Sunday Mirror phone-hacking claim revealed by Newsnight

Evidence of possible phone hacking at the Sunday Mirror newspaper has been found by the BBC's Newsnight.

The programme spoke to a journalist who worked on the paper in the past decade who claimed to have witnessed routine phone hacking in the newsroom.

The source said celebrities including actress Liz Hurley and footballer Rio Ferdinand were targeted.

Trinity Mirror said its journalists work within the criminal law and Press Complaints Commission code of conduct.

Also it has emerged that Lord Leveson, the judge who will lead the hacking inquiry has said he had attended functions with Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law - but that he had informed Prime Minister David Cameron of this before the appointment was announced.

'Dark arts'

The allegations about the Sunday Mirror were detailed by a source who told Newsnight: "One afternoon in the newsroom I saw Liz Hurley's phone being hacked and a reporter listen to her mobile phone messages and take a note of what was said.

"It was a Thursday and I was told that there wasn't much on there - just something about lunch from another woman, so they would keep trying before the weekend to see what they could find."

The programme's source said the technique of phone hacking was used on a daily basis.

"Designated reporters would be doing it pretty much every day," they said.

"One reporter who was very good at it was called the 'master of the dark arts'.

Voiceover artist

"At one point in 2004 it seemed like it was the only way people were getting scoops.

"If they didn't just randomly hack people in the news, they would use it to stand up stories that people had denied."

The source claimed the Sunday Mirror hired a voiceover artist to imitate famous people in order to get information about them.

"I was told he had successfully managed to get health records too," the source said.

"He was such a god of a voiceover artist that he could pretend to be famous people or failing that he'd pretend to be their lawyer or someone related to them.

"I was told that we had got [actress] Leslie Ash's medical records from the 'dark arts'."

'Followed extensively'

Meanwhile, BBC home affairs correspondent Tom Symonds said a former Daily Mirror journalist James Hipwell has told an Australian newspaper he is willing to testify that in the late 1990s Mirror journalists were told to go through the voicemails of celebrities to look for stories.

Hipwell has served time in prison for writing about companies whose shares he owned.

Trinity Mirror Group said in a statement: "Trinity Mirror's position is clear. Our journalists work within the criminal law and the Press Complaints Commission code of conduct."

The BBC has also learned that the News of the World hired a private investigator to follow Labour MP Tom Watson while he attended his party's conference in Brighton in 2009.

A source close to the now defunct Sunday tabloid said the paper was attempting to write a story about the MP but nothing was published.

There is no suggestion that Mr Watson's mobile phone was hacked.

"Politicians were being followed extensively," said the source who worked for the newspaper for several years but asked not to be named.

News International, which published the News of the World, said it would not comment.

Family connection

Meanwhile, the BBC's Robin Brant said that Lord Leveson had made the disclosure about his connection to the Murdoch family to both David Cameron and the Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, before he was chosen last week as the man to lead the judicial inquiry into phone hacking.

The senior judge met with Matthew Freud, who is married to Rupert Murdoch's daughter Elisabeth, at functions while he was chairman of the sentencing council, which advises the government on sentencing policy.

Downing Street said Lord Leveson attended the events organised by Mr Freud in his capacity as sentencing council chair, and "nothing more".

 

 

China: Dozens die as bullet trains collide in Zhejiang

 

The Hangzhou-Wenzhou train was near its destination when it hit the other train

At least 32 people have died and 100 more are hurt after two high-speed trains crashed into each other in eastern China, state media reports.

Two train coaches fell off a bridge after derailing close to Wenzhou in Zhejiang province.

Details are sketchy but Chinese media report that one of the trains came to a halt after being struck by lightning and was then hit by the second train.

Rescue workers are at the scene, near Shuangyu town in Wenzhou.

It is not known how many people were on the trains at the time, but Xinhua news agency says each carriage can carry 100 people.

Initial reports suggested one bullet train had derailed at about 2030 (1230 GMT) - the D3115 travelling from the provincial capital Hangzhou to Wenzhou.

But local television later said the first train had been forced to stop after losing power due to a lightning strike, and was then rear-ended by another train, causing two of its carriages to fall off the bridge.

 

"D" trains are the first generation of bullet trains in China, with an average speed of just short of 100mph (160km/h).

China is spending billions on constructing a high-speed rail network.

Last month China inaugurated its Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail link.

The 300 km/h (190mph) train halves the journey time to under five hours.

China is planning to roll out high-speed lines across the country.

But the project has come under fire for its high cost - the Beijing-Shanghai line cost 215bn yuan ($33bn; £21bn).

The BBC's Martin Patience in Beijing says there are also fears corruption has compromised safety in the network's construction.

Are you in the area? Did you witness the crash? You can get in touch with us using the form below.

Brandon McDonald’s vocal influence speaks volumes for D.C. United

Ned Dishman/GETTY IMAGES -
Though other trades brought bigger headlines, United’s acquisition of Brandon McDonald has brought the vocal leadership it needs in the locker room.

By Steven Goff, Published: July 15

 

For three months of the MLS season, D.C. United’s novice back line had proved its capacity but lacked bark and bite. Too often, communication lapses and gentle resistance yielded soft goals, turning plausible victories into maddening draws and gutting losses.

Needing an assertive presence, United went shopping around the league and, three weeks ago, obtained Brandon McDonald from the San Jose Earthquakes in exchange for financial considerations.

“He’s got a little nasty in him,” Coach Ben Olsen said. “It was much-needed back there.”

McDonald, 25, is expected to make his third consecutive start Saturday night when United (5-5-7) visits FC Dallas (10-5-4). Last weekend, with an animated and imposing McDonald in charge, United extended its unbeaten streak on the road to four by blanking Thierry Henry and the New York Red Bulls, MLS’s top-scoring player and club, respectively.

“Ben said that’s one of the reasons he brought me in here,” McDonald said, “so that’s my job to get it done.”

McDonald’s influence has steadied a defensive corps that includes rookie backs Ethan White, 20, and Perry Kitchen, 19, and goalkeeper Bill Hamid, 20. His acquisition also helped compensate for long-term injuries to veterans Dejan Jakovic, Jed Zayner and Marc Burch.

Jakovic, the club’s most experienced central defender, is back in the mix after missing six weeks with a hamstring injury, but the McDonald-White partnership might have lasting power. At New York, White seemed to draw inspiration from his new mentor.

“You always know where he’s going to be, where he is going to go, where he wants you,” the former Maryland Terrapin said. “It makes everyone’s job easier.”

McDonald is in his fourth season out of the University of San Francisco. Selected by Los Angeles in the fourth roundof the 2008 MLS draft, the 46th of 56 picks, he lasted only one season with the Galaxy.

Signed by San Jose, McDonald started 18 league matches in 2009 and was invited to a U.S. national team training camp featuring mostly MLS players. Last season, he started all but two games in helping the Earthquakes advance to the conference final.

After beginning this season in the San Jose lineup, he lost his starting job. Smitten with McDonald’s size (6 feet 1, 185 pounds), leadership and experience, United reached out to the Earthquakes.

McDonald’s arrival was overshadowed by United’s acquisition the same day of star midfielder Dwayne De Rosario from the Red Bulls.

“We need a little personality,” Olsen said. “We have talent, but we need a personality. Dwayne and Brandon have brought it. When you have that, it brings out personalities in everyone else.”

McDonald leads with his actions and voice.

“You can hear him all over the field,” Pontius said. “You don’t want to not do what he says because he’ll get on you. He holds you accountable.”

McDonald isn’t the only soccer player in the family. His sister Jessica was a starting forward on NCAA championship teams at North Carolina in 2008 and ’09, contributing 14 goals and 16 assists overall. In her final season, she scored the lone goal in the title game against previously unbeaten Stanford. That UNC squad included midfielder Tobin Heath, a member of the U.S. national team at the Women’s World Cup in Germany this summer.

Jessica, 23, played for the defunct Chicago Red Stars in Women’s Professional Soccer last year before she injured a knee. She hopes to resume her career soon.

As children in Glendale, Ariz., Brandon, Jessica and two cousins played regularly. She became a basketball, soccer and track and field standout; he excelled in soccer and played for the elite Sereno Golden Eagles youth club, which also produced 2010 World Cup forward Robbie Findley.

In college, Brandon transitioned to defense after playing forward for years. Many players resist such a move; he embraced it.

“Coaches would tell me I’d have to be versatile if I wanted to get more chances down the road,” he said. “I had an open mind to it. I love it. It’s a position you can be other people’s eyes. You can communicate with them, control the system you are in. I enjoy fitting into a system.”

How long he’ll stay in United’s system, however, is unclear. McDonald is in the final year of his contract and might test the European waters after the season.

“I have had offers [in recent years] to stay in the league longer, but I’m waiting it out and I’ll see what happens,” he said. “We have a good team here to push for the playoffs. I’m just worried about this season. We can do some things.”

 

Without walls: Swimming open water « Reach For The Wall

Swimming out at sea is more complex than racing to reach for a wall. The winds aren’t stable. The temperature isn’t even. The current cannot be controlled. “It’s not about who can swim the fastest 10k,” said Alex Meyer, American national open water champion. “You have to work with the conditions. There is much more strategy.”

