Samsung is in danger??

Samsung and its US lawyers could face sanctions after a secret patent licence between Apple and Nokia was distributed to scores of Samsung staff, breaking a court order.

Judge Paul Grewal has ordered one of Samsung's patent licensing team, as well as five other Samsung staff who have been identified by Apple in a court filing, to appear in front of him by 16 October. A further heading is scheduled for 22 October.

More than 90 Samsung staff could have seen the document, marked "Highly Confidential Attorney Eyes Only", in breach of a court confidentiality order.

Grewal's order follows complaints by Apple and Nokia that staff from the South Korean manufacturer learnt details of their secret June 2011 patent licensing deal from a document that was meant to be restricted solely to an expert witness, David Teece, who was writing an opinion on Samsung's behalf for last year's patent court battle with Apple.

Samsung, or its lawyers, may be liable for a fine under California's lawsfor breaking the court's order on the protection of the confidential information - though it's unclear whether that is the only option open to Grewal if he should find against Samsung or its law company, Quinn Emanuel.

Samsung's lawyer admitted in a court hearing before the order that a junior member of the law firm had failed to redact terms of the licence deal correctly, leaving them visible to Samsung executives who should not have been able to see them. But he argued that this was not a violation of the court order which is meant to keep such details secret, because it was not intentional.

It is not the first time that Samsung staff have been accused of making use of confidential information about Apple's business plans. In September 2011, Suk-Joo Hwang, a former manager at the company,testified that in December 2009 he had passed confidential shipping data about components for the Apple iPad - then not even announced - to members of a US hedge fund. Hwang received immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony.

Obstruction over disclosure

In the current case, Apple complained that Samsung had obstructed its attempts to find out how many people had seen the licences without permission, and failed to say whether it was using the wrongly-acquired material in other court proceedings - including one ongoing in the US.

Samsung had failed to give Apple any information about who had seen the licensing terms in the three months since Nokia had raised the topic, Apple's counsel said. And Samsung's lawyers had actually been aware of the breach of the court order since December 2012, Apple's lawyer claimed.

According to a declaration from Nokia's chief intellectual property officer Paul Melin of a meeting with Samsung licensing executives on 4 June, Seungho Ahn told Nokia that he already knew the details of the licence - and stated that Apple had produced the licence as part of its litigation with Samsung, and that Samsung's lawyers had provided him with a copy. "All information leaks," Ahn was quoted as saying, in Melin's declaration.

The Apple-Nokia deal is highly secret, and was struck by the two companies to cover a number of essential and non-essential patents in June 2011, after years of litigation following the launch of the original iPhone in 2007.

Apple made a one-off payment and agreed to make a number of ongoing royalty payments, and licensed some of its own patents to Nokia. The terms of the licence were never released - and like all patent licence deals, were treated as highly secret.

If the details of the deal were made public, or revealed to a competitor, it would mean that they would know how the two sides valued their patents - and so weaken them in future negotiations because it removes their ability to negotiate on price or value against someone whose prices and values are unknown.

'Fox investigating the henhouse'

Grewal's order contains harsh, if veiled, criticism of Samsung. "It is possible that Dr Ahn's encounter with Mr Melin occurred very differently. Unfortunately, the court cannot say, because Samsung has elected not to provide the court with any sworn testimony from Dr Ahn or anyone else at the meeting," the judge notes in his order. "Samsung also has failed to supply the court with any evidence at all regarding other uses of the Apple-Nokia licence, or those of the other confidential licencees [Ericsson, Sharp and Philips, which were also mentioned in the document].

"In fact, despite acknowledging that many dozens of individuals at Samsung and its other council have knowledge of confidential licence terms that they had no right to access, at yesterday's hearing, Samsung's counsel repeatedly denied even one violation of the protective order, asserting that such a violation can only occur wilfully." He called Samsung's offers in the matter "insufficient".

He called the hiring by Samsung's lawyer of an outside company to examine Samsung's systems "the fox [being] permitted to investigate… the disappearance of chickens at the henhouse."

Apple made a copy of the licence available to Samsung's lawyers in March 2012 only for the purpose of Teece's analysis, in which he was writing an expert opinion for the Apple-Samsung case in Northern California. There, Apple was suing Samsung over a number of design and technical patents, while Samsung was claiming that Apple had infringed a number of Samsung's standards-essential patents. The jury decided in Apple's favour and against Samsung.

