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Royal Mail is making great strides as a state-owned business run at arm's length so there is no pressing reason to sell now

Royal Mail's full-year profit numbers were intended to be read as the first draft of a flotation prospectus. Chief executive Moya Greene was in full warm-up mode. "Our strategy is delivering," she declared, as operating profits rose from £152m to £403m.

In business terms, her claim is fair. Royal Mail is quite clearly in a fit state to be sold, if the government really is committed to this unpopular policy. The huge deficit in the pension fund has been towed away by the state and the scheme has an £825m surplus. The regulatory freedom to crank up the price of stamps has done wonders for that division's profit – the volume of letters fell 8% last year but revenues rose 3%.

Looking ahead, a one-third share of the UK parcels market is an enviable position, as home shopping booms. And, yes, operating profit margins are rising, to 4.7% across the group, but there should still be plenty of room for improvement. Deutsche Post, for example, achieves 8.6%.

The unanswered question is why Royal Mail needs to be sold. The old argument was that only the private sector could provide the necessary capital and management clout to overhaul the business. That idea looks out of date, now that Royal Mail is generating a heap of cash and modernisation has proceeded. The free cash inflow was £334m last year, net debt was reduced from £1.19bn to £906m and there has been no major strike during Greene's three years at the helm.

By stealth, the government's position appears to have mutated into the claim that only the private sector should provide capital to the Royal Mail. That's a political judgment and it's out of tune with opinion polls, which show consistent public opposition to a sale. The majority's instincts are correct. Royal Mail is making great strides as a state-owned business run at arm's length from government. There is no pressing reason to sell now. Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's desirable.

Shami Chakrabarti blasts government and press proposals for watchdog, saying they have failed to follow Leveson blueprint

A key adviser to the Leveson report, the civil rights campaigner Shami Chakrabarti, has hit out against politicians and newspaper barons, accusing them of letting down the public over promises to set up a new press watchdog.

One of six assessors on the Leveson inquiry and the director of Liberty, Chakrabarti branded plans to launch a watchdog backed by a royal charter as "bizarre" and said that all politicians and the newspaper industry has done is to create "confusion and resentment" by putting forward rival proposals.

"A royal charter is constitutionally inappropriate, undemocratic, opaque and in no way fit for this purpose," Liberty said in a submission to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Chakrabarti called on politicians and the press to stop prevaricating but warned that neither charter would work.

"Six months on and still no sign of any real progress – and current squabbling over bizarre royal charters has achieved nothing but confusion and resentment. The Leveson report contained an effective blueprint for a decent self-regulator so why hasn't it been set up?" said Chakrabarti.

She was making her comments ahead of Thursday's deadline for responses to the government on the industry's proposal to launch an independent self-regulator backed by its its own royal charter, instead of the version agreed between the three main political parties and Hacked Off in a late night deal in March.

Chakrabarti said that the victims of the press and ethical journalists "need protection" and that the "public needs confidence restored".

"Everyday politicians and press barons prevaricate is another letting everyone down," Chakrabarti added.

Liberty said it had fundamental issues with the concept of a royal charter, which was first hatched by David Cameron's policy tsar Oliver Letwin as a means to set up a regulator that was not backed by statute but had more checks in place than the current Press Complaints Commission.

In a statement, Liberty said: "The limitations inherent to a royal charter make it difficult to achieve a truly independent recognition body. As is obvious from both charters, it creates an overly complex and bureaucratic system – which reflects the interests of the creator. For example, the press model would have the body funded by the press, whereas the politicians' version would be funded from the exchequer."

In its a submission to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Liberty said the two competing royal charters also appear to be in breach of the privy council's own criteria for assessing whether such a document should be granted.

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Chief executive of NHS Confederation rejects health secretary's claim that changes to GP contract in 2004 are to blame

There is no link between the crisis in hospital A&E departments and GPs opting out of out-of-hours care, a leading NHS figure has said – in a direct challenge to the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

Mike Farrar, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, the body representing organisations commissioning and providing health services, questioned Hunt's assertion that Labour was to blame for a public loss of confidence in alternatives to casualty by agreeing a new contract with family doctors in 2004.

As the political row deepened over overcrowded A&E departments – one that will get worse as ministers consider a number of closure plans – Farrar said: "We do not see a correlation between the changes to the 2004 GP contract and the NHS 4-hour waiting standard for A&E departments."

Hunt has been keen to differentiate between blaming Labour and GPs themselves, but for days he has been citing the GP contract changes as a main cause of the problem. On Tuesday, he told MPs they had had "devastating impact and that pressures on A&E services were "direct consequences of the disastrous changes".

The minister also said that last year's GP patients' survey showed "only 58% of patients know how to contact their local out-of-hours service, and said that 20% of patients find it difficult to contact their out-of-hours service, that 37% of patients feel that the service is too slow - problems that we are trying to address."

