World News

Proposals for mandatory jail terms for knife carriers could cost up to £80m a year, figures obtained by the Lib Dems suggest.

Thirteen people die, four of whom are beheaded, in drug-related violence at the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco.

Panic is sparked in Georgia after a bogus TV news report says Russian tanks have invaded and the country's president was dead.

At least 30 people have been killed in a series of suspected suicide bombings in the Afghan city of Kandahar, officials say.

Successful treatment for gum disease cuts the risk of pregnant women giving birth early, say US researchers.

Four explosions in Kandahar cause chaos but terrorists' attempt to free prisoners is thwarted

At least 30 people were killed when four suspected suicide bombers blew themselves up yesterday in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. The bombers' targets included a new prison and the local police headquarters.

The attacks are believed to have been timed to draw attention away from the main target, the prison. Guards had been reinforced by Canadian troops after a 2008 bombing led to a mass jailbreak. No prisoners escaped yesterday.

"They wanted to keep people busy in the city and break the prison, but the Canadians did a good job," said Wali Karzai, a provincial councillor and the half-brother of Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai.

Kandahar, with 800,000 inhabitants, is one of Afghanistan's largest cities. It was regarded as the Taliban's spiritual home when they ruled Afghanistan during the 1990s.

Nato and Afghan forces are planning an offensive in Kandahar province later this year, a follow-up to a continuing military operation in neighbouring Helmand.

• Afghanistan
• Taliban
• Hamid Karzai

Ben Quinn
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Pregnant teenagers are being forced out of education due to a "lack of support", a children's charity claims.

Ethiopian ambassador says the BBC World Service has endangered its credibility with claims that western aid money was diverted to buy weapons

The row between Bob Geldof and the BBC escalated into a diplomatic dispute yesterday as the Ethiopian ambassador called for an apology from the World Service after it reported claims that aid money meant for famine victims had been spent on weapons.

Peter Horrocks, director of the World Service, has said he fully supports the report, which featured one former Ethiopian rebel saying 95% of the money that flowed into famine-hit Tigray in 1985 was spent by the TPLF militia on guns.

A second man claimed that the TPLF (Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, now the ruling party of prime minister Meles Zenawi) had made a fortune selling sand disguised as grain to the aid agencies.

Live Aid founder Geldof and other leading charities have also demanded that the BBC retract the claims and have called for its reporter, Martin Plaut, to be fired.

Now ambassador Berhanu Kebede has told the Observer that he expects a full apology from the BBC, which has "destroyed its credibility in Africa".

"Frankly, it's a ridiculous report. They have not looked at this person they interviewed, who had left the TPLF before 1985. Anyone knows that a liberation movement depends on the support of the people to win. How could they starve their people or snatch bread from their mouths?

"To question the integrity of organisations like Band Aid, the Red Cross, Christian Aid, it is laughable. If the BBC want to investigate something from 25 years ago, they should have talked to a lot more people who were there.

"In Ethiopia, people on both sides laugh at this idea. They know it would have been a suicide mission to divert the aid money and let people starve; it makes no sense and it is unacceptable. For the BBC's own credibility, it has to apologise for this disgrace."

Horrocks is to have a meeting with the aid agency heads this week, and has said it was absolutely in the public interest to examine the claims being made.

• International aid and development
• Ethiopia
• BBC World Service
• BBC
• Radio industry

Tracy McVeigh
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Rights groups express concern at the rising number of juveniles as young as 12 who are held behind bars and 'treated like terrorists'

With more than 300 Palestinian children being held in Israeli prisons, human rights groups and Palestinian officials are increasingly concerned about the actions of the Israeli military.

The Israeli group B'Tselem said that security forces had "severely violated" the rights of a number of children, aged between 12 and 15, who had been taken into custody in recent months.

The family of one 13-year-old boy from Hebron who was arrested on 27 February by a military patrol and detained for eight days have brought a legal case against the authorities. The teenager, Al-Hasan Muhtaseb, described how he had been interrogated without a lawyer late into the night, forced to confess to throwing stones, made to sign a confession in Hebrew that he couldn't read, jailed with adults and brought before a military court. He was only released on bail eight days later, after considerable legal effort by several human rights groups. As he had signed a confession, he still faces a possible indictment for throwing stones – a charge that usually brings several months in jail but carries a maximum penalty of 20 years' jail.

Although most international attention focuses on diplomatic sparring in the Middle East, it is cases such as this teenager's arrest that are the reality for Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. The surprise about the teenager's experience is not that it is exceptional, but that it is a common occurrence.

As of the end of February, 343 Palestinian children were being held in Israeli prisons, according to Defence for Children International (DCI), which took up the Muhtaseb case. Israel routinely prosecutes Palestinian children as young as 12 and the Israeli legal system treats Palestinians as adults when they turn 16, but Israelis become adults only at 18. Ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children are "widespread, systematic and institutionalised", DCI said in a report last year.

Al-Hasan Muhtaseb was arrested early in the afternoon as he and his 10-year-old brother Amir were walking home through Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, after visiting their aunt.

"Two soldiers came to us and told us: 'Come over here.' We went to them," said Al-Hasan, a slight boy, neatly dressed, who barely looks his 13 years. "They took my brother and I don't know where they took him. I was sent inside the station and I never saw him after that."

They were detained separately. Amir was released later that night, deeply traumatised. "He was in a very, very bad psychological state," said his father, Fadel Muhtaseb, 45. "He had wet himself. He was terrified." The boy said he had been held with his eyes covered by a hat in a room where there was also a dog, which he could hear panting.

Al-Hasan was interrogated at an Israeli military post in Kiryat Arba, a Jewish settlement in Hebron. "I was asked: 'Did you throw stones? Did you hurt the soldiers or hit their vehicles? How close were you to the soldiers? Why were you throwing stones?'," he said. Eventually he had admitted throwing stones, although in an interview last week Al-Hasan said it was untrue: on that day he had not thrown stones, although earlier in the week he had.

He had been made to sign a statement in Hebrew, a language he doesn't speak or read. He was blindfolded and taken to Ofer military prison, where he arrived at 3.30am. "There were no other children," he said. "I was afraid." Three days after his arrest he appeared at a military court. But his father, who works as a tiler, could not afford the 2,000 shekels (£350) bail. "My father told them he couldn't pay this much money," said Al-Hasan. His father, who sat next to him through the interview, burst into tears.

Last Sunday the boy was freed under a bail arrangement in which his father faces arrest if his son does not appear at the next summons. "Even if he were throwing stones, he is only 13," said Fadel. "They treated him like a terrorist. They claim they are democratic and human, but they are not."

The Israeli Defence Force defended the arrest, saying Israeli troops were acting to prevent violence. Both boys are now incontinent and Amir has been hospitalised. "He wakes up in the middle of the night screaming," said Fadel. "We try to comfort him, but he's getting worse and worse."

The Palestinian Authority highlighted the case of the two Muhtaseb brothers, saying Israel was breaching international law and has recently seemed to take a stronger stance against the more routine challenges of the occupation, including the effect of the West Bank barrier. Israeli security forces have warned of a broader crackdown if the protests escalate.

• Palestinian territories
• Israel

Rory McCarthy
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Managing director Mark Price aims to keep fast-growing upmarket grocer ahead of rival M&S

Waitrose boss Mark Price is drawing up plans to transform the upmarket food chain into a consumer brand available in thousands of non-Waitrose shops in the UK and overseas. He believes the Waitrose label has the potential to be a big "fmcg" – fast moving consumer goods – name like Heinz or Kellogg's, which he can sell to other retail businesses, rather than just direct to shoppers.

