| |  | | | | | SHUTTING DOWN Feed My Inbox will be shutting down on January 10, 2013. To find an alternative service for email updates, visit this page. | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | High turnout could give Park Geun-hye's leftwing challenger Moon Jae-in victory and signal thawing of ties with North Korea South Koreans have voted in freezing winter temperatures for a new president in a battle between the daughter of their former military ruler and a man her father jailed for political activism. The next president of Asia's fourth largest economy will have to deal with a hostile North Korea, under young and untested new leader Kim Jong-un, and a slowing domestic economy. The Conservative candidate, Park Geun-hye, had a thin lead in polls published last week, the last allowed under election rules. Park's leftwing challenger, Moon Jae-in, has promised to perform global pop sensation Psy's Gangnam Style "horse dance" if turnout hits 77%. Such a turnout would signify a high level of participation by young voters who pollsters say could propel Moon into the presidential "Blue House". Three hours before polls closed turnout was 59.3%, higher than the two previous presidential elections and well on track to achieve 70%. If Park wins, the unmarried 60-year-old would be the first woman leader of the country. "I trust her. She will save our country," said Park Hye-sook, 67, who voted in an affluent Seoul district early ion Wednesday morning. "Her father … rescued the country," said the housewife and grandmother, who is no relation to the candidate, reflecting the admiration many older voters feel for former president Park Chung-hee, which has translated into support for his daughter. She has pledged dialogue with impoverished North Korea, whose rocket launch last week reinforced fears it is developing a long-range missile, and promised a tough line on the isolated north's nuclear and missile programmes. Park, wearing a red muffler, was cheered by crowds chanting her name as she entered the polling station and urged voters to "open a new era". Moon is a former human rights lawyer who has promised unconditional aid for North Korea and to reintroduce an engagement policy that ushered in closer ties between the cold war rivals. Those ties started unravelling with the shooting by North Korea of a tourist from the south in 2008 and deteriorated with the sinking of a South Korean warship in 2010, for which the north denies responsibility, and the shelling of a South Korean island the same year. Moon cast his ballot in the southern city of Busan and said voters disenchanted by five years of conservative rule under Lee Myung-bak, who is constitutionally limited to a single term, had the chance to "change the world with their vote". More than 40 million people are eligible to vote. Polling stations will close at 6pm (9am GMT) and the three network television stations will announce the result of a jointly conducted exit poll shortly afterwards. While Park's bid to become president has stirred debate and divisions about her father's rule, and the prospect of a nuclear-armed North Korea also hangs over the country, the main issue in the election has been the economy. While outwardly successful and home to some of the world's biggest companies, such as Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor, South Korean society has become steadily more unequal. Park advocated a broader welfare policy than when she ran five years ago, when she failed to win the conservative presidential nomination, but says she will not raise taxes or spend more money to boost the economy, instead relying on cutting wasteful spending. Moon, by contrast, has proposed an $18bn (£11bn) jobs package, boosting maternity pay and taxing the super-rich. He has also pledged to repeal a controversial free trade agreement with the US. Park's father took power in a 1961 coup and helped push South Korea from poverty to developed nation status but at the cost of repressing human rights and democracy. His wife was shot by a North Korean-backed assassin who was targeting him in 1974 and his then young daughter took on the role of South Korea's first lady until Park's own killing in 1979 by his security chief after a drunken night out. The younger Park has at times sought to appeal to the spirit that her father embodied. On Tuesday, she evoked his economic call to arms of "Let's Live Well" in a bid to rally her party faithful. But at other times she has stumbled over apologies to victims of her father's rule and sought to appeal to her mother's softer image. Moon, jailed in 1975 when he was a student activist, has attacked Park "for living the life of a princess". His only political experience was as an aide to former president Roh Moo-hyun, who was his law partner.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Swiss bank admits wrongdoing in settlement with multiple regulators over manipulation of inter-bank lending rates The Swiss bank UBS has been fined £940m (1.4bn Swiss francs, US$1.53bn) by global regulators for "extensive and widespread" attempts to manipulate key benchmark interest rates known as Libor for five years. This is the latest and most serious escalation of the rate-rigging scandal and exposes corrupt payments for the first time. The £160m portion of the fine levied by the Financial Services Authority is the largest ever imposed by the City regulator and surpasses the previous record of £59.5m imposed on Barclays in June for attempted manipulation of the Libor and Euribor rates. The total Barclays fine was £290m and led to the resignation of chief executive Bob Diamond days later. At UBS at least 2,000 requests for "inappropriate submissions" to the key rates were documented and at least 45 individuals "including traders, managers and senior managers were involved in, or aware of, the practice of attempting to influence submissions", the FSA said. It added that every one of those submissions was potentially suspicious. The City regulator said UBS had concluded with interdealer brokers to influence submissions to the yen Libor rate and that corrupt brokerage payments of £15,000 a quarter were made to reward brokers for their efforts to manipulate the Libor submissions of other banks on the panel submitting rates to Libor. The UBS fine exposes the full scale of the attempts to manipulate the two rates – London interbank offered rate (Libor) and the Euro interbank offered rate (Euribor).
