New Gadget 2011

Considering the size of the audience, the two sets of trumpeters, two choirs and several of the most senior clerics in the land, the presence of the entire British royal family, 45 crowned heads from around the world and a guest list stretching to nearly 2,000, it was quite an intimate wedding. And, confounding all the understandable fears, nerves and precautions, it went off without a hitch.
Miss Catherine Middleton of Bucklebury, Berkshire went into Westminster Abbey at 11am and came out an hour and a quarter later, holding the hand of the second in line to the throne as Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge – she will not be known as Princess Catherine. At the moment of their wedding, the Queen bestowed a title on her husband, Prince William of Wales. In fact, there were three titles so that none of her realms felt left out: he also became Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus.

Attempt by Libya loyalist soldiers to retake a key crossing from rebel hands leads to border skirmish with Tunisian forces

James Purnell, the former work and pensions secretary, is to call on Labour to rethink its approach to welfare, relying less on cash transfers and instead offering guarantees of jobs and access to housing.
He also proposes a revival of the contributory principle whereby a claimant's benefits are linked more closely to the amount they have put into the system. Describing "Blue Labour" as the most interesting element of the current debate within the party, he says it is central to understanding why the party lost so many voters – symbolised by Gillian Duffy, the Rochdale pensioner branded a bigot by Gordon Brown in the seminal moment of the 2010 general election. He is due to make his remarks at a speech in Australia on Saturday.
He claims that Blue Labour, a recent movement with the party launched by the social thinker and life peer Maurice Glasman, starts from the things that matter – "responsibility, love, loyalty, friendship, action and victory" – values that "used to be engraved upon Labour's heart".
"This roots politics back in people's lives and how they can pursue what they want. It's not that GDP or equality don't matter; just that they are not the right place to start." He argues that "Mrs Duffy and millions like her had good reason to be angry. It wasn't her gratitude problem. It was our ideological problem. "In the name of helping the poorest, we've thought too much about what people get out of society, and not enough about what they put in. Too much was to be solved from the centre."
Currently chairman of the Institute for Public Policy Research, Purnell approvingly quotes Duffy, saying: "There are too many people now who aren't vulnerable but they can claim and people who are vulnerable can't get to claim."
He claims many Labour voters were offended by the Labour government's conception of fairness: "They felt people were getting help who hadn't paid in. And they thought that people who needed protection weren't getting it. To convince them of the alternative, it is no good showing a graph demonstrating that Labour's tax and benefit changes benefited the poorest. It is an offence against relationships that had been committed – reciprocity and mutualism had broken down, and therefore trust has evaporated".
Setting out a vision of a new welfare state he says: "When people lost their job, they would want to get a proportion of their previous wages for a few months. If they hadn't found work, they would like to be guaranteed a job. That might sound fantastical, but it's what Germany and Britain did in the last recession. People would want a guarantee of housing, of a pension in retirement, of good parental leave and pay. That is the kind of welfare state that they would actually fight for, rather than treat with indifference."
He warns this kind of welfare state "might need to be funded out of the cash transfers and universal benefits they value much less and which are insufficient in times of need, but marginal when things are going well.
"Such a welfare state would explore how we can bring back the contributory principle – how what people get out relates better to what they put in. And it would say that people couldn't refuse to help themselves – that the job guarantee would also be a job requirement. If anyone turned it down, they would lose their benefits."
In his speech he seeks to draw a distinction between Labour and progressives, a phrase that appears to be a code for New Labour, a movement within which he was a central figure.
Labour, he contends, believes "markets were inherently unstable and exploitative. That Labour's role was to protect people from this by using the state and unions to reduce exploitation in good times, and to prevent or mop up crashes in bad."
Progressives, he said, revised this argument into "markets are the best way of generating wealth and tax revenues. Labour's role is to use those revenues to help people fulfil their aspirations, mainly by controlling the state and improving public services."
He summarises: "Labour emphasised protection, progressives majored on aspiration. Labour emphasised how markets could hurt people. Progressives talked about how they normally worked.
He argues: "When it turned out that markets could go spectacularly wrong, we were left looking a bit bananas because we'd said that could never happen. And, however good our stimulus measures were, we couldn't get credit for mopping up the mess we had told people they'd be insane to fear. We had said to our voters that markets worked. So, when a huge crash in financial markets occurred, we had no way of explaining to them what had just happened."
But he claims the progressive offer made by New Labour was failing people like Duffy before the credit crunch. It "operated outside her conception of fairness, and was too managerial. It was done to her, and wasn't what she'd asked for in the first place".