He has similar ambitions for the Duchy Originals brand, founded in 1990 by the Prince of Wales. Waitrose signed a licensing deal with the struggling royal label last autumn, which gives the John Lewis-owned grocer the right to manufacture, distribute and sell all Duchy goods in the UK. Price said there would be more than 300 Duchy products by the end of the year and there was potential for many more.

He said: "What we are trying to do is give access to the brand and it is not just about owning shops. It is about taking a creative approach and making products available to as many people as possible. We are looking to work with partners."

The plan to sell Waitrose goods in other stores will be kickstarted this month when Price unveils details of a deal that could eventually see Waitrose food sold in more than 700 Boots outlets. Sections of Boots' stores will be transformed into mini-Waitroses, with the grocer's own fixtures, fittings and signage. In return, Waitrose will sell a range of Boots health and beauty goods in its own stores.

Last year Waitrose defied predictions it would be battered by the recession and emerged as the fastest-growing big grocer, chalking up a sales increase of more than 11% to in excess of £4.5bn, trouncing upmarket rival Marks & Spencer. "We expect to be the fastest growing again this year," Price said.

Sales to overseas supermarkets are also to be ramped up. "Waitrose is seen as a really premium brand outside the UK," said Price. The grocer has already more than doubled business-to-business overseas sales to more than £100m over the past two year, exporting to 25 countries including Thailand, the Bahamas, India and China. But Price said there was much more potential.

The grocer is also keen to open more franchised outlets overseas, especially in the Middle East. Two stores in Dubai are chalking up 60% annual sales growth and franchises have been awarded for Bahrain, Oman and Abu Dhabi. Price said there would soon be 20-23 Middle East outlets.

• Supermarkets
• John Lewis
• Retail industry
• J Sainsbury
• Morrisons
• Tesco

Julia Finch
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It's depressing how 'Anyone But England' has become the mantra for the Scots

In Johannesburg in June the sun will rise on another football bacchanal while Scotland nurses its wrath of ages at home. Five major tournaments have come and gone since last we participated. And, as we all know, It's Not The Same Without the Tartan Army. Brazilian samba dancers, Mexican gauchos and tractor apprentices from the Czech Republic are heartbroken that the "See You, Jimmy" wig and Glengarry brigade will not be joining them in South Africa. There are still 88 days to go and already the xenophobia has started: the biased commentaries, the flag-waving; the fear and the loathing. It's going to get unpleasant if you're English and living in Scotland.

The first manifestation took place in a souvenir shop in Aberdeen. On display were T-shirts bearing the legend "Anyone But England". The prominence of these garments in the window prompted a visit by the police who warned the owner that they could cause offence. Anti-racism bodies said the shirts were merely harmless fun. They are correct: it is not racism. Yet neither is it harmless fun. Indeed, to a Scot such as myself the "Anyone But England" mentality which will be revealed in all its malevolent glory over the next three months is embarrassing and depressing.

On shop floors and offices, at pubs and parties, English people in our midst will be expected to smile and nod in a self-deprecating manner while some braying bampot says: "Don't take it personally, but I hope you get horsed by the Americans/Algerians/Slovenians." If our English friend even hints that, actually, he may indeed have taken offence, he will be admonished. Often this will be delivered by someone who becomes emotional if an English landlord so much as dares to call him Jock or questions the legality of his Clydesdale Bank tenner. But it's not a joke. For reasons I cannot fathom, a significant proportion of my fellow Scots will be supporting anyone but England during this summer's World Cup. On the BBC, and in newspapers, otherwise reasonable, witty and objective journalists will think it acceptable to urge the nation to run up the Stars and Stripes and get stuck into the bastard English.

The most common reason given for this attitude is that English football commentators become smug and objectionable when discussing their nation's progress. These worthless rapscallions insist also on talking about 1966, the year in which England won the World Cup. Yet our own Scottish commentators, our Archies and Arthurs and Dougies, have often been just a few heartbeats away from donning their Lions Rampant and wielding claymores as they urge on the Scots from their TV gantries. If Scotland had ever won the World Cup there would be an annual Scotland Month to mark the occasion and full independence would have been gained within the year. Cumbria and the north-east would have been annexed by now.

Nor can we justify our anti-Englishness by citing historical grievance. We willingly entered a union with them which, economically, has been extremely advantageous to us and England provides the biggest jobs market for us outside Scotland. Our tourist economy is built on the Bank of England pound. We even run their government and many of their biggest institutions. More distressing still is that most English people will support Scotland in every endeavour we undertake.

England has a splendid squad and an excellent manager. Wayne Rooney is perhaps the finest all-round footballer I have ever seen. And, though I am not yet convinced that their nation is the land of milk and honey that they claim, I'll still be singing "Jerusalem" if they do the business on 11 July.

• World Cup 2010

Kevin McKenna
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Bigelow's prize makes little difference to Hollywood's basic sexist approach towards women

A woman winning the Oscar for best directing is one of those cultural milestones that would pass better unremarked. Sadly, it didn't.

"The moment has come!" chirruped Barbra Streisand, emoting harder than any of the actresses who were nominated that night. "It's Kathryn Bigelow!"

Newspapers and magazines hurried to trumpet this historic landmark; I would have kept it quiet.

The best-director Oscar going female might have been a moment worth celebrating if it had happened in 1974. But this is 2010. These were the 82nd annual academy awards. How embarrassing.

It's hardly an indicator of social change. The rest of society has altered so radically since 1929 that it's no more than a random piece of pub-quiz trivia (for heaven's sake, elsewhere in America they have a female secretary of state and a mixed-race president), while Hollywood hasn't changed at all. Oscar or no Oscar, the crowd's main interest in Kathryn Bigelow was how marvellous she looks for 58.

The film industry's idea of a great feminist breakthrough is to applaud the tits of women over 40 as well as under it. All week, the press has gurgled about the great bodies of the Oscar-cougars: photo spreads of Pfeiffer, Bullock and Streep, above text that essentially says, both incredulously and smugly: "You'd still do 'em, wouldn't you?"

Even James McAvoy, introducing the nomination of Helen Mirren for best actress, focused his speech entirely on how "hot" he finds her. He must have imagined that this demonstrated a revolutionary political correctness because she's old enough to be his mother. No: it's just the usual reductionist nonsense, broadened upwards.

The other "feminist celebration" of Bigelow seems to be that she beat her ex-husband James Cameron to the award. I say it's embarrassing that she ever married him in the first place. Look at their two films. The Hurt Locker versus Dances With Smurfs. How could that marriage ever have worked?

But that's fine. That's Hollywood. A sparkly veneer of dismissive lust and gossip is what we expect and enjoy. Their mistake was drawing attention to how deep it runs. Why remind the world that it took 82 years for 50% of the human race to throw up someone who could make the best film, or be credited for it? That's just highlighting a matter of social awkwardness, like announcing you've farted. Better to let it out as quietly as possible, and hope nobody notices.

When the chips are down

Sorry not to write a column last week. I was in Berlin; I planned to write from there if anything noteworthy happened, but it didn't. I saw the Brandenburg gate, ate bratwurst, played a poker tournament, got knocked out by Boris Becker, left the tournament, six masked gunmen went in and stole a million dollars, that was it. So I took the week off.