In its report, the FSA said it had found a UBS trader agreeing with a counterpart that he would attempt to manipulate UBS's submissions in "small drops" in order to avoid arousing suspicion. The trader made it clear that he hoped to profit from the manipulation and referred explicitly to his UBS trading positions and the impact of the Japanese Libor rate on those positions. He offered to "return the favour" and entered into illicit transactions in order to incentivise and reward his counterparts. For example, on 18 September 2008 a trader explained to a broker: "If you keep 6s [ie, the six-month Japanese yen Libor rate] unchanged today ... I will fucking do one humongous deal with you ... Like a 50,000 buck deal, whatever ... I need you to keep it as low as possible ... if you do that .... I'll pay you, you know, 50,000 dollars, 100,000 dollars... whatever you want ... I'm a man of my word." Illicit fees of more thabn £170,000 were generated for the broker. Tracey McDermott, the FSA director of enforcement and financial crime, said: "The findings we have set out in our notice today do not make for pretty reading. The integrity of benchmarks such as Libor and Euribor are of fundamental importance to both UK and international financial markets. UBS traders and managers ignored this. "UBS's misconduct was all the more serious because of the orchestrated attempts to manipulate the Japanese yen Libor submissions of other banks, as well as its own, and the collusion with interdealer brokers and other panel banks in co-ordinated efforts to manipulate the fix." The Swiss regulator Finma said most of the requests were made by one trader who worked in Tokyo from 2006 to 2009. "The same trader also contacted employees at third-party banks and independent brokers, thereby seeking to influence the Libor submissions of third-party banks," Finma said.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Hillary Clinton accepts finding that state department did poor job of protecting embassy where ambassador and three others died Systematic management and leadership failures at the US state department led to "grossly" inadequate security at the embassy in Benghazi, Libya, where the American ambassador was killed along with three others, an independent panel has found. The attack on 11 September killed mission head Chris Stevens, information specialist Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods who were contractors working for the CIA. Stevens's killing was the first of a US ambassador since 1988. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, administration officials linked the attack to the spreading protests over an anti-Islamic film made in the US that had begun in Cairo, Egypt, earlier that day. Those comments came despite evidence already pointing to a distinct militant attack. The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, appeared on numerous TV talk shows the Sunday after the attack and used the administration talking points linking it to the film. An ensuing dispute in the heat of the presidential campaign eventually led Rice to withdraw her name from consideration to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state in Barack Obama's second term. The independent panel concluded that "systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the state department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place". The state department sent a classified version of the report to lawmakers on Tuesday and shortly thereafter released an unclassified version. The report made 29 recommendations to improve embassy security, particularly at high threat posts. In an accompanying letter to Congress, Hillary Clinton said she accepted all the recommendations and thanked the board for its "clear-eyed, serious look at serious systemic challenges". "We will never prevent every act of terrorism or achieve perfect security," Clinton wrote, but she stressed that "our diplomats cannot work in bunkers". "We must accept a level of risk to protect this country we love and to advance our interests and values around the world." The report singled out the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Near East Affairs for criticism, saying there appeared to be a lack of co-operation and confusion over protection at the mission in Benghazi, a city in eastern Libya that was relatively lawless after the revolution that toppled the Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi. Despite those failures, the Accountability Review Board determined that no individual officials ignored or violated their duties and recommended no disciplinary action now. But it also said poor performance by senior managers should be grounds for disciplinary recommendations in the future. The report appeared to break little new ground about the timeline of the Benghazi attack. But it confirmed that contrary to initial accounts there was no protest outside the consulate and said responsibility for the incident rested entirely with the terrorists who attacked the mission. The review board determined that there had been no immediate, specific tactical warning of a potential attack on the 11th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. However the report said there had been several worrisome incidents in the run-up to the attack that should have set off warning bells. While criticising state department management in Washington along with the local militia force and contract guards that the mission depended on for protection, the report said US personnel on the ground in Benghazi "performed with courage and readiness to risk their lives to protect their colleagues in a near-impossible situation". It said the response by diplomatic security agents on the scene and CIA operatives at a nearby compound that later came under attack itself had been "timely and appropriate" but absolved the military from any blame. "There was simply not enough time for armed US military assets to have made a difference." Some of the security challenges were revealed in earlier congressional hearings when several state department officials discussed competing demands for security and cost prohibitions.
