The Herald

Reinventing Airborne

SCOTLAND has already found an excellent way of reducing reoffending (Leader, Alternatives to prison, March 2). It is called the Airborne Initiative. The Scottish Executive has just pulled its funding, sent the inmates back to the courts for disposal and made the 23 staff working there redundant. Now we have an expensive consultation exercise to discover all over again what Airborne and other like organisations have been doing for years. Yet another triumph for the Labour/ LibDem coalition. Is...

Blair Faces Trial by Public Opinion, If Not the Hague

It's an image that would warm the heart of the anti-war campaigner, George Galloway: Tony Blair sitting behind bullet-proof glass in The Hague, headphones on, while he remonstrates against accusations of war crimes. But somehow I don't think the PM will be following Slobodan Milosevic into the dock quite yet. However, attempts by anti-war campaigners to take Tony Blair to the International Criminal Court look like rather more than just a publicity stunt. The civil rights lawyer, Michael Mansf...

Bloodiest Day Since the Butcher's Fall; Clerics Urge Calm As Shi'ite Youths Vow Revenge

IT was meant to be a holy day. But in a world where death has a thousand doors it turned out to be the bloodiest since the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Body parts littered the ground in Baghdad after three suicide bombers killed at least 58 people as Shi'ites marked the ceremony of Ashoura at the Kadhimiya mosque.

Gashed by His Mother - All Part of a Holy Ritual

A YOUNG boy sits bathed in his own blood, a vivid testament to the beliefs of his mother, who cut him with a sword during the ceremony of Ashoura. The biggest mass event in the Shi'ite calendar saw sect members across the Middle East beat their heads and chests and gash their heads with swords to show their grief and echo the suffering of Imam Hussein.

Militant with Al Qaeda Links Named As Chief Suspect

A JORDANIAN militant linked to al Qaeda was named last night as the "prime suspect" for the attacks which killed 170 worshippers at Shi'ite Muslim shrines in Baghdad and Kerbala. American officials and Iraqi leaders said Abu Musab Zarqawi was seeking to spark a Sunni-Shi'ite civil war in Iraq to wreck US plans to hand over power to the Iraqis on June 30.

If 50 Cent Thinks You're Cool, Then You're Ice Cold

When Abi Atanda, aka Necaras of the Edinburgh hip-hop outfit the Yard MCs, holds an under-18s night on Fridays, he sees a lot of white teenagers "well into their hip-hop fashion". The collective affection for hip-hop - both the music and its diverse culture - manifests itself in the way the crowd talks, he says, but white kids seem to use vocabulary that signifies their affection "when they're trying to be funny". "It's parody, rather than how they would actually speak all the time, but you k...

We Have Never Fitted in; Gilbert and George Changed Conceptual Art Forever, but What Makes the Odd Couple Tick? Cate Devine Reports

Gilbert and George have got the plumber in. They seem inordinately pleased at the very idea, and as they usher me slickly indoors I can't help noticing a muffled frisson as George glances covertly at Gilbert and whispers something about a man, a sink and a piece of lead piping. Not that you get to see the actual plumber in question, you understand. He's concealed behind a wall of perfectly restored Georgian wood panelling - and is actually beavering away next door, in the house they have just...

The Buy Word

Upping the stakes SCOTS consumers are losing out against unscrupulous companies.

Inbox; the Shopper's Guide to the Net

THIS WEEK: Collectables A rare edition of Shakespeare's Hamlet is expected to fetch up to (pounds) 1.1m when it is auctioned next month. For those with a big interest in antiques and collectables but a smaller budget, here are some websites that might get you started. HOME SERVICE www.lassco.co.uk For those interested in salvaging chimney pieces or pulpits, this is a delicious site. It is the internet shopfront of a massive salvage company in the Shoreditch area of London. The firm has a turn...

Billboard

Establishing contact TWO weeks ago, conductor Garry Walker, in his first official winter season concert as principal guest conductor of the RSNO - the No 2 job - put down his baton, lifted a microphone and addressed the audience.

City Tunes Up for Two Weeks of Music, Drama and Dance

FOR the next two weeks, Glasgow's halls will be alive with the sound of music - orchestral music, chamber music, instrumental music, choral music, solo singing, reading, recitation, dancing, and even TV newsreading. It can only mean one thing: the return of the annual Glasgow Music Festival, where the doors of opportunity are opened to everyone who aspires to any level of achievement in the performing arts, whether they are aiming at the profession, or merely cultivating their hobby and pasti...

Theatre the Quare Fellow, Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow 4/5 Stars

BRENDAN Behan knew about the pains of confinement first-hand. Joys, too, in the brand new post-war society inside Dublin's Mountjoy Prison, where Republican dissenters were banged up amid a caste system of old lags and rookies, untouched by the welfare state. This is made crystal clear in his most famous play, revived here by Kathy Burke for Oxford Stage in a tight-lipped, bleakly sensitive production. As all sides idle their time in wait for the next day's hanging, an unspoken dread looms la...

Theatre Oliver Twist, Lyric Hammersmith, London 4/5 Stars

YOU could have heard a pin drop. It might have been well past their bedtime, but Neil Bartlett had small children gripped by his latest theatrical excursion - and you'd think Oliver Twist would have been done to death. David Lean made a definitive movie version; since then he's been musicalised, sentimentalised (Lionel Bart) and BBC-filletted. Bartlett's Oliver Twist however does an unexpected thing and returns Dickens to his original place as part of the penny-dreadful brigade. It's as thoug...

The New Kid On the Bloc; Conductor Ilan Volkov Will Lead the Bbc Sso On a Tour of the Baltic States in His Debut Foreign Trip with the Orchestra. By Michael Tumelty

WITHIN a fortnight, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and its chief conductor, Ilan Volkov, will be heading off on a six-day trip to Latvia and Estonia, an excursion which marks the first proper foreign tour for the young Israeli conductor with his Scottish orchestra and signifies the beginning of a busy period of travelling for the BBC SSO. Indeed, in an era when symphony orchestras find it difficult to get off their own patch, and when the glamour and grind of touring, so prevalent in the...

Music Fountains of Wayne, Garage, Glasgow 3/5 Stars

A quick scan of tonight's audience reveals bald pates dotted throughout. There are a few instances of the band's new, younger, post-Stacy's Mom audience, but it seems the Fountains Of Wayne fanbase is the more mature gentleman, the sort that might own Nick Hornby's 31 Songs, enter the Mojo crossword competition and appreciate the band's traditional songcraft and pleasant melodies. Indeed, their set seems directed at the long-term devotee - and there are many word-perfect devotees here - takin...

Concern Over Ban

Bovis Manager Reveals 15,000 Design Changes for Holyrood

THE firm running the Holyrood project yesterday said it had been forced to cope with more than 15,000 design changes in the past five years, and changes were still being made just a few months before the target completion date. Alan Mack, project manager of Bovis Lend Lease Scotland, told the Fraser inquiry into the spiralling costs that there had been thousands of design changes and he had angrily demanded a "design freeze" last April, but the suggestion was not taken seriously by other memb...

Tuesday's Super Result for Kerry

AS the results rolled in this morning for the Super Tuesday primaries to pick a Democratic presidential candidate, US television said John Edwards would pull out today, abandoning the field to John Kerry. Mr Edwards had not won a single state in the six results announced out of the 10.

Water of Life Discovered On Mars

MARS was once wet enough to support life, Nasa announced last night. Opportunity, the robot ex-plorer, has found evidence of the main goal of Mars exploration: that water once flowed or gathered on its surface.

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