Yes. That's how bad a journalist I am. If it weren't for the sideline in poker, I don't think I'd eat.

It was only when I got home to find a hundred kindly enquiries on Twitter and a dozen interview requests from various departments of the BBC, that I thought: "Oh. That armed heist on the €3m celebrity poker tournament seems to have been reported as news."

Don't get me wrong, I had thought it was quite interesting. We haven't had an armed raid on a poker tournament for about five years now. It's six years since I saw those gunmen at the cash game in Holland. The game has become terribly respectable. Poker friends were ringing after the heist to say: "Isn't this retro? Been ages since I saw an Uzi."

Those still at the tournament sounded fine, saying how calm they'd felt. Unruffled bloggers filmed the raid on their digicams; some players recognised the robbers and arrests have already begun. All the prize winners got paid. Nobody got hurt. They were posting jokes online within half an hour. The tournament resumed less than two hours later.

One heroic Finnish player had been about to lose a huge pot when the gunmen came in. He declared that this did not constitute a serious interruption and insisted on paying his opponent anyway. The Finn ended up coming second in the tournament, winning €600,000 – that's karma.

Boris Becker missed the raid; he got knocked out just after I did. But he would have coped. I've loved Boris ever since I saw him at a poker tournament in Nassau, a vision of perfect physical fitness, with a doughnut in one hand and a cigarette in the other. That's my kind of sportsman.

None of this will make any difference to the success of the European Poker Tour. I will be at the final in Monte Carlo this April, and so will hundreds of others. You might think that's because poker players are more fatalistic – or greedier – than other people. You might think it's because guns are, historically, part of the Wild West poker picture. But I think it's because everyone can always cope with everything. Human nature is naturally stoic, unhysterical, with a sense of perspective on coincidence. Most people think: "Shit happens. If you're there: unlucky. But I'll carry on assuming I won't be."

A few weeks ago, I wrote about armed police on city streets and escalated ID-checking as a "response to terrorist threat", which I believe goes against most people's desire not to have their way of life compromised by fear of theoretical disaster. A reader sent me a quote from Benjamin Franklin which came back into my mind, proudly, as I watched players start signing up for the next leg of the European Poker Tour, in San Remo just a few weeks from now: "He who values security above liberty deserves neither."

www.victoriacoren.com

• Kathryn Bigelow
• James Cameron
• Oscars

Victoria Coren
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We all have film sequences that stick in our minds. Some are shared by many – such as the shower scene from Psycho – others are particular to us. Here our film critic and a panel of leading movie-makers reveal their favourites. What are yours?

Who will ever forget the first time they saw the 45-second shower-room murder in Hitchcock's Psycho? I remember 1959 and 1961 as the years when my first two children were born. But the first thing that comes to mind about the year in between was seeing Psycho, which I'd been looking forward to since a radio programme I'd produced the previous October, when Hitchcock had enticingly described Psycho as "my first real horror film". Entering the Plaza, Lower Regent Street, the day the film opened, I passed the cardboard cut-out of Hitchcock in the foyer, from which a tape recording of the Master's familiar Leytonstone undertaker's voice warned us what would happen if we gave away the ending.

Half an hour into the movie, when Janet Leigh stared out at us from the floor, a man sitting in front of me staggered into the aisle and vomited: testimony to the sensitive stomachs of the time, or (as several other people I know witnessed a similar incident at the Plaza that week) evidence that Paramount's publicity department had hired a method actor for the film's opening run?

Such indelibly iconic moments have been part of moviegoing since the Lumière brothers' first public screening of a dozen short scenes in December 1895. One of them had the audience recoiling from a train entering a station, another had them chuckling when a cheeky boy tricked a gardener into spraying himself with a hosepipe. People judge a movie by the strength of its story and overall impact, but ultimately what they remember are individual moments and sequences. This perhaps reflects the very nature of film, which is a rapid succession of still pictures that provide an illusion of motion. And until the coming of cassettes and DVDs, few of us were able to see a picture over and over again or re-view a sequence. So we had to replay it in our minds, and naturally we'd often get it wrong. Which is how "Play it again, Sam" entered the language instead of: "Play it, Sam, play 'As Time Goes By'."

James Stewart seems to have been thinking of this approach to cinema when he talked to Peter Bogdanovich about his craft: "What you're doing is… you're giving people little… little, tiny pieces of time… that they never forget." This is echoed by Walker Percy in his 1961 novel The Moviegoer. Some people, his narrator says, "treasure memorable moments in their lives: the time one climbed the Parthenon at sunrise", but "what I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in Stagecoach, and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in The Third Man". Likewise Jean-Dominique Bauby, the paralysed French writer, describes in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly how he'd lie in the hospital recreating favourite scenes from Touch of Evil, Stagecoach, Moonfleet and Pierrot le fou. Canny film-makers have cottoned on to the idea, like James Cameron, who says: "You try to create one or more emotional, epiphanous moments within a film."

These moments come in many forms – simple, complex, lyrical, violent, gentle, witty, romantic, revelatory – and, if they stick, become as real as any other memory. They can range from the split-second close-up of the suave spy's missing half-finger in Hitchcock's The 39 Steps to the protracted pursuit of Cary Grant by the crop-dusting plane in North by Northwest, from the in-your-face eye-slicing in Buñuel's first silent movie, the avant-garde Un Chien Andalou, to the puzzling sequence of the Chinese businessman's mysterious box in the same director's mainstream success Belle de Jour 40 years later. Like your favourite jokes, your cherished movie moments reveal something about you and, if shared, they can be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, especially if one of them is the final sequence in Casablanca that features that line.

My own favourites? The Odessa Steps sequence from Battleship Potemkin. The love at first sight between John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in The Quiet Man, the lust at first sight between Fred McMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. The children running through the woods to see a train in Pather Panchali and finding grandmother dead on the way back. The cruelly comic soccer match in Loach's Kes. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie making love in a Venetian hotel in Don't Look Now. The slow-motion mayhem let loose in The Wild Bunch after William Holden says: "If they move, kill 'em!" Perhaps my single favourite moment comes in Citizen Kane, where Kane's now elderly friend Bernstein tells the reporter about an epiphanic memory of seeing a girl in a white dress on the New Jersey ferry in 1896. "I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl." It's a moment about remembering a moment, and the actor Everett Sloane makes it so vivid we think we've seen that girl ourselves.

THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) - THE SUBWAY CHASE

Chosen by Ryan Fleck, the American indie film director, writer, editor and cinematographer, best known for co-writing and co-directing with partner Anna Boden Half Nelson and Sugar correct(out now on DVD).

The villain's on the elevated subway. You think he's going to get away because a person on foot can't keep up with the subway… But Gene Hackman jumps in a car and starts chasing the subway, riding underneath it, going at 80mph, swerving in and out of traffic. I first saw this scene on video when I was 18 or 19, in college. I loved it.

In action scenes nowadays you can chalk everything up to some kind of computer effect. Audiences no longer really believe that what they're seeing exists anymore. When The French Connection was made that notion didn't really occur to people. What you saw was usually really happening in front of the lens. It was raw. I did a little bit of research about how they shot the scene. Phenomenal. Basically they just did it. There was no security blocking off other traffic, just Hackman in a car with a camera mounted on the front. They went crazy, lost their minds, and went for it.