Open water swimming is a new event, added to the summer Olympics in 2008. Qualifying for the Olympic team is more complicated than standard swimming events: American athletes must place in the top two at open water nationals and then in the top 10 at the world championships.

The difficulty of open water swimming became all too real in October at the FINA Open Water 10k World Cup in Fujairah, south of Dubai, when Meyer’s U.S. national teammate Fran Crippen died due to apparent heat exhaustion. According to athletes, the temperature of the water was around the mid to high 80s, with outside temperatures resting at 100 degrees.

Meyer was the first to notice that his friend was missing from the finish line. After alerting officials, he jumped on a jet-ski to investigate the course, spearheading the search for Crippen’s body. Today, he carries Fran’s picture with him wherever he goes, including the first place podium at the Open Water Nationals and Team Trials just four weeks ago. “I have no doubt in my mind that Fran would’ve been standing where I was,” he said.

He will compete at the FINA Shanghai World Championships on July 20th to solidify his spot on the US Olympic team, along with fellow Americans Sean Ryan, Eva Fabian, and Christine Jennings.

Open water swimming is not for the faint hearted. Unpredictable and sometimes volatile conditions set it apart from the relative safety of the 25-meter pool. Even the swimmers can be physically aggressive. “It’s just part of the game,” said Meyer. Without lane ropes, swimmers are free to draft, kick, and swim over their competitors.

For Meyer, this is fun. Growing up near a lake and loving outdoors, he had a natural inclination for the sport. In college, after a 15-minute race, he always felt like he was just getting started. The pool cramped his spirit, and his body needed more space to race.

Curl Burke Swimmers preparing for their open water swims at Fort Lauderdale.. (Kaitlin Pawlowicz)

Ironically, even after increased safety measures prompted by Crippen’s death, conditions at the recent Open Water Nationals in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., were startlingly rough. John Flanagan, a long-time coach at Curl-Burke who brought 6 swimmers to the meet, reports watching many swimmers come up to the boat disoriented from the high surf conditions. “Over half of the coaches were sea sick on the boat,” he said. Out of the 43 female swimmers, 15 were pulled from the race.

Training for such an event is no small feat. Flanagan often paces beside Hunter Mill’s Kaitlin Pawlowicz, practicing giving her a “feeding stick” or cups of water.  The 2010 All-Met placed 15th in the 10k race and will swim for the University of Texas next year.

According to Curl’s Flanagan, other swimmers stuff packets of energy gels, such as GU, in their suits to prevent a sugar lows, a feeling often accompanied by a light-headedness and a queasy feeling above the stomach. Swimmers turn over onto their backs and rip open the packets while swimming. Pawlowicz also ate ginger before the race to help qualm an upset stomach due to rough conditions.

For Pawlowicz, open water swims provide a different kind of challenge. “You don’t just look at the bottom of a pool,” she said. The open-water experience has also helped her prepare for longer distances in the pool. “Before races like the mile [in the pool], I tell myself that I’ve done a longer distance. This race is no big deal.”

Many open water swimmers are forced into the confines of pools to keep up endurance. Accessible rivers and lakes are sometimes hard to come by, particularly in the colder regions. Flanagan, who owns a boat, takes his swimmers out to the Chesapeake Bay to practice swimming without water breaks when there is little boat traffic.

Meyer trains more yardage to prepare for the longer race, sometimes for several hours straight both in pools and in open water. During those long stretches, which can often be lonely, he sometimes thinks about Crippen — his “imaginary little training partner.” He also tries to emulate race conditions in practice, such as duration, changing speeds, and even the last 200-meter mad dash. “I do a lot of speed work for close finishes,” he said. “You need to have some legs with 200 meters to go.”

Alex Meyer holding Fran Crippen’s picture on the first place podium. (Matt Kaminske)

This speed work came in handy at the finish at US Nationals, where the high waves created a volatile finish. Meyer says he panicked when Ryan caught a wave 10 meters to go, catching up a full body length. But he held on, coming in with a winning time of 2 hours, 5 minutes 36 seconds.

Said Meyer: “I like the fact that it is purely a race,” said Meyer. “It’s just you versus a bunch of other guys. Ready, set, go.”

 

Washington Capitals re-sign defenseman Karl Alzner - Capitals Insider

Posted at 10:13 AM ET, 07/15/2011

Washington Capitals re-sign defenseman Karl Alzner

By Katie Carrera

The Capitals signed defenseman Karl Alzner to a two-year deal worth $2.57 million Friday that ties up the remaining loose end of the offseason.

Alzner, 22, was the only remaining restricted free agent on last year’s NHL roster remaining to be signed and Washington was able to reach a salary-cap friendly agreement with the Burnaby, British Columbia native. Alzner will make $1.3 million in 2011-12 and $1.27 million the following year.

The annual salary cap hit of Alzner’s new contract will come in at $1.285 million — $390,000 less than that of the final year of his entry-level deal last season.

Based on calculations on Capgeek, Alzner’s deal pushes Washington back over next year’s salary cap maximum of $64.3 million by a little more than $890,000. Teams are allowed to exceed the ceiling by 10 percent during the offseason and if Tom Poti starts the year on the long-term injured list because of continued problems with his groin it would free up $2.85 million and ultimately allow Washington to be in compliance with the cap.

Based on the current collective bargaining agreement, when the contract expires Alzner will be a restricted free agent with arbitration rights. The current CBA is set to expire after the 2011-12 campaign, though, and those respective eligibilities could change.

In his first full NHL season, Alzner established himself as half of the Capitals’ shut-down defensive pairing and didn’t miss a single game in the 2010-11 campaign. Skating alongside John Carlson, Alzner finished the regular season with a plus-14 rating and 12 points last year.

“We are pleased to have re-signed Karl Alzner to a two-year contract,” General Manager George McPhee said in a news release. “We feel he’s an important part of our defensive core who logs critical minutes against other teams’ top players.”

Roger Clemens gets a walk from perjury trial after inexplicable error

JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS -
Former Major League Baseball pitcher Roger Clemens stops to sign a baseball for a fan as he leaves the federal courthouse Friday.

On Thursday, the prosecution in the perjury case of United States v. Clemens committed an unforced gaffe so stunning that the sports world, and no doubt the legal community, will oscillate between pity and ridicule, incredulity and laughter, for years.

NFL lockout talks down to final details

With a resolution to the NFL lockout seemingly at hand, negotiators for the league and players met Friday in New York to work on final details of an agreement that would put professional football back in business soon.

Most of the heavy lifting in negotiations already had been done, with an accord Thursday on a rookie pay system putting the major economic components of the deal essentially in place. But a list of issues remained to be worked out entering Friday’s meeting, including benefits for retirees and some free agency rules.

An agreement in principle to end the lockout was possible by the end of Friday’s meeting, but might not come for a few days, according to people not involved in the negotiations but familiar with them.

The official end of the four-month lockout will not come even with such a handshake deal, however. Any accord must be approved by owners and players in separate votes. The owners are scheduled to meet Thursday in Atlanta and could take their ratification vote then. At least 24 of the 32 owners must vote in favor to approve the deal.

The players’ vote could be conducted via conference call.

The players’ antitrust lawsuit against the owners also must be resolved. It’s not clear whether formal court approval of the agreement would be required or whether the players could simply withdraw their lawsuit. They sued the owners in federal court in St. Paul, Minn., on March 11, a day before the lockout began. The players, after dissolving their union in March, might have to re-form the labor organization as part of an agreement.

The deal also would be likely to resolve a legal case involving the sport’s television contracts that players won in federal court. They are seeking punitive and compensatory damages of about $2.5 billion.

The two sides are scheduled to meet Tuesday in Minneapolis with their court-appointed mediator, Chief Magistrate Judge Arthur J. Boylan. They could present a deal to Boylan then if the agreement is completed.

Teams are scheduled to report to training camps beginning July 22, and that could proceed unaffected. The St. Louis Rams and Chicago Bears, who play each other in the Hall of Fame game Aug. 7 in Canton, Ohio, are the first two teams scheduled to open camp. The league would have to decide whether to play that game as scheduled.

But the rest of the preseason schedule likely would not be affected. The first round of preseason games for other teams is scheduled for Aug. 11-15. The regular season opener is scheduled for Sept. 8 in Green Bay with the Packers hosting the New Orleans Saints.

NFL officials have said they don’t intend to allow free agency to begin until there is a signed and formally completed collective bargaining agreement. In recent weeks, attorneys for the league and the players have begun drafting contract language and putting the deal into writing.

Teams will have to scramble to sign free agents because there won’t be enough time for a signing period before the Bears and Rams open their camps. Hundreds of players with expired contracts will be eligible for unrestricted free agency. Player signings and trades were put on hold during the lockout.

 

 

George Mason was aware of NCAA’s Georgia Tech investigation before hiring Paul Hewitt

Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post -
Paul Hewitt is introduced as George Mason’s new head basketball coach in early May, replacing Jim Larranaga, who took the job at Miami (Fla.).