Samsung's lawyer was at pains during the court hearing ahead of Grewal's order to avoid suggestions that the South Korean company - which has battled in a number of countries with Apple over patent matters - had derived the information from the leaked document, despite being unable to say who inside the company had seen it.

'Nothing wrong has happened here'

Asked by Grewal whether the information that had leaked had been used in any negotiations, Samsung's lawyer said: "I'm denying that confidential information governed by the protective order learned that Samsung, that Samsung learned about from inadvertent disclosures, was used in a negotiation."

Susan Estrich, for Quinn Emanuel, insisted to Grewal that "Nothing wrong has happened here" but admitted that "Yes, there was a disclosure." She added: "Was it wilful - in this case, no." She said that courts have not previously sanctioned those where the disclosure is not wilful, and where those involved take measures to remedy the situation.

But Judge Grewal admonished Estrich and Samsung for their lack of action: "You've just told me you can't even tell me whether you've taken any steps in any of these other tribunals [where Samsung and Apple are fighting patent battles] to retract reliance upon this information."

Estrich said that the error occurred when "an associated redacted [the Apple-Nokia licence for Teece] - it wasn't as if we sent [out] a report with no redactions. He made a mistake. He left in a footnote that should have been redacted. There were two additional paragraphs."

The insiufficiently redacted document was then placed on an FTP site controlled by Quinn Emanuel, where Samsung staff and Teece could access documents needed for the court case in summer 2012. But the law firm said it has no record of who accessed the site - and had now employed a third party company called Stroz to make enquiries inside Samsung about who had downloaded the file and who had emailed it.

Samsung's staff offered to delete all the emails involving the file when Nokia raised objections at the meeting in June - which Melin, for Nokia, immediately insisted it could not do. If a violation of court privacy is suspected, the law says that the extent of the violation must be determined; deleting emails or other information would constitute destruction of evidence.

Apple's lawyer complained that Samsung has used the information from the disclosure "to craft arguments at the ITC [International Trade Commission, which can impose import bans to the US for patent violation]. "The ITC issued an opinion on the licensing negotiations that specifically accepted Samsung's argument in which this confidential information was used."

Samsung declined to comment or to confirm any of the details of the meeting with Nokia.

A Nokia spokesperson said: "There is nothing we can add to the court documents at this stage."

More to know?

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/07/samsung-court-apple-nokia-licence-order-violation

What the world's fastest computer tells us about China's absorptive state

Deep inside China's National University of Defence Technology, on the outskirts of Changsha, a computer is whirring. But this is no ordinary machine. With 3.1 million Intel Core processors, 1.4 petabytes of RAM and the capacity to perform 33,860 trillion calculations per second, it is the fastest supercomputer on the planet.

In June 2013, China surprised observers by seizing the number one spot in the TOP500, a twice yearly ranking of the world's fastest supercomputers. The Tianhe-2 (or Milky Way-2) was successfully tested almost two years ahead of schedule. Funded by the Chinese government's 863 High Technology Program, with additional support from Guangdong province, it will eventually be deployed at the National Supercomputer Centre in Guangzhou, where it will be used by researchers from across southern China.

Tianhe-2 is the most impressive result to date of a well-funded and targeted drive by China to move to the fore of supercomputing. It has knocked the US Department of Energy's Titan machine off the No.1 position, and although the US still dominates the TOP500 (occupying 252 places in the table), China with 66 places is catching up fast.

The race is now on to see which country will be the first to reach exascale: by producing a supercomputer capable of one quintillion calculations per second. The US, EU, Japan, India and Russia all have substantial research programmes directed towards this goal. But most experts expect China to get there first. In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama warned that "This is our generation's Sputnik moment", as he highlighted supercomputing as one of several fields in which the US was in danger of falling behind. Two years on, an exascale strategic plan has only just been submitted to the US Congress, and the prospects for new funding look uncertain.

In one sense, Tianhe-2 is an achievement that the Americans should be every bit as proud of as the Chinese. It was built using US-designed Intel chips, and while the Chinese media lauded Tianhe-2 as an "independently-developed" technology, some users of the social media platform Weibo remained sceptical. But TOP500 editor Jack Dongarrapoints out that "Most of the features of [Tianhe-2] were developed in China, and they are only using Intel for the main compute part…the interconnect, operating system, front-end processors and software are mainly Chinese." Other analysts agree that it won't be long before China produces its first entirely home-grown supercomputer.

