News and Society

David Willetts told the universities conference that the London Met issue should not jeopardise the £8bn-a-year export earnings brought in by the 400,000 foreign students. Photograph: Chris Radburn/PA

The universities minister, David Willetts, is to launch a global drive to "protect Britain's reputation" and spread the message that it remains open to students from overseas in the wake of the government's curbs on student visas.

He is also to set up a £2m hardship fund to help "legitimate overseas students" at London Metropolitan University, who face extra costs as a result of the home secretary's decision to strip it of its licence to sponsor overseas students.

But Willetts stopped short of demands from vice-chancellors to remove overseas students from the government's drive to reduce net migration to below 100,000 by the next election.

Instead, Willetts told a universities conference in Keele that the Office for National Statistics would publicise statistics that made clearer the separate contribution of overseas students to immigration and try to improve estimates how many go home at the end of their studies.

The university lecturers' union said it appeared the government was finally recognising the damage its student visa policy was doing to Britain's international reputation.

Willetts's olive branch to the higher education sector over the government's drive to curb numbers of students from overseas came as 21 September was fixed as the date for the high court to hearing for London Met's legal challenge to the revocation of its Home Office sponsorship licence.

The minister also suggested it was necessary for higher education to develop a longer protection scheme for foreign students – similar to the Abta guarantee when travel agents fail – should other universities face a similar situation.

Universities UK said it welcomed the setting up of the £2m London Met hardship fund and would take part in talks over a protection scheme. While it welcomed changes to the immigration figures to show what contribution students were making to reductions, it wanted the government to go further and remove students from the net migration target entirely.

The University and College Union's general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: "It appears the government is finally recognising the damage its student visa policy, coupled with threatening to deport thousands of fee-paying overseas students, is doing to our international reputation."

The National Union of Students said the immigration statistics already gave details of overseas student flows in and out of Britain, and criticised the £2m hardship fund as offering "scant relief" to students who faced an average bill of £4,610 each as a result of moving university.

Willetts told the universities conference that the London Met issue must not be allowed to jeopardise the success story of the 400,000 overseas students who bring in almost £8bn a year in export earnings. He said it was necessary to take short-term action "to protect our international reputation" beyond the London Met hardship fund and the mini-clearing operation that will start next Monday.

"We have already used our Foreign Office posts to signal that we remain open to overseas students," Willetts said, before announcing a joint publicity drive with Universities UK in key newspapers "in our target markets", explaining that overseas students are welcome in Britain and reminding them of what a great opportunity it is to study in the UK.

Willetts acknowledged that the public did not regard overseas students as immigrants and saw "someone coming to study for a time and then going back home as different from someone permanently coming to Britain as a migrant".

But the minister made clear that they would not be removed from the overall net migration count: "We will publish disaggregated figures. We will disaggregate the headline totals for net migration so that people can see the student element within that. We are not removing students from the totals. We are improving the quality of data on students leaving the country."

Home Office ministers argue that the international definition of an immigrant covers anyone who goes to a country for more than 12 months and that removing them from the net migration statistics would look like the government "fiddling the figures" to meet their 'below 100,000' target. The latest net migration figure shows that 216,000 more people to live in Britain in 2011 than emigrated abroad. Students accounted for 232,000 of the 566,000 who were classified as long-term immigrants to Britain in 2011.

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Officials are concerned more Yosemite visitors could develop the lung disease because the virus may incubate for up to six weeks after exposure. Photograph: EPA

Yosemite national park has doubled the scope of its hantavirus warning to 22,000 visitors who may have been exposed to the deadly mouse-borne disease, as the number of confirmed cases grew to eight and a third death was reported.

US officials recently issued a global alert, saying up to 10,000 people were thought to be at risk of contracting hantavirus pulmonary syndrome after staying at the popular Curry Village lodging area between June and August. As many as 2,500 of those people live outside the US, health officials said.

Officials are concerned that more Yosemite visitors could develop the lung disease in the next month or so because the virus may incubate for up to six weeks after exposure.

The warning was expanded to about 12,000 additional visitors to the park's more remote High Sierra camps, after an eighth case of the illness was confirmed in a man who had stayed in tent cabins at three of those camps.

He had also had stayed in a tent cabin at the Tuolumne Meadows Lodge and had camped in the wilderness – all locations in the park's high country, the Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said.

His symptoms were so mild he never went to a hospital, but after hearing about the outbreak he was tested, and laboratory results confirmed on Thursday that he had been ill with the disease, Gediman said.

The seven other confirmed victims are all believed to have contracted the virus while staying in one or more of the 91 insulated "Signature" tent cabins in Curry Village, located at a lower-elevation area of the park.

The 91 Curry Village tent cabins were shut down after deer mice were found infesting the double walls of the structures.

Officials in Yosemite, a national park in California whose scenic vistas, hiking trails and wildlife attract about 4 million visitors a year, did not previously consider the High Sierra camps to be at risk of hantavirus.

