The US Embassy is warning of a possible terrorist attack on Bali on New Year's Eve.

Terry Jones, the pastor from Gainesville, Fla., said he would cancel the event, adding that he intended to meet with the imam planning to build an Islamic center near ground zero.

The administration has pledged tax credits and subsidies but has said the lead must come from the private sector.

American Marines boarded a hijacked ship and arrested nine pirates — without firing a shot, the military said.

A roundup of new shows in the coming television season.

With Democrats in danger of losing control of Congress, some lobbying shops, trade groups and contractors are moving to hire more Republicans.

Pope's Glasgow visit: umbrellas are banned, there are no seats and security dictates mass-goers have to stay for five hours

The 100,000 Roman Catholics expected to attend the pope's open-air "great mass" in Glasgow have been urged by their cardinal to endure the "sacrifices" the event will involve. Tens of thousands of pilgrims in Glasgow will have to get to next Thursday's event at Bellahouston Park on public transport after their private coaches were cancelled.

Umbrellas have been banned, there will be no seating provided, and pilgrims will have to stay in the park for at least five hours on security grounds.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the leader of Scotland's Roman Catholics, said there had been "ups and downs" and "hiccups" with the event, but was confident that close to 100,000 people would attend. He said: "I'm sure that the optimism which has already been engendered will increase."

Strathclyde passenger transport said extra buses and subway trains were being put on to cope.

O'Brien, who will host Pope Benedict at the start of his four-day state visit next week, said the open-air mass was not intended to be luxurious.

"At the great mass at Bellahouston, you're there for a serious purpose, to join in the celebration of mass, to listen to the word of God, to listen to the teaching of the church being proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI, and that is a serious business," he said.

"You're not sitting back at the beach relaxing: it's something serious and obviously there's something penitential. There is penance involved in it, just sacrifice; sacrificing of time, sacrificing of comfort, sacrificing of your energy and so on, to be involved in all that's going on. And I see great benefit from that as well."

The cardinal said he was delighted by the papal visit. While John Paul II was a charismatic figure able to captivate a large crowd, Benedict was a serious and intellectual figure who was attracting priests to join the church.

Catholics were "stimulated just by his openness, his honesty and you know, his integrity, and they respect that with him", he said. "He sticks to his guns."

O'Brien added that the pope's visit was also intended to heal many of the divisions and problems in the church, including the child sex abuse scandals. The pope was the church's "chief healer", he said.

"You know the shepherd's crook, the sign of a bishop, is to reach out and bring in those who are lost, those who are hurt, those who have been offended in any way, in particular to have reconciliation with the victims of child sex abuse, just to say we are sorry. Our chief leader is sorry. We're sorry for anything that has gone on. Come back to us."

Hugh Farmer, a Catholic journalist involved in arranging the open air-mass at Bellahouston by Pope John Paul II in 1982, which was attended by 250,000, said he was keen to hear the pope, but feared it would be a shambles.

"If it's teeming with rain and it's windy, we're in Bellahouston on our own, I'm afraid. If it goes alright, it will be a miracle."

• Catholicism
• Pope Benedict XVI
• Christianity
• Religion

Severin Carrell
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Terry Jones claimed agreement had been reached to move location of planned mosque at site of September 11 attacks in New York

Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who planned to burn the Qur'an on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, has decided to cancel the event.

Jones, who heads the Dove World Outreach Centre church based in the university town of Gainesville, claimed an agreement had been reached with Muslim leaders to move the controversial location of a planned Islamic cultural centre and mosque in New York.

Sources close to the New York imam, however, said there was no agreement to move the mosque away from the former World Trade Centre site.

The pastor's proposal to burn the Qur'an had drawn criticism from President Obama and religious and political leaders across the Muslim world.

• United States
• Islam
• Religion
• Christianity
• Florida
• New York
• Global terrorism
• Obama administration
• Barack Obama

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Hadidjatou Karamoko Traoré is a 9/11 widow who has had to balance an overnight job, three children and her Muslim faith.