Clinton said the department had already begun to implement some of the recommendations. They include increasing by several hundred the number of Marine guards stationed at diplomatic missions throughout the world, relying less on local security forces for protection at embassies, consulates and other offices, and increasing hiring and deployment of highly trained diplomatic security agents at at-risk posts. Members of local Libyan militias provided some security around the consulate but in the attack it became unclear whose side they were on. The report also called on Congress to fully fund the state department's security initiative, noting that budget constraints in the past had led some management officials to emphasize savings over security despite numerous requests from the Benghazi mission and embassy in Tripoli for enhanced protection. It said the number of diplomatic security staff in Benghazi before and on the day of the attack "was inadequate despite repeated requests ... for additional staffing". Congress has denied some funding requests from the state department for more security. In her letter to lawmakers Clinton urged Congress to support the department's security requests, noting that "all of us ... have a responsibility to provide the men and women serving this country with the best possible security and support". Retired ambassador Thomas Pickering and a former joint chiefs of staff chairman, Admiral Mike Mullen, led the independent review, studying thousands of pages of cables and other documents, hours of video and intelligence and interviewing more than 100 people, including survivors. They will testify before the House and Senate foreign affairs committees behind closed doors on Wednesday. On Thursday the state department's two deputy secretaries, William Burns and Thomas Nides, will testify in open sessions before the House foreign affairs committee and the Senate foreign relations committee. Clinton was to have appeared at Thursday's hearing but cancelled after fainting and sustaining a concussion last week while recovering from a stomach virus that dehydrated her. Clinton is under doctors' orders to rest.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Largest gun lobby group 'shocked, saddened and heartbroken' by Newtown shootings and plans press conference for Friday The National Rifle Association finally broke its silence on Tuesday, offering to make "meaningful contributions" to ensure there is no repeat of the Newtown massacre. The NRA has been heavily criticised for lying low since Friday's shooting spree at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut that left 20 children, seven adults and the gunman, Adam Lanza, dead. The normal pattern for the NRA is to say nothing in the immediate aftermath of such incidents and to emerge later, when memories begin to fade, to lobby hard against gun controls. On Tuesday, the NRA stuck to a short statement saying it would not comment until the facts had been thoroughly investigated. NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam, in a statement issued Tuesday, said the organisation "is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown". It added: "Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting." In an astonishing about-turn from the NRA's normally intransigent position, it added: "The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again." Although the NRA may revert to outright opposition to the changes Barack Obama has promised to back – a ban on automatic weapons, and possibly closing loopholes that allow lax checks at guns shows and reducing the size of bullet clips – even making this conciliatory comment marks a rare change in its posture. It is planning to hold a press conference in Washington on Friday, a week after the massacre. Obama hardened up his commitment to imposing restrictions on gun ownership on Tuesday, with the White House promising to support a bill to ban assault weapons of the type used in Newtown. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama supported reinstating the ban, which was first introduced in 1994 but was allowed to lapse in 2004 by the Bush administration. The pledge came amid criticism of the president that he has failed to be specific about which gun controls he would support. Even in his speech at the Newtown vigil on Sunday – in which he signalled that the issue would be a priority – he did not mention guns specifically, and on Monday Carney spoke only in broad, vague terms about gun control. But on Tuesday Carney said Obama will support a bill that the Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein said she will introduce in January to curb the sale of automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Feinstein was responsible for the original 1994 bill. Carney went further, saying that Obama was also considering support for the closure of a loophole that allows easy sale at gun shows. Buyers are not subjected to the same background checks and demands for various forms of ID at these shows that