It was the kind of thing that you just would never get away with these days. I'm editing a movie right now that has a teenager walking on the Brooklyn Bridge, considering suicide. He steps out on to a ledge, over traffic… It never even occurred to put the actual kid out on the ledge, on a bridge, over traffic because we knew there was no way authorities would let us do that. So there's camera trickery. Back in the 70s we'd have just thrown a child out over the ledge, seen what happened, and shot it.

JULES ET JIM (1962) - THE BICYCLE SCENE

Chosen by Ken Loach, writer/director of the influential docudrama Cathy Come Home, and director of nearly 30 films including Kes, Riff-Raff, My Name is Joe and Looking for Eric. He won the 2006 Palme d'Or at Cannes for The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

This scene always cheers you up. Jeanne Moreau and the two guys on their bicycles in the sun in France, the music that goes with it… Partly it evokes what you imagine to be the perfect French vacation but also it's a very fine bit of film-making.

When you're in the business and have been in the business a long time, you tend to dismember about 99% of films as you're watching. The time when you used to watch a film just for enjoyment is difficult to recapture. But just occasionally a film will transcend that. The sense of enjoyment with this trio on their bicycles is perennial. It's completely evocative of that carefree young moment, the age when people are carefree. And then of course, for these three, it will all be ruined by the war.

The song that was composed for the film – "Le tourbillon" – became very famous. I'd sing it for you if I wasn't surrounded by colleagues who would take the piss. I think film music that tells you what to think is cheap – the film should do that without that prompting. But in Jules et Jim it is music in relation to the images, the music has an independent existence and there's a relationship between the two.

It is not something subterranean, there to steer you through every second and push you into feelings that the pictures don't generate themselves.

ALL ABOUT EVE (1950) - BILL'S BIRTHDAY PARTY

Chosen by Beeban Kidron, who came to international attention directing the BBC's adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit in 1990. She has since directed several feature films including Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar.

Every single line in this scene is quotable. It's the most beautifully written thing, from an era of cinema very closely knitted to the theatre, when the words were supposed to evoke things rather than just be things for people to say while the pictures were going on. That's something that's very often lost 60 years later.

Margo, played by Bette Davis, is a great Broadway actress at the pinnacle of her power: brilliant, sophisticated, bitchy. Her assistant Eve, meanwhile, played by Anne Baxter, is simpering, beautiful and very, very ambitious. Eve is trying to replace Margo, trying to get her next part on Broadway and take her lover, Bill. This is the scene where Margo finally loses her rag, having waited upstairs for Bill to throw him a party before discovering that he's been downstairs with Eve for 20 minutes.

The scene sums up the central themes of the film, to do with Margo's insecurity about age and about the way that Eve is eating into her life. This is referred to in the dialogue all the time: Margo finds Eve and Bill talking and immediately asks if she can join in – "Or isn't it a story for grown-ups?" Bette Davis, despite being so powerful, gives a phenomenal performance of insecurity. That is very, very rarely drawn in the cinema.

The question of ageing and of being replaced by the younger, more beautiful woman is something we can still understand today.

JASON & THE ARGONAUTS (1963) - THE SKELETONS SCENE

Chosen by Nick Park, Oscar-winning animator and writer/director of the Wallace and Gromit films.

As a boy I was into monsters, heroes going off on adventures – and stop-motion animation. I saw trailers for this film and it seemed to be everything I wanted. I remember being at a school fair, just before Christmas, and being desperate to get home to watch it.

The scene that stood out the most, that I found both horrifying and enthralling, was the skeleton fight at the end. The heroes are all live action and the monsters are all done with stop-frame animation. It was a terrific technical feat – I think there were eight animated skeletons or more, cut together quite seamlessly with the live action. The whole choreography of it was amazing. But the story, too, really caught my imagination. These skeletons were planted like seeds, by a wizard chap spreading dragons teeth, and then dead soldiers grow up to fight the Argonauts. So exciting.

At around the same time I saw Ray Harryhausen, the animator, explain on television how he had done the skeletons. I immediately went and built my own models with wire and foam – I think I was planning to film something with my friends, live action, cut together with a sea monster made out of a coat hanger and nylon tights.

Disney films didn't make me want to go home and do it myself because it was shrouded in mystery and technique. But when I saw the skeletons in Harryhausen's film I wanted immediately to do it myself, because you got a sense of how it might be done.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) - THE FINAL SCENE

Chosen by Stephen Poliakoff. After starting out as a playwright, Poliakoff turned to writing and directing television dramas including Shooting the Past, Perfect Strangers and the award-winning The Lost Prince. His feature films include Hidden City and most recently Glorious 39.

Still, after 40 years, people are arguing about the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey. What the ending means to the film. The computer taking over, the menacing computer howl, the foetus – it has passed into cinema folklore. Science fiction was not a genre that attracted me much, and it was very unsexy in the 1960s. But Kubrick's film was the most original I had ever seen. It came at me for the first time, completely alone, in a cinema on a summer afternoon in 1968. I was 15, and it made an extraordinary impression on me. There was a lot more mainstream "auteur cinema" than there is now, Hollywood studios producing personal films. Nevertheless Kubrick stood alone, a titanic figure that obsessively made films, under great secrecy, and with nobody interfering.

I had never seen such a bold use of cinema, and certainly never such an incredibly obscure ending. To have spent all that time and money and to have the daring – some would say foolhardy daring, but nevertheless a magnificent daring – to end the film on such an elusive and obscure note, I found it amazing as a 15-year-old that anybody should have the balls to do that. It excited me and changed my whole view of what you could do as a writer, whatever medium you were attempting – Kubrick's aspiration to be original. Now it's been much imitated but 2001 was extraordinarily ahead of its time, and has continued to survive and influence generations.

TAXI DRIVER (1976) - THE MIRROR SCENE

Chosen by Stephen Woolley, the award-winning producer best known for his collaborations with director Neil Jordan including Interview with the Vampire and The Crying Game. Recent projects include How To Lose Friends and Alienate People and the forthcoming Made in Dagenham. In 2005 he made his directorial debut with Stoned.

I remember seeing Taxi Driver for the first time in Paris in the 70s. The taxi gliding across New York's wet streets, smoke coming out of the subways, it was all incredibly delicious. It had this thundery Bernard Herrmann score, and when Robert De Niro did his "are you talking to me?" sequence in front of the mirror you suddenly sensed the degree of anger there. It was all bottled up until he explodes with this bravura performance. It's very clever, very economical, everything concentrated on his eyes.

Sequences like this are not only successful because they are so beautifully created but also because they often come at a point in a film where you begin to realise where it's going, you think, "oh my god, I know what this is about". Here you become aware that not only is Travis Bickle schizophrenic but he's aware of his own schizophrenia. He's like a genie in a bottle and you're waiting for him to let the genie out – which he does brilliantly in that horrific sequence later on where he shoots Harvey Keitel's character and saves Jodie Foster's.

The scene was improvised but De Niro had tried out a version of it in an earlier film he made with Brian De Palma, I think it's called Hi Mom! I didn't see it until years after watching Taxi Driver and I remember thinking "I can't believe it – the thing he does in Taxi Driver!"

CARRIE (1976) - THE BLOOD AT THE PROM SCENE

Chosen by Edgar Wright, who co-created Channel 4's Spaced, and has collaborated with comedian Simon Pegg on hit films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. His latest directing project, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, is out later this year.

