World's best golfer breaks silence following his accident outside his Florida home on Friday

Tiger Woods tried to end the whirl of speculation surrounding the car crash outside his home in Florida three days ago, saying the accident was "my fault" and praising his wife, Elin Nordegren, for acting "courageously" in coming to his aid when she saw he was injured.

In a carefully worded statement on his website, the golfer, whose celebrity is matched by his desire for privacy, did not specifically address allegations that have been published in the US following the incident in the early hours of Friday, when he crashed his Cadillac 4x4 into a fire hydrant and then a tree. He described the reports as "irresponsible".

"This is a private matter and I want to keep it that way. Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumours that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible," he said, hours before he was due to meet officers from the Florida highway patrol.

It emerged shortly after that a Florida-based criminal defence lawyer, Mark NeJame, acting on behalf of Woods and his wife, had contacted police to cancel that meeting – the third such time an attempt by law enforcement officials to meet the couple to discuss the accident had been denied.

Woods, who was reportedly left with cuts and bruises to his face after the accident, said yesterday he was "feeling pretty sore".

"This situation is my fault, and it's obviously embarrassing to my family and me. I'm human and I'm not perfect. I will certainly make sure this doesn't happen again.

"The only person responsible for the accident is me. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble. She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false.

"I would also ask for some understanding that my family and I deserve some privacy no matter how intrusive some people can be."

His agent Mark Steinberg told CNBC: "We have been informed by the Florida highway patrol that further discussion with them is both voluntary and optional.

After Woods crashed outside his home on private estate near Orlando it was reported he was rescued by his wife, who smashed the vehicle's rear window with a golf club to gain entry. But there have since been a series of extraordinary claims in the US media, most of them from the "celebrity gossip" website TMZ, alleging the golfer's injuries may not have been sustained as result of the car crash, that the couple were allegedly involved in a domestic argument, and that as the golfer drove away from his home his wife struck the car several times with the golf club. It was subsequently alleged that a dispute between the couple may have arisen as a result of the publication of claims in the National Enquirer magazine that Woods was having an "affair" with a New York nightclub hostess, Rachel Uchitel.

Uchitel travelled to Los Angeles today to meet Gloria Allred, one the most visible and voluble "celebrity" lawyers in the US. Whatever plans Allred has for her client, they are unlikely to chime with Woods's hopes that this affair disappears from the front pages and cable news networks as quickly as possible.

Although Tiger realizes that there is a great deal of public curiosity, it has been conveyed to FHP that he simply has nothing more to add and wishes to protect the privacy of his family," he added.

The appeal for people to respect his privacy, and the condemnation of those whom he believes have been intruding upon it, was to be expected from Woods. Despite being the world's  most recognisable athlete, with all the influence that status bestows, he has also steered clear of any subjects, politics and race issues being the most notable, that might be described as controversial. 

Very little is known of his private life beyond the fact of his marriage to Nordegren, the daughter of a Swedish politician, and that the couple have two children, Charlie, aged two, and Sam, seven months.

In an October posting on his Facebook account, Woods wrote, "I'm asked why people don't often see me and Elin in gossip magazines or tabloids. I think we've avoided a lot of media attention because we're kind of boring."

Whether or not he will be able to hold back the tide of speculation that has engulfed his carefully nurtured reputation over the last three days remains to be seen. He is due to make his first public appearance since the accident at a press conference on Tuesdaytomorrow in southern California, at his annual golf tournament, the Chevron World Challenge, at Sherwood country club.

In normal circumstances, his meeting with the media would concentrate on the event – it raises funds for his charitable foundation – and the state of his golf game but, assuming Woods does not withdraw because of his injuries, it now threatens to rival Michael Jackson's funeral as one of the most watched cable news events of the year.

• Tiger Woods
• Golf
• United States

Lawrence Donegan
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Many British Jews take a less than kosher approach to Judaism. Jonathan Margolis explains why you will find him skipping synagogue and munching bacon bagels

Some people ask me if we can meet up. They know I'm Jewish. They're wondering if I might like to write about, maybe even get a little bit involved with, something called the Jewish Community Centre for London.

And no, I wouldn't, really. Fine, this community centre has just got planning permission, it's costing a lot, it'll be a beautiful building near Hampstead, it's going to open in 2013 and it'll have amazing activities for people to celebrate their heritage and all that. But it's all rather earnest – a bit, I don't know, Jewish for me. The truth is, and this is probably a bad thing, but I'd be more excited if a new Apple Store were opening in my town.

I explain that I like being a Jew, but apart from looking as if I'm playing a character role as an accountant, being unable to stop using words such as schlep and plutz and loving chopped liver, I'm so un-Jewish that I've only once in 20 years been to my local synagogue.

"I'll tell you what," I say. "You get Larry David to open it and I'm in."

"If we could," they reply, "he'd be perfect."

I've no idea how observant a Jew the real Larry David is, but the Larry he plays in Curb Your Enthusiasm is my sort of Jew – in it but not into it, enjoying the culture, the humour, the hypochondria, the Yiddish-isms, the argumentativeness, the curious, sceptical take on the world – but weirded out by the inward-looking-ness and the religious stuff.

"You mean," I said, "this is a centre for people who are more Jew-ish, than Jewish?"

"Precisely," they say.

So I agree to go along to the JCC when it opens. But what I really want to write about is being Jew-ish. This is a term that I wish I'd invented rather than the veteran doctor-slash-theatre-producer, Jonathan Miller, years ago. He also referred to being "an amphibious Jew – half in and half out of the water".

We are those cop-out, fair-weather Jews that "real" Jews despise more than they do antisemites: the secular, cultural Jews, the amoral majority, the ones who want to have their bagel and eat it. The ones who, with their marrying out, their going to the pub on Yom Kippur and to the football on Saturdays, and – God forbid – with their ambivalent view of the Middle East, are doing Hitler's work for him and conspiring in the erosion of the already disappearing UK Jewish community – currently about 250,000 and counting, downwards.

Leaving aside what's supposed to be wrong with having your cake and eating it (what else are you supposed to do with a cake? Frame it? Bury it?), I can't help feeling the time has come for us race traitors, half-breeds and "apathites" to stand up for ourselves.

Apart from the not insignificant point that being a Jew is largely an inherited condition, it seems perfectly adapted to being an "–ish". I even wonder if the etymology of the word Jewish has developed to allow my race/creed/orientation/whatever to be available in Lite. There aren't many other things you can be born into where you can choose to live the "–ish" version rather than be an "-ist" or follow an "–ism". All we Jew-ish Jews do is to elect for the Ultra Lite option.

For us, the cool thing about being born a Jew is you can do it as much or as little, as well or as badly, as you like. You can be professional, amateur or pro-am. This understandably pisses off the pros, who marry a fellow full-timer, know all the stuff in the manual and keep up with all the latest fads. Which is why, for the Jew-ish, this community centre thing (which exists in most American cities) is rather attractive. It's like an Emirates Stadium where we rank amateurs will be able to come and play a little bit without being laughed off the pitch.

Jew-ish is different, you see, from lapsed. You can't lapse from being a Jew like you can from other things. Plenty of German Jews in the 1930s thought that simply saying they were no longer interested would get them off the hook with the Nazis; it didn't. And we, the Jew-ish, have no wish to deny our heritage. As much as the pros deride us as dilettantes, we deride Jews who pretend they're not Jews, change their name to Featherstonehaugh and take up hunting. Apart from being ugly, it never quite works.

But being Jew-ish is just as hard as going the whole – you should excuse me – hog. Even here in lovely, tolerant multi-ethnic Britain, I've been persecuted plenty, both physically and verbally, for being a Jew, albeit a secular, beer-drinking, bacon-eating "-ish" rather than one of those Jews identifiable by way of hats, hairstyles and habits.

I don't pretend any of what I've experienced is more than an inconvenience, an irritant in the scheme of racist things, but at school in the 60s and 70s I was still physically beaten and tormented by larger boys despite, oddly, my having a reputation as a pretty vicious rugby player. The theme of these locker room Jew-bating sessions – which didn't abate when I squealed that I "wasn't practising" – confused me then as now. The reason for the violence was, apparently, that we Jews were at the same time unacceptably rich and flashy and unacceptably poor and miserly. It was, I see now, a writ-small version of the confused Nazi paradigm of the Jew as both arch-capitalist and arch-communist.

One of the leading antisemites of that time is now, I see from his website, a cuddly-looking junior school head teacher in the home counties; I'd love to know more about his school's anti-racism policies. Another enthusiastic race hate merchant became – obviously – a police officer. Another would snarl about me being a "half-caste" as he was repeatedly sitting on me and punching me in the face – which, even from my undignified position under him, I found ironic since he was half-Indian.

At university there was nothing physical, apart some snide comments from an esteemed philosophy tutor about my having a car, which I'd paid for with money earned in my gap year ("Daddy's money, is it?") – oh, and a snarled, spittle-flecked Holocaust denial from a leading member of the Young Liberals, who later became a publicist for Colonel Gaddafi.

At work on a regional newspaper in Yorkshire, "Jewish" as insult was replaced by the now more fashionable "Zionist". One of our NUJ officials once came over to my desk to complain about a suit he'd bought in Manchester "from one of your Zionist brethren". That kind of thing was common.

Even today, when anti-Zionism is so hip, I hear the odd, faint echo of the old-style, non-PC antisemitism. A dear old colleague who lives in the country mentioned bibulously at a party the other day that he had become great friends with a Jewish family that had moved into his village. "Of course, everybody else hates them," he said. Obviously.

