Glenn Mulcaire 'acted under instructions' over voicemails

Glenn Mulcaire said he had not acted 'unilaterally' when he intercepted voicemails. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA

The private investigator at the centre of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal has denied suggestions he acted without orders from the newspaper.

In an attack on News International, Glenn Mulcaire said he was "effectively employed" by the tabloid publisher from 2002 as a private investigator and had not acted "unilaterally" when he intercepted voicemails. "As an employee he acted on the instructions of others," a statement issued by his lawyers said.

His comments came 24 hours after it emerged that Sara Payne, whose eight-year-old daughter, Sarah, was abducted and murdered in 2000, learned Mulcaire may have targeted her phone.

Hours after his statement, Sara Payne made her first public comments, saying she was "very distressed and upset" that details relating to her may have been found in Mulcaire's files.

"I can confirm reports that I was given a phone by the campaign team [for the NoW's Sarah's Law campaign] and that my voicemail was only activated after my first aneurysm," she said. This relates to a report on Thursday that she had not turned her voicemail on the phone until 2009, the year of her first aneurysm. She was given the phone by NoW in 2000.

In a statement that indicated she still appreciated her work on Sarah's Law with the NoW, she said: "Notwithstanding the bad apples involved here, my faith remains solidly behind all the good people who have supported me over the last 11 years. I will never lose my faith in them. My way would be to challenge the bad apples head-on, learn from the facts of the matter, and be a proactive part of stopping this from happening again."

Brooks said the allegations about Payne were "abhorrent", and that it was "unthinkable" "anyone on the newspaper knew Sara or the campaign team were targeted by Mulcaire".

The private investigator's statement challenges News International's central defence since Mulcaire and Clive Goodman, the paper's former royal editor, were jailed in 2007 for hacking into Prince William's phone. The company claimed that one "rogue reporter" was responsible.

Mulcaire's statement from his lawyers said: "There were also occasions when he [Mulcaire] understood his instructions were from those who genuinely wished to assist in solving crimes. Any suggestion that he acted in such matters unilaterally is untrue. In the light of the ongoing police investigation, he cannot say any more."

His statement focuses attention back on News International executives, who face another grilling by MPs on the Commons culture select committee.

James Murdoch is likely to be summoned to appear before MPs for a second time after Colin Myler, the NoW's former editor, and Tom Crone, the paper's former head of legal affairs, challenged his evidence to the select committee on 19 July.

Crone and Myler accused Murdoch of being "mistaken" when he told the committee that he had no knowledge of an email that implicated a member of the News of the World staff in Mulcaire's activities.

The pair said they had shown Murdoch the so-called "for Neville" email, which raised the possibility that the paper's former chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck knew about phone hacking at the time that the BSkyB chairman approved payments to victims of phone hacking. Murdoch said earlier this month that he did not have a "complete picture" when he approved the payments.

Committee chair John Whittingdale, who said he wanted to hear from the pair and James Murdoch in writing first, is expected to summon them next month. He would also be asking Myler and Crone to exlain why they now think the "for Neville" email is so significant after they played down its significance when they appeared before the committee in July 2009.

"Tom Crone and Colin Myler … told us they had discovered no evidence suggesting that anybody else beyond Clive Goodman had been involved," Whittingdale said. "We are now told, we understand from the statement they issued to the media, that they had drawn James Murdoch's attention to the significance of the 'for Neville' email. It appeared, when they came before us, that they did not regard that it was significant. But clearly they are now suggesting it is."

The committee is also writing to Jon Chapman, a former director of legal affairs at News International, who challenged Rupert Murdoch's claim to the culture committee that he had a copy of a report "for a number of years" which showed evidence of illegality.

Chapman said he was responsible for corporate and legal matters at News International and did not have responsibility for dealing with allegations about phone hacking.

Mulcaire was jailed in 2007 after pleading guilty to charges of phone interception and is currently appealing against a High Court order that would force him to give more information about hacking to his alleged victims. Glenn Mulcaire had claimed the privilege of self-incrimination but lost a High Court battle against comedian Steve Coogan and football pundit Andy Gray.

There is now a prospect that this appeal against the order arising from this case is abandoned after News International announced it was ceasing to cover Mulcaire's legal fees with "immediate effect".

Mulcaire's solictors wrote to News International earlier this week warning the publisher they were still legally liable to indemnify him against legal costs until the appeal case was resolved.