Tianhe-2 is just one example of how China is becoming a more significant force in global science and innovation. This is partly a story of massive and sustained investment: in 2012, China's total R&D expenditure exceeded ¥1 trillion RMB ($163 billion USD). Since 2008, it has maintained 18 per cent year-on-year increases in research spending, in a period when the effects of the global financial crisis have seen investment flat-line or fall in the UK and other countries. As a result, China now accounts for 13 per cent of the world's scientific papers, up from 5 per cent a decade ago.

Supercomputing is one of several priority sectors in which foreign technologies are being absorbed, adapted and improved. The same process has occurred with a number of the technologies that China is most proud of, including its high-speed rail network, advanced nuclear reactors and the Shenzhou spacecraft.

These examples suggest that what China's President Xi Jinping has termed "innovation with Chinese characteristics" will not be a straightforward path from imported to home-grown innovation, but a messier process in which the lines between Chinese and non-Chinese ideas, technologies and capabilities are harder to draw.

In a Nesta report, which will be published next week to coincide with the first high-level UK government delegation to Beijing for over a year, we argue that China can now be characterised as an "absorptive state": increasingly adept at attracting and profiting from global knowledge and networks alongside its more supportive domestic environment for research and development.

The concept of "absorptive capacity" is well-established in debates about innovation at the level of individual firms. It can also be used to describe regional or national innovation systems; an earlier Nesta report defines it as "the ability of one place to absorb and adopt knowledge coming from another place." It is an idea which features in China's own policies, notably in its 2006-2020 Medium to Long Term Program for Science and Technology Development, which talks of "enhancing original innovation… based on assimilation and absorption of imported technology." And for potential partners like the UK, the notion of China as an absorptive state speaks to ongoing concerns about how to strike the right balance between competition and collaboration in the "global race" that is now a mantra of so many ministerial speeches.

Science and innovation are caught up in a bigger unfolding debate about the pace, scale and direction of China's economic and political reforms. Much still depends upon the playing out of a set of tensions: between the planned economy and the market; the hardware of research infrastructure and the software of culture and ethics; the skills and creativity of home-grown talent, and the entrepreneurialism and networks of returnees.

In the next decade, China is likely to change the way we think about science and innovation as much as science and innovation change China. In a series of posts this week on Political Science, we want to explore what these shifts will mean for China and for the wider world.

Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai says she's lost herself. "In Swat [district], I studied in the same school for 10 years and there I was just considered to be Malala. Here I'm famous, here people think of me as the girl who was shot by the Taliban. The real Malala is gone somewhere, and I can't find her."

1. I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban
2. by Malala Yousafzai, Christina Lamb
3. 

1. Tell us what you think:Star-rate and review this book

We are sitting in a boardroom on the seventh floor of the new Birmingham library, the glass walls allowing us a view of a city draped in mist, a sharp contrast to the "paradise" of Swat, with its tall mountains and clear rivers which Malala recalls wistfully. It should be desperately sad but the world's most famous 16-year-old makes it difficult for you to feel sorry for her. In part, it is because she is so poised, in a way that suggests an enviable self-assurance rather than an overconstructed persona. But more than that, it is to do with how much of her conversation is punctuated by laughter.

The laughter takes many forms: self-deprecating when I ask her why she thinks theTaliban feel threatened by her; delighted when she talks of Skyping her best friend, Muniba, to get the latest gossip from her old school; wry when she recalls a Taliban commander's advice that she return to Pakistan and enter a madrassa; giggly when she talks about her favourite cricketers ("Shahid Afridi, of course, and I also like Shane Watson"). And it's at its most full-throated when she is teasing her father, who is present for part of our interview. It happens during a conversation about her mother: "She loves my father," Malala says. Then, lowering her voice, she adds: "They had a love marriage." Her father, involved in making tea for Malala and me, looks up. "Hmmm? Are you sure?" he says, mock-stern. "Learn from your parents!" Malala says to me, and bursts into laughter.

Learning from her parents is something Malala knows a great deal about. Her mother was never formally educated and an awareness of the constraints this placed on her life have made her a great supporter of Malala and her father in their campaign against the Taliban's attempts to stop female education. One of the more moving details in I Am Malala, the memoir Malala has written with the journalist Christina Lamb, is that her mother was due to start learning to read and write on the day Malala was shot – 9 October 2012. When I suggest that Malala's campaign for female education may have played a role in encouraging her mother, she says: "That might be." But she is much happier giving credit to her mother's determined character, and the example provided by her father, Ziauddin, who long ago set up a school where girls could study as well as boys, in a part of the world where the gender gap in education is vast.

