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at Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:25:32 GMT
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'I shot him in the back and he fell … '
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/79920?ns=guardian&pageName=Mexico%27s+drug+war%3A+%27I+shot+him+in+the+back+and+he+fell+*+in+that+moment+%3AArticle%3A1447640&ch=World+news&c3=Guardian&c4=Mexico+%28News%29%2CDrugs+trade+%28News%29%2CWorld+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=Rory+Carroll&c7=10-Sep-05&c8=1447640&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=World+news&c13=Mexico+drug+war+%28Rory+Carroll+three+part+series+only%29&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FMexico" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">In the last of a three-part series, Rory Carroll asks a former gang member how he was drawn into a world of kidnapping, torture and killing</p><p>José Navarrete was 15 when he killed for the first time and it felt, all things considered, pretty good. "I shot him in the back and he fell. Then I went over and put one in his face. In that moment I felt the best."</p><p>The dead boy was also 15 and belonged to a group that had gatecrashed a birthday party organised by Navarrete's street gang. Shouting turned to shoving and Navarette decided to use the 9mm he kept in his waistband to frighten shop owners.</p><p>"All my friends congratulated me. They said it showed I really belonged in the gang. I felt a part of the neighbourhood." All these years later he can still feel the tingle.</p><p>It was the start of a long, dark journey into the business of kidnapping, mutilating and murdering fellow inhabitants of<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/03/mexico-drug-war-killing-fields" title="">Ciudad Juárez, centre of Mexico's drug war and by some measure the world's murder capital</a>.</p><p>The scale and sadism of the violence bewilders outsiders. We see the corpses, the ambulances and the police but what of the killers? Who are they? Why do they do it?</p><p>Navarrete's arc from little boy who put thumbtacks on teachers' chairs to leader of a pitiless gang that beheaded its victims goes some way to explaining the moral and social anarchy at the heart of the so-called war on drugs.</p><p>Sitting in the sunlit yard of Juárez prison, arms tattooed, head shaved, he looks the part of a ruthless cartel footsoldier but his story does not fit boilerplate references to turf war violence. It speaks, rather, of a broken state and society.</p><p>Now 31, Navarrete is composed – except for when the subject turns to decapitations – and relates tales of brutality and hedonism in the same matter-of-fact tone.</p><p>His father was a mechanic, his mother a housewife. They squabbled, so young José didn't spend much time at home. He didn't like school either and bunked off from the age of 12 to hang out on the street with friends.</p><p>As a teen he smoked and sold cannabis. "That was the start of my criminal career," he says. It was easier, more fun and better money than toiling in one of the city's myriad<em>maquilas</em>– sweatshop factories – which paid £25 a week.</p><p>Navarrete joined the local branch of the Sureños, a gang founded by Mexican prisoners in California, and started carrying a knife, then a machete, to extort takings from shopkeepers.</p><p>After the birthday shooting he skipped over the border to El Paso and spent three years as a cleaner, gardener and mugger. "There was a guy who didn't want to give me his tennis shoes so I hit him." How? "A machete. In the lungs." His anatomical knowledge expanded when he return to Juárez and assaulted storekeepers with broken bottles.</p><p>Navarrete moved up the gang ranks and started kidnapping businessmen and their relatives for ransom. "Police officers would sell us information," he says casually. "We would phone the victim's family and beat them so they'd scream to show we weren't playing with them. I cut off thumbs and fingers."</p><p>Ransom payments ranged from £10,000 to £75,000. "I enjoyed my money. Cocaine, heroin, women, cars." He fathered seven children with three women. A rival gang killed one of the women to get at Navarrete, while the other two want nothing to do with him.</p><p>He killed about half of his 20 kidnap victims, supposedly because ransoms were not paid. Was it difficult getting to know someone, then taking them to a deserted spot and shooting them? "Not really," is the chilling answer. "I had no pity for them. The point was to get money. It was a job."</p><p>Other victims included rival gang members and stallholders who refused to pay<em>cuota</em>, a criminal levy. In some cases, as an example, they were beheaded. It appears the only taboo in the gangster's moral landscape because he drops eye contact and examines his shoes. "I didn't do the cutting," he says softly.</p><p>Drugs weave in and out of the narrative. They were a source of revenue, a currency to buy and sell other products, a way to get high after a stressful day. Navarrete took cocaine and heroin packages across the Rio Grande, but trafficking was a sideline.