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Syrian tanks storm Hama

Residents of Hama protest against President Bashar al-Assad after Friday prayers, less than 48 hours before government forces used tanks to storm the city. Photograph: Reuters

Syrian troops in tanks have stormed the flashpoint city of Hama, killing and wounding scores of people in a barrage of shelling and gunfire that left bodies scattered in the streets.

Residents shouted "God is great!" and threw firebombs and stones at the tanks as they pushed through the city before dawn on Sunday.

"It's a massacre, they want to break Hama before the month of Ramadan," an eyewitness who identified himself by his first name, Ahmed, told the Associated Press by telephone.

Hospitals were overwhelmed with casualties and were seeking blood donations, he said.

Activists have predicted that demonstrations will escalate during Ramadan, which starts on Monday, as protesters and government forces try to use the Muslim holy month to tip the balance of the uprising that began in March in their favour.

Ahmed, a Hama resident, said he saw up to 12 people shot dead in the streets in a district known as the Baath neighbourhood. Most had been shot in the chest and head, he said.

"Troops entered Hama at dawn today," another resident told AP by telephone. "We woke up to this news, they are firing from their machine guns randomly and there are many casualties."

A doctor, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Reuters that the city's Badr, al-Horani and Hikmeh hospitals had received 24 bodies.

There were scores of wounded people and a shortage of blood for transfusions, he said by telephone from the city, which has a population of around 700,000.

"Tanks are attacking from four directions. They are firing their heavy machine guns randomly and overrunning makeshift roadblocks erected by the inhabitants," the doctor said. Machine gun fire could be heard in background as he spoke.

"There are bodies uncollected in the streets," said another resident, adding that army snipers had positioned themselves on the roofs of the state-owned electricity company and the main prison.

Tank shells were falling at the rate of four a minute in and around northern Hama, residents said, and electricity and water supplies to the main neighbourhoods had been cut off - a tactic used regularly by the military when storming towns.

During Ramadan, Muslims throng mosques for special night prayers after breaking their daily dawn-to-dusk fast. The gatherings could trigger major protests throughout the predominantly Sunni country and activists say authorities are moving to try to ensure that does not happen.

An estimated 1,600 civilians have died in the crackdown on the largely peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime since the uprising began. Most of the dead were killed in shootings by security forces at anti-government rallies.

Hama, about 130 miles (210 kilometres) north of Damascus, has become one of the hottest centres of the demonstrations. In early June, security forces shot dead 65 people there, and since then it has fallen out of government control, with protesters holding the streets and government forces ringing the city and conducting overnight raids.

The city has a history of dissent against the Assad dynasty. In 1982, Assad's late father, Hafez al-Assad, ordered his brother to quell a rebellion by Syrian members of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood movement. The city was sealed off before air strikes destroyed parts of the city. As many as 25,000 people, human rights groups say.

The real number may never be known. Then, as now, reporters were not allowed to reach the area.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had compiled the names of 13 dead from hospitals and residents in Hama, but the figure could not be independently confirmed. The Syria-based Local Coordination Committees said it had the names of four victims, but thatthere were more bodies still to be identified.

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'Eco-pirate' Paul Watson is in danger of losing his boat

Terri Irwin, widow of the late crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, and Paul Watson aboard the Sea Shepherd flagship in Melbourne in 2007. Photograph: William West/AFP

"Eco-pirate" Paul Watson is losing a race against time to recover his flagship boat, the Steve Irwin, which has been impounded in Shetland.

The world's most radical conservationist, Watson is being sued for $1.4m (?850,000) by a Maltese fishing company, Fish and Fish, one of Europe's leading tuna processors. The law suit against Watson's Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was filed last year after activists aboard the Steve Irwin freed 800 bluefin tuna from a pen in the Mediterranean.

Watson has just 10 days to raise the bond required to release the boat, which was named after the late Australian conservationist. It has been impounded in the harbour at Lerwick ever since the company sued him for damages. By last night, the society had raised about $500,000, after a global Twitter campaign and appeals to celebrities who have helped Watson in the past.

A co-founder of Greenpeace, Watson was picking up volunteer crew and restocking the Steve Irwin in preparation for a trip to protest against whaling in the Faroe Islands when he was served with the writ. The tuna cage that had been intercepted 40 miles off the Libyan coast in June last year held an estimated 35 tons of fish.