So don't tell me that being Jew-ish rather than a full-on Jew is a ­ cowardly cop-out. As far as avoiding antisemitism is concerned, being merely and meekly Jew-ish doesn't help at all.

Anyway, being Jew-ish has less to do with forgetting your roots than trying to have as little as possible to do with the more unruly shoots. I thoroughly enjoy and celebrate my culture, but I am deeply contemptuous of the madness and hypocrisy that has sprouted up in the organised religion, as it does in most cults. And I say this even though some of my best friends are frum and I'm a completely fake agnostic, because I still quietly recite the Shema when things get awkward.

What we, the Jew-ish, find offensive, especially from people who market themselves as being intelligent and questioning, is the literal interpretation of ancient petty rules and regulations, and subsequent attempts by the ultra-competitive to out-devout their fellow Jews by coming up with new, even more arcane policies. We're not talking about the proper Ten Commandments here, but bylaws such as the rules on kosher food, which made sense before there were fridges, but don't any more. Following these laws to the letter and beyond is, for us, like driving a petrol car 100 years from now on some kind of principle.

With this kosher business, it gets worse. There's a whole subsection of kosher food now called "glatt kosher" for those who don't think the 5,000-year-old food rules go far enough. The specifics of what makes meat glatt kosher are too tedious to go into, but this, surely, is just about one-upmanship and showing off, not theology? I don't know much about God, we've not met, but I am confident that if he or she exists, they wouldn't give a toss about what I eat. Only petty bureaucratic-type people could envisage a God who is a petty rule-book-waving bureaucrat.

A far bigger issue for the Jew-ish than silly, pedantic food fad minutiae is, of course, Israel. This, we find supremely troubling. We refuse to support it uncritically. We hate some of the stuff Israel does. But we can't help feeling uncomfortable when people who aren't Jews criticise the country; it seems, if only very exceptionally, to be tinged with a little bit of old-fashioned Jew-hating.

I have a possibly over-optimistic, glass half-full Jew-ish take on this. The reason Israel is singled out for hatred, I like to think, is positive; it's because the world expects better of Jews. The problem is that Israel isn't a monolithic entity; it contains all sorts of views on what that society should be. The things I as a Jew-ish leftie love (yes, love) about the place – its intellectualism, its remaining socialist ethic, the directness of its people and so on – are the very things other, more Jewish Jews, hate. The last time I visited a kibbutz, which used to be the epitome (for both the Jew-ish and the rest of the west) of the good Israel, there were no Jews under 70 living there. What's more, all the young volunteers were blond German and Danish idealists.

So has being merely Jew-ish rather than a proper Jew, marrying a woman who was half-Jewish, half-Methodist, and eating non-kosher food these five decades thwarted my children's option to be Jews, and by doing so played its part in the slow decline of Britain's Jewish population? In an odd way, it hasn't entirely.

Our elder daughter was several months into her relationship with her long-term Cornish boyfriend when she (and he) discovered he was, through his mother's line, more Jewish than she is. Their children, then, will be Jew-ish-ish, at least by birth. I continue to find it almost spooky that these two found each other. Our son a few weeks ago looked seriously into starting a website for the Jew-ish: working title, The Bacon Bagel. And our younger daughter has this last month been leading a campaign at Sussex University against a new campus ban on Israeli goods – theme of the campaign: it's all very well, but why Israel alone? Shouldn't the students also ban Chinese, American, Sri Lankan and dozens of other countries' goods?

The last she heard from the union hierarchy on this score was that to ban American or Chinese products would be, get this, "inconvenient". She is more enraged than I have ever known her about this frank and alarming admission that campus anti-Zionism is, at least for the students who aren't actually Palestinian, a fashion accessory like those chainstore black-and-white keffiyeh scarves.

All this activity by our Jew-ish-ish children seems to suggest our particular Jew-ish line might limp on for a while yet, rather than collapse in an apathetic heap. The point is that in our own way, we Jew-ish people are actually proud of being Jews. The biggest thrill I've had in a while was discovering recently that I'm on the BNP's Jews-in-the-media hate list. That is an unbelievable honour, although the details could use a little updating, lads.

But the thing I love best about being part – albeit a peripheral, out-of-step part – of this culture is that when this piece appears, there'll be uproar. The Jewish Jews will say I'm a typical self-hating Jew (as Larry David says, I've plenty to hate about myself without being a Jew coming into it). The Jews who deny being Jews will say I'm a typical self-obsessed Jew. The antisemites will say I'm a just a typical bloody Jew.

And yet the amazing thing is, I won't be excommunicated or fatwa-ed by frum Jews. There's no mechanism for it, and not a lot of desire for it, even from the fundamentalists among us. The worst that might happen is I won't be invited to a couple of Passover suppers next year. More likely, I'll be asked on to platform debates to discuss whether the Jew-ish are really Jews.

And if I die tomorrow, my people will still bury me like a proper Jew – in the prayer shawl I got for my barmitzvah. I'll be given a traditional farewell by my friend the rabbi, whom I've asked in advance to fly over from New York to officiate at my funeral.

He may not have been the most observant Jew, my friend will doubtless say. In fact, he was a very naughty boy. But at least he was Jew-ish.

• Judaism
• Religion

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A model admits she likes to be thin. So what? It's hardly going to shock anyone

I read a news story recently saying that Kate Moss was causing anorexia by talking. Is this true?

Mark, by email

Well, Kate Moss is a very powerful individual, you know, Mark. She saves the British fashion industry, propels the high street, launches music bands, makes people take drugs, causes eating disorders – and next year I can exclusively reveal that she will officially be the ruler of the free world, and the not-free world, too (so watch out, Mugabe). The talking that you are specifically referring to is a sentence that Moss said in an interview, claiming that "nothing tastes as good as being thin".

Now, if this statement merits prosecution for causing anorexia, then all I can say is that the courts are going to be pretty backed up with a lot of cases. My God, chuck that Lorraine Kelly in prison! She's been known to imply on GMTV that women like to feel slim. And what about Rosemary Conley? She's made a whole damn career out of the suggestion that being thin is preferable to being fat.

Leaving aside the tedious inference that eating disorders are just about silly teenage girls wanting to look like models, as opposed to psychological disorders, let's examine the issue. That Kate – a fashion model – likes to be thin is about as much of a shock revelation as that Tony Blair likes money: it's why she does what she does. She didn't say everyone should live on an apple a day, she said she likes being thin. Shock revelation!

So will this statement cause a mass outbreak of anorexia? No. Was it even a news story? No. Of course, cynics might say Moss has no real power to do anything anyway, but rather that newspapers seize on any old crap she happens to mutter simply as an excuse to print her photo, thus building up some kind of illusion of her importance and perpetuating the vicious circle. But cynicism causes wrinkles, you know, so let's not even go there.

As a gay Indian Oxbridge student, how do I dress to impress another (finicky) gay Oxbridge Indian student? Scholarly but not boring, edgy but not flippant, Indian but not-really-Indian . . . how do I strike A Fine Balance?

Anonymous, Oxbridge

How exciting to get an email from the magical, mythical land of Oxbridge, is it not, dear readers? I eagerly await missives from Hogwarts in the none-too-distant future.

But to the question, is it just me or is there a lot of self-hating going on here, Anonymous? You are basically saying you want to dress like yourself, but lessened. What is "Indian but not really Indian"? Is that like a microwave curry from Waitrose – sort of but not really Indian? What's wrong with being Indian? Or scholarly? Or edgy? You sound just fabulous! But to my mind, the biggest suggestion of self-hatred here is that you want to attract someone exactly like you, but don't trust yourself to know how to do it.

A fashion expert I may well be but I can assure you that you know better than me how to attract a finicky gay Oxbridge Indian student. Or are you saying that you would not be attracted to yourself and therefore should change to attract your doppleganger? Well (a) you shouldn't (what's the point of going out with someone if you have to pretend to be someone else the whole time? Ever so tiring) and (b) as you are attracted to him and you two are quite similar, doesn't it make sense that he is probably attracted to you? Do not change. You are divine. And if this dude is too finicky to see it, then he is clearly a fool, Oxbridge Schmoxbridge.

Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@guardian.co.uk

• Fashion
• Celebrity

Hadley Freeman
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Britain's academy of the sciences marks anniversary with online archive including letters from Newton and Captain Cook

Isaac Newton held a clear glass prism to the sunbeam that penetrated the shutters of his darkened room and watched in awe as the wall of his office danced with all the colours of the rainbow.

The 28-year-old physicist at Trinity College, Cambridge, was the first to show that white light is a blend of primary colours, a discovery that explains why grass is green and the sky is blue.

His written account of the experiment in 1671 is among the oldest in a collection of scientific milestones described in Letters to the Royal Society, which are made public today to celebrate the 350th anniversary of Britain's academy of science. The documents are released through an online library project called Trailblazing, a name inspired by Newton's famous nod to the work of his predecessors in a note to his rival Robert Hooke: "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

The letters to the society record the march of science from the earliest blood transfusions, and attempts to capture lightning, to the confirmation of Einstein's theory of relativity, the discovery of DNA and Stephen Hawking's first musings on black holes. The letters reveal a history of failure eclipsed by success, and the maturation of science from a haphazard amateur pursuit to the systematised professionalism of today.

"At that time the only scientists who were in any sense professionals were astronomers and maybe medical doctors, and of the two, the astronomers were the only ones who probably did more good than harm," said Professor Martin Rees, the astronomer royal and president of the society. "If you look at these records, you can't help but notice the immense range of interests they had. They were motivated by curiosity."