</p><p>The Sureños are independent of the big narco gangs. They follow their own homicidal agenda, while the Sinaloa cartel go on the offensive against the homegrown Juárez cartel.</p><p>Multiply the capacity for violence this implies by 500 – the estimated number of gangs in the city – and the result is anarchy.</p><p>No one knows how many of the 6,000 slaughtered in the past four years – an extraordinary number for a city of just over one million – were killed by cartel assassins – the<em>sicarios</em>– and how many ended up on the wrong side of the likes of Navarrete, who reckons he personally killed 20.</p><p><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/05/brazilian-immigrants-gunned-down-mexico" title="">Mexico's main crossing point to the US has always had a seedy border vibe,</a>but two decades ago it was envisaged as a showcase for a new economy built on free trade, manufacturing and cheap labour.</p><p>Factories drew migrants from all over Mexico but low wages kept families poor and often forced both parents to work, leaving children unsupervised. Secondary schools barely functioned, leading to a 50% drop-out rate. Today cartels and gangs find easy recruits amid the 50,000<em>ni nis</em>, teenagers who neither study nor work.</p><p>Alfredo Coral, 41, another Juárez jail inmate, said that with his parents at work all day he drifted out of school, moved from soft to hard drugs and became a pusher for the local cartel. "Bad company corrupts good intentions," he says.</p><p>Coral stabbed a client to death in a payment dispute and indirectly facilitated murders by identifying and distracting kidnap victims at the moment a snatch squad would strike. Police seldom intervened. "We had things arranged with them. Law does not know this city."</p><p>Juárez, he says, was a trampoline for getting drugs into the US. But the product spilled into the city, creating a local market of about 80,000 addicts and additional turf wars. Coral himself became so hooked he ran out of veins and had to inject into muscle. But in prison he discovered God and renounced violence.</p><p>Corrupt police and dysfunctional courts means that criminals can act with impunity, a fact chillingly supported by the disappearance of hundreds of young women in the 90s. But critics of the government's new military-led strategy say focusing on street thugs ignores villains at the top of the narco pyramid such as crooked politicians, financiers and officials.</p><p>A former Juárez police chief, Saulo Reyes Gamboa, is serving eight years in a Texas jail for trying to smuggle a tonne of marijuana. Despite the scandal, the mayor who appointed him, Héctor Murguía Lardizábal, has just been re-elected. Amid this social and moral morass it is little wonder gang members make crime sound a natural career choice. There is at least one ethical code: look after jailed members with money and drugs.</p><p>But Navarrete, serving 11 years for assault and attempted murder, does not want such help. He has renounced violence and joined a wing for evangelical inmates who say they have found Jesus.</p><p>The gangster admits he moved to escape retribution from rival gangs but says during a religious service he heard God. "I started crying. And thinking of all the people I hurt."</p><p>Fresh from prayers with a bible, pressed shirt and warm handshake, he looks like a worshipper, but you wonder if the flinty gaze, like the tattoos, is permanent. "When I get out of here my plan is to preach," says Navarrete. "Tell young people not to make the mistakes I made."</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/mexico">Mexico</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/drugs-trade">Drugs trade</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/rorycarroll">Rory Carroll</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a>&copy; Guardian News&Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our<a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms&Conditions</a>|<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /><p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/-EbSfldzN7uAYSWFfJrXsRAvzzw/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/-EbSfldzN7uAYSWFfJrXsRAvzzw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/-EbSfldzN7uAYSWFfJrXsRAvzzw/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/-EbSfldzN7uAYSWFfJrXsRAvzzw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>

The human face of Pakistan's deadly flood