Nationals’ top questions for second half of the MLB season

Alex Brandon/Associated Press -
Washington’s Danny Espinosa belting one of his 16 home runs, the most of any rookie second baseman before the all-star break in history. He is in the thick of the chase for NL Rookie of the Year honors, for his bat and stellar glove work.

British Open 2011: Darren Clarke and Lucas Glover are atop crowded leader board

SANDWICH, England — The strangest thing happened along the Kent coast Friday morning: The sun, rumored to be star relatively near the earth that provides heat and light, appeared. The air, for at least a few moments, sat still. Royal St. George’s, littered with more lumps and bumps than a prizefighter’s face, almost seemed vulnerable.

The British Open, however, isn’t about sunny skies and placid air, nor is it about birdies by the ration and scores like the John Deere Classic. So by mid-morning, the wind was back. And by the end of another grind of a day — 156 players from 6:30 a.m. to past 9 p.m. — absolutely nothing had been sorted out at the tournament’s midway point.

The leaders are Darren Clarke, a 42-year-old Northern Irishman who lost his wife to cancer five years ago and who is ranked 111th in the world, and Lucas Glover, the 2009 U.S. Open champion from South Carolina who has never come close to contending in this tournament. Clarke shot an adventurous 2-under-par 68 Friday that included both a double bogey and an eagle, and Glover turned in a steady even-par 70 that fit his Southern saunter. They are both at 4-under 136 through two rounds, and everyone else looks up at them — for the moment.

“I think you’ll see a lot of chopping and changing at the top of the leader board,” said reigning U.S. Open champ Rory McIlroy, four back after a 1-under 69 left him at even par. “It’s the most open Open I’ve seen in a long time.”

McIlroy may be only 22, but his point is well-taken. The chop and the churn could include most of the field. A glorious day at Royal St. George’s produced a leader board that is nothing short of a mess. There are 31 players at even par or better, all within four shots of the lead.

“It’s pretty tightly packed,” said American Rickie Fowler, also at level par. “For the most part, if you make the cut, you’ve got a chance.”

The list of those who don’t have to squint to see the leaders includes major championship winners young (Martin Kaymer at 3-under 137, Charl Schwartzel at 2-under 138) and old (Davis Love III and Tom Lehman, both at 138). It includes the usual bevy of unknowns (Pablo Larrazabal of Spain and George Coetzee of South Africa at 138) and some of the most prominent players of the moment (Dustin Johnson at 138, Phil Mickelson at 139).

The first-round co-leaders, 40-year-old veteran Thomas Bjorn of Denmark and 20-year-old amateur Tom Lewis of England, shot 72 and 74, respectively. But Bjorn, who bogeyed three in a row on the front side before steadying himself, sits just one back of Clarke and Glover, with Lewis, who finished bogey-bogey, just three behind.

 

Redskins official says team was unable to sell season tickets for seats removed from FedEx Field -

 

 

A top Washington Redskins official said the team had been unable to sell season tickets for the thousands of seats it removed from FedEx Field this summer, a rare admission by the franchise that demand for its in-stadium product has declined.

Lon Rosenberg, the vice president of operations at FedEx Field, said in a radio interview Wednesday that the approximately 10,000 removed upper deck seats had been offered to fans on the team’s season ticket waiting list, and that “these are seats that they were not wanting to buy.”

In a telephone interview Thursday, Rosenberg described the removed seats as “the least desirable seats in the stadium,” but added that the decision to remove the seats “has nothing to do with ticket sales.”

“It’s about making a more fan-friendly experience on game days,” he said. “There will be less traffic, shorter lines and and again, enable us to better serve our fans.”

Rosenberg estimated that the capacity of FedEx Field for the 2011 season will be around 82,000 — down from 91,704, which had made it the second-largest capacity in the NFL.

When the team began removing seats in the 400 levels of both end zones this spring, the Redskins published a story on their official Web site saying they would be replaced by standing-room only party decks that would offer fans a different in-game experience. The story called the decks “another major upgrade” that were expected to be completed “for the start of the 2012 season.”

But Rosenberg said the team hasn’t decided what, if anything, will replace the end zone seats, explaining that the impetus behind the project was to ease traffic congestion and lines at concession stands and bathrooms at the stadium in Landover.

“I’m saying what we removed from the stadium is to give people a little more room,” he told ESPN 980, a station owned by Redskins owner Daniel Snyder.

Redskins spokesman Tony Wyllie said in a telephone interview Thursday that the team still wanted to install the decks but had not made a final decision and needed to apply for permits for that phase of the renovation project.

Samuel Wynkoop, the director of the Prince George’s County Department of Environmental Resources, said Thursday no changes have been made to the construction permit issued by the county last September. That permit was for construction of a “club-level concrete platform structure” and removal of seats from the upper deck.

“To us, everything is going ahead,” Wynkoop said.

Wynkoop said the Redskins would have to notify the county if they do not plan to move forward with their plans. “They would have to abandon the current application,” he said. “And that has not happened.”

Rosenberg said Thursday that intalling party decks was the team’s preference, but added: “We still need an architect to come in and make sure that it’s even structurally possible to construct party decks that high up in the air. As it is now, you’ll see most of the concrete in those areas has been removed.”

“Going forward, what we do with that space, we haven’t determined,” he said.

The Redskins have said for years that their waiting list for season tickets numbers in the hundreds of thousands, even as the team’s home stadium capacity grew from around 54,000 at RFK Stadium to 80,116 when FedEx Field opened in 1997. The capacity at FedEx was increased several times under Snyder’s ownership — to 85,407 in 2000, 86,484 in 2001 and 91,665 in 2004. Seating capacity was listed at 91,704 last season.

Dave Donovan, the team’s chief operating officer who announced last week he would be leaving the organization, said in the fall of 2009 that there were more than 160,000 names on the team’s waiting list. Snyder told the Washington Times in 2006 that there were more than 200,000 names on the list. The Redskins say they have been sold out since 1966.

There have been large numbers of empty seats at FedEx Field during many home games in recent seasons. The Redskins finished last or tied for last in the NFC East four of the past five years and have not hosted a playoff game since 1999.

The secondary ticket market has made it easier for fans to get a la carte entrance to games, while high-definition television and satellite subscriptions have made watching games at home a more appealing option for fans in all sports, including the NFL.

The NFL labor strife, which has players locked out and the start of the 2011 season in some doubt, has also made some fans in many NFL cities hesitant to pay for ticket packages this year. The Redskins previously said the team would not attempt to sell tickets to fans on the waiting list because of the lockout.

“The people on the waiting list are being offered to buy seats,” Rosenberg said on Wednesday. “We have the seats available for them. . . . They were asking to be kept on the waiting list till better seats opened up.”

 

Latest developments in Arab political unrest stretching from North Africa to the Persian Gulf

BEIRUT — Hundreds of thousands of Syrians mount the largest protests since the uprising began more than four months ago, pouring into areas where the government crackdown has been most intense in a sign that security forces cannot break the revolt. Syrian authorities fire on the crowds, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 100, activists say.

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LIBYA

The United States and more than 30 other nations formally recognize Libya’s main opposition group as the country’s legitimate government, giving the rebel movement a major boost. The decision gives Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s foes greater credibility and potentially frees up billions in frozen Gadhafi assets that could not be funneled to the rebels.

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EGYPT

Thousands of Egyptians, increasingly impatient with their interim military rulers, rally in the nation’s two largest cities. They ring a security building with chants of “Oh police, you are thugs” and demand trials for police officers suspected of killing of hundreds of activists in the uprising that brought down Hosni Mubarak.

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JORDAN

Riot police swinging clubs clash with dozens of pro-reform demonstrators trying to set up a protest camp in a central square, injuring at least 15 in the most violent confrontation in the Jordanian capital since March. The crackdown comes a day after Jordan’s prime minister warns he will not tolerate an open-ended sit-in.

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YEMEN

At least 10 Yemenis are killed in fighting between government forces and tribesmen seeking to oust President Ali Abdullah Saleh, target of a five-month-long popular uprising. The violence is the latest sign that security is unraveling in the Arab world’s poorest country, home to an active al-Qaida branch.

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BAHRAIN

New York-based Human Rights Watch says more than 2,000 workers have been fired from state-linked firms and government jobs in apparent retribution for participating in pro-democracy protests earlier this year.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

Scottish couple plan to travel the world after winning Europe’s biggest lottery jackpot

LONDON — A Scottish couple say they plan to travel the world and buy homes for their two children after winning a 161 million pound ($260 million) jackpot, Europe’s largest ever lottery prize.

Colin and Chris Weir said they hope to visit Australia, the Great Wall of China and the art galleries of Paris after winning the EuroMillions draw.

Colin Weir, 64, said the new wealth was overwhelming, but “it feels like a good thing, something we should not be afraid of but for us to enjoy with the children.”

He is a former TV cameraman and his wife is a psychiatric nurse. Both are currently out of work due to health problems.

Their win places the couple from Largs in Scotland 430th on the Sunday Times Rich List of wealthy Britons, not far below David and Victoria Beckham.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

In a first, UN shipping agency approves universal rules on energy efficiency, carbon emissions

LONDON — The U.N. agency regulating international shipping decided Friday that the global merchant marine, which ferries most of the world’s trade, must meet energy efficiency standards and cut carbon pollution.