they would if buying from a licensed gun store. In yet another measure, Carney also signalled support for taking action to restrict ammunition clips, reducing the number of bullets to single figures, making mass killings more difficult. Obama is "interested in looking at" this, Carney said. "He is actively supportive of, for example, senator Feinstein's stated intent to revive a piece of legislation that would reinstate the assault weapons ban," Carney said. "He supports and would support legislation that addresses the problem of the so-called gun show loophole, and there are other elements of gun legislation that he could support … high capacity ammunition clips, for example. That is certainly something he would be interested in looking at," he said. The number of legislators expressing support for reform continues to grow. Obama spoke on Tuesday to a Democratic senator who had until this week been regarded as one of staunchest members of the gun lobby, the Joe Manchin, but who has now come out in favour of reform. Obama was "is heartened … by what we have all heard from some members of Congress who have been longtime opponents of gun control measures", Carney said. Republican senator Lindsey Graham on Tuesday echoed Carney, saying that restrictions on the size of clips were worth looking at. Carney, facing criticism for not being specific on Monday, defended the president, saying that Obama does not view the gun debate as "political theatre". He wanted to chat to various people about what changes might be implemented, Carney said. Carney ran through the list of cabinet members that Obama had approached on Monday for ideas on trying to prevent, or at least reduce, the number of gun massacres. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence brought victims of gun violence to Washington on Tuesday to face down the gun lobby, in particular the NRA. More than 20 members of families who lost people in shooting incidents or were wounded in them met members of Congress. In the letter to Congress signed by the families, they wrote: "We know we are far from alone in our grief. Every day in America, 32 more families lose loved ones to gun murders, most in tragedies that do not make national headlines because they are so common. We believe we are better than this," the letter said. The Huffington Post quoted a message for the NRA from Andrei Nikitchyuk, whose eight-year-old son escaped violence at the Sandy Hook school. The message was: think of the children who could be saved in the future if stricter gun control laws are enacted. "Return this country their kids," Nikitchyuk told reporters after a press conference hosted by Democratic congressman David Cicilline. "If they [the NRA] can do it, I would like that very, very much."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Largest gun lobby group breaks silence to say it is 'heartbroken' by Newtown shootings and plans press conference for Friday The National Rifle Association finally broke its silence on Tuesday, offering to make "meaningful contributions" to ensure there is no repeat of the Newtown massacre. The NRA has been heavily criticised for lying low since Friday's shooting spree at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut that left 20 children, seven adults and the gunman, Adam Lanza, dead. The normal pattern for the NRA is to say nothing in the immediate aftermath of such incidents and to emerge later, when memories begin to fade, to lobby hard against gun controls. On Tuesday, the NRA stuck to a short statement saying it would not comment until the facts had been thoroughly investigated. NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam, in a statement issued Tuesday, said the organisation "is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown". It added: "Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting." In an astonishing about-turn from the NRA's normally intransigent position, it added: "The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again." Although the NRA may revert to outright opposition to the changes Barack Obama has promised to back – a ban on automatic weapons, and possibly closing loopholes that allow lax checks at guns shows and reducing the size of bullet clips – even making this conciliatory comment marks a rare change in its posture. It is planning to hold what it described as a "major" press conference in Washington on Friday, a week after the massacre. The NRA's statement came as Obama hardened up his commitment to imposing restrictions on gun ownership on Tuesday, with the White House promising to support a bill to ban assault weapons of the type used in Newtown. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama supported reinstating the ban, which was first introduced in 1994 but was allowed to lapse in 2004 by the Bush administration. Carney said Obama will support a bill that the Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein said she will introduce in January to curb the sale of automatic- and semi-automatic weapons. Feinstein was responsible for the original 1994 bill. Carney went further, saying that Obama was also considering support for the closure of a loophole that allows easy sale at gun shows. Buyers are not subjected to the same background checks and demands for various forms of ID at these shows that they would if buying from a licensed gun store. In another measure, Carney also signalled support for taking action to restrict ammunition clips, reducing the number of bullets to single figures, making mass killings more difficult. Obama is "interested in looking at" this, Carney said. "He is actively supportive of, for example, Senator Feinstein's stated intent to revive a piece of legislation that would reinstate the assault weapons ban," Carney said. "He supports and would support legislation that addresses the problem of the so-called gun show