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/31244?ns=guardian&pageName=Behind+the+photograph%3A+the+human+face+of+Pakistan%27s+deadly+flood%3AArticle%3A1447743&ch=World+news&c3=Guardian&c4=Pakistan+flood+2010+%28News%29%2CNatural+disasters+and+extreme+weather+%28News%29%2CPakistan+%28News%29%2CWorld+news%2CAfghanistan+%28News%29&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CCharities&c6=Rania+Abouzeid+in+Azakhel&c7=10-Sep-05&c8=1447743&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FPakistan+flood" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Mother of the child in image that went around the world tells of her family's struggle</p><p>It was an image that conveyed the human cost of the Pakistani floods – and the failure to deliver aid to those affected – more powerfully than any statistic: four young children lying on a filthy patchwork quilt, one of them sucking on an empty yellow bottle, all of them covered by flies.</p><p>The photograph by Associated Press's Mohammad Sajjad went around the world and featured in the Guardian's<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/picture/2010/sep/01/pakistan-floods-children" title="Eyewitness">Eyewitness</a>slot last week. The Guardian identified the child with the bottle as two-year-old Reza Khan and tracked him down to a makeshift camp at a roadside in Azakhel, some 19 miles from Peshawar, the capital of the insurgency-plagued province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, bordering Afghanistan.</p><p>The camp is a hotchpotch of about two dozen tents donated by various aid organisations, but it is run by none. Its residents must fend for themselves, and rely on the charity of passersby. There are 19 families here, all of them Afghan refugees: people who were displaced once by conflict in their homeland have now been displaced again by the month-long deluge.</p><p>Reza's family is from Butkhak, near the Afghan capital, Kabul. His father fled the area as a young boy, some 30 years ago, to escape the cycle of foreign occupation and internecine battles plaguing his homeland.</p><p>When we found him, Reza was in a tent with his mother, Fatima, who, like most Afghans, has only one name, and six of his seven siblings, all huddled on a blue blanket extended over themuddy floor. He was still clutching the same bottle. It was still empty.</p><p>Fatima tried to calm the boy, who cries in a constant, low whimper, as well as his twin brother, Mahmoud. She covered three of her other children – she has eight, all under the age of nine – with a dirty mosquito net somebody in a passing car gave her, but it has several gaping holes. Her eldest child, a nine-year-old girl called Sayma, is mute and seems dissociated from her surroundings. Her green eyes stare blankly ahead, seemingly oblivious to her brothers' wails. Flies carpet the few blankets arranged on the floor, and swarm all over the children. There is precious little in the tent – one cooking pot, a few cushions and two or three items of children's clothing. The stench of human and animal waste is overwhelming in the hot, humid air. There is no sanitation, just shallow, open ditches of raw sewage that attract flies and mosquitoes.</p><p>"They have had nothing to eat today. I have no food," Fatima says as she tries to swat the flies away from her children with a bamboo fan. "He's crying with hunger," she says, pointing to Reza. "It's been a month since he had any milk."</p><p>On this day, Reza's father, Aslam, was in a nearby hospital with his seven-year-old daughter, who has a skin infection caused by the unsanitary living conditions. Reza and several of his siblings also bear red spots, and appear malnourished. Their thin hair is coming out in clumps, their mother says. "We have been here for a month, a month!" Fatima says. "We are tired of these flies and of being without food. Before the waters came, my husband worked. We were poor before, but we had full stomachs."</p><p>The family of 10 used to live among the 23,000 residents of the Azakhel Afghan refugee camp, about 20 minutes' walk from their current roadside location. Aslam sold chickens for a living, travelling from door to door on a rickety bicycle, one of the family's prized possessions. He made about $2 a day.</p><p>Their mud-brick home was small, Fatima says, but it was enough for her. They lived among her husband's clan, about six families in all. "I had a kitchen, and there was a water tap close by," she says as her youngest child, one-year-old Ayad, tugs on her lilac<em>dupatta</em>, the scarf Pakistani women drape over their heads, arms and chest, pulling it away from her hair. She quickly readjusts the worn, holed fabric. "These clothes are all that we have now," she says, almost apologetically.</p><p>The loose mud bricks of their home were no match for the raging waters of the nearby swollen Kabul River. The floodwaters gushed into the house in the morning. She and her husband snatched several of the children in their arms, while extended family members helped bundle the others out of the house.</p><p>The clan of some 60 people walked toward the main road linking the town of Nowshera to Peshawar. They spent five days out in an open field, eating whatever scraps they could forage.</p><p>Aslam's older brother, Taykadar, set out on foot to find help, stopping at several of the dozen or so organized relief camps nearby. "They would ask us for our Pakistani identification cards in order to register us, but we are Afghans," he says. "And we are too many, that's the problem. We don't want to be split from each other. We've already lost our homes, we don't want to lose our families."