Those camps will remain open, based on recommendations from public health officials, Gediman said, adding: "We do inspections and we try to keep the rodents out. It's impossible to say every tent cabin is rodent-proof."

He estimated that a few hundred notices were being sent to individuals who still had reservations to stay at the High Sierra camps before they close for the season on 17 September.

The expanded warning came as Yosemite announced a third person had died of the disease and the number of confirmed cases rose to eight, all of them among American visitors to the park.

Health officials in France were also investigating two suspected hantavirus cases there among people who may have been exposed while at Yosemite, according to an assessment by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Gediman identified the third fatality as a West Virginia resident who had contracted hantavirus while staying in Curry Village tent cabins in June. That person died at the end of July, and laboratory tests confirmed on Thursday the death was due to hantavirus, he said.

The two others who died were a man from northern California and a man from Pennsylvania.

The World Health Organisation issued a global alert this week over the cases of hantavirus linked to Yosemite, and advised travellers to avoid exposure to rodents.

The virus can lead to severe breathing difficulties and death. Early flu-like symptoms include headache, fever, muscle aches, shortness of breath and coughing.

There is no cure for the lung disease, which kills over a third of those infected, but early detection through blood tests greatly increases survival rates.

Hantavirus is carried in rodent faeces, urine and saliva that can mix with dust and be inhaled by humans, especially in small, confined spaces with poor ventilation. People can also become infected by eating contaminated food, touching tainted surfaces or being bitten by infected rodents.

The disease has never been known to be transmitted between humans.

Hantavirus was previously known to have infected only two Yosemite visitors, one in 2000 and another in 2010, both at higher elevations in the park.

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The Arthur Ashe Stadium crowd was relentless in its support for Williams and she rose to the occasion, gutting out 2 hours 25 minutes of effort that made her second-round slugfest perhaps the best match of the tournament.

Kerber had eliminated Williams at the London Olympics last month in dramatic fashion, rallying twice in tiebreakers that Williams seemed to have won.

After that match, Williams said, “She had the answers.”

In the rematch, Kerber found a way to answer the roars of the crowd, which rattled her and revitalized Williams.

Kerber complained to the umpire about crowd noise, but the fans did not relent. At one point the umpire politely thanked the crowd after he asked for silence and a fan broke the silence by shouting, “You’re welcome!”

Williams has struggled with an autoimmune disorder since pulling out of the Open last year before a second-round match.

This year fatigue still seems to be an issue for Williams, 32 years old and less powerful than the star who won consecutive Open titles more than a decade ago.

Williams double-faulted to lose the first game of the match, and four times over all in the set, receiving louder sighs of disappointment from the crowd.

The momentum shifted in her favor in the second set. When she lost the first game, the crowd responded with a rally cry: “Let’s go Venus!”

Williams then lost the second game, but she toughed it out in the third to finally win a service game and eventually took a 3-2 lead.

Williams and Kerber traded games until a Williams winner finally closed out the second set, 7-5.

The final set featured similar sparring and a shift in demeanors. Williams sat upright during breaks and bobbed back and forth in her chair. Kerber sought refuge underneath a towel that she draped over her head and upper body.

It is hard to imagine that a towel could block out the crowd, but it was enough to keep Kerber focused. She won the final three games to seal the match.

Earlier in the day, Serena Williams overpowered María José Martínez Sánchez of Spain, 6-2, 6-4, hitting 32 winners to Sánchez’s 5. But six double faults and 24 unforced errors by Williams kept the match somewhat interesting.

After being down, 2-0, in the second set, the fourth-seeded Williams rallied, seemingly invigorated by a range of demonstrative actions. For all of the hustle and muscle she displayed in the match, Williams expended nearly as much energy after each point, whether she smacked a winner down the line or flubbed a shot into the net.

At various points in the set’s third game, Williams, a 14-time Grand Slam singles champion, squatted, slouched, bent over, stared at her racket or yelled with her palms opened to the sky, shouting, “What are you doing?”

More often, however, she clenched her fists and pumped her arms, as she advanced to the third round.

In her postmatch address to the crowd, Williams responded to the news that Andy Roddick, whom she has known since she was 10 years old, had announced his retirement.

“I knew for a while,” Williams said. “He told me this would probably be his last tournament. I was hoping he would change his mind, but I guess not.”

She added: “He’s been so amazing for men’s American tennis and so amazing to watch. I’m sad to see another face gone.”

James Blake defeated No. 24 Marcel Granollers of Spain at Louis Armstrong Stadium, 6-1, 6-4, 6-2. Blake held serve throughout the match, and it marked the first time he had beaten a seeded player at the Open since 2006.

Though Blake thought Roddick’s win over Roger Federer in Miami this year might persuade Roddick to play another year, Blake, like Williams, was not surprised by Roddick’s announcement, citing the many injuries in Roddick’s career.

“I don’t know what it feels like, but it’s got to hurt when you serve 140 miles per hour for 10, 12 years,” Blake said.