The 15-year-old pictured at Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, to which she had been rushed for an operation. Photograph: University Hospitals Birmingham/PA

It is hard to refrain from asking Ziauddin Yousafzai the "do you wish you hadn't …?" question about his daughter, whose passion for reform clearly owes a lot to the desire to emulate her education-activist father. But it's a cruel question, and unfair, too, given my own inability to work out what constitutes responsible parenting in a world where girls are told that the safest way to live is to stay away from school, and preferably disappear entirely.

It is perhaps because of criticism levelled at her father that Malala mentions more than once in her book that no one believed the Taliban would target a schoolgirl, even if that schoolgirl had been speaking and writing against the Taliban's ban on female education since the age of 12. If any member of the family was believed to be in danger, it was Ziauddin Yousafzai, as much a part of the campaign as his daughter. And it was the daughter who urged the father to keep on when he suggested they both "go into hibernation" after receiving particularly worrisome threats. The most interesting detail to emerge about Ziauddin from his daughter's book is his own early flirtation with militancy. He was only 12 years old when Sufi Mohammad, who would later be a leading figure among the extremists in Swat, came to his village to recruit young boys to join the jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Although Ziauddin was too young to fight then, within a few years he was preparing to become a jihadi, and praying for martyrdom. He later came to recognise what he experienced as brainwashing – and was saved from it by his questioning mind and the influence of his future brother-in-law, a secular nationalist.

The information about her father's semi-brainwashing forms an interesting backdrop to Malala's comments when I ask if she ever wonders about the man who tried to kill her on her way back from school that day in October last year, and why his hands were shaking as he held the gun – a detail she has picked up from the girls in the school bus with her at the time; she herself has no memory of the shooting. There is no trace of rancour in her voice when she says: "He was young, in his 20s … he was quite young, we may call him a boy. And it's hard to have a gun and kill people. Maybe that's why his hand was shaking. Maybe he didn't know if he could do it. But people are brainwashed. That's why they do things like suicide attacks and killing people. I can't imagine it – that boy who shot me, I can't imagine hurting him even with a needle. I believe in peace. I believe in mercy."

Well, I believe in these things, too, but if someone put a bullet in my head I suspect I would be more than a little irate. Doesn't she feel at all angry? "I only get angry at my brothers, and at my father," she says. Particularly her brother Khushal, who is two years younger than her. "I can't be good to him, it's impossible. We can't ever be friends," she says, sounding like the teenager she is.

Schoolgirls in New Delhi wear Malala masks as part of a campaign to win greater resources for education in India. Photograph: Altaf Qadri/AP

Perhaps meditating on the value of peace and mercy is an entirely sane way of coping with bullets and invective. But, all the same, it must hurt to find yourself reviled – and not only by the Taliban. In her book she writes of how her speech at the UN received plaudits around the world, but in Pakistan people accused her of seeking fame and the luxury of a life abroad. When I ask her about this, it is one of the only times in the conversation that she turns to Urdu to express herself: "Dukh to insaan ko hota hai jab daikhta hai kay uss ka bhai uss kay khilaf hai." ("Naturally it's hurtful when you see your brothers turn against you.") Her voice is pained, but she quickly switches to English and the more philosophical tone emerges again. "Pakistanis can't trust," she says. "They've seen in history that people, particularly politicians, are corrupt. And they're misguided by people in the name of Islam. They're told: 'Malala is not a Muslim, she's not in purdah, she's working for America.' They say maybe she's with the CIA or ISI [Pakistan's intelligence service]. It's fine; they say it about every politician too, and I want to become a politician."

That line is a joke, insofar as she sees the humour in it; but it is nonetheless a statement of intent. She really does believe she will go back to Pakistan – "inshallah, soon" – and replies like a seasoned politician when I ask which political party she'll join. "I haven't chosen any party yet because people choose parties when they get older. When it's time I'll look and if I can't find one to join, I'll make another party."

She is, at first, similarly noncommittal about what she thinks of conversations around the burqa in the UK. "I don't have a specific idea about that," she says. But quickly, it's clear she does. "I believe it's a woman's right to decide what she wants to wear and if a woman can go to the beach and wear nothing, then why can't she also wear everything?" Having said that, she doesn't think a woman should cover her face in court or in other places "where it's necessary to show your identity. I don't cover my face because I want to show my identity."