I always describe Carrie as the Grease of horror movies: it resonates with all ages because everybody remembers their awkward teenage phase and can watch it and say – I was the bully or the victim or the person who did nothing. It explores how apocalyptic your rage can be as a teenager. Carrie's not a killer, she's a girl who has been bullied and through a terrible confluence of events ends up burning the school down.

It's also unusual for a horror film. It doesn't have someone being killed every 20 minutes and then a climax – it builds to one huge climax at the prom. School bullies have fixed the prom so that Carrie White will win and they can humiliate her by tipping a bucket of pig's blood over her in front of the whole school. The scene and the excruciating build-up to it is one of the greatest set pieces of all time, full of suspense, with a monumental payoff.

A crane shot sets up the sequence so you know where everyone is positioned and that the bucket of blood is above Carrie and Tommy's heads. Once the plot is set in motion Pino Donaggio's score takes over. The resulting sequence is pure opera.

I first saw Carrie on VHS with my brother's friend when I was about 12. I obsessively read about horror movies and was dying to see it. I've watched it so many times since. De Palma planned the sequence for months and battled the studio over the time spent on filming it. But it was worth the blood, sweat and tears. It still leaves audiences speechless.

REAR WINDOW (1954) - THE OPENING SCENE

Chosen by Claire Denis, who made her directorial debut in 1988 with Chocolat. Subsequent films include Good Work and 35 Shots of Rum. Her latest, White Material, is out in the summer.

We don't have courtyards in France like they do in New York, where Hitchcock's film is set, but we have street buildings that are set very close to each other. From where I stand in my kitchen or my bedroom I can watch neighbours' windows very easily. I'm intrigued by voyeurism, about what is behind windows, and often in my films I stage a scene as if I was peeping in from outside.

The situation Hitchcock establishes in the opening scene of Rear Window is the ultimate voyeuristic situation. The character played by James Stewart has broken his leg, has nothing to do but linger behind his window and watch. He is passive but eager to find something – to be a witness of something, or to give his imagination something to chew on. As a spectator in a cinema theatre, you are a sort of prisoner in a chair, like he is.

• Alfred Hitchcock
• Bette Davis
• Stanley Kubrick
• Martin Scorsese
• Robert De Niro

Philip French
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Nigel Slater visits Suffolk – and returns with a batch of smoked food recipes

Even before you turn into the narrow opening that is Baker's Lane, you spot the winding trail of grey smoke against Orford's white winter sky. Turn sharp right, and you see the rickety smokehouse, as black as tar, leaning drunkenly against the side of the open shop, with its noticeboard of local events and Gillian Eustace's romantic watercolour of the same scene on an altogether sunnier day.

Richardson's smokehouse is one of several in this part of Suffolk, originally started as a way of preserving the local mackerel catch, and now a source of all manner of smoked fish and meat to locals and visitors alike. Smoking food has been in the area's blood for centuries, just as it has in the Highlands of Scotland. Business is thriving too, (a local company, Pinney's, has just opened a smart new shop on Orford's small, busy quay that is also worth a look). But it is the "mom 'n' pop" simplicity of Steve Richardson and Veronica Buckley's diminutive smokery and shop that appeals to someone who also tends to potter along in his own particular way.

The scent of wood smoke has always intrigued me. The scented candles at home smell not of tuberose but of the fireplace. The ball of tarred string in the gardening cupboard has an addictive smoky quality that insists I pick it up and sniff it each time I open the door. And I value smoke for its nostalgia quotient too, that whiff of the garden on the day after bonfire night, visits to rambling country houses with fireplaces the size of my kitchen and of the Gypsy children who used to get on my school bus each morning filling the old coach with the essence of their bonfire. Any food that smells of it is certain to get this cook's attention.

An untidy pile of fat oak logs is heaped on the floor of the Richardson's yard. Steve reckons they might just last a week. Each pile has to be humped and chopped by hand. He insists on oak and will never have any truck with the modern commercial alternatives. Now is the quiet season for the bloaters, trout and salmon that hang in one of the two tar-black rooms, but come summer, there will be queues outside. Even on a stiff February day there is a steady stream of callers for Veronica Buckley's mackerel pâté and venison sausages, and desperate pleas for more fishcakes. "Sorry, not today." Regulars brave the ice and frost for the smoked chorizo and duck breasts, though how the proprietors cope with the cold in the open-fronted building in winter is anyone's guess (after a couple of hours I was so frozen I took off to next door's Crown and Castle for the comfort of a parsley-flecked fish pie and a roaring fire).

While my initial interest is with the products hanging up in the two intimately proportioned smoke rooms, it is impossible not to notice the long, ongoing love story among the kippers. "We are business partners now," says Roni firmly, even though it is quite clear they adore one another. She admits to a few ups and downs over their 30 years here, first as a couple and then as a company, which you get the feeling is something of an understatement. The rickety smokehouse could tell a tale or two.

Veronica is known to all except Steve as "Roni" or "Ron". "Steve hates it," she laughs, "he always uses my full name." The smokehouse at Orford has been in Steve's family for three generations. His grandfather preserved local fish here and their son is keen to take it on when Steve and Roni retire.

When you look at the rows of beautiful ochre game, plates of pork and apple sausages and links of chorizo, it seems odd to think this tall, slightly gruff Suffolk man started out as an engineer, earning good money on the oil rigs, rather than the artisan he is now. It took the shock of redundancy, followed by a swift kick up the backside from an exasperated Roni – "he drove me mad hanging round the house all day, so I sent him back to live at his grandparents' house" – to get Steve lighting up their disused smokerooms. It must have been like starting up a classic car after years on bricks in the garage.

At first he smoked his daily fish catch, the two of them meeting up to hawk it around the local pubs. "To be honest it was a bit of pub crawl," admits Roni, and you can see them reeling home, having swapped their kippers for more than a few pints of Adnams. But the reputation for the quality of their softly smoked kippers and mackerel grew and soon they decided to open the stall next to the smokehouse.

I suppose it was inevitable that the list grew from what Steve had on the end of his line and soon they were experimenting with everything from whole pheasants to heads of garlic. The smoker was up and running, so why not see what happens when you hang a row of partridge or slide a half stilton on the top shelf of the smokehouse and leave it for six days. (Answer: something that looks like a giant pork pie.)

I say smokehouse but there are actually two side by side. The first is a cool smoker, for ingredients that are usually cooked later by the customer so require smoking but not cooking. The second room, the hot smoker, is for anything likely to be eaten without further cooking once you get it home. Kippers get a bit of both treatments – they are gutted, brined for a couple of hours, then cold-smoked overnight before being given a short final blast in the hot section. Steve has perfected a system where the fish retains as much of its oil as possible, leaving the flesh moist and sweet. Rather than hanging, they get their final treatment on flat racks that allow them to hold on to their precious oils.

The sight of the moist flat fish, their skin glistening silver and gold, leads to a discussion on the method of cooking. "I hope you don't jug them," says Roni, who quite clearly disapproves of the popular method of lowering kippers into just-boiled water to cook them. "They lose all their oil that way," and I mentally change how I plan to cook the day's purchases. I am assured that a brief ride in the microwave gives the best result. Not being a microwave kind of a cook, I will just have to take my chances under a hot grill.