Top-seeded Roger Federer handily beat Bjorn Phau of Germany, 6-2, 6-3, 6-2, in 90 minutes.

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1 of 32. A resident of Plaquemines Parish who was rescued from his flooded home sits in the back of a pickup truck during Hurricane Isaac in Braithwaite, Louisiana August 29, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Lee Celano

By Ellen Wulfhorst and Scott Malone

NEW ORLEANS | Thu Aug 30, 2012 2:32am EDT

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - The Isaac weather system is expected to weaken further as it heads north on Thursday, having caused significant damage to the U.S. Gulf Coast but nothing on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005.

The former Category One hurricane is likely to become a tropical depression on Thursday, and move over southern Arkansas by early Friday, the National Hurricane Center said.

As Isaac ebbs, post-mortems should show that an elaborate flood containment plan developed for low-lying New Orleans survived its first major test, seven years to the day after Katrina laid waste to large parts of the iconic city and killed more than 1,800 people.

And as the focus shifts from the coast, many further north will hope that Isaac brings rains desperately needed to ease a drought in the center of the United States, where summer crops have been ravaged and many rivers and dams are critically low.

The mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu, said the $14.5 billion system built for New Orleans by the Army Corps of Engineers -- an array of walls, floodgates, levees and pumps -- had performed "exactly as it should."

Isaac was never close to packing the punch of Katrina, which was a Category 3 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale when it smashed into New Orleans on August 29, 2005 - a day that still reverberates in the nation's psyche.

And early indications are that property damage from Isaac will not crack the top-10 list of worst U.S. hurricanes by inflation-adjusted losses.

But the storm still produced major headaches, especially the seemingly endless rain that caught many long-time residents by surprise, trapped some on rooftops, and caused significant flooding in low-lying coastal areas.

SLOW MOVING

Isaac's advance slowed to a crawl after it first grazed the southeast Louisiana coast on Tuesday. That slowdown allowed it to pick up strength and dump rain for many more hours than expected. Flooding and storm surges forced thousands from their homes in areas not far from New Orleans.

"There is no such thing as 'just' a tropical storm," Craig Fugate, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said after Isaac was downgraded from Hurricane strength on Wednesday.

Fugate's boss, U.S. President Barack Obama, declared the impact on Louisiana and Mississippi major disasters and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local recovery efforts.

The NHC estimated total rainfall amounts from Isaac of 7 to 14 inches, enough for widespread lowland flooding. Isolated maximum amounts over much of Louisiana and parts of Mississippi, Alabama and even Arkansas were expected to be as much as 25 inches.

Storm surges at high tide were also as high as 12 feet on the coast of Mississippi and southeastern Louisiana. Thousands were evacuated from St. John the Baptist Parish, north of New Orleans, after surges in Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas.

New Orleans was provided with a heavy security presence to prevent any repeat of the days-long crime wave and general chaos that followed Katrina.

Police and National Guard units, many armed with assault rifles, patrolled dark and nearly deserted streets in downtown New Orleans, usually a hotbed of tourism.

The city was still being lashed by rain and high winds on Wednesday night and about 60 percent of all homes and businesses were without power.

GHOST TOWN

"It's a ghost town," said Sgt. Joseph Jennings, a member of the Louisiana Army National Guard patrolling the streets in an armored humvee.

"Everybody saw the widespread looting during Katrina and nobody wants that to happen again."

The darkness of the Lower Ninth Ward was eerily reminiscent of Katrina, when a nearby levee failed and the largely poor and black neighborhood was inundated by deadly floodwaters.

In the nearby Seventh Ward, one of the city's poorest and most crime-ridden areas, residents could be seen in shadows on porches, standing outside their darkened homes.

Earlier, along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, Donalyn Lott watched a pumping station sucking water out of an overflowing drainage canal and into the lake.

"We're holding up pretty good … no flooding," Lott said.

About 3,000 residents were forced from their homes in St. John the Baptist Parish, upriver from New Orleans, by flooding caused by storm surges.

Evacuations were also needed in Plaquemines Parish, a major shrimping area southeast of New Orleans that bore the brunt of the northward-moving storm.

Dozens were plucked from the roofs of their houses by local boatmen after earlier deciding they could ride out what compared with Katrina seemed like a small storm.

"This storm has delivered more of a punch than people thought," said Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser.

More than 730,000 Louisiana and Mississippi customers of Entergy Corp and other local utilities were without power as of late Wednesday.

City officials also said Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, which closed late Monday, would remain shut on Thursday as the lines that supply it with power were knocked out by the storm.

Benchmark crude oil prices slipped on Wednesday on expectations that damage to oil facilities, offshore and along the coast, would be limited. Major oil companies including Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil Corp, began making plans to assess or restart operations.

(Additional reporting by Ben Gruber and Kathy Finn in New Orleans, Emily Le Coz in Tupelo, Mississippi, Chris Baltimore in Houston, Ben Berkowitz in Boston and Jane Sutton and David Adams in Miami; Writing by Ros Krasny; Editing by David Brunnstrom)

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