Malala Yousafzai: her laughter takes many forms, from self-deprecating about why the Taliban feel threatened by her to giggly when talking about cricketers. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

This desire to be visible meant she wasn't at all happy, aged 12, when the BBC insisted that she use a pen name to write her diary of a schoolgirl living under the Taliban. "I still think, why didn't I write as Malala? But the BBC was doing it for my security. They didn't want me to be killed for" – and here she laughs – "writing a diary for BBC Urdu. So, if you look at it in another way, they were really kind because they were thinking about my life." She clearly believes the decision was as misguided as it was well-intentioned. You can't campaign invisibly.

I try to draw her on the question of how she finds life in the UK, and what an average day is like. There is clearly something of culture shock – quite other than the fact that the girls in school don't see "the real Malala". She says the environment here is different to everything she knew before – the way the girls interact, their manner of gossip and play, are all unfamiliar. And everyone takes education for granted; school isn't the "Aladdin's lamp … the doorway to a magical world" as it was for the girls in Swat. For the moment, it seems her main concern is how many A grades she will get in her GCSEs next year, but "the hard thing is now my life is very busy and I have so many responsibilities and duties that I need to fulfil."

Unlikely as a 16-year-old with a burning passion for reform and education might be, there is no doubt she is entirely genuine. In fact, the points at which I found myself raising an eyebrow at her book had nothing to do with extraordinary maturity or resolve but, rather, references to Justin Bieber and Twilight which seem forced in by someone trying to point out that in some ways she is "a normal teenager". When I bring up pop culture, it's the only time she appears to be on the back foot. She struggles to tell me names of Pakistani singers she likes, and finally comes up with "the woman who sang Ek Bar Muskara Do" (Smile Just Once) – the name she is looking for is Munni Begum, a classical singer who did a well-known cover of that 1972 song, years before Malala was born. When I tell her the question isn't important she says that she does like some English-language songs, but "most of them I can't understand. They say words and words and words, and I don't know what they're telling me. I like songs with a meaning."

It isn't that she doesn't have any interests beyond her education campaign; it's just that "a normal teenager" in Swat isn't defined by Justin Bieber and Twilight. If you really want to get her animated, talk about the one subject that can make almost any Pakistani turn into a bit of a teenager: cricket. She follows it closely on TV (which isn't unusual for girls in Pakistan), and also plays (which is). When she sees that I am interested in talking to her about the game everything in her poised manner changes. Within seconds she's calling out "Howzat!" and "Siiiiiix!" and showing me the deficiencies of her bowling action (she's a wrist spinner, though she prefers to bat). When I mention the Birmingham women's cricket club she says: "Yeah, I would like to join them."

She is so entirely sparkling and alive, with no sign of the Taliban or education or responsibilities intruding on her memories of playing cricket on the rooftop of her house with the mountains as backdrop, that I wish I could take her to Lord's instead of plying her with questions. Does it get lonely, knowing there is no one else in the world who has had the same experience as her? I don't just mean being shot by the Taliban, which is a tragically common experience, but the attention that followed. It's the only time she doesn't understand what I am asking her. I explain and she says: "When someone tells me about Malala, the girl who was shot by the Taliban – that's my definition for her – I don't think she's me. Now I don't even feel as if I was shot. Even my life in Swat feels like a part of history or a movie I watched. Things change. God has given us a brain and a heart which tell us how to live."

The interview ends soon after and the photographer is in the middle of taking pictures when the door opens and her father, who had left halfway through the interview, walks in with a group made up mostly of men. At their head is Chaudhry Abdul Majeed, the prime minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir. Photographs are taken, everyone sits down, and the prime minister starts talking – about what I already can't remember. He is still talking when I leave the room, and still talking when I turn around for my last glimpse of Malala: she is sitting silently, stoically, being talked at. The girl who shouted "Howzat!" has disappeared and in her place is Malala, the girl who was shot by the Taliban.

Muhammad Ali's biggest fight – for justice – comes to life in style

"Nobody sings Dylan like Dylan" was how the record company's slogan put it back in the 1960s. Equally, nobody plays Ali like Ali, then or now. So it was sensible of the director Stephen Frears and the screenwriter Shawn Slovo to mix original newsreel footage with newly shot material when putting together their film Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight, which they presented to an audience at the British Film Institute on Tuesday night.