Barack Obama has flown to the epicentre of one of the United States' worst tornado disasters to pledge federal support for recovery after 310 people were killed.
The president and his family visited the wrecked university city of Tuscaloosa in Alabama, the hardest hit of seven states that were blasted this week by tornadoes and storms that flattened whole neighbourhoods. It was the worst US natural catastrophe since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In Alabama alone, 210 people lost their lives.
Approaching the airport in Tuscaloosa yesterday, Air Force One flew over the tornado strike zone, giving Obama and his family a clear view of a wide brown scar of devastation several miles long and hundreds of meters wide.
The president is eager to show that federal relief is on its way and that he is not taking the disaster lightly. His predecessor George Bush was fiercely criticised for what was viewed as a slow response to Hurricane Katrina.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama "wants to put a spotlight for the rest of America on the suffering that a storm like this implies for so many families."
Recovery could cost billions of dollars and even with federal disaster aid it could complicate efforts by affected states to bounce back from recession. It will place an added burden on municipalities grappling with fragile finances.
Tornadoes are a regular feature of life in the south and midwest, but they are rarely so devastating. Deaths also were reported in Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia, Virginia and Louisiana.
The tornadoes ravaged Alabama's poultry industry – the state is the country's third-largest chicken producer – and battered at least one coal mine and other manufacturers and industries.
The second-biggest US nuclear power plant, the Browns Ferry facility in Alabama, may be down for weeks after its power was knocked out and the plant automatically shut, avoiding a nuclear disaster, officials said.
Clothing company VF Designs said one of its jeanswear distribution centres in Hackleburg, Alabama, was destroyed and an employee killed.
At first light on Friday, state authorities deployed teams in Tuscaloosa, home to the University of Alabama, to help survivors still picking up the pieces after the tornadoes on Wednesday devastated homes and businesses.
The twisters, including one a mile-wide that cut a path of destruction, reduced houses to rubble, flipped cars and knocked out power and other utilities.
"We are bringing in the cadaver dogs today," said Heather McCollum, assistant to the mayor of Tuscaloosa, who put the death toll in the city at 42 but said it could rise. She said 900 people were injured.
Hundreds of people were left homeless by the tornadoes and stayed in shelters. A curfew would be renewed on Friday night to prevent looting, although there had been almost none, she said.
The city has been inundated with offers of help from around the country, McCollum said.
McFarland Boulevard, normally one of the busiest streets, was wrecked and largely blocked off and state troopers and city police patrolled its shattered shops and houses.
The storms left up to a million homes in Alabama without power. Because of damage to infrastructure and gas stations, Alabama and the neighboring state of Tennessee advised people traveling to affected areas to fill up their tanks with gas.
Water and garbage collection services were also disrupted in some areas.
Alabama's Jefferson County, which is fighting to avoid what would be the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history over a $3.2bn bond debt, suffered damage and 19 dead but said the storms would have little direct impact on its finances.
"It won't directly impact us in that the president has declared a national disaster which requires grants," county commission president David Carrington said.
The storm threw into turmoil the University of Alabama. Two students died off campus and administrators canceled final exams and postponed graduation until August.
Many students slept in dorm rooms without power overnight and large numbers were heading home on Friday. "Everyone is getting out," said Katie Bayless, 19, whose parents had driven through the night from Houston, Texas, to collect her.

Booming demand for luxury cars in China has helped Daimler double its profits in the first quarter of the year and highlighted a wider turnaround in confidence for automobile makers.
Sales of Mercedes-branded cars and sports utility vehicles (SUVs) increased by 82% in the world's most populous nation compared to 4% growth in western Europe and America.
The German-based carmaker reported earnings of €1.18bn (£1.05bn) compared with €612m in the same period of 2010, while revenues were up 15% at €24.7bn.
"We achieved excellent earnings in the first quarter. This puts us well ahead of our planning and confirms our positive outlook for the year 2011," said Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler and head of the Mercedes division.
The strong performance confirms a trend highlighted by other companies recently, including Volkswagen, Volvo and particularly Ford, which had its best quarter for 13 years.
The industry has been in a parlous position since the banking crisis of 2008 triggered a global recession and a slump in car sales that led governments to introduce a "cash for clunkers" financial incentive scheme. Recent upsets have included the Japanese earthquake which has disrupted output among companies such as Toyota with major British production factories.
Daimler itself said it had been forced to write down €49m at its Daimler Truck division, which has a joint venture in Japan, and a further €29m at Daimler Financial Services. But the truck operation – the biggest in the world – generally performed very strongly, raising operating earnings from €130m in the first quarter of 2010 to €415m this year.
Overall, Daimler sold 15% more cars and commercial vehicles in the first three months of this year while Mercedes' operating profits rose 60% to €1.2bn.
Bodo Uebber, chief financial officer at Daimler, said there was no indication that demand in China for Mercedes would ease off in the near future and the group expected the marque to hit record sales of 1.2m cars this year helped by its top-of-the-range S-Class model. Similar trends – a burgeoning middle class seeking out luxury vehicles – can be seen in India.
However, the City was not impressed by Daimler's figures after far stronger than expected results from others. Daimler shares were trading down 2%.
Tim Schuldt, a car industry analyst at Equinet Bank, said: "While the first quarter was definitely a good quarter for Daimler, it also shows that it becomes more difficult for the company to surprise positively as expectations are high."
Volkswagen announced this week that it had tripled its profits in the first quarter, crediting mounting demand in China for its VW and Audi brands.
Volvo has also doubled its earnings and said its European orders were up by nearly 50% and its North American ones more than tripled, while Ford said US sales had risen by 16% as customers sought fuel-efficient vehicles such as the Escape. This helped Ford's total vehicle sales to reach 1.4m, up by 150,000 vehicles.
But some firms are still struggling. Spyker Cars – the owner of the Saab marque – has reported a net loss of €76.3m as it struggled to find cash to restart production at its factory in Sweden. Output has been at a standstill since earlier this month after Spyker ran out of money to pay Saab suppliers.
Spyker has been trying to interest a handful of Chinese carmakers to put up some cash for Saab, while China's state-owned SAIC now owns the MG brand and has just launched the new MG6 fastback.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders in Britain reported last week that 135,052 cars were produced in the UK last month – a 14.8% increase on the March 2010 figure.

Diehard royal fans celebrate Kate and William's nuptials but for most it's business as usual