The decision by a powerful committee of the International Maritime Organization attacks a growing source of greenhouse gases and is the first measure on climate change to apply equally to countries regardless of whether they are from the industrial or developing world

About 50,000 cargo ships carry 90 per cent of world trade, and most ships are powered by heavily polluting oil known as bunker fuels. The IMO says shipping was responsible for 2.7 percent of global carbon emissions in 2007, but that would double or even triple by mid-century if no action is taken.

Concluding a weeklong meeting, the IMO’s Environment Protection Committee resolved that all ships built in the future must reduce pollution from today’s average, according to an efficiency index for ships of varying sizes and types.

The new regulations say it will be up to the ship builders to decide how they would meet the new standards.

“As long as the required energy-efficiency level is attained, ship designers and builders would be free to use the most cost-efficient solutions for the ship to comply with the regulations,” the resolution said.

But in a concession to developing countries, it deferred the measure for at least four years after it takes effect, probably next year or 2013.

In a further step to win support, it included a provision to promote the transfer of clean ship building technology to developing countries.

The committee also approved a new mechanism to monitor fleet performance to ensure compliance.

The IMO has 169 members, but fewer than half were eligible to vote on the pollution measures, which were adopted by 48-5 with several abstentions.

“This is a very positive and important first step for a truly global, binding measure to reduce CO2 emissions,” Connie Hedegaard, the European commissioner on climate action, said from Brussels.

The European Commission said the new standards would apply to about 70 percent of all emissions from new ships.

Some environmentalists were lukewarm about the accord. The vote was “bittersweet,” said Jacqueline Savitz, of the nonprofit Oceana. “There will be no change to existing ships, which are currently pumping a billion tonnes of CO2 each year,” she said, and it will take another dozen years before the agreement delivers benefits with new ships.

Mark Lutes, who observed the proceedings for the Worldwide Fund for Nature, or WWF, said industrial countries and most developing countries favored the measures, but a hoped-for consensus proved elusive with objections from major countries like Brazil, China and India.

Small island states that lend their flags to merchant ships also were reluctant, since one way toward greater efficiency is to build larger ships that could prove too big for their port facilities.

“This is the first globally applied rule that the international community has come up with that regulates greenhouse gas emissions,” said Lutes. But some countries were concerned that the universal application of the shipping rules undermined a cardinal principle of climate change negotiations that assigns greater responsibility to the wealthy countries whose industries created the global warming problem in the first place.

Under the new rules, ships contracted in the first five years after 2015 would have to improve fuel efficiency by 10 percent, and the standard would be tightened every subsequent five years. By 2030, a 30 percent reduction rate would be set for most types of ships, based on the average of those built between 1999 to 2009.

The committee also debated measures to charge ships for carbon emissions for shipping, but delegations differed on how the tax would be used and whether it would apply to all countries. The problem is compounded by the fact that many ships fly flags of convenience and true ownership often is difficult to trace.

Jo Espinoza-Ferry, the IMO’s policy planning chief, says any financial measure would probably add less than 1 percent to transportation costs. He said on the sidelines of a climate conference in Germany in April that several market-based options were being considered, including a direct tax, an emissions trading scheme or a combination of incentives.

 

Argentine doctor allegedly stole babies he delivered from junta’s political prisoners

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — A former military doctor was extradited from Paraguay on Friday to face charges that include stealing babies from political prisoners during Argentina’s dictatorship.

Prosecutors say the mothers were killed and the newborns were often given to military families to raise.

Dr. Norberto Atilo Bianco allegedly helped run a clandestine maternity ward inside the epidemiology section of the Argentine army’s Campo de Mayo military hospital in 1977 and 1978. Nurses said he personally carried off newborns.

Paraguayan police handed Bianco over to their Argentine counterparts Friday after he lost his last appeal.

While fighting extradition, Bianca worked as a surgeon in a private hospital in Paraguay’s capital, and repeatedly denied the accusations in interviews with The Associated Press.

“I’m not responsible for any of what they say because in the Campo de Mayo clinic I was an orthopedic surgeon, not a gynecologist. I never attended a single pregnant woman,” Bianco said.

But other doctors, nurses and a very few survivors testified that Bianco took pregnant detainees to the ward from other torture centers in his Ford Falcon, and later helped organize the childbirths and disappearances, said Alan Iud, a lawyer for the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which has sought for decades to find the children.

In court documents, witnesses accused Bianco of escorting pregnant detainees into the tightly guarded epidemiology section, where they gave birth while handcuffed and blindfolded. Both the women and the newborns then disappeared. None of the so-called “subversives” or their babies were ever registered in the hospital, nurses testified.

Argentine human rights secretary Eduardo Luis Duhalde said Bianco’s extradition could help determine the fate of 400 children who may have been born to pregnant detainees who were among the 13,000 people kidnapped and killed during the 1976-83 military dictatorship.

This was Bianca’s second extradition from Paraguay. He first fled there in 1986, after the Grandmothers group accused him of illegally adopting two children born to disappeared dissidents. After a decade of court battles, he was returned to Argentina and served just two years in prison because he was given credit for his house arrest in Paraguay. Then he fled the country again.

DNA tests eventually confirmed that Pablo, the boy adopted by Bianca and his wife, Susana Wherli, was really the son of two leftist detainees who were eliminated by the junta. Their adopted daughter, Carolina, resisted the tests and her birth family has not been found. Both adoptees, now adults, have continued to live in Paraguay with Bianco and his wife.

Bianco was extradited this time to face charges of taking four newborn babies, while making two of their mothers disappear and depriving a third of her liberty. But more charges are likely.

Bianco’s name surfaced repeatedly in the investigation that led to the current trial of former Argentine dictators Jorge Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, who are accused of creating a systematic plan to steal the babies of political prisoners. Five other military figures and a doctor who attended to the detainees also are being tried.

About 500 detainees were thought to be pregnant before they disappeared. The Grandmothers group so far has helped identify 104. The adopted son of Bianco was No. 86.

___

 

Mexican army rounds up 58 alleged workers for questioning in largest marijuana plantation bust

SAN QUINTIN, Mexico — Farm workers fled the camp dinner table when Mexican soldiers on routine patrol turned up at their lush, mesh-covered oasis stretching across the harsh Baja California desert.

Two men were caught in the camp and 56 others were rounded up in the area around what the Mexican government calls the biggest marijuana plantation ever found in the country.

Officials on Friday showed reporters the sophisticated operation, which the army says popped up in less than four months.

Army officers said the vast farm just 1½ miles (2.5 kilometers) from the main federal highway in Baja California state appeared to be the work of the Sinaloa cartel. The same gang was tied to Mexico’s largest bust of marijuana packaged for sale last fall and sophisticated underground border tunnels discovered in November, both also in Baja California.

No one has been charged in the raid on the huge pot farm late Tuesday. The suspected workers are still being questioned.

Two of the men said they were from Sinaloa state, headquarters of the Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most-wanted fugitive. The farm was in remote territory of the Baja peninsula, 280 miles (450 kilometers) south of Tijuana, that is believed to be controlled by Guzman’s cartel.

“There are indications that these are zones of the Sinaloa cartel,” said infantry Maj. Bernardo Rafael Sanchez, spokesman for the army’s second region, which covers the border states of Baja California and Sonora.

Some areas of the more than half-mile-square (kilometer-square) marijuana farm resembled a nursery, with small plants. Other parts were like mature corn fields with neat rows of forest green plants rising more than six feet to a protective mesh shielding the expanse of plants. From the air, it looks like a giant square of asphalt.

Authorities believe as many as 120 men worked the farm, living in four rudimentary, plywood buildings, including a large bunkhouse with long sleeping platforms for up to 60 people, a living room and the kitchen.

Beans, cheese and salsa sat on the dinner table nearly three days after the raid, along with CDs of Norteno music. Women’s lingerie and platform heels were found in one of the smaller bedrooms. Army officials said women did not appear to have worked in the fields and may have been there for “entertainment.”

The army also found prepaid telephone cards and communications antennas.

Marijuana plantations this large and sophisticate are rare in Mexico, especially in Baja California, army Brig. Gen. Gilberto Landeros said.

Pot cultivation is much more common in the Sierra Madre mountain range in northern Sonora, Durango and Sinaloa states.

Federal authorities said the Baja pot farm was nearly double the size of an operation found in Sinaloa in 2007 and four times the size of the “Bufalo” farm discovered in the border state of Chihuahua in 1984. Estimates of the size of the Bufalo plantation vary widely.

The army said that troops patrol this area of arid bushland and cactus every three to four months and that the plantation was not here just a few months ago. The operators used wells for water, and tiny irrigation hoses fed every plant. There were also discarded boxes of the herbicide Gramoxone.

 

7 killed during inmate fighting in northern Mexico near US border, 59 prisoners escape

 

MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials say fighting among inmates at a prison near the U.S. border has killed seven prisoners and allowed at least 59 others to escape.

The clash happened Friday in the city of Nuevo Laredo, which borders Laredo, Texas.

The government of Tamaulipas state says five prison guards abandoned their posts during the fight.