loophole, and there are other elements of gun legislation that he could support … high capacity ammunition clips, for example. That is certainly something he would be interested in looking at," he said. These are all measures that have been vehemently opposed in the past by the NRA, which has used its lobbying muscle at federal and state level to both fight off any attempts to regulate gun ownership and to unwind existing controls. But Tuesday's statement suggests a possible shift. The promise of meaningful contributions to ensure this never happens again is a long way from the NRA reaction to earlier massacres, detailed on Tuesday by Slate's Dave Weigel. The usual response is to express condolences and offer no concessions, or to express condolences and promise discussion at an "appropriate" time. After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 that left 32 dead, the single worst gun incident in recent US history, it said: "The NRA joins the entire country in expressing our deepest condolences to the families of Virginia Tech University and everyone else affected by this horrible tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families." When Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot last year in Tucson, Arizona, the NRA said: "At this time, anything other than prayers for the victims and their families would be inappropriate." In July this year, after the massacre at the cinema in Aurora, Colorado, the NRA response was: "We believe that now is the time for families to grieve and for the community to heal. There will be an appropriate time down the road to engage in political and policy discussions." But the response this time has been different. The NRA has never before faced such an outpouring of outrage.
The length of the delay in responding suggests the NRA has had difficulty framing its reaction this time. While so often indifferent to pressure from outside, it may be facing internal pressure from at least some of its members. Democratic senator Joe Manchin, one of the strongest supporters of the NRA and gun rights but who now says he is open to reform because of Newtown, said he has been in touch with friends in the organisation. He spoke with Obama on Tuesday, the White House said. Obama was "is heartened … by what we have all heard from some members of Congress who have been longtime opponents of gun control measures", Carney said. The NRA, which has 4.3 million members, spent $24m during the election this year, much of it in support of pro-gun legislators. The only legislation the NRA has failed to block was the ban on automatic weapons in 1994, but the Bush administration allowed that to lapse in 2004. In spite of this, gun control groups claim its power is exaggerated and can be broken, and are hoping that Newtown might be the catalyst for real change. A few Republicans too have shown signs of movement this week. On Tuesday, Senator Lindsey Graham echoed Carney, saying that restrictions on the size of clips were worth looking at. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence brought victims of gun violence to Washington on Tuesday to face down the gun lobby, in particular the NRA. More than 20 members of families who lost people in shooting incidents or were wounded in them met members of Congress. In the letter to Congress signed by the families, they wrote: "We know we are far from alone in our grief. Every day in America, 32 more families lose loved ones to gun murders, most in tragedies that do not make national headlines because they are so common. We believe we are better than this," the letter said.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | PLO officials say Assad regime's attack marks 'historic moment' with former ally as 50,000 Palestinians expected from Yarmouk Thousands of Palestinians in Syria are fleeing Damascus after an attack on the country's largest refugee camp, according to survivors who have reached Lebanon. Some of those who have made it to the relative safety of Beirut claim the attack marks a "historical moment" in the Syrian war that has shattered the regime's claim to be a patron of resistance against Israel. The fallout from the attack on the Yarmouk refugee camp in south-west Damascus on Sunday night is now reaching beyond Syria's borders, with Lebanon and Jordan braced for a fresh refugee crisis. About 1,000 Palestinians had reached Lebanon less than 48 hours after a Syrian jet bombed a mosque and a school inside Yarmouk camp, the first time the large, sprawling section of the capital had been targeted from the air and only the second time it had been struck since the civil war began. The air strike is believed to have killed about 25 people and wounded several dozen more. The new arrivals say they fear that authority in the Syrian capital is starting to crumble. They are now openly hostile towards a regime that had long portrayed itself as the protector of the 500,000 Palestinians living in Syria, most of whom had called Yarmouk home until now. "No Palestinian will trust them anymore after what they did on Sunday," said Abu Khalil, a father of three who has taken refuge in the infamous Beirut refugee camp Sabra-Shatila. "All of us accept that blood has been drawn between us and the regime. There is a debt to settle. It will never be like it was." Abu Khalil and his extended family of 15, now refugees for a second time in a lifetime, say the attack has repulsed Palestinians who had enjoyed the patronage of the Assad regime for more than 40 years but had increasingly been expected to openly align with them. Abu Khalil offered an account of what took place on Sunday in the hours before the attack and in the frenetic aftermath, which has led to unprecedented criticism of the regime from most Palestinian factions. "Since the summer, the two intelligence bases in the camp, air force intelligence and political security, were