But Farrar said: "In fact, for the vast majority of the last decade, A&E waiting time standards have been improving. It is in recent years where the pressures have started to bite, and there have not been any discernible structural changes to out-of-hours GP contracts during that time.

"It is clearly evident that there are rising pressures on the whole system. We agree there is a need to improve the co-ordination of out-of-hours care, and see how it can help take the pressures off A&E," said Farrar.

"We believe real and lasting improvements to out-of-hours care are possible, but only if we put a greater level of investment in to primary, community and social care."

Chief executive of NHS Confederation rejects health secretary's claim that changes to GP contract in 2004 are to blame

There is no link between the crisis in hospital A&E departments and GPs opting out of out-of-hours care, a leading NHS figure has said – in a direct challenge to the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

Mike Farrar, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, the body representing organisations commissioning and providing health services, questioned Hunt's assertion that Labour was to blame for a public loss of confidence in alternatives to casualty by agreeing a new contract with family doctors in 2004.

As the political row deepened over overcrowded A&E departments – one that will get worse as ministers consider a number of closure plans – Farrar said: "We do not see a correlation between the changes to the 2004 GP contract and the NHS 4-hour waiting standard for A&E departments."

Hunt has been keen to differentiate between blaming Labour and GPs themselves, but for days he has been citing the GP contract changes as a main cause of the problem. On Tuesday, he told MPs they had had "devastating impact and that pressures on A&E services were "direct consequences of the disastrous changes".

The minister also said that last year's GP patients' survey showed "only 58% of patients know how to contact their local out-of-hours service, and said that 20% of patients find it difficult to contact their out-of-hours service, that 37% of patients feel that the service is too slow - problems that we are trying to address."

But Farrar said: "In fact, for the vast majority of the last decade, A&E waiting time standards have been improving. It is in recent years where the pressures have started to bite, and there have not been any discernible structural changes to out-of-hours GP contracts during that time.

"It is clearly evident that there are rising pressures on the whole system. We agree there is a need to improve the co-ordination of out-of-hours care, and see how it can help take the pressures off A&E," said Farrar.

"We believe real and lasting improvements to out-of-hours care are possible, but only if we put a greater level of investment in to primary, community and social care."

Army says it has faced fierce resistance in its offensive against Islamist insurgents who are armed with weapons from Libya

Nigeria's military has been involved in heavy fighting with Islamist insurgents armed with sophisticated weapons from Libya as it steps up an offensive aimed at flushing out Boko Haram from their north-eastern bases.

"They have been putting up fierce resistance and they are very, very well-armed with weapons from Libya," a senior military official told the Guardian, adding that most of the militants who have waged a bloody four-year battle to create an Islamist state have scattered across the semi-desert borders.

A renewed military campaign, including aerial bombardments on Boko Haram training camps in three remote states declared under emergency rule this month, has led to the capture of almost 200 militants and the death of several dozen in a week, according to military statistics. In one of the raids, a military helicopter gunship was hit by anti-aircraft and anti-tank fire, a military source said.

In a sign of increasing concerns about jihadist movements jumping borders, Nigeria has also asked neighbouring Niger for military support as it seeks to police 870 miles of shared desert borders. With phone lines cut off across most of the three north-eastern states as advancing soldiers try to prevent militants from warning of approaching raids, residents fleeing across porous borders also risks destabilising a region already reeling from a separate Islamist insurgency in Mali.

"It's only by the goodwill of soldiers and by virtue of my position I was able to leave the city. All the entry points to and from [Borno state capital] Maiduguri are blocked by the military but they let me through," said Suleiman, a civil servant who quit the city at the epicentre of the insurgency with his family of four. Outside the city walls, he said, trucks carrying food and market produce were lined up awaiting entrance.

"We have been used to seeing soldiers and checkpoints for the past two years in Maiduguri, but it is having a real impact on the economic activity," he added.

In Maiduguri, where militants are deeply enmeshed in the population, soldiers carrying out house-to-house searches after placing a 24-hour curfew in some neighbourhoods discovered stockpiles of weapons including rocket-propelled grenades, a defence spokesperson said.

"Life has still not returned to normal in these areas, shops aren't open. People are just sitting at home scared and sweating," said Amina, a secretary in the 202 neighbourhood. "They arrested a lot of people here in operations in the night."

Nigeria's military, already assisting a west African-led force in Mali, has asked for help from Niger. "We currently have military operations under way in Nigeria in three federal states to combat terrorism and we would like to have Niger's support in the common fight against these terrorists," said Nurudeen Muhammed, Nigeria's minister of state for foreign affairs. He did not specify what kind of military co-operation that might mean.