At least 35 of the escaped prisoners faced federal criminal prosecutions.

Tamaulipas is one of the states most affected by drug violence and has faced prison problems such as escapes in recent years.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

Haitian government offers cash to move camp dwellers from national stadium parking lot

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A Haitian official says the government has started moving families out of a stadium parking lot where they have lived since last year’s earthquake.

Presidential adviser Pierre-Richard Duplan says the government is paying families $250 each to move from the National Stadium parking lot. The government wants the lot available for stadium events

Some of the 30 families leaving Friday complain that an alternate site set up by the government isn’t ready and they have nowhere to go. About 400 families have been living in the lot, and Duplan says it will take several days to move them.

Haiti’s government is trying to clear several major camps across the devastated region. An estimated 634,000 people live in 1,000 settlement camps.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he’s going back to Cuba for cancer treatment

By Associated Press, Published: July 15 |
Updated: Saturday, July 16, 3:48 AM

 

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced Friday that he will return to Cuba to begin a new phase of cancer treatment that will include chemotherapy.

Chavez said he would go to Havana on Saturday “to begin what we’ve called the second phase.”

Chavez said he was sending a letter to the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly to secure authorization for his trip, as required by the constitution.

The 56-year-old announced his plans after meeting with Peruvian President-elect Ollanta Humala at the presidential palace. Humala wished Chavez the best in “this personal battle you are leading.”

Chavez underwent surgery in Cuba on June 20 to remove a cancerous tumor from his pelvic region. He has said the tumor was the size of a baseball.

Chavez had aknowledged on Wednesday for the first time that he expected to eventually undergo chemotherapy or radiation treatment.

His revelation of his trip to Cuba came after reports from Brazil that the Venezuelan leader planned to undergo his next round of treatment at Sirio-Libanes hospital in Sao Paulo, which is considered one of the best hospitals in South America.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

WSJ publisher quits, Murdoch’s British chief leaves as mogul tries to stem hacking scandal

LONDON — Rupert Murdoch accepted the resignations of The Wall Street Journal’s publisher and the chief of his British operations on Friday as the once-defiant media mogul struggled to control an escalating phone hacking scandal, offering apologies to the public and the family of a murdered schoolgirl.

The scandal has knocked billions off the value of Murdoch’s News Corp., scuttled his ambitions to take control of a lucrative satellite TV company, withered his political power in Britain — and is threatening to destabilize his globe-spanning empire.

 

The controversy claimed its first Murdoch executive in the United States as Les Hinton, chief executive of the Murdoch-owned Dow Jones & Co. and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, announced he was resigning with immediate effect.

Murdoch’s British lieutenant, Rebekah Brooks, stepped down earlier Friday.

Hinton, 67, has worked for Murdoch’s News Corp. for 52 years and is one of the media baron’s staunchest allies. He became head of Dow Jones in December 2007.

He was chairman of Murdoch’s British newspaper arm during some of the years its staffers are alleged to have hacked cell phones, but testified to a parliamentary committee in 2009 that he had seen no evidence abuses had spread beyond a single jailed reporter, Clive Goodman.

Hinton said Friday that “the pain caused to innocent people (by hacking) is unimaginable.”

“That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant, and in the circumstances I feel it is proper for me to resign from News Corp. and apologize to those hurt by the actions of News of the World,” he said.

Murdoch said he accepted Hinton’s resignation with “much sadness.” It capped a difficult week for the embattled mogul.

Just a day after asserting that News Corp. had made only “minor mistakes,” Murdoch issued an apology to run in Britain’s national newspapers for “serious wrongdoing” by the News of the World, which he shut down last week amid allegations of large-scale illegal hacking by its staff.

“We are sorry for the serious wrongdoing that occurred. We are deeply sorry for the hurt suffered by the individuals affected. We regret not acting faster to sort things out,” said the full-page ad, signed by Murdoch and due to run in Saturday’s editions of Britain’s main national newspapers.

Murdoch promised “further concrete steps to resolve these issues and make amends for the damage they have caused.”

Murdoch also met the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose phone was hacked by the News of the World in 2002. The revelation that journalists had accessed her phone in search of scoops inflamed the long-simmering scandal about illegal eavesdropping by the newspaper.

The 80-year-old mogul emerged from the meeting at a London hotel to catcalls of “shame on you!” from hecklers. He said that “as founder of the company I was appalled to find out what had happened and I apologized.”

Dowler family lawyer Mark Lewis said Murdoch appeared humbled and had offered “a heartfelt and what seemed to be a very sincere apology.”

 

Mubarak denies any responsibility for security forces killing protesters during Egypt uprising

CAIRO — Ousted President Hosni Mubarak has denied any responsibility for his security forces killing nearly 900 protesters during Egypt’s uprising, according to a transcript of his interrogation published on Thursday.

Asked to explain the killings, Mubarak dismissed the lethal crackdown by saying

“Our people and our security are like that.”

Mubarak, 83, is in custody in an Egyptian hospital. He faces charges of ordering the use of deadly force against demonstrators during the 18-day revolt that swept him from power in February. He has rarely been heard from since and the transcript offers the public his most extensive comments yet about the final days of his three-decade rule.

Judicial officials confirmed to The Associated Press that the transcript is authentic. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Mubarak’s chief defense lawyer, Farid el-Deeb, told the AP that part of what was published had been fabricated, but declined to elaborate.

The transcript was leaked in the midst of a new wave of protests across the country, one of them a week-old sit-in in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where protesters camped night and day for almost the entire uprising.

Justice for the uprising’s victims is among the hottest issues in Egypt’s bumpy transition to democracy. And the protesters camping out in Tahrir are demanding that those behind the killings be swiftly tried. They accuse the military generals who took over from Mubarak of stalling on the prosecutions.

Mubarak comes across in the transcript as aloof and totally out of touch with the fury his regime created.

Asked to explain why he thought protesters were killed and wounded, he said: “I cannot say exactly.” He later added that there was chaos, with the security forces and the protesters attacking each other.

“No one would have paid any attention to me or my orders,” he said when asked why he did not stop the violence. He claimed he gave clear orders that no force be used against the protesters.

The transcript was published Thursday by two independent newspapers, Al-Youm al-Sabea and Al-Dustour. Al-Youm al-Sabea published photographs of what it said were the original handwritten notes of the interrogators on its website.

Mubarak is under arrest at a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. He faces trial next month over the protesters’ deaths. He also faces charges of corruption along with his two sons, businessman Alaa and one-time heir apparent Gamal. If convicted, Mubarak could face a maximum sentence of death.

The former president also denied corruption allegations, seeking to explain why a bank account in his name held millions of dollars in foreign donations intended for the construction and upkeep of a massive library in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria.

He said he had secretly kept the money from the library’s management so they could not claim it or use it for purposes not related to the facility.

He also denied he was a friend of businessman Hussein Salem, whose extradition from Spain is demanded by Egypt. Salem is wanted for trial on corruption charges, mostly arising from his alleged use of Mubarak’s name to buy state land cheaply.

 

Ahmed Wali Karzai’s killer had been a Taliban foe

With Karzai’s help, Mohammad, who had been a melon farmer with a wife, three sons and four daughters, eventually became a police commander responsible for about 200 men who guarded eight checkpoints, the relatives said. Among his duties were to guard Karzai family homes and the cemetery where Ahmed Wali Karzai was buried on Wednesday.

He met six days a week with Ahmed Wali Karzai, who would pay his policemen’s salary if it was late and also provide additional money for him, Malik said. Their relationship was so close that Karzai brought his mother to Mohammad’s home. And just days before his death, Karzai asked the government for more equipment and personnel for Mohammad, according to the senior Afghan official.

Mohammad also met with U.S. and British military officials, and would be introduced to the new commanders when they rotated into Kandahar, the relatives said. Two of Mohammad’s brothers-in-law said they work as guards at a Central Intelligence Agency base in Kandahar — situated on a hillside at the former home of Taliban leader Mohammad Omar — as part of the agency-run paramilitary group called the Kandahar Strike Force.

These relatives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mohammad was not a member of the strike force, which Karzai helped recruit to fight the Taliban, but that he shared intelligence with U.S. officials and arrested hundreds of insurgents over the years.

“If there was something Sardar could do that the Americans couldn’t, they would ask him to do it,” Malik said. “If American forces were suspicious of someone, they were asking Sardar to make the arrest.”

On the morning of the killing, Mohammad walked into Karzai’s bustling home, asked for a private moment, and showed him a document listing the names of men who worked for him. As Karzai looked at it, Mohammad pulled out a pistol and shot him. One bullet struck the right side of his face and exited behind his ear; another hit near his heart, according to his death certificate. He died before he reached nearby Mirwais Hospital; while there, a doctor said, someone stole his watch.

After the shooting, Karzai’s guards entered the room and riddled Mohammad with bullets — his death certificate said he was shot in the skull and had 11 other gunshot wounds. Mohammad’s body was taken into the streets and strung up from a building by a rope, before eventually arriving at the hospital. Despite Islamic custom demanding a swift burial, on Thursday morning Mohammad’s corpse was still in the hospital’s refrigerated morgue in a white body bag. Nobody has come to retrieve it and the relatives said they are waiting for it to be delivered.