There is the letter from the chemist Robert Boyle, asking the physician Richard Lower about the consequences of transfusing blood from one animal into another. Does a dog lose its quirks after transfusion and gain those of the donor? Does blood from a big dog make a small dog grow? Can you safely replace a frog's blood with blood from a calf, and might that change one species into another? The answers were no, no, no and no.

That did not stop Lower moving on to human experiments, paying an "addle-brained" man 20 shillings to receive blood from a lamb. There were hopes it might cure the man's mental condition, but when Samuel Pepys, a president of the society, questioned the physician afterwards, Lower noted that his subject was still "a little cracked in the head".

A letter from Benjamin Franklin from 1752 dispels the myth that lightning is a supernatural force. He recounts an experiment in Philadelphia that he was lucky to survive, involving a thunderstorm and a kite armed with a long metal spike.

Franklin had a keen eye for the appliance of science. On witnessing the Montgolfier brothers' hot air balloon flight, the polymath declared such a device might be strapped to one's errand boy, so he could hop over hedges more swiftly as he ran from house to house. Or, Franklin mused, it could carry wine to great altitude and keep it cool.

In 1769, the English naturalist Daines Barrington wrote to the society after a barrage of tests confirmed that Mozart was indeed a child genius. Barrington visited the eight-year-old at his parents' home, and asked him to play scores he had never seen and to compose on the spot. "His execution was amazing, considering his little fingers could scarcely reach a 5th on the harpsichord," Barrington wrote on hearing one recital.

He vouched for Mozart's age, by confirming birth certificate detail and documenting his behaviour. "Whilst he was playing to me, a favourite cat came in, upon which he immediately left his harpsichord, nor could we bring him back for a considerable time," he wrote. "He would also sometimes run about the room with a stick between his legs by way of horse."

After a safe return to Britain aboard HMS Resolution, Captain James Cook wrote to the Royal Society in 1776 to disclose how he saved his crew from scurvy by filling the hold with "sweet-wort", sauerkraut, lemons and vegetables. One sailor died of an unrelated disease. "Two others were unfortunately drowned, and one killed by a fall; so of the whole number with which I set out from England I lost only four," Cook wrote.

Scientific progress brought inevitable clashes with scripture. The fossilised remains of elephants, tigers, rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses in Kirkdale, Yorkshire, were not washed there by a biblical flood, but showed life on Earth had existed for millions of years, noted the Rev William Buckland in 1822.

To mark the anniversary, the society is calling leading researchers together to thrash out the biggest issues for modern science. Feeding the world and providing clean, green energy will doubtless feature, as will more basic questions on the nature of ageing and consciousness.

"Our world is completely transformed through the application of scientific concepts which could not even be conceived of at the time the society was founded," said Rees. "New questions come into focus as old ones are answered. The important thing about science is it's an unending quest."

The rise of the 'invisible college'

The Royal Society emerged from an "invisible college" of natural philosophers who met in London in the 1640s to discuss the ideas of Francis Bacon. It became a formal society at Gresham College in November 1660 and included prominent names of the time such as architect Christopher Wren, scientist Robert Boyle and John Wilkins, inventor of the metric system.

The society held weekly meetings where experiments were described or performed before the audience. In a royal charter of 1663, the group was officially named as The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.

It is the world's oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, with more than 60 Nobel laureates among its 1,400 fellows and foreign members. Since 1967, it has occupied a row of buildings overlooking St James's Park in London.

Every year, the society names 44 scientists as fellows in recognition of their scientific achievements.

The accolade is the highest a scientist can have, short of a Nobel prize. Existing fellows include neuroscientist Dame Nancy Rothwell, astronomer Jocelyn Bell-Burnell and Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking.

• Heritage
• People in science
• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Ian Sample
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Vote represents blow to Switzerland's political establishment

Switzerland became the first country in Europe todayto vote to curb the religious practices of Muslims when a referendum banning the construction of minarets on mosques was backed by a solid majority.

The surprise result, banning minarets in a country that has only four mosques with minarets and no major problems with Islamist militancy, stunned the Swiss establishment, which was bracing itself for a backlash in the Middle East.

The result looks likely to cause strife where there was relative peace, sully the country's image abroad, damage investment and trade with the Muslim world, and set back efforts to integrate a population of some 400,000 Muslims, most of whom are European Muslims – and non-mosque-goers – from the Balkans.

The campaign to ban minarets was described by the country's justice minister as a "proxy war" for drumming up conflict between ethnic Swiss and Muslim immigrants. But the ban was supported by a majority of 57.5%, 20 percentage points more than predicted in opinion polls in the run-up to the vote.

"The federal council [the body that constitutes the federal government] respects this decision," said a government statement tonight . "The construction of new minarets in Switzerland is no longer permitted."

While surprising, the verdict raised the question of whether such curbs on Muslims would be replicated across Europe were voters given their say. If Switzerland is the only country in Europe to embark on such a ban, that may be because its system of plebiscitary democracy compels single-issue referendums if petitions amass enough signatures.

Across Europe, far-right parties have been scoring gains in recent years on anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant platforms.

The result represented a triumph for the far-right populist Swiss People's party, which organised the petition paving the way for the referendum. In opposition, the SPP became the strongest party in Switzerland two years ago largely by running a robust campaign, denounced as racist by the UN, against immigrants.

The result also represented an act of mass defiance of the national establishment. The government, mainstream political parties, the churches, the main newspapers, the national president, the powerful business lobby, and the Vatican all opposed the ban, but it was backed by 22 of the country's 26 cantons on a national turnout of more than 53% .

As a result, the article of the national constitution regulating relations between the state and religion will be amended to include the bald statement: "The construction of minarets is forbidden."

"The result is unworthy of Switzerland's tradition and history," said Farhad Afshar, a leading Swiss Muslim and Berne University sociologist. "Muslims are well-integrated here compared with France or Germany. This result has nothing to do with the Muslims living in Switzerland."

The SPP said the minaret ban would "be implemented to the letter" and denounced senior church figures for the "alarming role" they played in the campaign.

Opponents of the move in the government, churches and human rights organisations had argued a ban on minarets would infringe fundamental liberties and freedom of religion. Green Party leaders warned tonightthat the ban could be unconstitutional and threatened to try to overturn the verdict at the European court of human rights in Strasbourg.

Ulrich Schlüer, an SPP MP who led the ban campaign, pointed out that the Strasbourg court had recently ruled against crucifixes in classrooms in Italy.

"It now appears that Christian towns are not supposed to use Christian symbols," he said. "But we're supposed to have Muslim symbols." The SPP said that going to the European court would breach the popular sovereignty that underpins the Swiss democratic model and tradition.

It dismissed the arguments about freedom or religion, asserting that minarets were not a religious but a political symbol, and the thin end of a wedge that would bring sharia law to the country, with forced marriages, "honour" killings, female genital mutilation and oppression of women.

A handful of recent applications for building permits for minarets in Switzerland, the no campaigners said, was proof to many Swiss "of the next step in the strategy of Islamification of our country. The fear is great that the minarets will be followed by the calls to prayer of the muezzin … sharia is gaining in importance in Switzerland and in Europe. That means honour killings, forced marriages, circumcision, wearing the burka, ignoring school rules, and even stoning."

The prohibition also found substantial support on the left and among secularists worried about the status of women in Islamic cultures. Prominent feminists attacked minarets as male power symbols, deplored the oppression of Muslim women, and urged a vote for the ban.

The justice minister, Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, a strong opponent of the ban, said the result reflected fears about Islamic fundamentalist tendencies. "The Federal Council [government] takes the view that a ban on the construction of new minarets is not a feasible means of countering extremist tendencies."

She had previously criticised the prohibition campaign as a violation of human rights and as a "proxy war" for those seeking to stir up religious friction.

Corine Mauch, the mayor of Zurich, who also opposed the ban, said the vote was "a fateful signal to the Muslim community".

Swiss business is worried that the anti-Muslim vote could have a serious impact on trade with the Arab world. More immediately, there is concern for two Swiss businessmen abducted in Libya last year after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's son and daughter-in-law were arrested in a Geneva hotel on suspicion of mistreating their staff. The two Swiss, regarded as hostages, were handed over to the Swiss embassy in Tripoli earlier this month but have still been denied exit visas and could yet face trial.End

Europe's tense relations with Islam

Dutch films Theo van Gogh, the outspoken film-maker and polemicist, was stabbed to death in Amsterdam in 2004 by a Muslim, causing national and international outrage. Geert Wilders is riding high in Dutch politics on an anti-Muslim platform after making an incendiary film about Islamic practices, calling for the banning of the Qur'an and an end to Muslim immigration.

Danish cartoons The country was plunged into crisis with the Arab and Islamic world in 2005 after a Copenhagen newspaper published a set of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad regarded as sacrilegious and offensive to Muslims. The episode triggered intense debate over freedom of expression and its limits, and hate speech.

French burkas Nicolas Sarkozy is pushing to ban the burka, arguing this month that it breaches rigorous French adherence to public secularism. The French president's statements follow years of argument and legal disputes over the wearing of Islamic veils and headdresses in schools and public places.

German mosques A dispute has broken out over one of Europe's biggest mosques, being built in Cologne. There are similar disputes in Denmark, France, Italy, Austria and the Netherlands.

• Switzerland
• Islam
• The far right

Ian Traynor
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My, hasn't it grown? World of Warcraft celebrates its fifth birthday this month, and the population of Azeroth – the virtual world where this online game takes place – is around 11.5 million. More people now play World of Warcraft, or WoW, than live in Greece.