The effect that oak smoke has on food is subtly different to that of other woods. In my house, smoked goodies often come out at lunchtime on a Saturday, laid out in their paper, a sort of smokehouse picnic. There will be soup of some sort, and maybe a bowl of crunchy slaw (wonderful with a clove of smoked garlic in the dressing) and then maybe a whole mackerel in its skin, a link or two of sausage or maybe slices of wood-infused chicken. For no particular reason I associate such flavours with the cold months. Perhaps it is the hint of the fire left at the heart of the food, or the singed edges on a fist-shaped lump of ham hock. Who knows? And no matter how good the trout or the duck that has been inside the smokers of Orford, I still want to cook with them, crumbling mackerel into a potato gratin; tucking smoked garlic inside a roasting chicken; tossing a few slices of sausage as Roni showed me into a weekday pasta supper. Yes, such delicacies are for eating in their naked simplicity, but good for the cook in us, too.

I had been here once before, almost a decade ago, and came home with a purchase of their shimmering pink and gold smoked trout. On that occasion, I wimped out of the smoked Long Clawson stilton, which I believed to have been smoked for six hours. "Six days, more like," laughs Roni, who finally gets me to try some. Up to this point I have been less than open-minded about smoked cheese. I have always found it smacked of too much smoke and not enough of cheese. One smoked cheese had often tasted pretty much like another. Until now.

The stilton here is a subtle revelation and I suspect it is this subtlety that is the clue to much of the couple's success. At home, I crumbled the mahogany-skinned cheese into a salad of red cabbage and some seriously sour pickled onions. A shot of pure gold on a grey winter's afternoon.

Steve and Roni are particularly proud of the ham hocks from local pigs, which arrive ready smoked and are then marinated in black treacle and cider. They are boiled, then flash-roasted till their edges turn the colour of molasses. It is true they resemble blackened elephant's feet, but only to look at. One of these has been the cornerstone of my cooking this week, my host's recipe for a very basic but gorgeous stew with potatoes and lentils. I have often used a ham-hock soup to keep the cold at bay, but the smoke adds another dimension, altogether deeper and more characterful.

Whether it is a brace of quail or local fish, the day's smokings are listed on a blackboard at the entrance to the shop. Despite the trays of oak-coloured whole mallard, hot smoked pigeons, chickens and duck breasts; haddock, whole trout and bloaters, Steve sorely misses the local eel that has been a mainstay of their business for years. Rarely does a day go by without someone asking about it. Only when the local reservoir is up and running again will it return to the menu.

Passing round toast thickly spread with the most heavenly smoked cod's roe I have ever eaten, he looks off into the distance towards the pile of logs that give heart and soul to his products and to his working life, no doubt working out whether it will last him till the end of the week

Click here for Nigel Slater's smokehouse recipes

• Food & drink

Nigel Slater
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Chancellor will cite state investment in jobs as key to lower-than-expected unemployment

Alistair Darling will claim next week that government action to protect jobs has saved around £12bn, as Labour uses the pre-election budget to spell out key economic dividing lines with the Tories.

In what is expected to be the most political budget in decades, the chancellor will cite government investment in jobs programmes as a major reason why unemployment has turned out to be dramatically lower than economists predicted. Last year's budget anticipated that the level of unemployment, based on National Audit Office assessments of independent forecasts, would be 2.09 million people in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2.44 million in the fourth quarter of 2010. By December's pre-budget report (PBR), however, the government had revised the forecasts to 1.72 million for 2009 and 1.91 million for 2010, saying that this would save up to £10bn over five years from lower unemployment benefits alone.

Since then, the Observer has established that Darling's officials have cut the forecasts still further. The latest projections for unemployment are for it to hit 1.72 million in the final quarter of this year and 1.75 million in the fourth quarter of 2011 – a further 200,000 lower than in the PBR plans, potentially freeing up an extra £1bn-£2bn.

The work and pensions secretary, Yvette Cooper, said: "In the 80s and 90s unemployment continued to rise even after the recession ended, because the government failed to put the necessary support and training in place and keep it there as the economy returned to growth." She claimed that the Conservatives would cut back investment in jobs programmes and "put the economy at risk, even though the clear evidence shows helping people back to work saves money for the future too".

This week Cooper is expected to announce that the government will subsidise another 7,000 jobs for young people, bringing the total created under the Future Jobs Fund to 117,000. The funding will pay for work at the national minimum wage, targeted at under-25s and people living in unemployment hotspots.

Last night Treasury sources insisted that most of the windfall savings from lower-than-expected unemployment would be used to cut the deficit, rather than for pre-election giveaways.

Darling believes the budget could spark a sell-off in government markets unless he stands by his pledge to halve the deficit within four years. Ministers believe that they have a credible plan to put the public finances back in order, through targeted investment in the economy, which they say will speed progress towards sustained growth; the introduction of tax rises such as the 50p rate for top earners (from this April) and national insurance rises from next April; and efficiency savings across government. But Darling is not expected to spell out any more details of specific departmental spending cuts so close to polling day.

• Unemployment and employment statistics
• Budget
• Alistair Darling
• Economics

Toby HelmHeather Stewart
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MPs and financial experts demand regulators reform industry in effort to eliminate risky practices, writes Phillip Inman

Pressure was mounting this weekend for a root-and-branch review of the role played by auditors in the credit crunch, following the revelation that Lehman Brothers was able to hide $50bn (£32bn) of debts from regulators despite checks by accountancy firm Ernst & Young.

MPs and financial experts called on regulators to clean up the audit industry as part of a clampdown on reckless and risky practices in the financial sector.

Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott urged the government to commission a fundamental review, while Tory MP Michael Fallon, who is deputy chairman of the influential treasury select committee, said: "Too much is being concealed. We need a fresh approach that gives a more realistic picture of bank finances and not one that disguises risky practices."

Oakeshott said the treasury select committee's investigation of Northern Rock's collapse had already revealed that accountants should be banned from accepting additional consultancy work for the firms they audit; but, he added, "that is just a starting point to cleaning up the whole profession".

Prem Sikka, a professor of accounting at Essex University and a leading critic of the accounting profession, warned that without deep-rooted reform the crisis could repeat itself. "The report into the collapse of Lehmans is indicative of a deeper malaise," he said. "We rely on the discretion of eminent firms of auditors and lawyers that are paid millions of pounds for their efforts, but that discretion is too often abused."

A damning 2,200-page report commissioned by the US bankruptcy courts into the collapse of Lehman said that Ernst & Young's failure to act over off-balance sheet accounting practices which allowed the bank to hide $50bn of debts, and failing to investigate the concerns of a whistleblower, amounted to "professional negligence".

Ernst & Young, which earned fees of $31m from auditing Lehman Brothers in 2007, has insisted that a thorough internal review showed it did nothing wrong.

• Lehman Brothers
• Financial crisis
• Credit crunch
• US economy
• United States

Phillip Inman
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Billions of pounds of debt, the internet and piracy are crippling one of Britain's most iconic firms

It is a tale of sex, debt and rock'n'roll that is unlikely to have a happy ending. When Guy Hands, a City financier with a penchant for fast food and an insatiable appetite for deal-making, came up with a plan to buy EMI, Britain's flagship music company, using billions of pounds of borrowed money, many wondered how he could possibly make a decent return on his investment. As it has turned out, he couldn't.

This weekend EMI's new chairman Charles Allen, the former ITV chief executive hired by Hands last week to run the music arm of the company, is battling to ensure its independence, assembling a rescue plan for the company that signed the Beatles and became synonymous with the golden age of British pop.