“We feel sorry for both of them,” said one relative. “We don’t know what caused this killing.”

The families were still so close, he said, that he helped dig Ahmed Wali Karzai’s grave.

 

 

Special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

 

 

Ahmed Wali Karzai’s killer had been a Taliban foe

By Joshua Partlow, Published: July 15

 

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — The man who murdered President Hamid Karzai’s half brother spent years as an ally of the United States in the war against the Taliban.

The killer, Sardar Mohammad, a police commander, met on several occasions with U.S. and British military officials, shared intelligence with Americans and played a part in Afghan arrests of scores of Taliban fighters, according to three relatives interviewed on Thursday in his home near Kandahar.

 

Ahmed Wali Karzai’s killer had been a Taliban foe - The Washington Post

 

The reasons behind the dramatic switch that turned the 35-year-old officer against Ahmed Wali Karzai, perhaps the most powerful figure in southern Afghanistan, are still not understood. But one of Karzai’s brothers and a senior Afghan official said they were now convinced that the Taliban somehow won Mohammad’s allegiance in recent months and convinced him to carry out an assassination on the group’s behalf.

The official said that investigators are trying to determine whether Mohammad was a long-term Taliban sleeper agent or just recently joined the insurgents. A NATO spokesman in Afghanistan referred questions about Karzai’s killing to Afghan authorities. 

Mahmood Karzai, one of the president’s brothers, said the family has learned since the assassination that Mohammad traveled to the Pakistani city of Quetta within the past three months to meet with Taliban insurgents. He had also acted erratically in recent weeks, sleeping poorly, changing houses at night, acting suspiciously toward his men and demanding to know who they were talking to on their phones.

“All of a sudden, he changed,” Mahmood Karzai said in an interview Thursday. “This is the work of the Taliban.”

The senior Afghan official, interviewed separately, said he had heard about the Quetta visit but could not confirm its accuracy. He said Mohammad had attended a Pakistani madrassa in his youth before returning to Afghanistan. The senior official said that “the Taliban and the forces behind Taliban’’ were responsible for the killing.

The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the killing, and if it was indeed the group’s work, it would be one more example of the insurgents’ ability to attack even the most closely guarded targets. On Thursday, a man hid a bomb in his turban and killed four people at Ahmed Wali Karzai’s memorial service.

At Mohammad’s home, a relatively spacious concrete dwelling protected by military-style barriers — in a poor village of ancient-looking mud hovels — the police commander’s relatives adamantly denied that he would have worked on behalf of the Taliban. One of his brothers-in-law, Abdul Malik, said that Mohammad had not been in Pakistan for 20 years. On the walls of the sitting room are large photographs of Ahmed Wali Karzai and President Hamid Karzai, men he was devoted to, said his relatives.

“We were just like one family,” said one relative who declined to be named. “Until today, there wasn’t any dispute between us.”

A long history

Mohammad had known the Karzai family for many years and began working with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the leader of Kandahar’s provincial council, after the fall of the Taliban. Mohammad had been opposed to the Taliban’s regime because his village’s close proximity to the Karzai family’s ancestral home village down the road led the Taliban to harass them, according to relatives.

 

Israelis and Arabs march in Jerusalem for Palestinian statehood

JERUSALEM — A crowd of about 2,000 left-wing Israelis and Palestinian activists marched through East Jerusalem on Friday in a show of support for Palestinian statehood, a rare Jewish-Arab demonstration in this contested city.

Demonstrators carrying Palestinian flags and signs that read “Marching to Independence” gathered outside the walled Old City and walked along the pre-1967 boundary dividing Jerusalem, ending in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood where Jewish settlers have established several enclaves.

 

Israelis and Arabs march in Jerusalem for Palestinian statehood - The Washington Post

 

A handful of protesters waving Israeli flags gathered near the marchers at one street corner, but the demonstration proceeded without incident, controlled by Israeli and Palestinian organizers who had received clearance for the event from the police.

“We stand together, hand in hand,” Murad Shafea, an activist from the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, told the mostly Israeli crowd in Hebrew at a concluding rally. “We . . . will live in tranquility and peace.”

Daniel Argo, from the Israeli group Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity, the main organizer of the march, asserted that Palestinian statehood would free Israel from the burden of occupation. “The struggle for Palestinian independence is also a struggle for freedom for Israelis,” he said.

The route of the march was the reverse of the path taken by thousands of nationalist Israelis last month when they celebrated Jerusalem Day, the anniversary of Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in 1967, with a flag-waving procession through the Old City punctuated by anti-Arab chants.

 

Checkpoint Washington - Reporting on diplomacy, intelligence, and military affairs.

 

Posted at 11:26 AM ET, 07/15/2011
 

Al-Qaeda’s terrorist tool kit now includes training manuals from Pakistani spy agency

 

By Greg Miller

After losing key rounds in what some al-Qaeda operatives call the “intelligence war,” the terrorist network has introduced a new online course in operational security with material from an unusual source: Pakistan’s powerful spy service.

The Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate has long been accused of coddling militant groups, even while helping the CIA kill or capture dozens of senior al-Qaeda operatives including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Now al-Qaeda operatives can study directly from some of the ISI’s training manuals, according to a new report by Abdul Hameed Bakier at The Jamestown Foundation.

Outsourcing reaches rural India

Just as Mitta and Talwai once had to convince American executives that they could reliably outsource work to India, now they have to convince skeptical Indian city dwellers that their own rural hinterland is not the back of beyond.

“Fifteen or 20 years ago, when we went with Wipro to the U.S., we got a lot of questions and suspicion,” said Mitta, NextWealth’s managing director. “We would draw a map of the world and show where India is. And people would ask, ‘How do people know English there?’ ”

 

 

  

 

“Today we are doing the same thing, but with executives in Indian companies, who ask ‘Do people in Salem speak English? Do they have power? Do they have broadband?’ We have to keep answering and convincing them.”

Engines of the boom

India’s smaller cities and towns are fast becoming the engines of the country’s economic boom. Talwai and Mitta believe the IT industry can help to “spawn a revolution” in small-town India just as it did in the once-sleepy southern city of Bangalore,.

There are other companies, like Sparsh, trying to take outsourcing outside India’s big cities, offering back-office processing for domestic companies as well as call-center services in all of India’s 15 main languages, for businesses that want to be closer to their newest consumers.

“There is no point in talking Delhi Hindi to consumers in Punjab or rural Maharashtra,” said chief operating officer Radhika Balasubramanian. “This helps in building support with customers.”

But NextWealth aims to go beyond call-center work, outsourcing higher-level tasks, in English, for multinational companies at a quality that can match what’s available in Bangalore.

Sensitive to the old accusation that outsourcing merely undercuts existing jobs, NextWealth’s directors are at pains to point out that their model opens new opportunities for personalized work at rates that would not otherwise be commercially viable.

In the town of Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh, for example, NextWealth employees take clients’ digital photographs, perhaps of a holiday or special event, choose the best pictures, add designs and text, and ultimately produce a coffee-table book that no automated system could match. “In Chittoor, we are doing that for $3 an hour, which is profitable,” Talwai said. “That is work that didn’t exist earlier.”

More than seat-fillers

Down a rural road in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, past paddies and coconut palms and small farming villages, the Mahendra Engineering College suddenly looms into view.

In a four-story building on the campus is the office of Mahendra NextWealth, where employees code health-care claims and, like Mallur, tutor foreigners in math.

Their spoken English might not be perfect, director Faustino Avinash Rosario freely admits, but after completing an engineering degree in English, their command of the written language is excellent.

Instead of being swallowed up in the jaws of the outsourcing industry in Bangalore, Mahendra NextWealth’s roughly 250 employees said they felt they were treated like real people, not just seat-fillers.

“I love teaching, and I am very proud to work here,” said Mallur, sitting at her desk in her sari with jasmine in her hair, writing equations on a tablet that appear on a computer screen in far-away Michigan. “If I went to Bangalore, I would have to leave my family, but it is more comfortable to stay with my parents. I also find it extremely safe.”

 

 

Outsourcing reaches rural India - The Washington Post

MALLASAMUDRAM, India — The fact that a 23-year-old Indian engineering graduate is tutoring American high school students in math over the Internet is hardly unusual anymore.

But Pradeepa Mallur is not based in Bangalore, the capital of the Indian outsourcing industry, or another big city. Instead, she still lives with her parents in a small village in southern India and works in an air-conditioned office on a college campus in a village nearby.

After two decades of furious growth, Bangalore is showing signs of strain, and not just in terms of ever-worsening traffic congestion and occasional social unrest, but also in a shortage of skilled workers that is pushing up wages and leading to high employee attrition rates.

But in small towns and villages all over India, there is a glut of graduates who either cannot or do not want to move to a big city, many of them young women like Mallur, who is from a conservative family and is reluctant to leave home before marriage.

Matching that demand for workers with the untapped supply has become the mission of four veteran former employees of Indian IT giant Wipro, who say their idea could unleash another wave of transformative growth and wealth creation across the Indian landscape.