WoW is a sword'n'sorcery game in which players control virtual characters who whizz about killing monsters, collecting treasure, fighting or ganging up with one another. Azeroth has a functioning virtual economy, and (mindbogglingly) an exchange rate with the real world: a WoW gold piece, enough to buy you some virtual barbecued boar ribs, is currently worth about one and a half euro cents. Also, WoW has some wicked magic swords. Yet grown-ups play it. In fact, seduced by the beauty of this whole new world that's theirs to explore, they find it eats their lives.

WoW is such a colossal and pernicious time-suck that it can have you slaying goblin pirates till 4am. It is also, undoubtedly, a work of art. But what sort of work of art? I have a theory. Computer games are often described in terms of what they resemble. They appear on screen; they feature dwarves, giant spiders and gurgling fish-men; they have cinematic trailers and blockbuster-style launches – so they must be like films, right? Wrong.

Games aren't trying to be films any more than songs are trying to be poems, paintings are trying to be photographs, or Ginsters pasties are trying to be food. When it comes to WoW, the comparison is especially skewed. Films, with the exception of Andy Warhol's, are all about narrative. They tell stories. But narrative is probably WoW's weakest suit. Here's a typical sequence: kill demon boar, kill another demon boar, get ambushed by ghoul, swear, wake up in graveyard, traipse in ectoplasmic form across open country (swearing all the way) to your own dead body, resurrect self, get ambushed by ghoul again, awake in graveyard again, swear again.

Nothing is permanently at risk. Good and evil are simply team colours, not moral convictions. Endlessly repeatable, the "quests" are more like errands or even rituals. Your character is changed by these quests only by becoming richer, more powerful and better dressed. Azeroth is the only place where I can get away with wearing gem-encrusted black leather trousers.

So here's my theory: WoW doesn't resemble a film. It resembles, rather, a medieval cathedral. And a magnificent one: it is the Chartres of the video-game world. Like a cathedral, it is a supreme work of art that is, on a brick-by-brick basis, the creation of hundreds of artisans and craftsmen, many of whom will be long gone by the time it comes to completion; indeed, since WoW is in a state of permanent expansion, it may not ever be "complete". All those programmers are the modern-day equivalent of stonemasons, foundation-diggers and structural engineers.

Cathedrals don't really have narratives either, but they do have a mythos – a system of stories – behind them. And oh boy, does WoW have a mythos: just Google Kil'Jaeden and the Shadow Pact or Kel'Thuzad and the Forming of the Scourge, and you'll wish you never had. The Azeroth has a historical back-story involving aeons of strife and sacrifice, unspeakable cataclysms, mighty heroes, and tonnes and tonnes of that sort of guff.

But the mythos is there in the background: it's part of the furniture, rather than part of the action – in the same way that windows of stained-glass martyrs, or narrative frescoes of the Passion, serve as a backdrop to ritual observances in a cathedral. And the observances of WoW are, like those that take place in a cathedral, calmingly repetitious and governed by rules. Instead of a series of Hail Marys, you're handed a target number of flowers to collect, or giants to kill; instead of manna from heaven, you are rewarded with experience points in the XP bar.

It is rich in decorative detail, but the decorative detail is not the point. Azeroth's architecture is a glorious space for glorious things to happen in. And, like a cathedral, it is above all a social space, for communal experience. That's what has given it its longevity. Five years isn't long in terms of the life of a cathedral; for a computer game, it's an eternity, given that you can finish most in a matter of hours. The people who stay in WoW join guilds, make friends online, go questing in groups and spend hours (with only a bit of giant-slaying) talking in the chat channels. It's as much a social networking site as a videogame. You log on and gossip in its pews.

Gone are the days when families gathered round the wireless. Inconceivable, now, would be the simultaneous nationwide toilet flush during the break of the final MASH episode. Art is increasingly consumed in isolation – through earplugs, on the computer, on demand. Yet there's still a thirst for a communal experience of culture. Hence the boom in live music, and in interactive, watch-on-the-night shows like The X Factor. And then there's World of Warcraft, perhaps the daddy of them all: a cathedral without a god, where you and your gang can hang out – dressed in leather, killing goblins and eating ribs.

• World of Warcraft
• Games
• Architecture

Sam Leith
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Zac Goldsmith, the prominent environmental campaigner and Tory parliamentary candidate, was tonight forced to deny opposition claims that he had "dodged" paying taxes in Britain.

Goldsmith, who is standing in the key marginal seat of Richmond Park, west London, confirmed that he retained the non-domiciled tax status inherited from his billionaire father, Sir James Goldsmith. He said he had derived "very few" benefits from being a non-dom and had already decided to give it up.

The Liberal Democrats have accused Goldsmith, who inherited an estimated £200m from his father, of being unfit to stand for parliament.

Matthew Oakeshott, the Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, said: "He's claimed non-dom status all his life to keep his offshore hundreds of millions free of income tax, capital gains or inheritance tax. He must pay the millions he's dodged to the British taxman."

British citizens with interests abroad can register for non-domiciled status, meaning they do not pay tax on earnings made outside the UK.

Although his father was Anglo-French, Goldsmith grew up in Britain. The bulk of his inheritance remains in a Cayman Islands-based family trust which bought his UK homes, in Richmond and Devon, where he farms organically. In his statement, Goldsmith said he paid UK income tax on UK-generated income.

After consulting his accountants, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Goldsmith, 34, said: "My annual tax returns are all signed off by the Inland Revenue and there are no outstanding matters between us … despite having been non-domiciled because of my father's tax status, I have always chosen to be tax-resident in the UK."

Labour joined the attack, with MP Steve Pound calling the Tory attitude to taxation "more like the Bourbons than the Bullingdon Club; they just don't seem to care".

But Tory activists were supportive. Richmond Park's constituency chairman, Pamela Fleming, said she had received "not a single telephone call" of complaint in the wake of today's disclosure and praised Goldsmith as a hard-working candidate who was getting "an extremely good reaction from voters". She said: "The whole point is that he has always been a resident and always paid tax in the UK. He has tried to be honest and transparent."

Goldsmith, credited with pushing the Tory leader, fellow Old Etonian David Cameron, towards greener policies, joined the party in 2005. He was fast-tracked on to the A-list of would-be candidates the following year and was picked in 2007 to fight Lib Dem MP Susan Kramer, whose 3,731 majority would fall on a swing of 3.7%.

Rival politicians predicted that voters in the affluent suburb might take a less tolerant view in the wake of the banking crisis when even George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, entered a bidding war with Labour to levy an annual charge of £25,000 a year on non-doms living for long periods in Britain. Tory HQ said it was "a private matter" for the candidate.

Goldsmith said tonight he derived "very few benefits" from his non-dom status and insisted that Oakeshott's claim that "I keep money offshore 'free of income tax, inheritance tax and capital gains tax'" was entirely wrong.

"Despite having been non-domiciled because of my father's status, I have always chosen to be tax-resident in the UK," he said. "Virtually everything I do is in the UK and therefore virtually all my income comes to the UK, where I pay full tax on it. I do not derive any benefits as far as either capital gains tax or inheritance is concerned since I am registered for the latter in the UK.

"Because of my own choices, the non-domicile status has delivered very few benefits. I have, in any event, already decided to relinquish it."

The Lib Dem Treasury spokesman and MP for neighbouring Twickenham, Vince Cable, protested that "voters normally expect people in the House of Commons to be UK residents". He said: "It gives out all the wrong signals being British born and bred by taking advantage of non-dom status. It's quite cynical. In most countries, including the US, you are taxed on your worldwide income. Non-dom status was designed for short-term expatriates in the City and is becoming discredited."

David Cameron has repeatedly called for transparency in all the "nooks and crannies" of public life but has been unable to state categorically that his deputy party chairman, Lord Ashcroft, is resident in the UK for tax purposes. Lord Ashcroft refuses to say.

• Zac Goldsmith
• Conservatives
• Tax and spending

Michael White
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Blind Summit's puppets regularly upstage the actors they appear with. Will 1984, their Orwellian new show, be different?

Blind Summit's puppets are wily, untrustworthy things, for ever outsmarting their human handlers. It's a recurring theme in the theatre company's work, and it was especially true of the characters they created for the late film-maker Anthony Minghella's first opera, a production of Madam Butterfly, at the English National Opera in 2005. Their puppets became a cause celebre; for one reviewer, they were "the most authentic characters on the stage".

The same thing happened when Mark Down and Nick Barnes – Blind Summit's director and designer respectively – collaborated with Complicite on Shun-Kin, a story of love and mutilation, and when they made daemons for a revival of the National theatre's His Dark Materials. Even when the shows were panned, the puppets were deemed exquisite. Choreographer Akram Khan has just invited the pair to work with him on Gnosis. Perhaps he should think again, if he doesn't want to be upstaged.

Down and Barnes have been so busy surreptitiously stealing other people's shows, they haven't had a chance to devise one of their own since 2005, when they made Low Life, a darkly humorous cabaret of vignettes inspired by the writings of Charles Bukowski, starring puppets who were by turns argumentative, melancholy and seductive. This winter, however, Blind Summit are returning to the stage in their own right, with 1984, an adaptation of George Orwell's novel.

It's easy to see what attracted them to the book: set in a dictatorship, it focuses on a man discovering the extent to which he is manipulated by the state. But Down and Barnes are subverting expectations – only one of their main characters is played by a puppet, and 40 minutes of the show will pass before he even appears.