Sources close to the company say Allen, a former accountant whose eclectic musical tastes encompass Lily Allen and Edith Piaf, is "rolling up his sleeves" and working to ensure the company does not breach the terms of its bank loans, but there is no doubt EMI is in peril. "It is a very, very big moment," according to Claire Enders, founder of media consultancy Enders Analysis. "The next two or three months are critical for the future of EMI."

Allen's predecessor, Elio Leoni-Sceti, left suddenly last week just as the final touches were being put on a rescue package, prompting fears over the company's future. The business is effectively being propped up by its past, surviving on the revenues generated by artists signed during a 30-year period when British music dominated the world.

The list of talent on EMI's books reads like a roll call of rock royalty: David Bowie, Queen, Lennon and McCartney, the Sex Pistols and Pink Floyd. As an incubator of home-grown musical talent, the company is without equal and its position as one of the "big four" global record labels is a source of national pride; it exists to make money but EMI also safeguards the country's status as a place where music that matters is made.

If EMI disappears or falls into foreign hands, many music industry figures worry that future generations of British acts may find it more difficult to find a worldwide audience. Jazz Summers, who manages former Verve vocalist Richard Ashcroft, who is signed to EMI, said: "If you look at their track record, they have broken more British acts in America than anyone else, and the same is true in other countries."

EMI is in crisis because it is burdened with what sources close to the company describe as a "ludicrous" amount of debt, racked up after it was bought in 2007 by Hands's private equity company Terra Firma. EMI Music currently has three artists in the top 15 of the album chart for the first time this century, including Blur vocalist Damon Albarn's Gorillaz, and it is on course to make a profit of £200m this year, but a staggering three quarters of that will go on interest payments.

Hands borrowed heavily to fund the deal, using money provided by Terra Firma's investors, and EMI's valuable back catalogue, as collateral, but even then some questioned whether he was right to pay the amount he did for a business that was struggling to come to terms with downloads and a dramatic decline in physical music sales. The industry has lost between 30% and 50% of its revenues in the last five years, but the irony is that EMI is currently outperforming its peers, which include Sony BMG and Warner Music.

It had the biggest-selling album of 2008, Coldplay's Viva La Vida, and reissued the Beatles digitally remastered back catalogue last year. Acts including Lily Allen and Katy Perry are selling well, but the way the company is structured means it cannot trade its way out of trouble.

Before the credit crunch, loans could be refinanced cheaply, but now EMI is struggling to meet its debt repayments in the wake of the severe economic downturn. It has been forced to cut costs dramatically, laying off close to 20% of its workforce. The company is now worth £450m, around a tenth of what Hands paid for it. Some big acts, including Radiohead, have already left, muttering that the money men simply didn't understand the music business.

Last week one of EMI's biggest-selling groups, Pink Floyd, won a court action preventing the company from making tracks from their 1970s album Dark Side of the Moon available to download individually. That was widely portrayed as a victory for artistic integrity – the group want their masterpiece to be consumed from start to finish, as they originally intended – but it also illustrates the challenges the music industry faces in an era of huge upheaval, when illegal downloading is costing it dear and making money from talent discovered and developed at huge cost is more difficult than ever.

If Allen cannot persuade Terra Firma's investors to stump up another £120m, EMI will be in breach of its loan terms, and its main creditor – US bank Citigroup – could seize control of the company. If it does so, Citigroup is likely to sell it to Warner Music, an American rival which was outbid by Hands for EMI three years ago. The situation is complicated by Terra Firma's decision to sue Citigroup in New York, accusing it of forcing EMI towards administration so it can take possession of the company and make a profit from a quick sale, allegations that the bank denies.

Hands is a larger-than-life tax exile, a hero in the Square Mile whose reputation has been badly tarnished by the EMI debacle. He now concedes he overpaid for EMI, but his miscalculation means he could be about to hand a much-loved cultural institution into the keeping of the Americans.

At the end of last year Cadbury's city shareholders agreed to sell the nation's favourite chocolate company to Illinois-based Kraft. The prospect of another household name passing into foreign ownership, particularly a national champion in one of the few industries in which Britain still excels, is an unsettling one.

One senior music industry executive explained: "For British music, the fact that there was a very successful British company to sign for was hugely significant." However, others say the temptation to indulge in flag-waving should be resisted. Enders said: "Britain is one of the places people come looking for talent and that won't change. There are a lot of players in the market and advances paid to acts such as Florence and The Machine have gone up."

If EMI does fall into the hands of an American rival, she added, it might ultimately safeguard its future. "It would be better for EMI to have less indebtedness. It will have much more firepower."

EMI could survive. It is still lining up the sale of some prized assets. It was reported last month that the Abbey Road studios in London could be sold off. The company later insisted the studios should stay under its ownership and was working with "third parties" about funding a "revitalisation project".

Raising the possibility that a part of the nation's cultural heritage could be sold provides a graphic reminder of how the company's huge debt is forcing it to make unpopular decisions.

It may not matter if British acts are no longer championed by a UK company as long as the country continues to produce talent and A&R men from overseas arrive here in search of the next Lily Allen or Amy Winehouse. "In the end the music business is the same as it ever was," Enders said. "It's about hits."

• EMI
• Music industry
• Charles Allen
• Guy Hands
• Piracy
• Internet
• Lily Allen
• The Beatles

James Robinson
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Charities say reports of abuse being routinely ignored is a 'systemic and increasing problem'

Torture survivors seeking sanctuary in Britain are being wrongly held in government detention centres, despite independent medical evidence supporting claims of brutal violence against them in their home countries.

According to Home Office guidelines, in cases where there is evidence that a person seeking asylum has been tortured they should be detained only in "exceptional circumstances". But medical charities that carry out hundreds of independent assessments of torture survivors every year have accused the government of routinely ignoring their reports, with victims held in detention centres until their asylum claims are heard – and, in almost every case, rejected.

Sonya Sceats, a spokeswoman for one charity that carries out medical assessments for the government, told the Observer: "It's very clear there is a systemic and increasing problem here. The corollary of their dismissal of independent medical evidence is that the protection [asylum] claim is invariably rejected and this means a survivor of torture is at risk of being returned to further torture or at risk of detention."

The allegations come in the wake of strong criticism last week of the UK Border Agency, which was condemned for failing to investigate claims of mistreatment by failed asylum seekers in abuse allegations up to July 2008. Ministers now plan to review the use of force against asylum seekers by British security guards after a Border Agency report on abuse conceded that serious injuries were suffered by detainees who had been handcuffed or physically restrained.

The new allegations further highlight systematic mistreatment in Britain's asylum system. One 43-year-old torture victim from Zimbabwe, who is on hunger strike in Yarl's Wood detention centre, Bedfordshire, alleged she was detained despite independent verification of the abuse in her home country.

Her arms are scarred from repeated stabbings during an incident in Zimbabwe in which she was also beaten and raped. The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, has been in Yarl's Wood for five months and alleges medical mistreatment and racist abuse by staff, claims that have been denied. She told the Observer: "The officers are racist and are not sympathetic. We have suffered and don't want to be tortured here, but inside here it is a form of torture but nobody can see us locked up."