The Guardian's Jonathan Franklin, in a unique despatch, documents a day in the subterranean life of the 33 miners trapped 700 metres below the Chilean desert

Day in the San José mine begins at 7.30am, when a makeshift lighting rig powered by truck batteries and a portable generator flickers into life, casting a weak light on the refuge where the men have now spent 35 days.

In the hours after the shaft was sealed the miners used truck headlights to light their way, but in the following days, electrician Edison Pena wired up a series of lamps which provide between eight and 12 hours of light to provide a semblance of day and night.

"In those first few days, he took care of all the illumination down there, they had some equipment in there. It was never dark," said Pedro Campusano, a nurse with the rescue operation who has regular contact with the miners. "They had some machinery including a pickup, a truck, so he installed an electrical [generator] to feed the lighting system."

Breakfast begins to arrive at 8.30am via a delivery system known as the "pigeons" – the three-metre metal tubes that are packed with food, medicine and letters and lowered 700 metres through a 8.8cm communications shaft.

The food takes over an hour to arrive, with deliveries every 20 to 30 minutes. At the bottom of the mine, three men are tasked with receiving the "pigeons," unpacking bottled water, hot sandwiches and morning medicines, then stuffing the latest letters and messages into the torpedo-shaped tube, which slowly rises out of sight.

After breakfast the men clean their living area. "They know how to maintain their environment. They have a designated bathroom area, garbage area and are even recycling," said Dr Andre Llarena, an anaesthesiologist with the Chilean navy. "They put plastic stuff away from biological [wastes], in different holes. They are taking care of their place."

Morning showers require the men to climb aboard a bulldozer-type mining vehicle that rumbles 300 metres up the tunnel to a natural waterfall where they shower, shampoo and clean off the ubiquitous rust-coloured mud.

Showers and breakfast are followed by morning chores, some under instruction from mining engineers above ground, others in obedience to common sense.

Last week the trapped men sent up a list with a job description for each of them. "We have three groups, 'Refuge', 'The Ramp' and '105' [metres above sea level]," wrote Omar Raygada in a letter to his family. "I am head of Refuge."

Each group leader reports directly to Luis Urzua, the shift foreman on 5 August, when the men entered the mine in northern Chile for what was expected to be a half-day shift. Each has a variety of jobs which must be completed before the eight-hour turn is over.

"These men are trapped in their office – they are not tourists who went cave visiting. They know the drill, know how to get around," said Llarena. "They regularly spent 10-12 hours down there in the heat and humidity, and that's what they're doing now. That's what psychologists are reinforcing – this is a long shift, a very long shift, but still a shift."

Nineteen-year-old Jimmy Sanchez, the youngest of the group, is the "environmental assistant", who roams the caverns with a handheld computerised device that measures oxygen, CO2 levels and air temperature, which usually averages at around 31C. Every day Sanchez takes the reading from the gas detector and sends his reports to the medical team outside the mine. Another group of men reinforce the mine walls and divert streams of water seeping into their refuge. Several of the drilling and communications tubes connecting the men to the surface use water as lubricant, meaning a constant stream of muddy gunk trickles into their world.

Throughout the morning, some of the men maintain regular security patrols to scan the perimeter of their sleeping and living quarters, alert for signs of another rockfall. Others spend hours working with long-handled picks to lever loose large rocks that threaten to fall from the ceiling.

What the miners most fear is that a small rockfall could suddenly trigger a full-scale collapse, leaving them trapped in an even more confined space.

"They will seek shelter at the first major movement [of rocks]," said Alejandro Pino, a lead organiser of the rescue operation who works for the Association Chilena de Seguridad [ACHS]. "These are experienced miners – at the first sign of major movement they know where to hide."

The relief bore that will allow the men to escape is still some 140 metres from the living quarters, but in around three weeks' time a much larger drill bit will start tearing through the ceiling of the chamber, and the men will need to start moving an estimated 500kg of rock and mud every hour as debris from the drilling drops from the roof.