Its US premiere took place 24 hours later in Louisville, Kentucky, Ali's home town, kicking off Three Days of Greatness, a gala at which humanitarian awards were presented in the boxer's name to recipients including Jimmy Carter and Christina Aguilera. No one who saw it on either side of the Atlantic this week could doubt that if any sceptic, at any time in the future, were to question the wider significance of Ali's life, this film would at least start the job of putting them straight.

In this telling, Ali's greatest fight was not the Rumble in the Jungle or theThriller in Manila. Based on accounts in a book of the same name written a dozen years ago by Howard Bingham, the magazine photographer who became Ali's close friend, the film focuses on the events surrounding the US Supreme Court's decision in 1971 not to send the boxer to jail for his refusal to be drafted into the services during the Vietnam war. It was a moment at which the civil rights and anti-war struggles intersected, giving vital publicity and impetus to protests aimed at persuading the US government to extract its armed forces – with their disproportionate number of black servicemen – from south-east Asia.

Slovo told the London audience that, since Supreme Court deliberations are not minuted or otherwise recorded, it had been necessary to invent the exchanges leading up to the historic verdict by a group of judges whose average at the time was north of 70. She relied on the known histories of the nine men, who are played by a group of distinguished actors, led by Christopher Plummer, Frank Langella and Danny Glover.

"There's a kind of freedom in that lack of documentation," Slovo said, and if that is true, then she has used the freedom effectively to depict a body created to be free from political influence and yet whose chief justice, Warren Burger (played by Langella), was clearly operating according to the wishes of President Nixon.

For dramatic purposes, the screenwriter also created a group of younger lawyers attached to the individual justices, among whom the debate rages most fiercely. The most significant of them – the one whose commitment tips the balance – is played by Benjamin Walker, a 31-year-old American actor who was also present on Tuesday, telling the audience that, although he had boxed as a youth, he had been unaware of the details or the significance of the story with which the film deals.

"This was a time," Walker added, rather wistfully, "when young people were more involved in politics than I imagine they are today." You can say that again. And among the figures who inspired the young people of half a century ago was a boxer who, in Walker's words, "had the ability to remain composed and articulate in the face of a massive amount of opposition".

Frears, who so successfully cast Helen Mirren as the Queen and is currently making a film about Lance Armstrong with Ben Foster in the lead role, expressed his relief at not having to find an actor to play Ali. By using the newsreel footage to tell the story of Ali's rise, his conversion to Islam and his confrontation with the authorities, he injects immediacy and momentum to the narrative that unfolds within the Supreme Court building.

To boxing fans, Ali's legal battle perhaps took second place to his achievements in the ring. But Frears pointed out that, even after winning his world title back against George Foreman in Zaire in 1974, Ali was still enraged by the memory of the years stolen from him by the political establishment.

Cinemas no longer offer double bills, but I was fortunate to walk into Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight straight from seeing Nothing But a Man, a 1964 film by the director Michael Roemer, little seen at the time but now restored and being shown at the BFI. Set in Birmingham, Alabama just before the civil rights movement broke surface, it deals with a young black man whose attempt to settle down and live a decent life is disrupted when he is sacked for attempting to unionise his co-workers at a sawmill and finds himself suddenly being turned away by other potential employers.

Shot in black and white, in the style of Italian neo-realist cinema, it captures the texture of life among men whose pride is destroyed by socio-economic powerlessness and women who have to cope with the consequences. Music – whether the gospel choir in a Baptist church or the sound of Martha and the Vandellas throbbing from jukeboxes, car windows and back doors – is everywhere.

Roemer and Robert M Young, his collaborator on the screenplay, end the film on a note of optimism, with the young couple at the centre of the film, played by Ivan Dixon and the great jazz singer Abbey Lincoln, repairing their relationship and resolving not to buckle under the pressures imposed by a racist society. But the modern viewer is aware that, between the making of the film and its release, a group of white supremacists dynamited a Birmingham church, killing four schoolgirls in one of the most terrible atrocities of the civil rights era.

That was how the world was when Cassius Clay encountered Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam, changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and forced the whole world, from boxing promoters to the president of the United States, to deal with the meaning of his gesture.

"You see him fighting for his principles," said Attallah Shabazz, Malcolm X's daughter, after seeing the film in Louisville, with Ali and his wife, Lonnie, also in the audience. Those principles continue to make him a worldwide symbol of resistance to oppression and discrimination.

Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight was funded by HBO, which will broadcast it in the US on Saturday night, to be followed on Wednesday by a UK screening on Sky Atlantic. Nothing But a Man has just begun a run at the BFI. It was my luck to see the two films on the same evening, which is something that might never happen again – although it should, and not just by coincidence.

Should UK aid money be propping up private schools in developing countries?

School pupils in Sogakope, Ghana. Public education in the west African country is in urgent need of investment. Photograph: Alamy

In the past three years the Department for International Development (DfID) has made the controversial move to support low-cost privateschools in countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and Pakistan, where public education systems are in desperate need of investment.

In so doing DfID is following in the ideological footsteps of the World Bank. Indeed, a recent DfID guidance note on low-cost private education argues that these schools have a key role to play, despite acknowledging the "lack of data and comparative analysis on education outcomes to assess value for money". So is it a good use of UK taxpayers' money to invest speculatively in for-profit private schools in poor countries?

Low-cost private schools thrive in specific contexts. They flourish in illegal slum settlements in marginal urban areas, where governments fail to provide public schools because they do not recognise the settlements. Yet most slum dwellers would prefer their governments to open schools, and we should support this.

They arise, too, in other contexts where government services are largely absent, such as in rural Pakistan. Analysis shows this is the result of a lack of investment in education. Pakistan spends only 2.4% of its gross domestic product on education against a benchmark of good practice of 6%. In this context, DfID ought to be making the case for increased national investment as the only sustainable solution.

UK aid is supposed to be focused on ending extreme poverty. Support for low-cost private schools contradicts this. In fact, these schools exacerbate inequality. DfID concedes that in India, "no schools charging below $8 [£5] are able to perform well". For parents with four children living on a dollar a day, a fee of $8 a month or more per child remains out of reach.

In such contexts, parents may choose to send just one child to the low-cost school – usually boys, not girls and children with disabilities. DfID says: "Evidence does suggest there are serious equity and choice barriers associated with the growth of low-cost private schools." But it seems these concerns are not enough to halt new DfID investments.

The biggest gains in education in recent years occurred when governments eliminated school fees to deliver on the right to education. This has led to tens of millions of children enrolling in school for the first time. Supporting low-cost private schools flies in the face of this evidence.

A recent survey in Ghana found that of 450 children enrolled in low-cost private schools, 449 were previously enrolled in government schools – which will face a spiral of underinvestment. Even the private schools with the lowest fees will not help extend access to the 57 million children worldwide not at school.

Successful expansion of enrolment in public schools has often led to a dip in quality. Proponents of low-cost private schools argue they offer a model of better quality, but. their evidence is contested and inconclusive.

Proponents tend to be selective in quoting what is often flawed and superficial research on improved learning outcomes. The biggest problem is that most comparative studies fail to consider the socioeconomic status of children or the motivation of parents. This latter point is crucial, as mothers and fathers who opt to pay for their child's schooling have evidently prioritised education and are, therefore, more likely provide a supportive environment at home, which is a key determinant of educational success.

The main argument for causality of any (flawed) claims of difference in learning outcomes tends to point to teacher attendance and school accountability. Private schools make a difference by ensuring that teachers are in the classroom and that schools are accountable to parents, say proponents. If so, the coherent response should be to invest in these within the public system, expanding and improving teacher training and support, making school inspectorates work effectively, and strengthening school-management committees.

Such investments yield systemic, nationwide returns in improving quality – a much more strategic and effective use of public money. Thankfully, most DfID funding for education is spent on such efforts.

We urgently need to improve the quality of public schools, and this needs concerted attention and support, rather than toying with unproven and divisive experiments.

If a public education system is broken, it needs fixing. For many years, DfID has been a global leader in supporting public education reform through the Global Partnership for Education. Let us hope they do not break the broad global consensus on education reform by pursuing ideological distractions that threaten to undermine the right to education

Typhoon Fitow slams into China

At least two people were reported killed, both near Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, the state news agency Xinhua said.

Parts of Zhejiang, which neighbours the commercial hub Shanghai, saw nearly 29 centimetres  of rain over 17 hours from Sunday to early Monday, while areas in Fujian to the south saw up to 16 centimetres, the official China News Service said.

In the hard-hit Cangnan county in Wenzhou, more than 1,200 homes collapsed and damages amounted to hundreds of millions of yuan, China National Radio said.

One of the victims, 55-year-old Ni Wenlin, died “after strong wind blew him off a hill” late Sunday, Xinhua said, citing municipal flood control authorities.