Bibiche Lutete, 36, was beaten and repeatedly raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the UN has confirmed rape is used as a weapon of war. After seeking asylum in the UK, she said she had been further traumatised while being illegally held in a British detention centre. She also claimed to have suffered "medical abuse" and had anxiety attacks after witnessing a naked woman dragged from her room in Yarl's Wood by private security guards, claims robustly denied by the Home Office.

"Everybody was shocked," she said. "She had no clothes on and she was photographed. I still get flashbacks."

The Medical Foundation For the Care of Victims of Torture, the UK charity dedicated to the treatment of torture survivors, said it had lodged complaints with the Home Office over concerns that its assessments documenting evidence of abuse among asylum seekers were being increasingly dismissed by officials. The foundation cited figures from the last 18 months showing only seven people had been released from detention out of 250 cases where clinical evidence of abuse had been presented.

The Border Agency denied it dismissed the evidence of independent medical experts. Hugh Ind, the agency's director for protection, said: "We consider all evidence submitted in support of asylum claims very carefully, including claims of torture. Where an individual sets out a credible case that they are in need of protection, we normally grant asylum."

An Observer investigation has also found that the number of "assaults" against refugees in detention centres remains high. The charity Medical Justice Network has documented at least 15 recent cases where a detainee claims they were assaulted, while allegations by asylum seekers of inadequate healthcare are running at eight a month.

A number involve torture survivors, including one from the DRC who ended up in hospital last March after sustaining severe handcuff injuries during an attempted deportation from the UK by private security guards. His complaint to the Border Agency tells how six guards restrained him on a plane and that "one turned round trying to strangle me by my throat while the other was banging my head on the seat in front".

The government is trying to clear a backlog of 200,000 asylum cases, though the border agency admits it can process fewer than half its target applications a month. Three Russians refugees leapt to their death from the 15th floor of a block of flats in Glasgow last Sunday, prompting further concern over the treatment of asylum seekers. Yesterday hundreds of people joined a rally in the city and called for an end to the "enforced removal of refugee families".

• Immigration and asylum
• Torture

Mark Townsend
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Study finds US, Germany, Italy and Norway have more problems with foods such as apples, peaches, shrimp and wheat

British people are some of the least likely in the western world to suffer from food sensitivity reactions. This is the conclusion of a study of more than 4,500 adults from 13 countries carried out by Imperial College London.

The study found that nations varied in the rate of individuals who reacted to at least one food. At the top end of the spectrum, about 25% of people in Portland, Oregon, in the US, displayed food sensitivity reactions, compared with 11% in Iceland and Spain. Britain and France were next at 14%.

For the study, published in the journal Allergy, the researchers tested participants' blood for antibodies against a range of foods. This gauges food sensitivity, which refers to an immune system response to a food's proteins. Not everyone who is sensitive to a food displays symptoms of a clinical allergy, such as wheezing, swelling or digestive problems.

Results from the study revealed that, along with the US, Germany, Italy and Norway had the highest prevalence of food sensitivity, with about 22% of people from each country showing antibodies against some type of food.

However, the researchers also discovered that countries tended to have similar specific foods that triggered reactions. Hazelnuts, peaches, shrimp, wheat and apples emerged as the most common. At the other end of the spectrum, fish, eggs and cow's milk – normally viewed as the foodstuffs most like to trigger allergic reactions – turned out to be least common causes of sensitivity.

Those patterns were fairly consistent across countries – more consistent than would be expected by chance, according to the researchers, led by Dr Peter Burney of Imperial College London.

Across countries, less than 1% of people had sensitivities to fish, eggs or milk while 7% of people had sensitivity to hazelnuts. The next most common causes of sensitivity were peaches, shrimp and wheat, which each affected about 5% of people across countries.

• Food safety
• Health & wellbeing

Robin McKie
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Top doctor accuses hospitals of failing to provide beds for families, who end up exhausted, stressed and depressed

The NHS is adding to the suffering of parents with a child in hospital by not giving them somewhere to sleep, the UK's top children's doctor has warned.

Far too few hospitals provide parents with accommodation so they can stay beside their ill son or daughter, Professor Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, told the Observer.

He said it was "not good enough" that some parents have to sleep on a pulldown bed or an unused patient's bed, sometimes for weeks or even months, in order to keep a vigil by their child. Some end up exhausted and reduced to tears by sleep deprivation and the lack of privacy, he added. He accused the NHS of neglecting the needs of people who deserved a better deal for playing a key role in their child's recovery.

"Every week, hundreds of pre-term babies are born and thousands of children end up in hospital with a broken limb, cancer or cystic fibrosis. But there aren't enough family accommodation facilities across the NHS and the situation is not good enough. In my experience, the majority of parents who are in hospital overnight are on a Zedbed beside their sick baby or child," he said.

"They will be woken frequently throughout the night when other children are admitted, or the ward buzzer sounds, or the lights go on and off. They will often become exhausted. Parents can't be expected to sleep on a put-you-up bed for weeks on end," he added.

"This is a major issue, as more than 40 hospitals are looking to a charity to provide what we as a college regard as an essential service. But there are over 250 children's inpatient services across the NHS and provision is far short of what's required. We believe that, whenever children are admitted to hospital, their parents or carers should be able to stay with them. The NHS is trying as hard as it can, but it can do a lot better," Stephenson said. He wants every parent whose child has more than a short stay to be offered a private room with washing and cooking facilities.

Stephenson praised the role played by Ronald McDonald House Charities, which is backed by the McDonald's fast-food chain. It houses more than 400 parents or families every night in its network of 14 houses and 29 sets of family rooms at 43 hospitals across the UK.

Action for Sick Children welcomed Stephen son's remarks. Some hospitals do provide good parents' facilities, said the charity's Jo Waterson. For example, the new Manchester Children's Hospital has a pulldown bed beside each bed and in each patient's room. But while more hospitals are addressing the problem, it is still a recurring complaint from parents, she said.

The shortage of parental rooms is most acute in neonatal wards. Over 1,000 premature babies are born every week. A neonatal ward containing 25 babies may have just four rooms for mothers and fathers, he said. Emma Pugh's son, Tom, now two-and-a-half, weighed just 1lb 2oz when he was born at 23 weeks in her local hospital in Hereford. He was treated in the special care unit at Birmingham Women's Hospital, 70 miles away, where there were no overnight parental facilities.

Pugh said: "It meant three-to -four-hour, 140-mile round trips for me, Gary and our three-year-old, Nancy, which was horrendous. I did that journey every day for three months. Having to leave Tom, especially on days when things weren't going well – he was given a less than 10% chance of survival – was gutting. That lack of parental accommodation at the hospital added to our stress, cost us £150-£170 a week in fuel, made our life even more difficult than it already was and, crucially, took away time with Tom."

Andy Cole, chief executive of the sick and premature baby charity, Bliss, said: "Around 50% of special care baby units do not provide accommodation for parents. Families are already facing an extremely traumatic and stressful time. To be faced with not being able to stay with or even be near their baby is inconceivable."

A department of health spokeswoman said that the department's National Service Framework for Children, Young People and Maternity Services stresses that the NHS and parents are partners in looking after children receiving treatment. She said: "It also recommends that hospital care of children and young people should be provided in buildings that… cater for parents and siblings, with suitable provision for overnight stay. These must include access to meals and relaxation, and must respect parents' privacy." She added that it was for the NHS locally to decide how such facilities are provided and to what level.

• NHS
• Health
• Children
• Health policy

Denis Campbell
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