Food deliveries and meals take up much of the day. Lunch delivery starts at noon and takes a full hour and a half to deliver the hot meals.

"When they finish lunch, they have a general meeting, and in this meeting they start their prayers," said Dr Jorgé Diaz, a member of the rescue team.

The daily prayer is organised under the leadership of José Henriquez, who has been named the group's official "pastor". If Henriquez wants to record his sermons, he has the media team of Florencio Avalos, the group's official cameraman, and two sound engineers, Pedro Cortez and Carlos Bugueno. Aside from sermons, the sound engineers are also in charge of maintaining the phone lines, both conventional and fibre-optic. Telephone conversations and now video conferences are often scheduled for the early afternoon.

With basic needs such as food and sleeping quarters now fully organised, the men have also chosen to fill both bureaucratic and cultural positions. Victor Segovia is the group's official biographer, penning daily accounts from day one in an effort to keep an ongoing log of the men's predicament.

In a nation that produced the Nobel prize-winning poets Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda, it is only briefly surprising that the men named Victor Zamora as the group's official poet. Zamora's rhymed compositions are often one-page homages to the rescue team. Zamora's combinations of hope, gratitude and humour are among the most-read messages from below. Even after multiple readings, the poems still brings tears to the eyes of Campusano, the nurse working topside: "When this first came up, I read it and got halfway through, I couldn't." Campusano's eyes fill with tears. "It fills me with emotions … when I read it."

After lunch, the men are free to relax. Many of them spend the afternoon writing letters to their families, using safety lamps attached to their helmets. Letters from the men are frequently stained with rusty red blotches, a permanent reminder of the 85% humidity and muddy conditions inside the mine. The men have requested books, sketchpads and a stereo to play music.

Medical rounds are conducted daily by Jonny Barrios, a miner who trained in advanced first aid. Barrios once dreamed of studying medicine, but probably never envisaged how that ambition would be realised: as the team's official doctor, he is now undergoing a crash course in distance learning.

With fungal infections and bad teeth at the forefront of current medical problems, Barrios is under strict orders to make a daily list of any health problems.

In recent days, dermatological infections, toothaches, constipation and withdrawal from tobacco addiction have also caused problems. When a miner is considered ill, his name is added to those who have been "transferred" to a category known as the "intensive care unit". Barrios is so busy taking temperatures, administering medicines and updating patients' charts that he has now brought in Daniel Herrera, who has been given the title "assistant paramedic".

Of all the men given the job of keeping the group functioning, Barrios is perhaps the most crucial. He has already vaccinated the entire group against diphtheria, tetanus and pneumonia.

"We need him to measure the men, we need their circumference [in order to find out if they will fit through the small rescue hole now being drilled]," said Dr Devis Castro, a surgeon who has carried out advanced studies in nutrition. "The only way to weigh the men is with one of those scales like you see at the fruit market. So we are designing one small enough to send down through the tubes. Then they are going to have to figure our a way to hang themselves from the hook."

Apart from the daily medical rounds, Barrios has a daily hour-long consultant call every afternoon in which he receives messages from Chilean government's medical team, who huddle around a phone the size of a briefcase in a small tent some 700 metres above the trapped men.

"Jonny, can you hear me?" yelled the Chilean health minister, Dr Jaime Manalich, during a medical conference call last week. "Jonny, have you ever pulled out a tooth?"

From far below came the crackle of Barrios's voice. "Yeah … one of my own."

"If we have to ask you to pull a tooth and send you sterilised equipment, could you?" asked Manalich, who promised to first send a how-to video showing Barrios the most professional way to rip out an infected molar. "Remember Jonny, tell the men if they don't keep brushing their teeth that you will soon be ripping their teeth out down there."

From the moment the men were trapped on 5 August, the miners organised themselves for a rescue they guessed would be many days away, said Dr Jorge Diaz of the ACHS medical support team. "These are thinking people, they are workers with a work ethic that goes back many years. They don't need us to tell them what to do."