</p><p>The men managed to obtain several tents from various organisations. Fatima's, for example, was donated by the Saudi government while others bear the logos of UNHCR. The Afghans say they have nothing to return to. Taykadar says they haven't received any help from a government he knows is overwhelmed by the destitution of its own people. The busy road that they have camped alongside is now their lifeline. Men, women and children rush out towards any car that appears to slow down alongside them. Hundreds of hands stretch out, hoping for food, water or clothing.</p><p>"We have to run after the food, it isn't given by some organisation in the tents," Fatima says bitterly. Her children eat once a day, usually in the evenings, thanks to charity organisations that provide iftar meals during Ramadan. But Ramadan ends this week. "I just want to say to the world, isn't there any way they can get us food?" she pleads. "Look," she says, pointing to the twins in her lap. "Please, our children are dying of hunger."</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan-flood">Pakistan flood</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/natural-disasters">Natural disasters and extreme weather</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/pakistan">Pakistan</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/afghanistan">Afghanistan</a></li></ul></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a>&copy; Guardian News&Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our<a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms&Conditions</a>|<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /><p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/GPGc28oBxa27vG0Ok132S4uYyIA/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/GPGc28oBxa27vG0Ok132S4uYyIA/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/GPGc28oBxa27vG0Ok132S4uYyIA/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/GPGc28oBxa27vG0Ok132S4uYyIA/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>

Stay out of DC, Rice told Bush after 9/11
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/29525?ns=guardian&pageName=Stay+out+of+Washington%2C+Rice+told+Bush+after+9%2F11%3AArticle%3A1447761&ch=World+news&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=September+11+2001+%28News%29%2CGeorge+Bush+%28News%29%2CTerrorism+-+international%2CUS+news%2CWorld+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CCharities&c6=Press+Association&c7=10-Sep-06&c8=1447761&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FSeptember+11+2001" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Former secretary of state reveals exchange with president who wanted to 'be at helm of ship' despite security risks</p><p>Condoleezza Rice ordered George Bush not to return to Washington after the 9/11 attacks before hanging up the phone, the former national security adviser has revealed in a documentary interview.</p><p>In a heated exchange, Rice argued with the US president in Florida not to return to the White House because it was a potential terrorist target.</p><p>She told the Channel 4 documentary: "The president got on the phone and he said: 'I'm coming back.'</p><p>"I said: 'You cannot come back here. The United States of America is under attack, you have to go to safety. We don't know what is going on here.'</p><p>"He said: 'I'm coming back.' I said: 'You can't.'</p><p>"I said to him in a raised voice, and I had never raised my voice to the president before, I said: 'You cannot come back here.' I hung up.</p><p>"The president was quite annoyed with me to say the least. I've known the president a long time and I knew that he wanted nothing more than to be there at the helm of the ship."</p><p>Rice revealed that the bunker beneath the White House where she was sheltering with Dick Cheney began to run out of air.</p><p>"There were so many people in the bunker that the oxygen levels started dropping and the secret service came in and said we've got to get some people out of here.</p><p>"They literally went around telling people that they weren't essential and they had to leave."</p><p>Government communication systems were failing and Bush had to resort to an unsecured line to talk to Washington. Rice said: "Despite all of the sophisticated hierarchy, sophisticated command and control equipment that we had, at that moment much of it didn't function very well and people instead did whatever they could to communicate messages. And frankly we then had to make it up.</p><p>"I think back on the number of cell phones that were probably used to communicate the most sensitive information because somebody was driving in or somebody couldn't get to a landline.</p><p>"And I think how really dangerous that was because if the terrorists were monitoring our communications they would have heard a lot on cell phones."</p><p>Bush gave the order authorising the airforce to shoot down any commercial airliner that was not responding. When United 93 came down, Rice and other officials believed it may have been shot out of the sky.</p><p>"Everyone in that room thinks that perhaps it's been shot down. I got on the phone with somebody at the national military command centre ... just saying: 'You must know whether or not you you've shot down a commercial airliner or not.'