In this production, they explain, they wanted text and human action at the fore, not puppetry. "We made Low Life to answer a puppet agenda, to say puppets can be grown-up, and entertain people," says Down. "Since then, we've done lots of work with people who had just one puppet in their show, and we started to feel jealous. To begin with, we banned the word 'puppet' from the rehearsal room – and said we just have to trust that what we do will be our stuff."

Blind Summit's "stuff" is irreverent and anarchic, thoughtful and precise – a duality that reflects the two men. There is a rumpled, haywire quality to Down; Barnes is neater and more measured in appearance and speech. They met in 1997, when Down – who had qualified as a doctor before studying acting at London's Central School of Speech and Drama – took part in a workshop Barnes was directing. He found Barnes's approach "really exciting, like performance art, but with a purpose".Barnes, who studied theatre design at the Slade School of Fine Art, was trying to construct a show around some puppets he had made, but realised he wasn't much of a director– and that he had no idea how to operate a puppet. So he asked Down to h elp, and the result was the first Blind Summit show, Mr China's Son. It set the tone for the company, using small, beautifully sculpted puppets to tell an epic story of communist China and question the ways in which people are controlled.

Among the fans of the show was Carolyn Choa, Minghella's wife and his associate director and choreographer for Madam Butterfly. She telephoned Down in 2004, asking to meet. "We didn't realise Anthony was going to be there," says Barnes. In their naivety, says Down, they almost didn't take a bag of puppets along. "It was all really odd. Carolyn pulled a puppet out of the bag and just hugged it. Anthony didn't say anything – he was just taking pictures of the puppet. And we're going, 'Bloody hell, that's a real movie director! With Oscars!'" After a couple of days observing the pair in a rehearsal room, Minghella announced that he wanted their puppets to feature in Madam Butterfly. "I felt like I was four years old," says Down. "Three years later, I learned to relax in his company, almost."

Minghella involved the duo in every aspect of the production and rehearsal process. The experience boosted Blind Summit's stock – and their confidence. You don't worry about whether a puppet can entertain a crowd when you know it can keep an audience of 3,800 people at New York's Met Opera riveted.

It has also encouraged them to be more ambitious with 1984, and rethink their approach to puppetry. They have spent a year working on the show, during which, Down says, "we realised that language is the puppet in the story". He's referring to Orwell's fictional language Newspeak, which was designed to make rebellious thought impossible. He sees Newspeak as a representation of language, with all the limbs of language present, but none of its spirit. In the production, its key words are barked by the actors or shown on flashcards. Down is also exploring ways to get his seven actors to mimic the relationship between a puppet and its manipulator, so that each actor seems to need another cast member in order to function. "There is a scene in which one of the characters is working in his office, and the rest of the cast are holding everything he needs. A really interesting struggle occurs – of who's in charge of whom."

Blind Summit are benefiting from a change in attitudes to puppetry: Down says the transfer of War Horse, a hit at the National, to the West End "has been really important in terms of people realising that puppets can sell tickets". But he worries that it's not considered an adult medium: "War Horse is odd, because it has adults weeping over horses: I don't find that a grown-up thing."

"We've got nothing against children's shows," Barnes adds. They'd just rather spend their time with puppets that are a little bit louche, a little bit wild.1984 is at BAC, London, from Wednesday until 9 January. Box office: 020-7223 2223.

• Theatre
• George Orwell

Maddy Costa
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The dearth of parties is a real worry. We need the booze to simulate a bit of economic confidence

So. Here it is. Merry Christmas. Everybody's having fun. For 37 years, those words, as roared by Noddy Holder of Slade, have been the harbingers of Christmas. It's here and you're going to have fun, whether you want to or not. And your fun, make no mistake, will be alcoholically induced. Even Santa's at it. "Do the fairies keep him sober for a day?" asks Noddy. A day! For 24 hours, Noddy implies, Santa hides the corkscrew, because he has reindeer to drive and chimneys down which he's loth to fall. (It would alert the children.) But on every other day of the festive season, Santa gets merry. He has fun, and fun means acquiring the mother and Father Christmas of all hangovers.

That was then, though. The song was written in 1973, when society could look at Santa's red cheeks and think "jolly". Now we think "rehab". So. Here it is. Again. Merry Christmas. The question is, will this one be any less drunken?

As a freelance, I've always relied for my Christmas drinks consumption on a fast-flowing, alcoholic stream of parties given by theatrical agencies and TV and film production companies.

Already, I've been told by the big cheese at one such company not to expect the traditional hospitality. Times are tight, so I won't be, not at his expense. This year, he's forgoing the traditional lavish party designed to promote goodwill among employees and suppliers and clients.

The expense will cause too much badwill in the boardroom. "Lavish" is a euphemism for drunken, meaning thousands of pounds worth of alcohol will not, this year, be literally poured away, down the perma-gulping throats of two or three hundred freeloaders.

But what if there weren't any alcohol? What if, instead of champagne corks popping, there were water taps running? Could he not throw a Christmas drinks party where the drinks were non-alcoholic? Isn't that very 2009? No. You cannot be thrifty where parties are concerned. Thrifty isn't fun. There's no Christmas party equivalent of the fashionably cheap stay-cation. Cornwall cannot substitute for Mauritius, not if Cornwall's cranberry juice and Mauritius is Moet. It's a party. Tongues must loosen. Hands must wander. Bums must be hoicked on to photocopiers. Love and hate must be shouted from the rooftops. Verbal wars must be declared in toilets.

All this demands a generous supply of booze, struggling to keep up with an unreasonable demand. There's a place for sobriety, but it's not at the office party. The Twelve Steps are the ones that take you zig-zagging from the door of the nightclub to the taxi, where you struggle for the words you need to say to the cabbie. Go on. You remember. Your own address.

No, it's better that my friend throws no party than a drinkless one. Maybe next year, he'll feel different. At root, he lacks the spur that makes a man, a woman or a corporation go out and spend money. He lacks consumer confidence. He doesn't, this Christmas, feel optimistic about the prospects for his production company, so he's doing the only rational thing in the circumstances – keeping his company credit card in his wallet. But, since I want more than anything for him to throw a huge boozy party, as always, I would like to suggest that, where the bulk-buying of drink's concerned, consumer confidence is a nonsense.

When you walk your trolley up the Sainsbury's wine aisle, cruising for a boozing, putting bottles in the trolley then bottles on your bottles, this is no index of your faith in our economic recovery. On the contrary. You don't buy drink because you're confident. You buy drink because you want the drink to make you confident. Only with several glasses inside you will you hallucinate those fabled green shoots you keep being told are everywhere. It's Dutch confidence, which is no confidence at all. It's consumer unconfidence, in fact.

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we – hold on, I've forgotten, how does it go after that? Oh yes. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we are confident that UK GDP will continue its ascent by one and-three-quarter per cent in 2010. Or, as Noddy would say: look to the future now, it's only just begun. Cheers.

• Christmas
• Financial crisis

Jon Canter
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Four uniformed police officers drinking coffee before their shift began in a shop in Washington state on Sunday morning were shot dead by a lone gunman in what detectives are describing as an execution-style ambush.

The officers – three men and a woman, all from the local police force in Lakewood, about 35 miles south of Seattle – were preparing paperwork for their morning duties, and were working on laptops at the Forza Coffee shop. At around 8.15am a man dressed in a black coat and blue jeans walked into the shop and opened fire on them using a handgun.

He then escaped on foot.

Scores of police have descended on the area, searching for the killer of their colleagues. A helicopter and dog teams are being used to scour houses, parking areas and open spaces.

So far, investigators are baffled by the killings and the absence of any known motive. There are no indications that any of the four officers had received previous threats.

Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the sheriff of the local Pierce County, said there was every indication the victims had been specifically targeted. There were marked patrol cars outside and they were all in uniform.

"This was more of an execution - [to] walk in with the specific mindset to shoot police officers. As cold-hearted as it is, that's exactly what happened," he told the local TV station, King-TV

Two baristas and a few customers who were in the shop at the time of the shootings are all being questioned by police. Though none were hurt they were described as stunned and traumatised.

Police will be seeking to rule out any link between today's murders and the death of police officer Timothy Brenton in Seattle last month. He was shot as he was sitting in a police vehicle on the night of Halloween.

The Forza Coffee shop in Lakewood is owned by a former police officer, Brad Carpenter. "I'm a retired police officer, so this really hits close to home for me," he said.

A $10,000 reward has been offered for information about the killings.

• United States

Ed Pilkington
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Patients and doctors to blame for UK's 'unacceptable' record

Up to 10,000 people die needlessly of cancer every year because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government's director of cancer services. The figure is twice the previous estimate for preventable deaths.

Earlier detection of symptoms could save between 5,000 and 10,000 lives in England a year, Prof Mike Richards will reveal this week. The higher figure is nearly twice his previous calculation, which put the figure at about 5,000.

Richards has revised up his estimate after studying the three deadliest forms of the disease ‑ lung, bowel and breast cancer ‑ which together kill almost 63,000 people a year.

"These delays in patients presenting with symptoms and cancer being diagnosed at a late stage inevitably cost lives. The situation is unacceptable," Richards told the Guardian.

New efforts are planned to educate the public about the signs of cancer, tackle the widespread reluctance to tell their GP if they develop symptoms, and improve family doctors' ability to spot signs of the disease earlier, he added.

Britain is poor by international standards at diagnosing cancer. Richards's findings will add urgency to the NHS's efforts to improve early diagnosis.

They also raise further questions about how often family doctors fail to recognise telltale signs.  