“India has close to 2,000 good engineering colleges, all in small towns, and no jobs,” said Anand Talwai, co-founder and executive director of NextWealth. “At the moment, they all have to come to the big cities, but why can’t we take jobs to them? Even at a lower salary, the quality of life is better for them at home.”

Talwai and business partner Sridhar Mitta were the ninth and first employees, respectively, of Wipro Technologies in 1981, working out of a basement with founder Azim Premji.

Three decades later, the two men, nearing retirement age, decided they wanted to give something back to society.

With two other former Wipro employees, they started NextWealth, a company meant to provide a social service while generating profits and encouraging entre­pre­neur­ship. The company aims to distribute some of the fruits of India’s IT success to the countryside, to fulfill the potential of aspirational, educated young people from small towns and villages.

With its headquarters in Bangalore, NextWealth is trying to create a network of partner companies across rural India, in or around fast-growing towns and cities to provide international-quality outsourcing work at half the cost of the big Indian cities.

“We have reached a status in life where we are happy with what we have and can share with others,” Talwai said.

NextWealth works through local entrepreneurs, taking a 26 percent equity stake in their companies but providing the brand, expertise, experience and clients the companies need to convince people to take outsourcing to the next level.

“It is a mixture of the experience of the elders with the energy and entrepreneurship of youth,” said Mallikarjun Huralikoppi, who has opened a NextWealth partner company providing payroll services in the city of Hubli.

 

U.S. drone attack kills 6, wounds scores in Yemen, officials say

SANAA, Yemen — Six people were killed and about 40 wounded by a U.S. drone missile attack in Yemen’s restive southern province of Abyan, security officials and tribal leaders said Friday.

The victims of the Thursday airstrike were believed to be Islamist militants in al-Wadhi district suspected of having links with al-Qaeda, they said.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, said the fighters escaped from Mudiah district in Abyan after tribal forces pushed them away from that region. The involvement of tribal forces in the effort against the militants is a possibly significant development in southern Yemen, where there has been a growing separatist movement.

The fighters fled to al-Wadhi, which is the home area of Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who is acting as head of state while President Ali Abdullah Saleh undergoes medical treatment in Saudi Arabia.

The officials said the fighters were attacked while they were gathering in a police station that they controlled.

Militants took over parts of Abyan, including the provincial capital Zinjibar, in May. The anti-government opposition accused the government of facilitating the takeover to convince Western nations that al-Qaeda will take over Yemen if Saleh leaves power.

The airstrike comes as the U.S. grows increasingly concerned about the al-Qaeda threat in Yemen. U.S. officials have said the CIA would begin operating armed drone aircraft over Yemen along with the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command, which has been flying drones over the country for the past year.

John O. Brennan, assistant to the president for counterterrorism and homeland security, met this week with both Saleh and Hadi to urge Saleh to follow through with an agreement that would give him immunity from prosecution in exchange for stepping down from office.

Large anti-government protests took place Friday in about 17 provinces, calling for the establishment of a civil state, and transitional council to run the country and prosecution of those pro-Saleh forces involved in attacks on demonstrators as well as the shelling of regions including Arhab and Taiz. They dubbed the day “Civil State Friday.”

In the city of Taiz, a center of the uprising against the Saleh government, seven civilians were killed and 30 others wounded Friday in shell attacks on the al-Rawdha and al-Masbah neighborhoods, witnesses and residents said. The city has been shelled for about 10 successive days.

Also in Taiz province, a security official was killed along with two of his bodyguards in an ambush by armed men outside the city, a security official said. Three of his bodyguards and four attackers were also wounded.

The Saleh regime gave no sign that it would accede to the protesters’ demands. Tarik Mohammed Abdullah Saleh, Saleh’s nephew and commander of the Special Guards, said in an article published Thursday in the army newspaper, “As long as his excellency the president and the Yemeni people are with us, we will never accept the defeat.”

Saleh supporters gathered Friday near the presidential palace to express gratitude to Saudi Arabia for Saleh’s medical treatment.

 

 

 

 

Syrian troops kill 27 as protests intensify in Damascus area

BEIRUT — Syrian security forces killed 27 anti-government protesters in several towns and cities after prayers Friday, mostly in Damascus, amid indications that opposition to President Bashar al-Assad is hardening in the capital.

According to the Local Coordination Committees, a group that organizes and monitors protests, 22 people were killed in neighborhoods and suburbs of Damascus, the highest daily toll there since the nationwide uprising began four months ago. Activists said the protests in the capital were also the largest yet, pointing to what they say is a rising tide of anti-Assad sentiment in the heart of his government’s power base.

 

Syrian troops kill 27 as protests intensify in Damascus area - The Washington Post

 

The violent response shows that the authorities “are 100 percent worried about Damascus,” said Rami Abdelrahman of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, who estimated that 50,000 people took to the streets in and around the city.

Figures could not be independently confirmed because the government has restricted journalists’ access to Syria. But the reported size of the demonstrations remains small compared with those that have toppled rulers elsewhere.

The deadliest crackdown came in the suburb of Qaboun, where 14 demonstrators died after security forces fired on a what activists described as a demonstration of 25,000 people. Video posted on YouTube showed thousands marching through the streets chanting anti-government slogans and holding banners proclaiming “Out Bashar” and “Game Over Bashar” in English.

Qaboun has emerged as an opposition stronghold in recent weeks, and dissidents had been hoping to hold a conference there Saturday to draw up a strategy for ousting Assad in coordination with a parallel gathering of exiled opposition leaders in Istanbul. But after the killings Friday, organizers called off the Damascus gathering because of safety concerns.

Another video showed the biggest demonstration yet to be held in the central Damascus neighborhood of Midan, where authorities have repeatedly tried and failed to quell protests by blanketing the area with security forces.

Two eyewitnesses put the size of the crowd at several thousand and said scattered demonstrations continued for several hours despite efforts by the security forces to disperse protesters with batons and tear gas.

Elsewhere, far bigger demonstrations passed off without incident, in an indication that the government may be losing its grip in some parts of the country.

In the eastern border towns of Deir al-Zour and Bokamal, security forces made no attempt to prevent tens of thousands of people from taking to the streets. Large demonstrations also proceeded unhindered in the heart of the central city of Hama, which has effectively been taken over by government opponents since security forces withdrew to the city’s outskirts more than a month ago.

The scale of the protests in Damascus was perceived as significant because, until now, the capital has been considered a stronghold of government support. “Damascus has proved that it is changing,” said Wissam Tarif of the human rights group Insan.

Some activists say the protesters have been encouraged by signs that the international community is toughening its stance against Assad, following comments this week in which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Assad had “lost legitimacy.”

Abdelrahman also attributed the growing numbers attending protests in the capital to the end of the university year last week, which has freed thousands of students for the summer.

Opposition leaders had been hoping to boost momentum for the effort to oust Assad at Saturday’s dual-city conference, which aspired to unite traditional dissidents with the largely spontaneous and youthful protest movement that has sprung up on the streets of Syria.

With activists concluding that it is now too dangerous for them to meet in Damascus, however, the effort to forge a cohesive opposition movement remains in doubt.

 

United States recognizes Libyan rebels as legitimate government

The Obama administration’s announcement in Turkey drew immediate criticism from Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), who has been among the most vocal Republicans on Libya. “This is incredibly premature,” Turner said, citing concerns about the rebels’ loyalty to the United States. “I don’t believe the administration can even answer the question, ‘Where will the money go?’ ”

Libyan rebel leaders in Turkey said in response that they are not asking for U.S. aid but frozen assets that belong to the Libyan people.

According to Clinton, Friday’s move was meant as a clear signal of support for the rebels. For weeks, U.S. officials have stopped short of official diplomatic recognition because of concerns about whether a post-Gaddafi government set up by rebel leaders would be truly inclusive politically and geographically.

The United States and other foreign powers have worried that the oil-rich country could become embroiled in tribal conflicts or ethnic tensions once Gaddafi is no longer in power.

The United States changed its position after hearing a presentation in Turkey by Mahmoud Jibril, the transitional council’s foreign affairs representative, who described the rebels’ plans for governing a post-Gaddafi Libya.

According to Libyan council members, the plan includes having the rebels, now based in the eastern city of Benghazi, reach out to other regions of Libya not currently represented on the council. Together, they would form an interim government to rule in Gaddafi’s place and then guide the country through a democratic reforms and, ultimately, the election of a new government. Because the council plans to form an interim governing body, it will not immediately be changing its name.

In Libya, rebel leaders complained on Friday that NATO’s mandate of limited engagement should be expanded to allow allied warplanes to strike at Gaddafi’s forces in coordination with rebel attacks.

“NATO hits one tank and then goes home,” said Ibrahim Taher, a battalion commander in Zintan who lost eight fighters Wednesday. “NATO could change this war in a day if they wanted to.”

The question of how to oust Gaddafi also dominated the meeting in Istanbul. Foreign ministers debated the sincerity of Gaddafi emissaries who have recently declared that he is ready to step down. U.S. officials say that Gaddafi’s camp has sent contradictory signals and that they are not convinced he is prepared to give up his power.