Fighting in border areas has prompted a wave of refugees into landlocked Niger, ranked the world's least developed country. "We have already had a huge flood of refugees from Mali, which has had an impact on food security," said Artur Mallam of Save the Children in the Nigerien capital, Niamey, who estimated at least 500 Nigerians had settled in frontier towns in five days.

The tough stance against Boko Haram has proved largely popular so far, with many seeing it as a welcome acknowledgement of the disintegrating security situation in parts of the north. Nigeria has previously used military means to quell religious uprisings, including one in the north's main city of Kano that left some 5,000 dead in the 1980s.

"Our people have no problem with the soldiers coming here as long as they follow the rule of the law," said Ahmad Sabo, a village elder in Borno.

The Nigerian military said it would release all female prisoners to help peace efforts.

A spokesperson said: "The measure, which is in line with presidential magnanimity to enhance peace efforts in the country, will result in freedom for suspects including all women in custody."

The state department report on religious freedom highlights much that is bad, but to dream of tolerant rationality is unrealistic

The US state department has just released its annual review of religious freedom around the world. Eight countries are marked out for particularly egregious violations: three are officially atheist, two are Sunni Muslim, one is Shia, one Buddhist, and one, Eritrea, is intolerantly multi-faith in that it recognises three streams of Christianity and one of Islam while persecuting all others.

I'll list them all at the end of the article. For the moment it's quite a good exercise to try and work out which they can be. It sets in proportion the idea that there is one religion that is uniquely wicked and intolerant.

There is always something a little arbitrary about such lists. There are countries that are more religiously intolerant than any of those on it. To be a member of a religious minority in the wrong part of Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq, or Syria right now is more dangerous than any of the countries the state department fingered.

On the other hand you can hardly expect the American government to admit the frightfulness of either Iraq or Afghanistan while it is still pretending to have delivered both countries from tyranny. And in all those cases the problem arises because the government has collapsed at least in the afflicted areas. What the state department is concentrating on is persecution orchestrated by an efficient government.

Antisemitism was noted in Hungary, Greece, Argentina and France, as well as the more obvious Middle Eastern suspects:

"In Egypt, anti-Semitic sentiment in the media was widespread and sometimes included Holocaust denial or glorification. On October 19, President Morsy said 'Amen' during televised prayers in Mansour after an imam stated, 'Oh Allah ... grant us victory over the infidels. Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters.' This is a common prayer in Egyptian mosques and came in a litany of other prayers."

"In Iran, the government regularly vilified Judaism. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continued to question the existence and the scope of the Holocaust, and stated that 'a horrendous Zionist clan' had been 'ruling the major world affairs' for some 400 years."

This is all loathsome but can we hope for this kind of scapegoating to be replaced by a tolerant rationality?

One of the things the report makes clear is just how much the secular discourse of human rights – from which religious freedom is supposed to derive – rests on large, unsupported, almost theological claims: "Foremost among the rights Americans hold sacred is the freedom to worship as we choose … The right to religious freedom is inherent in every human being."

Either or both of these statements may be true. But it's clear that if they are there are kinds of truth wholly inaccessible to science and also incapable of logical proof. The reason that human rights arguments and religious ones can come into conflict is not that one is about fact and the other about values. They are both statements about the same kind of thing.

They are, fundamentally, arguments about what it is to be human. And the answers to that kind of question are not fixed. In good times they are more generous; in bad times very much less forgiving. In some ways what is most surprising about this year's report is not that there is so little religious toleration round the world but that so much survives.

Oh, and the eight countries picked out? China, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.

Personal importation of appliances including microwaves and fridges was restricted eight years ago during energy crisis

Cuba has authorised individual imports of appliances such as air conditioners, refrigerators and microwave ovens, lifting a ban imposed in 2005 amid a wave of energy shortages and blackouts.

Islanders can now bring up to two such appliances per person into the country for noncommercial purposes. The list of approved items includes air conditioners with a capacity of less than one ton, ovens that consume less than 1,500 watts and microwaves under 2,000 watts. It also covers water heaters, toasters and irons.

Personal importation of energy-sucking appliances was restricted eight years ago during an energy crisis that prompted the then president, Fidel Castro, to launch the so-called energy revolution, seeking to lower consumption.

Castro went on state TV to promote more efficient rice steamers and pressure cookers, government workers fanned out across the island replacing incandescent lightbulbs in homes, and the electrical grid got an update.

Blackouts are much rarer today, thanks in part to a steady flow of oil on preferential terms from close ally Venezuela.

In 2011 Cuba resumed local sales of domestic appliances in response to demand and to support private small businesses launched under the economic reforms of the current president, Raul Castro. Authorities have continued to stress the importance of conservation to keep Cuba's power grid from being overtaxed.