Experts say early diagnosis can be the difference between a patient living for a short or long time or deciding whether they need surgery, such as a mastectomy, or not because quick access to surgery, drugs or radiotherapy greatly improves chances of survival.

In an article in the forthcoming British Journal of Cancer, which is published by Cancer Research UK, Richards will say: "Efforts now need to be directed at promoting early diagnosis for the very large number (over 90%) of cancer patients who are diagnosed as a result of their symptoms, rather than by screening.

"The National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative [NAEDI] has been established to co-ordinate and drive efforts in this area. The size of the prize is large – potentially 5,000 to 10,000 deaths that occur within five years of diagnosis could be avoided every year."

Richards reached his conclusions after analysing one-year survival rates for the three cancers in England and comparing them with those in other European countries in the late 1990s. Previously he had looked at the number of patients who were still alive five years after diagnosis.

One-year survival is now thought to be a much better indicator of whether diagnosis was early or late.

The study focused on Britain's three biggest cancer killers: lung, which killed 34,589 people in 2007; colon (16,087); and breast (12,082). They account for 40% of the 155,484 cancer deaths in the UK in 2007 and, Richards found, about half of all the deaths that could have been avoided if diagnosis was as good as the best- performing European countries.

Richards found that "late diagnosis was almost certainly a major contributor to poor survival in England for all three cancers", but also identified low rates of surgical intervention being received by cancer patients as another key reason for poor survival rates.

Research by academics at Durham University led by Prof Greg Rubin has identified five types of delay in NHS cancer care: "patient delay", "doctor delay", "delay in primary care [at GPs' surgeries]", "system delay" and "delay in secondary care [at hospitals]".

The new initiative is intended to "fix this problem", helping the UK's 53,000 GPs improve their ability to identify patients who may have cancer, said Richards.

With smoking in decline "early diagnosis is our next big challenge in cancer and will be crucial in bringing our survival rates up to the best in Europe",  he added. Prof Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, said: "Mike Richards's latest findings on cancer diagnosis are really important information and reinforce the need for GPs to put a lot of effort into ensuring that patients present [their symptoms] and have access to GPs, and that we pick up the symptoms early on, and also reflect if we can do things even better in this crucial area of healthcare, which we can.

"It's wrong to blame GPs for all these deaths, as there are many factors involved, including patients not recognising symptoms of cancer and not talking to their GP about them, especially middle-aged men. But I'm sure that we could all at times be more alert to symptoms and investigate and refer patients quicker," he added.

Sara Hiom, director of health information at Cancer Research UK, said GPs faced a difficult task in spotting cancer: "Despite cancer being a common disease, the average GP will only see one case of each of the four biggest cancers each year.

"Many of the symptoms that could be cancer turn out to be something less serious, but it's best to get things like unusual lumps, changes to moles, unusual bleeding or changes to bowel motions checked by a GP."

Early diagnosis usually means that treatment is more effective and milder for the patient, added Hiom.

Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients' Association, said: "Some patients are diagnosed with cancer when they have presented with the same symptoms six months earlier.

"Patients will sometimes tell us that they had been going to see their GP for six to nine months with, say, a pain in their stomach and were told to go to the pharmacy and buy an over the counter medicine [and later are found to have cancer]."

• Health
• NHS
• Cancer
• Health policy

Denis Campbell
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Confidential papers reveal Europeans want assistance for poorer countries to come from existing cash pot

The EU was accused of threatening the global climate talks last night after confidential papers showed it wants existing overseas aid funding to be used to help poor countries adapt to global warming, not new and additional funds.

The papers, seen by the Guardian, show that the EU has removed lines in the negotiating text of next month's Copenhagen climate change summit which stress the principle that climate change aid comes on top of existing development aid. The EU negotiating team has written: "Cannot accept reference to 'additional to', and 'separate from' ODA [official development assistance] targets."

Aid agencies said Europe threatened to fatally undermine the talks.

"No developing country will sign up to an agreement that could give them no extra money at all. The EU and other rich countries must provide new and additional finance, otherwise there will be no deal at all," said Rob Bailey, Oxfam's senior policy adviser. Developing nations have been unanimous and implacable on the terms of the finance deal.

Rich countries accept they must pay poor ones to adapt to increasing droughts, floods and rising seas, but Europe is known to be split over whether existing aid should provide the cash.

Britain and Holland have argued strongly that it be largely additional, but Germany, France and most small member states have said they want existing aid to be used. In the latter case, spending on poverty, health, water, and education in some of the poorest countries in the world would be significantly reduced. But in a separate development, Britain was embarrassed when it emerged that all the climate aid money it has so far pledged or provided to poor countries has come from its existing aid budget, despite statements by Gordon Brown that it should be largely additional to existing funds.

In an email seen by the Guardian, an official in the Department for International Development (DfID) states: "All of the money pledged, committed, and/or spent [on climate change] thus far comes from within the UK's 0.7% GNI ODA commitment."

Britain has pledged nearly £1bn, with most of it channelled into global funds run by the World Bank. But it has separately promised nearly £200m to help especially vulnerable countries such as Bangladesh and Nepal. Earlier this year, Brown said: "The government recognises that finance to tackle climate change cannot simply be part of ODA. [It] should not be allowed to divert money from the pledges we have already made to the poorest."

On Friday, Brown proposed a new £10bn global fund to kickstart the post-Copenhagen regime. He promised Britain would contribute £800m, although the contribution is expected to be entirely drawn from existing budgets.

Finance now threatens to become the main obstacle to securing a global climate deal at Copenhagen, following US and Chinese moves last week to provide targets for cuts in their emissions.

Poor countries want a minimum of $400bn (£242bn) a year by 2020 to help them adapt, but rich countries have proposed only €110bn (£100bn) a year.

A history of broken promises has seen poor countries become deeply distrustful of climate pledges by rich countries and they say they want guaranteed funding to address the climate change that rich countries have largely caused. Last week, Oxfam stated that only $128m of the money pledged in the last decade by rich countries for adaptation had been handed out, and the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, accused industrialised countries of failing to keep their promises.

Kit Vaughan, the head of climate adaptation at WWF, said: "Gordon Brown was the first leader to step up and call for a global fund to fight climate change, and insisted this shouldn't come out of existing aid budgets. But so far, all the climate money has come out of the aid budget. Under a Copenhagen deal, it's crucial to find new and additional money that avoids robbing from the poor."

Europe, along with other rich countries, has a poor track record on meeting its commitments on climate finance. At a UN meeting in Bonn in 2001, the EU, Canada, Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and New Zealand said they would jointly pay developing countries $410m (£200m) a year from 2005 to 2008. Barely a 10th of the promised money has so far been delivered.A DfID spokesman said: "Additional funding for climate change will be made available from 2013, which is when the commitments from the Copenhagen summit will come into effect. Britain will push at Copenhagen for all countries to provide new and additional finance to tackle climate change."

• Copenhagen climate change conference 2009
• European Union
• Climate change
• Gordon Brown
• Green politics

John VidalDavid Adam
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For Arsenal the future has been postponed once again. This defeat was all too familiar. It was reminiscent, for instance, of the 3-1 beating here by Manchester United in the second leg of last season's Champions League semi-final. There was a pointed resemblance, as well, to the 4-1 drubbing when Chelsea themselves last came to the Emirates in May.

There are some particularly regrettable casualties in all the carnage. It was, for instance, sad to hear Arsène Wenger trying to deny the inferiority of his men. He surely recognises the pattern. Didier Drogba, with his pair of goals, has now scored 10 times in 11 appearances, including the Community Shield, against Arsenal. The striker has never lost to these opponents.

If there is any comfort for Arsenal, it lies in the fact that they are far from being the only major side who cannot cope with a hardened and accomplished Chelsea. The full range of that side's capacities was flaunted here. For the home support it must have bordered on the unendurable that the catcalls for their former left-back Ashley Cole had to be stifled as he set up the first two goals.

• Wenger bemoans decision over disallowed goal
• Dominic Fifield: Ashley Cole makes his point
• Read Paul Doyle's minute-by-minute report
• Find out David Hytner's player ratings

There was a revival of sorts for Wenger's side following the interval. The manager removed Alex Song since there was no longer any sense in having a holding midfielder on the pitch when keeping Chelsea at bay was an irrelevance. Arsenal, with Theo Walcott introduced, had to chase the game. They seemed to do so with some élan but the Chelsea defence reacted with its habitual efficiency. When Andrey Arshavin did have the ball in the net, a foul was awarded against Eduardo da Silva by the referee, Andre Marriner, because the Croatia international had raised his foot when challenging the goalkeeper Petr Cech.

There should be no recriminations from Arsenal over the official. He had indulged them when he declined to give a penalty in the 17th minute despite Bacary Sagna's tug on Nicolas Anelka as he moved on to a Frank Lampard pass. The unusual aspect was the disinclination of the striker to keel over inside the area when he had grounds to do so against his former club.

Hope and potential look like handicaps for Arsenal when confronted by a side of Chelsea's expertise. After this defeat Arsenal are 11 points behind Carlo Ancelotti's Premier League leaders and their game in hand is scant consolation. This was a second consecutive domestic defeat, following that at Sunderland.

That was bad enough but the know-how of the visitors was all the more depressing for home fans who had to endure the key role of Cole at the first two goals. There was a final demonstration of Chelsea's authority in the 86th minute, when Drogba took his second goal with a crashing free-kick from 25 yards.

Chelsea had few moments of anxiety and, when pressure was applied as Arsenal sought a comeback, they looked wholly prepared for that stress. Ancelotti has a squad that, in some departments, seems grizzled. For the time being, though, it is not at risk of disintegration. The defence, if not actually enjoying its work in blocking Walcott and the others, was thoroughly prepared for that exercise.