After a fracas in which there was hand-to-hand fighting between the two crews, Sea Shepherd sent in divers to release the 800 tuna.

Joseph Caruana, the owner of Fish and Fish, declined to speak to the Observer, but has claimed in the Maltese press that two of his divers were injured in the encounter, an allegation strongly denied by Watson. "Sea Shepherd cannot continue behaving this way. My aim is for justice to be done. I wanted to show that we mean business and we will fight our cause," he said.

Malta has become a global capital of tuna fishing, exporting ?80m-worth of the fish, mainly to the Middle East and Japan. Ships surround the fish with nets and then tow them to cages, where they are fattened for export.

Catches are limited to two weeks a year and ship owners have been given strict quotas to meet by governments, but, with little policing, the industry has been able to openly flout the law in Libyan waters.

Greenpeace and WWF called last month for a suspension of the Mediterranean tuna fishing season, saying that stocks were at critically low levels. "Mediterranean bluefin tuna is on the slippery slope to collapse," said Dr Sergi Tudela, of WWF Mediterranean.

In a statement last week, Watson said that if Sea Shepherd could not raise the money, the Steve Irwin could be held indefinitely and possibly sold. "This would not only be a financial hardship, but it could threaten our ability to defend whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary from the Japanese whaling fleet this December. Fish and Fish are claiming damages for bluefin tuna we believe were illegally caught after the season had closed," he said.

In a separate incident, the Namibian government has declared Sea Shepherd a "threat to national security" after it tried to film the annual slaughter of 90,000 Cape fur seals on the west African coast. It is a crime to document seal clubbing in Namibia.

"The group tried to document the seal slaughter, but was detected by Namibian special forces," said Watson. "It was a good plan, but Sea Shepherd is no match for the Namibian military." The group fled to South Africa, having had its rooms burgled and cameras destroyed.

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US debt crisis: talks to avoid default make 'significant progress'

Negotiations to raise the US debt ceiling and avert the country's first ever default continued through the night on Saturday as Republicans and Democrats tried to reach a deal before markets open on Monday. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

The White House and Republican leaders in Congress have made significant progress toward a deal to raise the US debt ceiling and avert a potentially catastrophic default, according to officials familiar with the talks.

Under a plan negotiated late on Saturday night, the ceiling would be raised in two steps by about $2.4tn (?1.5tn) and spending would be cut by a slightly larger amount, the officials said. The first stage – to raise the ceiling by about $1tn – would take place immediately and the second later in the year.

Congress would be required to vote on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, but none of the debt limit increase would be contingent on its approval.

President Barack Obama is seeking legislation to raise the government's $14.3tn debt limit by enough to tide the US treasury over until after the 2012 elections. He has threatened to veto any proposals that might lead to a recurrence of the current crisis next year but has agreed to Republican demands that deficits be cut – without tax increases – in exchange for authorising additional US borrowing.

Without a compromise in place by Tuesday, administration officials say the treasury will run out of funds to pay the nation's bills.

The subsequent default, which would be the first in US history, could prove catastrophic for the US economy by causing interest rates to rise and financial markets to sink, and sending shockwaves around the world. With financial markets closed for the weekend, the parties to the negotiations had a little breathing space, but not much. Asian markets open for the new working week late Sunday afternoon Washington time.

"There is very little time," Obama said in his weekly radio and internet address on Saturday. He called for an end to political gamesmanship, saying: "The time for compromise on behalf of the American people is now."

One official commenting on the late night negotiations said the two sides had settled on general concepts, but that there were numerous details to be worked out – and no assurance of a final agreement.

"There are many elements to be finalised," Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate said. "There is still a distance to go."

Still, word of significant progress after weeks of stalemate offered the strongest indication yet that a default might be averted.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said at a joint news conference with the House speaker John Boehner that he was confident a deal could be reached "in the very near future".

After a meeting at the White House with Obama and the House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, Reid initially disagreed with that optimistic assessment.

Past increases in the US debt ceiling have been routine, but Republicans, citing the giant US deficit, have demanded huge spending cuts as a condition for approving the increase this time.

After weeks of intense partisanship, there was renewed talk of compromise as both the House and Senate convened for extraordinary Saturday sessions.

McConnell and Boehner held their news conference shortly after the House of Representatives had rejected a Senate Democratic bill drafted by Reid to raise the government's debt limit by $2.4tn and cut spending by $2.2tn.