</p><p>"That was just a horrible thought that the American air force would have shot down innocent civilians, that was a horrible thought.</p><p>"As I've reflected now on what the passengers and crew of, of 93, flight 93 did, first of all there's a sense of personal gratitude that they may well have saved my life, me personally.</p><p>"I also think of what they did for the country because had another plane hit the White House or the capital I just don't think we had much more capacity to absorb greater shock than we already had."</p><p><em>• The documentary 9/11: State of Emergency will be broadcast on Channel 4 on Saturday 11 September at 9pm</em></p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/september11">September 11 2001</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/george-bush">George Bush</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/terrorism">Global terrorism</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a></li></ul></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a>&copy; Guardian News&Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our<a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms&Conditions</a>|<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /><p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Uui_ML7ejpmEeC-OWPrxbe-0D2Y/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Uui_ML7ejpmEeC-OWPrxbe-0D2Y/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Uui_ML7ejpmEeC-OWPrxbe-0D2Y/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/Uui_ML7ejpmEeC-OWPrxbe-0D2Y/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>

South African nurses beaten during state worker strikes
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/15204?ns=guardian&pageName=South+African+nurses+beaten+during+state+worker+strikes%3AArticle%3A1447847&ch=World+news&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=South+Africa+%28News%29%2CWorld+news&c5=Not+commercially+useful&c6=David+Smith+%28Africa+correspondent%29&c7=10-Sep-06&c8=1447847&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=World+news&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FWorld+news%2FSouth+Africa" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Government hopes unions will accept latest pay offer as schools and hospitals remain paralysed by industrial action</p><p>Pressure for an end to South Africa's public sector strike was intensifying after reports of nurses being beaten, stabbed and kidnapped for crossing the picket line.</p><p>Union leaders were expected to make an announcement today on whether to accept the government's latest wage offer and end the stoppage that has crippled the country's hospitals and schools.</p><p>South African media have published accounts of numerous acts of violence and intimidation against health and education staff who insist on going to work.</p><p>A nurse was taken to hospital last Friday with serious head and neck injuries. Lynette Dube had reportedly been beaten by striking workers at Chris Hani Baragwanath hospital, in Soweto.</p><p>A day earlier, another nurse was stabbed at a hospital in Pietermaritzburg. There were also reports of a nurse being abducted and held for several hours before being released unharmed.</p><p>Nomvula Mokonyane, the premier of Gauteng province, condemned the behaviour of some workers. "Our differences should not degenerate into senseless killing of fellow human beings," she said.</p><p>The strike is now in its fourth week and has seen 1.3 million workers down tools and demand a double inflation 8.6% pay rise and a 1,000 rand (£90) a month housing allowance.</p><p>"The strike must end, we want workers to return to their posts but consultations to continue," one union official told Reuters. "We will need to convince other unions."</p><p>Another official said: "Members are still divided on whether to accept the offer but we don't see any reason why they can't go to work while we continue our deliberations."</p><p>Union leaders are scheduled to meet each other and then government negotiators today before making an announcement. The decision was supposed to have been made public yesterday but some big unions had not yet received mandates from members on how to proceed.</p><p>President Jacob Zuma's government raised its offer to 7.5% and 800 rand (£72) for the housingallowance last week but workers rejected the deal and unions asked for more time to explain the offer to their members.</p><p>Government officials said the state cannot afford the offer they have already put on the table and there is no more room in the budget to increase its offer, which would swell state spending by about 1%.</p><p>Economists estimate that the labour action is costing the economy about 1bn rand (£90m) a day.</p><p>The SA Chamber of Commerce and Industry has warned that the strike is wiping out the economic gains of hosting a successful football World Cup.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/southafrica">South Africa</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/davidsmith">David Smith</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a>&copy; Guardian News&Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our<a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms&Conditions</a>|<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /><p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KKdmKT-pDAUip9TtIM7_ya6tQGg/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KKdmKT-pDAUip9TtIM7_ya6tQGg/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KKdmKT-pDAUip9TtIM7_ya6tQGg/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/KKdmKT-pDAUip9TtIM7_ya6tQGg/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>