There is so much talk of Chelsea'sdiscipline and professionalism that too little time is left to speak of their talent. With 36 goals in the league, they are now joint top scorers with Arsenal. Their thwarting of the opposition's attackers is, of course, decidedly superior to Wenger's side.

Arsenal were opened up slickly for the first goal here. John Terry, who spends much of his life stifling the opposition's creativity, played a lovely left-footed pass to release Cole in the 42nd minute. Drogba then jammed home the cross off the inside of the post. Four minutes later another expert cross from the left-back was turned into his own net by Thomas Vermaelen.

The centre-half will have felt unfortunate but it was the mood of general inadequacy that will truly pain Arsenal. The margin of defeat could have been greater, although it would have been unlucky if Manuel Almunia had not responded to turn a ricochet behind when Drogba's drive broke off the chest of Lampard in the 64th minute.

If some of these Chelsea players are in the later stages of their careers, then fans should treasure them all the more. Anelka, who may reportedly be offered a new contract worth £120,000 a week, looks a clever and incisive partner for Drogba. The Frenchman is apparently irked by the reputation he once had, with Arsenal, as a goal-snatcher who simply played on the shoulder of the last defender.

It was no insult to classify him as a predator but Anelka has always wanted more recognition of his full repertoire. He is an accomplice of imagination and cunning for Drogba nowadays. Chelsea have far to go yet before they check the domination of Manchester United, who have taken the last three league titles. Even so Ancelotti has made his club believe the best is yet to come.

• Premier League
• Arsenal
• Chelsea

Kevin McCarra
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Iran today sent a defiant signal to the international community by announcing plans to build 10 uranium enrichment plants days after it was condemned by the UN for concealing activities that are feared may be designed to produce an atomic bomb.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government said the plants would be the same size as the main enrichment complex at Natanz, central Iran, and work would begin within two months.

"We have a friendly approach towards the world but at the same time we won't let anyone harm even one iota of the Iranian nation's rights," the president said. The aim was to produce 250-300 tonnes of nuclear fuel a year by using centrifuges with a higher speed.

The announcement seems likely to strengthen the hands of those arguing for sanctions if negotiations do not resume soon. The Foreign Office called the development "a matter of serious concern". The news from Tehran followed Friday's rare display of unanimity by the security council's "big five" – the US, Russia, China, Britain and France – who condemned Iran for concealing an enrichment plant in a mountainside near Qom.

The 25-3 vote by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, was seen as a sign of deepening exasperation over the impasse. Mohammed ElBaradei, the outgoing IAEA chief, warned that talks were at "a dead end".

As a signatory to the nuclear non- proliferation treaty, Iran has the right to generate nuclear power for peaceful purposes, which is what is says it wants to do. But five UN resolutions demand it suspend enrichment and it is refusing to comply.

Nor is Iran any closer to allaying suspicions it is seeking to secretly build a nuclear weapon. It has been asked by the IAEA to discuss evidence of warhead-related research activities but has refused. Having been caught cheating in the past, its repeated denials have little credibility.

In recent weeks, after talks in Geneva and Vienna with the big five and Germany, Iran has seemed to reject a proposal under which most of its uranium would be shipped to France and Russia for processing into fuel for use in civilian reactors.

An arrangement of that kind would give Iran the nuclear fuel it needs but provide guarantees that it was not being diverted for military purposes.

Analysts and officials suggested the Iranian move was more about making gestures than a realistic plan. "This is mostly about presenting two fingers to the world," said one diplomat.

Others also pointed to the president's domestic problems, where he is under pressure from conservatives in parliament, from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and from opposition supporters protesting against the "theft" of last June's election.

"It's bluster," said Sir Richard Dalton, a former British ambassador to Tehran. "Iran can't afford 10 plants the size of Natanz and 500,000 centrifuges."

But the move is likely to galvanise efforts to put together a package of sanctions, perhaps persuading Russia and China to back moves supported by the US, Britain and France.

Israel welcomed Friday's censure by the IAEA but has made clear for months that it reserves the right to take pre-emptive military action if it felt that its own nuclear deterrence were to be challenged by Tehran.

The US warned on Friday that its patience is not unlimited, but doors are being left open in the hope that Iran will somehow re-engage.

Earlier today MPs announced the allocation of $20m for unnamed "progressive" groups to combat what it called US and British "conspiracies." Iran's parliament said the money would be disbursed by a committee including representatives of the ministries of intelligence, foreign affairs and the Revolutionary Guards.

• Iran
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
• Nuclear weapons
• United Nations
• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

Ian Black
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Inquiry says US failure to attack al-Qaida's leader at Tora Bora had far-reaching consequences

Donald Rumsfeld had the chance when he was US defence secretary in December 2001 to make sure Osama bin Laden was killed or captured, but let him slip through his hands, a Senate report has found.

The report by the Senate foreign relations committee is damning of the way George Bush's administration conducted the aftermath of its bombing campaign in Afghanistan, saying it amounted to a "lost opportunity". It states that as a result of allowing the al-Qaida leader to flee from his Tora Bora stronghold into Pakistan, Americans were left more vulnerable to terrorism, and the foundations were laid for today's protracted Afghan insurgency. It also lays blame for the July 2005 London bombings on a failure to kill the al-Qaida leaders at Tora Bora.

Republican critics are likely to dismiss the report as a partisan work designed to deflect the current military troubles in Afghanistan away from President Barack Obama and on to his predecessor. The committee is Democratic-controlled.

But the report contains a mass of evidence that points towards the near certainty that Bin Laden was in the Tora Bora district of the White Mountains in eastern Afghanistan, along with up to 1,500 of his most loyal al-Qaida fighters and bodyguards, in late November 2001, shortly before the fall of Kabul.

Further evidence came from al-Qaida suspects detained at Guantánamo and, most authoritatively, from the official history of the US special operations command, which confirms bin Laden's presence at Tora Bora.

"Osama bin Laden's demise would not have erased the worldwide threat from extremists," it concludes. "But the failure to kill or capture him has allowed Bin Laden to exert a malign influence over events in the region."

• Osama bin Laden
• Al-Qaida
• Afghanistan
• Global terrorism
• George Bush
• US military
• United States

Ed Pilkington
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Dr Foster organisation says 12 trusts 'significantly underperforming'

The government's health and social care watchdog criticised parts of a report identifying 12 "significantly underperforming" NHS hospital trusts as "alarmist" as the row intensified today over standards of care.

Eight of the trusts named by Dr Foster, a part-public, part-private organisation that analyses NHS healthcare data, had been judged by the Care Quality Commission, the official regulator, to have good or excellent overall care.

They included Basildon and Thurrock foundation trust in Essex, where the commission last week reported lapses in hygiene and higher than expected death rates even though it had earlier given it a good rating without having made site visits to verify the trust's self-assessment.

The chairman of another autonomous foundation trust, in Colchester, was fired on Friday because it had high death rates and failed to improve waiting times, prompting health secretary Andy Burnham to order the commission to check whether others needed investigation.

Dr Foster's new hospital safety guide, ranking trusts on a range of safety measures, suggested that 27 trusts had unusually high mortality rates among patients, with almost 5,000 more dying in their care last year than expected. It also said that nearly four in 10 trusts had failed to investigate unexpected deaths or cases of serious harm on their wards, that there were 209 incidents last year where "foreign objects" such as swabs or drill-bits were left in patients after operations, and that in another 82 cases surgery had been on the wrong part of patients' bodies.

Lady Young, head of the Care Quality Commission, told the BBC today that while some of Dr Foster's data was "very legitimate", some was "alarmist". "Where they are good we will take them to account in our regulatory work and where they are flaky, we won't," she said.

Young insisted that "we do a comprehensive programme of monitoring". She did not believe any other trust was performing badly enough to warrant the taskforce-style response seen in Basildon.

Roger Taylor, director of Dr Foster, said: "No hospital in the world would claim to be free of these kinds of errors. But recording what is happening, and making that information public, is the best way to start tackling these issues."

The sharply differing assessments of performance prompted Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, to say: "We have to move away from the flawed system of self-assessment … We need more spot inspections which focus on the results of treatment, the experiences of patients and their feedback."

The other trusts ranked by Dr Foster in the bottom 12 are: University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire; Weston Area; St Helens and Knowsley Trust; Mid-Yorkshire; Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre Hospitals; Hereford Hospitals; Scarborough and North East Yorkshire; Tameside; South London; and Lewisham.

• NHS
• Health

James Meikle
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• He wants court to free him from monitoring
• Risk remains, say police, despite 2008 acquittal

Barry George, the man acquitted at a retrial of killing the BBC television presenter Jill Dando, is making an unprecedented legal challenge to stop the authorities keeping a watch on his movements.

George, 48, begins a legal case in the high court against the Metropolitan police, claiming his human rights are being breached because he is the subject of a multi-agency public protection arrangement (Mappa). The arrangements, which involve the police, probation service, prison service and local authorities, are designed to protect the public from sexual and violent offenders who are considered to still pose a risk after serving their sentences.

If George succeeds, probation officers and police believe hundreds of other offenders being supervised under Mappa could make similar challenges.

George, who suffers from a personality disorder and was said in court to be obsessed by celebrities, was freed from prison in August last year after serving seven years of a life sentence for the murder of Dando. The Crimewatch presenter was shot dead on her doorstep in Fulham, west London, on 26 April 1999.