In Fujian the typhoon broke electricity poles in half, leaving power lines on the ground, and bent iron roadsigns out of shape, CNR reported.

In the coastal city of Ningde, a village leader told the Beijing Times that huge waves had damaged a 200-hectare seaweed farm, which nearly 100 families depended on for their livelihood.

The typhoon “broke the bamboo poles holding the seaweed in place”, said Lin Fangqin.

The storm is expected to move northwest but “weaken quickly”, Xinhua said on Monday, citing the National Meteorological Centre (NMC).

Authorities evacuated hundreds of thousands of people and issued China’s highest alert on Sunday as Fitow approached the mainland.

The NMC issued a red alert for the storm, which was packing winds of up to 151 kilometres an hour late Sunday night as it moved towards the coast.

Winds rose to 201 km per hour in parts of Wenzhou, the official Xinhua news agency reported later, citing local flood control authorities.

Zhejiang has so far evacuated more than 574,000 people, while in Fujian 177,000 have been displaced, Xinhua said.

Two port workers in Wenzhou were missing and may have fallen into the sea, the agency added.

Zhejiang governor Li Qiang urged local authorities to increase inspections of dams and reservoirs as well as safety checks of chemical plants and other important facilities, Xinhua reported.

The storm also forced the suspension of bullet train services in several cities in Zhejiang, Fujian and Jiangxi provinces, Xinhua said.

Wenzhou’s airport cancelled 27 flights Sunday, the agency said.

Xinhua quoted the weather centre as saying it was unusual for a typhoon to come ashore in China’s southeast during October, at the end of the storm season.

Chinese maritime authorities also issued red alerts, warning of storm tides and waves, with fishermen urged to return to port and local authorities told to prepare harbour facilities and sea walls for high tides.

In Zhejiang more than 35,000 boats returned to harbour while in Fujian nearly 30,000 vessels were called back, according to Xinhua.

Named after a flower from Micronesia, Fitow has hit just two weeks after Typhoon Usagi wreaked havoc in the region, leaving at least 25 reported dead in southern China.

Fitow, which Xinhua described as the 23rd storm to hit China this year, earlier passed through Japan’s southern Okinawan island chain, forcing flight cancellations and causing power outages.

Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau had issued a warning over the storm Sunday morning as it surged past the north of the island.

A total of 103 international flights were cancelled in Taiwan, while 14 flights were delayed. Seventeen ferry services between Taiwan and offshore islands were also halted.

Japan was bracing for another storm Monday, Typhoon Danas, which is on course to hit the archipelago.

Packing winds of up to 180 kilometres per hour near its centre, Danas was churning northwest towards the southern Okinawa island chain Monday morning.

More than 50 flights at Naha airport were cancelled while schools in Okinawa were shut, according to local media.

It was estimated to be 200 kilometres south of Naha, the capital city of Okinawa, at 0200 GMT and was expected to reach a point off the western coast of Kyushu island by early Tuesday.

Ranbir Kapoor finally speaks........

He is all set to produce Jagga Jasoos with Anurag Basu. PHOTO: FILE

Ranbir Kapoor is all set to make his debut as a producer with Jagga Jasoos and Picture Shuru Productions alongside Anurag Basu. However, he is not eager to kick off his production career under grandfather Raj Kapoor’s R.K. Films banner. In an earlier interview, he admitted that production is not “his place” despite having taken on the project. In a more recent chat with the Hindustan Times, the 30-year-old actor confessed that he is not sure if he wants to revive his grandfather banner.

“I don’t believe in this fact that I need to rekindle the R.K. Films banner,” says Ranbir, whose latest release Besharam has received quite a bashing from critics. “R.K Films is right up there in the ‘Greats of Indian Cinema’ and I wouldn’t like to touch it or spoil it or take advantage of it. If I do something, I will create something of my own so that if my children are working in movies, they don’t have to have anyone’s shadow. Raj Kapoor is too big a name to have a shadow.”

He then shares his reservations. “I have realised that I don’t know if I really want to make films under our R.K. Films banner. It’s synonymous with Raj Kapoor. It’s his banner and his creation. I can’t live up to his vision.”

He adds that he wants to collaborate with directors as a producer, which is why he is producing a movie with Anurag Basu.

“We are equal partners in it. It’s called Picture Shuru. If I want to produce films with Ayan Mukerji, I will probably call it something else,” he said.