With the three shifts functioning like clockwork, psychologists have begun permitting certain extra pleasures. Earlier this week, the 33 miners gathered to watch their first live football match: Chile lost to Ukraine, 2-1. But despite the mud underfoot, loose rocks threatening to crash down and a lacklustre match, the men cheered every moment. Former football star Franklin Lobos, a legend on the pitch for the northern Chilean team Cobresal, ran a play by play summary.

After the match was over, the men prepared to sleep. They walked down the ramp to the bathroom, an area kept constantly clean by a stream of fresh water that washes away the urine and faeces.

By 10pm, the lights are out, and the men prepare their beds – inflatable mattresses shipped down from above. As they drift off to sleep, they are assured that if nothing else, their saga has been shortened by one day.

• Chile
• Mining

Jonathan Franklin
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A federal court permitted federal funding of research until the court rules on the Obama administration’s case.

Politicians use parliamentary privilege to attack police inquiry and target News International figures over claims

Rupert Murdoch was today accused of knowingly appointing Rebekah Brooks as chief executive of News International even though she had admitted that the News of the World had made illegal payments to the police, as Labour MPs intensified their attacks on the media mogul by using parliamentary privilege to round on his senior executives.

In a parliamentary debate on the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World, in which Conservative MPs voiced concerns, the Metropolitan police were also criticised for evasiveness in their investigation of the illegal practice.

Tom Watson, a Labour member of the Commons culture select committee, placed Murdoch in the line of fire by accusing him of appointing Rebekah Brooks as chief executive of News International knowing that she had broken the law over payments to police.

Brooks admitted in evidence to the Commons culture select committee in 2003 that the News of the World had paid police officers in the past for stories. This was condemned by the committee and by the Met as illegal. "When Rupert Murdoch appointed Rebekah Brooks he did so in that knowledge," Watson said of the ruling from the Commons committee.

Les Hinton, then chair of News International, later told the committee that Brooks subsequently told him she had "not authorised payments to policemen". He said her evidence was meant to suggest "there have been payments in the past".

The former Labour Cabinet Office minister was speaking as MPs debated whether to refer the phone hacking allegations to the powerful Commons standards and privileges committee.

The standards committee is to examine whether the News of the World breached ancient parliamentary privilege by endorsing the hacking of MPs' phones.

Watson recommended that Murdoch be summoned to give evidence."

He accused Brooks of refusing three invitations to give evidence to the culture select committee, which examined the allegations during the last parliament. "[She] was pursued on three separate occasions. We gave up."

Paul Farrelly, a former journalist who is another Labour member of the committee, used parliamentary privilege to make allegations about Andy Coulson and the News International legal director, Tom Crone. Coulson, now Downing Street director of communications, resigned as editor of the News of the World in 2007 after the paper's royal editor, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, were jailed for hacking into phones. Coulson denies any knowledge of the hacking.

Farrelly said people had wrongly assumed that his committee had cleared Coulson because it could find no evidence linking him to the phone hacking. "We were frankly incredulous of the notion that such a hands-on editor would not have had the slightest inkling about what his staff, and what private investigators employed by the paper, were up to."

Farrelly alleged that Coulson personally spiked a News of the World story about Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association. Coulson allegedly did this after a conversation with Crone, who had had a denial from Taylor's lawyers. A £700,000 payout by News International to Taylor, revealed by the Guardian in July 2009, prompted the latest round of allegations.

"We thought it would be highly unusual for an editor to accept a denial at face value," Farrelly said. "We'd expect an editor to ask, how can we stand this story up? The answer, we thought, would inevitably involve some discussion of … the source of the story. We suspected, although we could not prove it, that the story was spiked, in part at least, because any libel suit would have exposed the phone hacking that was going on."

Farrelly alleged Crone misled his committee. "He denied admitting a payoff to Clive Goodman, after he got out of jail. He also misled our committee on the identity of the junior reporter involved in transcribing phone hacking messages."

Watson was highly critical of people who refused to appear before the committee. These included Greg Miskiw, former assistant news editor at the paper, who said he was too ill to attend, Mulcaire, who said through an intermediary he would not give evidence, and Goodman, who said he was unavailable.