The House vote was 246-173, mostly along party lines and after a bitter debate. The vote was unusual in that Republicans lined up to kill Reid's legislation before it had even cleared the Senate. It was orchestrated as political payback because late on Friday Reid had engineered the demise of Republican proposals hours after it they were passed in the House.

Before the House vote, Republicans said Reid's proposals were full of gimmicks and would make unacceptable reductions in defence spending.

Pelosi said Boehner had chosen "to go to the dark side" when he changed his own legislation to satisfy the Tea Party movement and other critics, who insist taxes must not be raised to cut into federal deficits, even for the wealthiest US companies and individuals.

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Students given tips to stop gap year travel being 'a new colonialism'

Volunteering in developing countries such as Nepal can help young people gain confidence and a sense of self-reliance. Photograph: Jonny Cochrane/Alamy

The multi-million pound gap-year industry is in danger of damaging Britain's reputation abroad and raising fears that the west is engaged in a new form of colonialism, according to a leading thinktank.

Young people planning a gap year should focus on what they can offer their hosts in order to discourage the view that volunteering is merely a new way of exercising power, says a new report by Demos.

Those who carefully select the projects in which they take part are likely to make the most of their time, while doing the most to dispel the belief that their trips are merely self-interested, says the report.

Nine out of 10 young people surveyed by YouGov for Demos said they had improved their self-confidence, self-reliance and sense of motivation following a stint of volunteering in a developing country.

However, the gap-year industry is a ?6bn business for western companies, costing volunteers between ?1,500 and ?4,500 for a mere two-month experience. One in five people who took a gap year said they believed their presence in the place they visited made no positive difference to the lives of those around them.

Jonathan Birdwell, author of the Demos report, said there was even evidence that an ill thought-out gap year could be bad for local communities and Britain's relations with other countries. "There is a risk of such programmes perpetuating negative stereotypes of western 'colonialism' and 'charity': a new way for the west to assert its power," he said.

Birdwell added that "projects that do not appear to have benefits or make a difference for communities abroad leave volunteers unmotivated and disillusioned".

One respondent to the survey's report said: "I felt that the local community could have done the work we were doing; there were lots of unemployed people there. I'd have preferred to work with local unemployed and helped them in some way to benefit their community."

The study comes in the wake of the government's launch of the International Citizen Service which, in the words of the prime minister, is designed to "give thousands of our young people, those who couldn't otherwise afford it, the chance to see the world and serve others".

The scheme is means tested, allowing those who come from families with a joint income of less than ?25,000 the chance of a gap year for free. The pilot of the scheme will involve 1,080 young people visiting 27 different countries.

The Demos report found that 64% of 3,000 parents surveyed want their children to take part in the ICS scheme. However, Demos's research indicated that there were key factors which make a gap year successful and the report recommends the ICS should incorporate them.

There should be post-placement support, which allows the young person to continue the work they started abroad once back home, it claims.

The report says there should be pre-departure training to ensure that young people are able to offer relevant skills. It says placements which are short are just as likely to have positive outcomes in personal development and civic participation as long-term ones. Young people who live with a host family are also more likely to report positive outcomes in "skills, identity and values".

The report found that the typical UK overseas volunteer tended to be young, affluent, white and female, although those with few qualifications and those from low-income backgrounds reported the most positive experiences.

Birdwell said he hoped the ICS would grow to help around 3,000 young people a year and that these would be the least well-off in society. He said: "The new International Citizen Service is an exciting opportunity for young British people to experience the world and gain invaluable experience and skills while helping to contribute to the UK's international development goals.

"However, the ICS is competing with an already crowded gap-year market. In order to be successful, it must ensure that activities benefit communities abroad and it must target recruitment to young people who couldn't afford commercial gap year programmes."

Harry went on an expedition with funding from the charity Raleigh International to Costa Rica and Nicaragua before starting at Manchester on a business studies course. "I wanted a gap year which gave me work experience, a chance to travel and the chance to give something back to a community. When I returned, I managed to get on to an internship with IBM. I could have just travelled to Australia like everyone else, but how often do you get to trek through rainforests, build a community centre for a remote village or reforest a national park?"

