits later in the season. No mention in folklore is made of the more prosaic problems associated with low hanging fruit in areas where dogs are walked and child pickers roam.

Varieties

According to Lia Leendertz, Loch Ness is extremely popular because it "produces a high yield from thornless, compact plants - perfect for small gardens. Alternatively, the vigorous Ashton Cross produces vast crops with a proper wild blackberry flavour. But Kotata, with its beautiful long, black glossy berries, perhaps boasts the best flavour of all."

If your style is to go no further than your own patch when foraging see here for more information on growing your own blackberries.

What to look for

The prize berry for flavour, size and ripeness is the one at the extremity of the bunch, and it's a sure sign that someone else has beaten you to the bush if they've vanished by the time you arrive. A glossy black swollen appearance indicates a ripe berry; if insects have been at the fruit it will tend to appear deflated. For more on the finer points of foraging from acclaimed expert John Wright, see here.

Nutrition

A good source of vitamin C, and also dietary fibre in the multitudinous tiny seeds. They also contain a mild analgesic in the form of salicylates; useful in combating the effects of an autumnal sore throat, but potentially less helpful to people with an allergy to asprin.

Harvested

August to mid-October.

Storage

It's a rare person indeed who can contemplate storing blackberries. Fresh, they will not keep even overnight without losing taste and condition, and that's without factoring in the most notorious predator of the picked blackberry; the forager's own family. They do freeze very well, though, making a glut a nice problem to have. As with other soft fruit, spread them in a single layer on a tray and freeze them before transferring to a container, or simmer them briefly and freeze or refrigerate the resulting purée for a couple of days.

Basic cooking

Stew briefly with a little lemon juice and / or sugar to taste.

Goes with / good in

As noted, blackberries and apples are best friends forever, and blackberries also lend themselves to jelly, jam, compote, tart, pie, iced desserts, syrup, liqueur and ratafia.

Recipes

Nigel Slater's deep dish blackberry and apple pie

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's blackberry and apple leather

Nigel Slater's blackberry and apple fool

John Wright's bramble mousse

Paul A Young's chocolate bramble cocktail

Fraser Doherty's basic fruit jam recipe

Poet puts haikus on Atlanta streets 

Artist satirises roadside adverts by nailing his poetry to traffic lights and streetlamps across the city

Artist John Morse has been peppering Atlanta's road intersections with haikus, nailing his poetry to traffic lights and streetlamps in an attempt to provide commuters with "poetic snapshots of the urban condition".

Mimicking the usual advertisements for weight loss and health insurance, Morse's poems began appearing throughout the city last month. From an exhortation to "Lose ugly weight fast!!/ Feel Happier! Healthier!/ Dump your bigotry" to "Meet local singles!!/ Easy: stand near others/ Hang up your cell phone" and "Free debt counselling/ Take the important first step/ Beware signs like these", the artist has written 10 different haikus, printed 50 copies of each and placed them at 500 locations across Atlanta.

"People read these bandit signs. They'll read them if it's about an electrician or they'll read them if it's about anything," explained Morse. "So if they read it and they like it, great, if they read it and they don't like it, great. But the fact is they'll read it, they're going to read your poetry and that's my goal.

"There's a great deal of bad in the world, and one of the few things that ameliorates the cruelties of the world is art," he said. "A little bit of art can do a great deal of good. And I want to spend my life doing something good ... Will it be good? I don't know. But I'm going to try."

Backed by artist support group Flux Projects, which says the signs offer "compact observations and commentary on modern life", the Roadside Haiku initiative is scheduled to run until the end of October. The haikus haven't been welcomed by everyone, however: Peggy Denby of Keep Atlanta Beautiful described them as "litter on a stick" and told local news site wsbtv.com there would be fines if they weren't taken down.

The truth about travel and warming 

A new study suggests that planes cause more warming than cars, while ships are cooling enough to counteract them both

We hear much about the environmental costs of air travel. As our recent Q&A explained, the problem is not just that planes burn a lot of fuel and therefore kick out plenty of CO2 per passenger. Just as important are a host of other high-altitude impacts, including vapour trails and ozone production, that are usually estimated to cause as much warming as the CO2 itself.

Hence we often hear that although air travel accounts for only a small fraction of global emissions (relatively few people can afford to fly), one transatlantic flight can add as much to your carbon footprint as a typical year's worth of driving.

Surely it couldn't get any worse, could it? Unfortunately for green-minded air travellers, it just did. Kind of.

The wrinkle, always vaguely understood by climate geeks but finally explored in depth in a recent scientific paper, is that the relative impact of different types of travel depends not just on practical factors such as engine efficiency and occupancy rates, but also on something altogether more abstract: the time frame you care about.

The reason this is so crucial is that the effects of different greenhouse gases play out in the atmosphere at a different speeds. CO2, released by all fuel-burning vehicles, can remain in the air for centuries, causing a gentle warming effect. By contrast, most other gases and impacts