Andy Hayman, former head of the Met's special operations unit, who was in charge of the Mulcaire inquiry, was also criticised. Watson said the committee should summon Hayman to "get the bottom of which MPs were on the target list".

Farrelly criticised Hayman for interviewing only Mulcaire and Goodman. He also criticised Hayman's successor, Assistant Commissioner John Yates. "Had Mr Hayman been in charge of the Watergate inquiry President Nixon would have safely served a full term. His line is one which … John Yates is finding increasingly difficult to maintain … We were very critical of the evasiveness displayed by Mr Yates in the police evidence to us."

Paul McMullan, the former News of the World executive who spoke on the record to the Guardian, was deputy features editor at the NoW when Coulson arrived as deputy editor in May 2000. He worked with Coulson for 18 months. A Channel 4 website report incorrectly suggested that McMullan worked with Coulson for just a few months, casting doubt on his claims that Coulson must have known about the hacking practice.

What MPs said

"The barons of the media, with their red-topped assassins, are the biggest beasts in the modern jungle. They have no predators, they are untouchable, they laugh at the law, they sneer at parliament, they have the power to hurt us, and they do with gusto and precision."

Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East and former minister

"This is … about what kind of investigative journalism we want in this country. Searching, yes. Critical, caustic, aggressive and cynical, maybe. But not illegal. And it is about whether this house will be supine when its members' phones are hacked, or about whether it will take action when the democratic right of MPs to do their job without illegal let, hindrance or interception has been traduced."

Chris Bryant, Labour MP for the Rhondda

"Former assistant commissioner Andy Hayman has repeatedly told the news that, as far as the Met is concerned, 'we didn't leave a stone unturned, we interviewed everyone who was relevant at the time'. That, I'm afraid, is simply not true.

The second thing I wanted to address ... is that our committee 'found no evidence that Andy Coulson knew about the hacking'. That has been taken to mean that we effectively cleared Mr Coulson of not knowing what his staff were up to. Nothing could be further from the truth."

Paul Farrelly, Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme and member of the culture committee

"The Press Complaints Commission has not done a robust job. The public are not adequately protected from the press."

Simon Hughes, Liberal Democrat MP for Bermondsey and Old Southwark

• News of the World phone-hacking scandal
• Rupert Murdoch
• Newspapers & magazines
• News International
• Newspapers
• News of the World
• National newspapers
• House of Commons
• News Corporation

Nicholas Watt
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The Gold Coast's large New Zealand contingent is about to get a whole lot louder.

Kiwi fans are set to paint a city known for its sunshine black.

It's not that Ivan Cleary wants James Maloney to stop pushing the boundaries with referees when he sets foot on the field. It's just that he'd prefer he stop getting caught.

Junior players audition for agents and sponsorship dollars at the Open.

Many are questioning the practice of driving on the beaches near Daytona Beach after two children were killed this year.

Thilo Sarrazin, who made disparaging remarks about Muslims and Jews in a disputed book, has agreed to quit his position on the board, the Bundesbank said Thursday.

Proposals which chancellor says will target those who view welfare as 'lifestyle choice' draw fury from leftwing Lib Dems

The chancellor George Osbornetoday dramatically turned up the heat in the spending review by revealing he will slash the benefit budget for the unemployed by a further £4bn, and saying he would go after those who regarded welfare benefits as "a lifestyle choice".

Interviewed today, Osborne said: "People who think it is a lifestyle to sit on out-of-work benefits … that lifestyle choice is going to come to an end. The money will not be there for that lifestyle choice."

Treasury sources indicated they were confident they would secure £4bn in further savings by 2014-15 on top of the £11bn savings set out in the June budget.

The Department of Work and Pensions, however, said no agreement had been struck, or specific figure agreed. Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, has been involved in bitter talks with the Treasury over his potentially costly plan to improve work incentives for those on the dole, and some of his allies were annoyed by Osborne's rhetoric at a sensitive point in complex negotiations.