Amy spent eight weeks in Nakavika village, Fiji, in 2008 before studying English at Nottingham. "I learnt nothing. By and large, the villagers living there seemed really happy. Probably earlier projects would have been rewarding, when you helped to build their toilets and when they didn't have sports equipment and text books already. I felt the only impact I had was the money I paid. Realistically, my presence only positively impacted the children there, as we played with them a lot when we were meant to be 'building'!"

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Plane from New York crashes at Guyana airport

A Caribbean Airlines jet carrying 140 passengers from New York crashed and broke in half on landing in Guyana, injuring several people but causing no deaths.

The Boeing 737-800 reportedly overshot the 7,400ft (2,200m) runway at Cheddi Jagan international airport in rainy weather, just missing a 200ft ravine that would have made fatalities more likely, according to the Guyanese president, Bharrat Jagdeo.

"We are very, very grateful that more people were not injured," he said as authorities closed the airport, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded and delaying dozens of flights.

Authorities struggled at first to remove passengers without adequate field lights and other emergency equipment. About 100 people received medical attention, with four treated for serious injuries, said Devant Maharaj, transportation minister in Trinidad, where Caribbean Airlines is based.

He said the company was sending a team to Guyana to help investigate the crash. No further details were available. Maharaj spoke at a press conference in Trinidad and took no questions, saying the investigation is ongoing.

Among the injured was Geeta Ramsingh, 41, of Philadelphia, who said passengers had just started to applaud the touchdown "when it turned to screams", she said, pointing to bruises on her knees. She said she hopped onto the wing and then onto the dirt road outside the runway fence.

"I am upset that no one came to rescue us in the dark, but a taxi driver appeared from nowhere and charged me $20 to take me to the terminal. I had to pay, but in times of emergencies, you don't charge people for a ride," she said, sitting on a chair in the arrival area surrounded by relatives. She was returning to her native country for only the second time in 30 years. The plane had left New York and made a stop in Trinidad before landing in Guyana.

Jagdeo said he has asked the US National Transportation Safety Board to help investigate the crash. He said crews were pushing to reopen the airport as soon as possible.

The crash of Flight BW523 is the worst in recent history in Guyana, and only one of the few serious incidents involving the Trinidad-based airline. It is the single largest carrier in the region, operating at least five daily flights.

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Somali refugees brave fighting in Mogadishu in hope of UN food aid

Despite continued fighting in Mogadishu, thousands of refugees from Somali's drought-hit south are arriving in the capital. Above, refugees queue for food in a camp in the suburbs. Photograph: Mustafa Abdi/AFP/Getty Images

Hit by the worst drought in 60 years, tens of thousands of people are leaving the rural areas of central and southern Somalia for the war-ravaged capital, Mogadishu, where last week the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) started an airlift operation to deliver to 20 feeding centres.

Despite continuing fighting, with troops of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and African Union-led forces battling the Islamic militants of al-Shabaab, more and more people are coming into the city, hoping to find relief from a drought that is affecting 11 million in Somalia alone.

The WFP said it has been able to provide 85,000 meals a day in Mogadishu but with mortar shells frequently hitting civilian areas the TFG military offensive that started last week is likely to hamper the delivery of food.

The UN declared a famine in two southern regions of Somalia on 20 July, but Abdirahman Omar Osman, the Somali government's spokesman, said the emergency is even more serious. Every day about 3,000 people arrive in Ifo, Dagahaley and Hagadera, the three camps at Dadaab in Kenya, which now have more than 380,000 refugees, 100,000 of whom arrived this year.

Barack Obama has said the emergency in east Africa has not had the attention it deserved in the US. Speaking during a meeting with the presidents of Benin, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Niger on Friday, Obama asked Africa to play a bigger role in assisting the people affected by the drought.

The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs has predicted that famine will spread to all of southern Somalia, parts of which are controlled by al-Shabaab, which banned foreign aid in 2009.

After talks with relief organisations, al-Shabaab has allowed some food to be delivered in the past weeks but so far no regular supplies have reached the areas controlled by the Islamist militants, who are linked to al-Qaida.

Djibouti, eastern Ethiopia and northern Kenya have been badly hit as well. The scale of the crisis has even prompted long-time refugees in Dadaab to join the relief efforts. Mosques and Islamic associations in the camps are collecting food and clothes to give to the newcomers.

"We have also asked the population to give priority to the new refugees at the water points," says Mahmoud Jama Guled, who chairs a section of Ifo camp. He said that in his area one water tank is now serving more than 6,500 families.

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