September 7, 1940: the Blitz, day one mapped
<p>Using Google Fusion tables, we've produced this map of the first day's bombing</p><br/><p style="clear:both" /><p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cqheZhG6h6nnLZrgZ7GF1iUxHZ8/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cqheZhG6h6nnLZrgZ7GF1iUxHZ8/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cqheZhG6h6nnLZrgZ7GF1iUxHZ8/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cqheZhG6h6nnLZrgZ7GF1iUxHZ8/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>

Paul Oakenfold, Armin van Buuren and Paul van Dyk unite for Love Parade tribute
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.4/41249?ns=guardian&pageName=Paul+Oakenfold%2C+Armin+van+Buuren+and+Paul+van+Dyk+unite+for+Love+Parade+%3AArticle%3A1447839&ch=Music&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Dance+music+%28music+genre%29%2CMusic%2CElectronic+music+%28Music+genre%29%2CFestivals+%28Culture%29%2CCulture+section%2CGermany&c5=Pop+Music%2CElectronic+and+Dance%2CNot+commercially+useful&c6=Sean+Michaels&c7=10-Sep-06&c8=1447839&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Music&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FMusic%2FDance+music" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Superstar DJs dedicate track to victims of German festival tragedy, with proceeds going to those injured and the families of those who died</p><p>Some of the world's top DJs have announced a new collaboration dedicated to the victims of this year's<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/jul/27/love-parade-tragic-final-chapter" title="Love Parade tragedy">Love Parade tragedy</a>. Paul Oakenfold, Armin van Buuren and Paul van Dyk have recorded a new song, Remember Love, with proceeds going to those affected by the stampede in Duisburg, Germany.</p><p></p><p>"I think this is the first time this has ever been done in the dance scene, to give back, to help people," Oakenfold said. "In many other music genres, artists come together, like Live Aid and after the Haiti disaster. We should do something [too]." The project began with Oakenfold, who wrote the song's basic structure and then spent the past month co-producing with Van Buuren and Van Dyk. "I thought it was a good idea to have England, Holland and Germany coming together," he said. "Love Parade [represented] a big part of the essence of the dance movement."</p><p></p><p>Twenty-one people died and dozens were injured after panic broke out at this year's Love Parade festival inGermany. Hundreds of people stampeded toward an entrance tunnel when police began turning festivalgoers away. Organisers have announced that the annual event, which began as a Berlin peace march in 1989, will not take place again.</p><p></p><p>"In its last years outside Berlin, the vibe of the Love Parade was a far cry from its original spirit," said Van Dyk, who has performed several times at the festival. "With Remember Love, we want to recapture the essence of Love Parade and try to assist those who suffered."</p><p></p><p>The single will go on sale on 11 September, initially available exclusively on Beatport. According to Oakenfold, Remember Love offers his signature "melodicism", Van Buuren's "emotion and movement" and "the energy and uplifting touch that no one does better than Paul van Dyk". Proceeds will go to the Association of Non-statutory Welfare in North Rhine-Westphalia Germany, which launched a campaign to benefit the families and victims affected by the July 24 tragedy.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/dance-music">Dance music</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/electronicmusic">Electronic music</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/festivals">Festivals</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/germany">Germany</a></li></ul></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/seanmichaels">Sean Michaels</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a>&copy; Guardian News&Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our<a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms&Conditions</a>|<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" /><p><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ksz3gXEwRmcQ6baPJF7PsueX98k/0/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ksz3gXEwRmcQ6baPJF7PsueX98k/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a><br/><a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ksz3gXEwRmcQ6baPJF7PsueX98k/1/da"><img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/ksz3gXEwRmcQ6baPJF7PsueX98k/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"></img></a></p>