One source said: "This feels like an effort to get Andy Coulson off the front pages rather than anything to do with welfare reform."

The Treasury said the £4bn extra saving was not dependent on a fall in unemployment, but is an estimate of the number of extra people who will find jobs due to the government's Work Programme and changes to work incentives.

The benefit savings could be increased if the Treasury presses ahead with proposals to restrict current universal benefits such as the winter fuel allowance, travel passes and TV licences.

The benefit proposals, and the manner in which they emerged in Osborne's interview with the BBC's Nick Robinson, drew fury from leftwing Liberal Democrat MPs Mike Hancock, Tim Farron and Bob Russell. Vowing to vote against such cuts, Hancock said: "This goes right to heart of the benefit system in this country. He has a lot of questions to answer and this is not the right way to do things."

Russell said: "This is not the way the coalition should work. I think Liberal Democrat MPs need to find out what is being done in our name. He is going around with a sledgehammer."

Farron said: "The government needs to demonstrate that those who got us into this mess are going to more than bear the brunt and that the most in need will not be targeted. We need to scrutinise where the cuts are made."

Osborne's declaration came on the day Nick Clegg had tried to send out a nuanced message that the cuts in the 20 October spending review would not fall in one blow, and would not be "dramatically different" to those proposed by Labour.

Osborne, by contrast, adopted a blunt tone, telling the BBC: "The welfare system is broken. We have to accept that the welfare bill has got completely out of control and that there are 5m people living on permanent out-of-work benefits. That is a tragedy for them and fiscally unsustainable for us.

"There will be further welfare cuts amounting to several billions of pounds additional to what I announced in the budget," he promised. "The people of this country understand this choice and they have chosen for us as a government to push further on welfare reform."

During the election campaign David Cameron promised the winter fuel allowance would not be cut, but it is possible that it, and some other universal benefits, could be restricted to those on pension credit, as the Lib Dems advocated.

In a speech today Clegg warned that the biggest risk facing the government in next month's spending review is panic, with civil servants slashing budgets across the board.

Six weeks before 25% cuts in departmental budgets are unveiled, the deputy prime minister revealed that the government "was putting a lot of pressure on departments not simply to panic, and do a numerical exercise, but also think about their long-term vocational purpose".

Clegg said he knew the spending review would be very controversial. "More worrisome still, they simply look at the cost of employing people and slash jobs."

He also disclosed that the spending review would provide extra money to introduce a pupil premium for poorer school children. It would include a deal to loosen Treasury controls over local government so "over time there is a rebalancing of the fiscal system", he said.

It is understood that the cabinet agreed this week that spending ministers will be entitled to take their departmental spending cuts programme to the domestic affairs committee of the cabinet to ensure there is full political buy-in into the cuts programme, so ministers collectively agree on highly controversial individual department programmes.

It had previously been thought cabinet ministers would simply strike bilateral deals with the Treasury, or the so-called star chamber.

Clegg's politically driven need to calm anxieties carries the danger of sending a mixed political message, since to placate the markets the coalition is also insisting that Labour's deficit reduction programme was totally inadequate.

Clegg argued: "This is a four- to five-year plan. It means for a department that is being asked to have its finances to be reduced by 25%, it is an annual reduction of about 6%. Under Labour's plans it would have been 20% reduction so that it would have been 5% every year.

"Our plans are not that dramatically different in some cases from what Labour was planning, and crucially it takes place over time, so I hope that gives everyone in public services and local government time to plan carefully, not to panic, and to take the wrong decisions right at the beginning."

However, Clegg admitted that the public were at present reading their worst fears into the spending review. He admitted: "Of course, there are plenty reasons for people to be anxious, particularly in those parts of the country that are very dependent on the public sector."

• Welfare
• Conservative and Liberal Democrat cabinet
• Conservatives
• George Osborne
• State benefits
• Liberal Democrats

Patrick Wintour
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An appeals court has granted a temporary stay to the controversial injunction that last month froze new government grants for embryonic stem cell research