Leading up to the meeting, Turkey and the African Union proposed “road maps” for resolving the conflict. But foreign ministers from several countries, including Italy and France, said there are too many road maps and differing talks with Gaddafi emissaries. As a result, the contact group agreed to make the U.N. special envoy to Libya, Abdul-Illah Khatib, the sole representative to communicate with Gaddafi’s government.

The session in Turkey is the fourth official meeting of the international contact group. For the first time, China and Russia were invited to attend. But the two countries, which have been critical of the NATO-led campaign, declined.

 

 

Booth reported from Zintan, Libya. Staff writers David Fahrenthold in Washington and Colum Lynch in New York contributed to this report.

 

United States recognizes Libyan rebels as legitimate government

ISTANBUL — The United States granted Libyan rebel leaders full diplomatic recognition as the governing authority of Libya on Friday, a move that could give the cash-strapped rebels access to more than $30 billion in frozen assets that once belonged to Moammar Gaddafi.

“The TNC has offered important assurances today, including the promise to pursue a process of democratic reform that is inclusive both geographically and politically,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, referring to the rebels’ Transitional National Council, in an explanation of the decision to other foreign ministers.

The U.S. announcement was accompanied by an agreement among all of the nations at a meeting of 30 Western and Arab nations to similarly recognize the rebel council after five months of fighting that has failed to oust Gaddafi.

The move came after a plan was outlined by Libyan rebel leaders seeking to dispel doubts among Western powers about their capability to govern. The Libyan rebel representatives sent to Istanbul to make their case for recognition expressed exuberance after the announcement but also weariness and frustration at the limited help they have received.

With hair matted in sweat and heavy bags under his eyes, Ali Tarhouni, the rebels’ minister of finance and oil, noted that the international recognition the rebels received Friday would not result in an immediate infusion of funds, which they desperately need.

“All it has brought is more pledges for money,” he said. “If we had as much money as we have had pledges these past few months, we would have no problems.”

Beside him, the rebels’ minister of information, Mahmoud Shammam, added that the opposition needs needs money but that it more desperately needs weapons, which most Western powers have refused to supply. The rebels might be barred from using money in frozen assets to buy weapons, he said.

News that the United States would recognize the rebel government as the legitimate authority in Libya spread quickly in the rugged desert mountains south of Tripoli, where rebel fighters have been fighting Libyan troops. “We are very happy to hear this,” said Omar Gazayah, a teacher in the rebel town of Zintan who commands 230 fighters. “But we are waiting for actions, not just words and declarations.”

Gazayah said the rebels need money for fuel, medicines and weapons. “We hope this recognition means that America and NATO will put more pressure on Gaddafi — more pressure politically and with the military.”

So far, Kuwait and Qatar have given the rebels roughly $100 million. France on Friday renewed a previous pledge to unfreeze $250 million in assets in coming weeks for the rebels, and Italy pledged to unfreeze $100 million.

The United States did not pledge a specific amount, because the money is tied up in legalities, including U.S. and U.N. sanctions, U.S. officials said.

The United States could tell banks to transfer frozen assets directly to the TNC, but that could run into U.N. sanctions still in place. An alternative being considered by U.S. officials and Libyan rebels is using those assets as collateral for loans that rebels could use as funding.

 

APNewsBreak: Judge rejects Malibu resident’s pricey deal to thwart public access to beach

 

 

By Associated Press, Published: July 14

 

LOS ANGELES — It turns out the going price for privacy on Malibu’s beachfront “millionaires row” is only $250,000.

Court documents show the nonprofit group Access for All, which manages public pathways to the beach, agreed to help get rid of an access point at a home overlooking one of the most exclusive parts of the California coast in exchange for money and lawyer fees from the resident to open a different pathway.

However, the deal didn’t get very far.

Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant backed the state last week in its effort to open the original pathway past Lisette Ackerberg’s home to Carbon Beach.

While California’s Coastal Act of 1976 ensures beach access, the rich and famous who want to keep the state’s dramatic coast exclusive have in some cases launched years-long legal battles. Some regularly post fake “no parking” and “private beach” signs that are so convincing that unfortunate beachgoers occasionally get ticketed.

This pathway was a condition of a development permit the Coastal Commission gave in the 1980s to the Ackerberg family, which has a mansion, three-car garage, tennis courts and pool spanning two beachfront lots. The Coastal Conservancy, which is responsible for making sure such pathways get opened, had agreed to let Access for All manage the site.

Diane Abbitt, an attorney for Ackerberg, did not immediately return calls for comment Wednesday.

Steve Hoye, who heads Access for All, strongly denied the organization would enter into a settlement to abandon the proposed pathway at the Ackerberg home.

But 2009 court documents obtained by The Associated Press showed the nonprofit agreed to those terms.

“We did not agree to help her sort out her problems with the Coastal Commission,” Hoye said. “We were simply looking at a different opportunity to open up a different accessway.”

This isn’t the first time that a battle to provide public access to Carbon Beach has made headlines.

Perhaps the most famous is the pathway film and music mogul David Geffen promised in exchange for a remodeling permit. Geffen, who finally relented in 2007, battled for decades to stop the public from using a stretch of Carbon Beach in front of his Malibu compound, citing concerns about traffic, privacy and the potential environmental harm sunbathers would cause.

“They build their homes, enjoy it, but when it’s time to provide the public access required they just use their money to delay opening it,” said Aaron McLendon, statewide enforcement analyst for the Coastal Commission.

Pathways to beaches along California’s 1,100 miles of coast are typically managed by a patchwork of state and local agencies as well as nonprofits. In Malibu, Access for All oversees six access points for the state and has received as much as $105,000 in grants from the conservancy to open and maintain them.

In 2003, Access for All notified the Ackerbergs that it had accepted the offer to oversee the opening of the public pathway and received grant money for the project.

According to the judge’s decision, the nonprofit did little beyond getting a survey two years later that found the proposed access was blocked by a concrete slab, generator, light posts, a 9-foot-high wall and other development.

 

Scientists to analyze catch from weekend Alabama fishing rodeo for oil, other hazards

DAUPHIN ISLAND, Ala. — Federal scientists will conduct chemical analyses of fish caught during this weekend’s Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s mobile laboratory will be stationed on Dauphin Island for the three-day event and will collect samples from hundreds of fish brought to the scales.

About 40 fish per day will be given a “rapid assessment,” which includes a battery of analyses designed to detect oil pollution compounds, plus other hazards such as mercury and red tide bacteria.

More than 3,000 anglers are expected to weigh fish during the rodeo. Most of the fish samples collected will be processed within weeks.

___

Information from: Press-Register, http://www.al.com/press-register/

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

Oregon arsonist in Earth Liberation Front case sentenced for probation violation -

EUGENE, Ore. — An arsonist who avoided federal prison five years ago by helping lock up Earth Liberation Front activists has been sentenced in Oregon to 27 months in prison for violating terms of his probation.

Jacob Ferguson was sentenced Thursday in Eugene

A federal judge said the sentence will be served at the same time Ferguson serves his recent five-year state prison sentence for selling heroin.

The 38-year-old Eugene man was on probation under a 2008 plea deal for his role in arsons by an Earth Liberation Front band known as “the Family.” Targets included a meat-packing company, car dealership, ranger station and lumber company.

The Register Guard reports an assistant U.S. attorney asked Judge Ann Aiken to make Ferguson’s federal sentence follow his state time, but she decided it would be served concurrently.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or

 

City of Merced to pay $1.5 million to 2,200 residents of chromium-contaminated subdivision -

MERCED, Calif. — The Central California city of Merced will pay a $1.5 million settlement after a federal jury found that thousands of residents of a subdivision were potentially exposed to a cancer-causing chemical, a newspaper reported Friday.

In March, the jury found that hazardous levels of hexavalent chromium had leaked from a manufacturing plant in Merced’s Beachwood subdivision and spread into the air and water.

 

The jury found residents could have been exposed to the chemical — which was made famous in the film “Erin Brockovich” — for 25 years through the air, through water in an irrigation canal where residents swam and fished, and through floodwaters in 2006 that had picked up contaminated soil from the plant.

The jury also found that the neighborhood’s public water supply was not contaminated by hexavalent chromium from the plant.

The Merced settlement will go to more than 2,200 plaintiffs, the Merced Sun-Star reported.

Merced city attorney Greg Diaz was not immediately available for comment to The Associated Press.

The now-shuttered Baltimore Aircoil plant, which manufactured cooling towers, used industrial chemicals to pressure-treat wood from 1969 to 1991. Merck, which owned Baltimore Aircoil until it sold it in 1985 to Amsted Industries, is leading the remediation effort. The plant was shut down in 1994.

Merck officials acknowledged during the first phase of the trial that hexavalent chromium contamination occurred but denied that any of it left the confines of the plant at levels that could have harmed the health of residents.

Merck first found hexavalent chromium at the plant site in 1984 and was issued a violation in 1987. But according to court documents, the company did not start remediation until 1991.

In the second phase of the trial, a new federal jury will determine which of the plaintiffs may have been harmed by the chemical exposure and determine possible punitive damages.

The Merced settlement was finalized in May, but wasn’t immediately reported.