George, who has lived with his sister in Ireland and at an address in west London since his release, will argue in his legal challenge that the monitoring of his life breaches his rights because he was acquitted of the Dando killing and because previous convictions for attempted rape and indecent assault are now spent.

Legal sources said George's challenge was unprecedented. He is on the lowest level of Mappa monitoring: he has to tell the local authority where he lives and the police are kept informed of his movements.

Harry Fletcher, from Napo, the trade union for probation staff, said he believed George's case raised worrying issues.

"Mappa was set up to monitor people coming out of prison who still posed a risk to the public and, if you go down the road of monitoring people who haven't been convicted, it raises massive issues about civil liberties," said Fletcher.

"If people are being referred to Mappa on the basis of suspicions and intelligence or because their case is high-profile, it does open up worrying aspects around intrusion."

The Metropolitan police is contesting the challenge, which will be heard in full in two weeks' time after Tuesday's preliminary hearing.

It argues that George has admitted stalking women and police have received new complaints from two women since his release last year.

The Met says his pattern of behaviour over many years of following women means that he still poses a risk despite his acquittal. They use his convictions for indecent assault in 1982 and attempted rape in 1983 as evidence of a long-running pattern of behaviour.

George was arrested in 2000 for the murder of Dando. He was convicted at his first trial in 2001 after the jury accepted that a single speck of gunpowder residue found on his coat linked him to the crime. After losing his first appeal, his conviction was quashed in 2007 after scientists told the court of appeal the gunpowder evidence was neutral and too much weight had been placed upon it.

A jury at his second trial last year found him not guilty in a unanimous verdict and George was released and made the subject of a Mappa order.

After his release, George gave an interview in which he admitted stalking women. He said the reason he could not have killed Dando was that he was stalking another woman at the time.

In the interview with the News of the World, George said that when Dando was murdered, he was following another woman after leaving a disability centre in Fulham, west London.

"I walked with her for a bit and, from her perspective, maybe it was unwanted attention. But she didn't make that clear," he said. "It didn't seem like she was telling me to go away. If she'd told me to leave, I'd have done so straight away."

He told another newspaper: "I won't follow women any more. I know it's wrong. I am never going to give anyone the chance to send me away again. I have changed."

George became a suspect about eight months into the Dando murder inquiry. His name had cropped up before, sometimes as Barry Bulsara – the name of one of singer Freddie Mercury's relatives – but he had not come to the fore.

During a search of George's flat, detectives found piles of newspapers and celebrity magazines. Photographs of Caron Keating, Anthea Turner and Emma Freud were among 4,000 pictures of women found in his flat in May 2000, the court heard. Police also found newspapercuttings about Dando's life and career.

He was placed under surveillance and was seen to approach 38 women on the streets during a three-week period. Checks revealed his previous convictions for sex offences.

During his second trial, the jury heard from 14 women who said George had followed them or frightened them as they walked home. But there was never any scientific proof or witnesses to put him at the Dando murder scene; the evidence presented was all circumstantial and he was acquitted.

Scotland Yard's review of the Dando murder inquiry is ongoing. It is understood forensic scientists have found no new evidence.

• Jill Dando murder
• Crime
• Law

Sandra Laville
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Widow welcomes long sentences for three fishermen

The widow of a British yachtsman murdered by three Burmese fishermen today welcomed prison sentences for their "heinous" crime.

Two men have been jailed for 25 years and a 17-year-old boy must remain in custody until he is 24 after pleading guilty to the attack on Malcolm Robertson, 64, who was bludgeoned and thrown overboard after they boarded the vessel he had been sailing with his wife Linda, 59, in March.

She survived the ordeal but was tied up for about 10 hours during the raid that prompted an intensive week-long search for her husband's body. Linda Robertson, from St Leonards, East Sussex, said today: " I don't want to trivialise Malcolm's death but I don't think 25 years in a Thai prison is going to be pleasant for them.

"I do hope the time they spend in jail will help them reflect and realise the heinous crime they committed. I also believe they were victims themselves.

"I don't think they had any plan. The fact that they didn't kill me, which they could quite easily have done, shows some compassion for me."

The Foreign Office in London earlier confirmed details of the sentences laid on them on Thursday at Satun provincial court for murdering Robertson.

A spokesman said both adults had their sentences reduced by half to 25 years and eight months imprisonment because they had pleaded guilty.

Robertson was semi-retired, after passing the running of his chain of coffee shops to his children. The couple, qualified yachtmasters who had been married 25 years, had been fulfilling Robertson's dream of spending the winter sailing in warmer climates. Their four children, two each from previous marriages, flew to Thailand to support Linda after the attack, but there were several false reports of Robertson's body being found before Thai fishermen discovered it 10 nautical miles north of Satun's Lipeh island.

The Robertsons had been sailing from Phuket in Thailand to the Malaysian island of Langkawi. They were attacked when they were moored off Bintang island in Tarutao national marine park.

Earlier reports of the March attack suggested Eksian Warapon, 19, an 18-year-old known as Aow and the 17-year-old known as Ko, had been stranded on the island after jumping from a Thai fishing ship. After finding little food and water there, they swam out to the mooring. Robertson was attacked as he tried to throw the amateur pirates off the 44-foot anchored yacht, called Mr Bean after his business. The trio were later arrested on a raft about half a mile away.

Linda Robertson had minor injuries and detailed her ordeal in nearly 10 hours of testimony in Satun in March. She said the three had tied her hands and feet.

She had heard her husband tell them: "Get off my boat."

After they had killed him, they laughed, joked and behaved as they were having a picnic as they ate the couple's food. Yet the youngest attacker had stroked her feet and given her food and water. "He said sorry many times and gave me hope that I would live," she said.

An inquest into Roberton's death is due to be held in Hastings on 9 December.

• Piracy at sea
• Thailand
• Burma
• Crime

James Meikle
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Abu Dhabi-based regulator tries to reassure foreign investors ahead of markets reopening by offering extra liquidity

The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates said today that it would "stand behind" Dubai's disastrous finances.

The UAE central bank said it would guarantee the loans made by both local Arab banks and crucially, western institutions on reasonably generous terms.

Dubai World, the state-owned conglomerate behind the emirate's astonishing rise, has debts of $59bn (£36bn), with close to $25bn owed in bonds and direct bank loans. There are fears that local banks face heavy losses that could lead to investors pulling money out of the system when the market reopens after the Eid al-Adha festival tomorrow morning.

However, some investors think the move did not go far enough. Shawkat Raslan, head of brokerage at Prime Emirates brokerage, said: "It might support the market a little bit but I don't think it is enough.

"I think some foreigners will take their money of the country and others will be afraid to put their money into these markets," said Raslan.

The central bank's move came as Dubai's supreme fiscal committee gathered to prepare a statement before the market opens in an attempt to reassure investors.

The central bank will make available to banks "a special additional liquidity facility linked to the current accounts" at the central bank that can be drawn on at a cost of 50 basis points above the three-month Emirates inter-bank offered rate, the Abu Dhabi-based regulator said in an emailed statement today.

The move ought to avert a calamitous slide in Dubai's financial markets, which will reopen for the first time since Dubai World announced that it wanted a six-month standstill agreement on a $4bn bond repayment made on behalf of its property subsidiary, Nakheel.

Mohammed Yasin, chief executive of Shuaa Securities, said: "What the central bank is doing here is pre-empting some of the worries that some of the foreign institutions, like what happened a year ago ... may try to transfer cash out.

"I would think foreign institutions will be the initial source of worry ... so the central bank is trying to first of all give those people the piece of mind that they are on top of things, and secondly, to give the very strong message that the funds are there, and they are going to support the banks."

• Financial crisis
• Market turmoil
• Dubai
• United Arab Emirates
• Global economy
• Global recession
• Middle East

Nick Mathiason
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Nikolay Davydenko (Rus) bt Juan Martin Del Potro (Arg) 6-3, 6-4

Nikolay Davydenko won the biggest title of his career with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over US Open champion Juan Martin del Potro in the final of the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals at London's O2 Arena.

The Russian, who beat Roger Federer in the semi-finals, went one better than last year having lost to Novak Djokovic in the showpiece 12 months ago. Del Potro knew victory would take him above Andy Murray – whom he had pipped for a place in the last four by one game – to number four in the rankings but he was thoroughly outplayed.

Davydenko picked up where he had left off against Federer while Del Potro, who had played quite brilliantly to beat Robin Soderling last night, looked nervous and tentative.

The Russian has been talking all week about his new-found love of volleying and he took every opportunity to put pressure on his opponent. It paid dividends in the fourth game, Davydenko taking his second break point after the Argentinian – not for the first time in the tournament – had been pulled up for a foot fault.

This was the Del Potro who had started so hesitantly against Murray in his first match. He was given a chance in game seven when Davydenko double-faulted to go break point down, but the 28-year-old is not easily rattled and he recovered to hold and move 5-2 ahead. The Russian was playing with supreme confidence and he easily served out a set in which he had barely put a foot wrong.

Del Potro needed something special in the second set and two huge forehand winners in Davydenko's first service game hinted at better to come. But it was the sixth seed who again had the first break points, in game five, although this time Del Potro proved equal to the challenge, firing down two big serves. The next game brought the same scenario, with the Russian getting himself out of trouble after for once failing to find the lines.

Davydenko had won two of their three previous meetings, most recently in the group stages of the same tournament last year, and he moved to within sight of victory as some superbly constructed points left his opponent facing three break points at 4-4. The Russian needed only one, and serving for the match he never looked like faltering, clinching victory when Del Potro netted a forehand.

• Tennis

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