opened as recruitment centres for anyone who wanted to join Ahmed Jibril," he said. "Anyone who did was given a gun." Ahmed Jibril runs the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command, a faction that has remained loyal to the Assad regime and is hostile to the main Palestinian organisational body, the PLO. "There had been no fighting inside the camp at all until Sunday," he said. "There were clashes on the outskirts, but the Free Syria Army had not entered the camp at all. They only came in after the air strike." About 3,000 members of the Free Syria Army and the al-Qaida-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra are now inside the camp, Abu Khalil said. He claimed only 500 residents remain, with most having sought refuge in homes, schools and mosques elsewhere in Damascus. Jibril had about 1,000 armed men but only 150 of them were fighting with him on Sunday," he said. "They fled after a few hours. "Some of the rebels who came in after the attack spoke with strange dialects. Others had beards, like jihadists. They were all telling us not to worry. It was the first time we had seen any opposition member in Yarmouk." Abu Khalil's mother, who called herself Um Hassan, said warnings broadcast from mosques in Yarmouk early on Sunday had given residents two hours to leave. Many had done just that, she said. However, others had sought refuge in a mosque and remained behind. Syrians who had fled from battlezones elsewhere in Syria were staying in a nearby school. They also chose to stay. Both groups were hit by bombs dropped from jets. "We left at 7am on Monday and got to Sabra-Shatila at 3.30am [on Tuesday]," said Abu Khalil. "It was the biggest humiliation I have ever felt. We left with only the clothes on our backs. "Three weeks ago we watched the ugly scenes as the Israelis bombed Gaza. We know what to expect with them. But I can't describe the feeling of Muslims attacking Muslims. It was a historical moment." Palestinian leaders in Lebanon say they are bracing for the arrival of 50,000 refugees from Yarmouk, an influx that would seriously strain resources inside the country's 12 established camps. Such numbers could also potentially upset the delicate sectarian balance in the still-brittle country, where sect numbers are bitterly contested and often used as political tools. Unlike in Lebanon, Syria's Palestinians had largely enjoyed equal rights as citizens, with access to homes, healthcare and other trappings of state. Their treatment has often been showcased by regime officials as a sign of Syria's support for a people who have remained at odds with their sworn enemy, Israel. The regime's far-reaching support for Hezbollah has been the second dimension of its resistance credentials. The Yarmouk attack is also being seen as a turning point by senior Palestinian officials in Lebanon. Qassem Hassan, the general secretary of the PLO in Sabra-Shatila, said: "We sense a very bad smell to this. Why this is happening, we can't understand. The PLO had taken a position not to support the regime or the other side. "We did not interfere in the affairs of Syria and they shouldn't have interfered in ours. A volcano has erupted here. Is this part of a plan to reorganise the Middle East? We don't know. But it is a very big event."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | After earlier vague promises on gun legislation, spokesman says president supports restricting clips and closing loopholes Barack Obama hardened up his commitment to imposing restrictions on gun ownership on Tuesday, with the White House promising to support a bill to ban assault weapons of the type used in the Newtown school shootings. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama supported reinstating the ban, which was first introduced in 1994 but was allowed to lapse in 2004 by the Bush administration. The pledge came amid criticism of the president that he has failed to be specific about which gun controls he would support. Even in his speech at the Newtown vigil on Sunday in which he signalled that the issue would be a priority he did not mention guns specifically, and on Monday Carney spoke only in broad, vague terms about gun control. But on Tuesday Carney said Obama will support a bill that the Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein said she will introduce in January to curb the sale of automatic- and semi-automatic weapons. Feinstein was responsible for the original 1994 bill. Carney went further, saying that Obama was also considering support for the closure of a loophole that allows easy sale at gun shows. Buyers are not subjected to the same background checks and demands for various forms of ID at these shows that they would if buying from a licensed gun store. In yet another measure, Carney also signalled support for taking action to restrict ammunition clips, reducing the number of bullets to single figures, making mass killings more difficult. Obama is "interested in looking at" this, Carney said. "He is actively supportive of, for example, senator Feinstein's stated intent to revive a piece of legislation that would reinstate the assault weapons ban," Carney said. "He supports and would support legislation that addresses the problem of the so-called gun show loophole, and there are other elements of gun legislation that he could support … high capacity ammunition clips, for example. That is certainly something he would be interested in looking at," he said. If Obama had made such promises even last week, he would almost certainly have provoked a major backlash from some gun owners. But the events at Newtown have left the gun lobby relatively subdued so far. The number of legislators expressing support for reform continues to grow. Obama spoke on Tuesday to a Democratic senator who had until this week been regarded as one of staunchest members of the gun lobby, the Joe Manchin, but who has now come out in favour of reform. Obama was "is heartened … by what we have all heard from some members of Congress who have been longtime opponents of gun control measures", Carney said. Republican senator Lindsey Graham on Tuesday echoed Carney, saying that restrictions on the size of clips were worth looking at. Carney, facing criticism for not being specific on Monday, defended the president, saying that Obama does not view the gun debate as "political theatre". He wanted to chat to various people about what changes might be implemented, Carney said. Carney ran through the list of cabinet members that Obama had approached on Monday for ideas on trying to prevent, or at least reduce, the number of gun massacres. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence brought victims of gun violence to Washington on Tuesday to face down the gun lobby, in particular the National Rifle Association. More than 20 members of families who lost people in shooting incidents or were wounded in them met members of Congress. In the letter to Congress signed by the families, they wrote: "We know we are far from alone in our grief. Every day in America, 32 more families lose loved ones to gun murders, most in tragedies that do not make national headlines because they are so common. We believe we are better than this," the letter said. The Huffington Post quoted a message for the NRA from Andrei Nikitchyuk, whose eight-year-old son escaped violence at the Sandy Hook school. The message was: think of the children who could be saved in the future if stricter gun control laws are enacted. "Return this country their kids," Nikitchyuk told reporters after a press conference hosted by Democratic congressman David Cicilline. "If they (the NRA) can do it, I would like that very, very much."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Meeting between David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband pencilled in as talks on implementing Leveson report drag A three-way summit between David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband was pencilled in for Wednesday morning as cross-party talks on how to implement the Leveson report drag, following a meeting between front benchers of all three main parties that made little progress on Tuesday afternoon. Oliver Letwin, David Cameron's policy fixer, presented a half-finished version of his royal charter plan for press regulation at Tuesday's talks, disappointing politicians of other parties present who thought the cabinet officer minister would finally present a complete scheme on how the Conservatives intend to respond to Leveson. The Letwin paper, presented by the minister at a meeting attended by Maria Miller, the culture secretary, plus Harriet Harman and Lord Falconer for Labour, did not spell out who Letwin wants to act as verifiers of a revamped Press Complaints Commission, nor how it would be funded or remain insulated from political interference. Politicians present were surprised by the lack of firm detail, given that Letwin had been canvassing firmer proposals in private meetings. His plan to avoid the need for a press law would involve creating a body to audit the work of the new press regulator, establishing it by royal charter, a model first used in the Middle Ages. However, while Letwin presented his plan in outline, there was no reference to the so-called "three wise men" scheme that he has mooted elsewhere, in which three senior academics or similar public figures could audit whether a new press regulator was compliant with Lord Justice Leveson's report. Letwin's paper also offered little detail on how the new body would be kept out of the clutches of politicians. A suggestion that the press verifier could only be created or amended on the say-so of all three main party leaders was not in the document – although that could be agreed instead at the leaders' summit if it goes ahead on Wednesday. The Lib Dems were represented by former Scottish party leader Lord Wallace, who it was said, expressed concerns about the durability of the royal charter press regulator. Earlier this week, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg was signalling that he was open-minded about the Conservative charter plan – but Labour remains of the view that only a law would be an effective way of entrenching the regulator. Separately, Miller brought along two draft bills as an alternative to the royal charter scheme, described as long and short respectively. There were discrepancies between the bills and the royal charter proposal, with the bills making generic proposals that a "recognition commissioner" be created to supervise the work of the replacement for the PCC – which could be an individual or a number of individuals. Brian Cathcart, the director of Hacked Off, which is campaigning for a bill to underpin the work of a new press regulator, said: "Our strong suspicion is that the royal charter is being adopted by ministers as a device to enable editors and proprietors to escape effective accountability." He added that "a recognition body that is Leveson-compliant must, by definition, be established by parliament".
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The National Women's Soccer League will be the third professional league for women in the US this century. Will it fare better than its predecessors? Here we go again: The United States Soccer Federation has announced that a new league known as the National Women's Soccer League will launch in 2013 administered by US Soccer. The league will begin with eight clubs, the four left over from the recently-extinguished Women's Professional Soccer league (Boston, Chicago, New Jersey, Buffalo) and four new clubs. The names range from overly regional minor league names (Western New York Flash) to cheeky (Portland Thorns FC) to names that have survived all three women's leagues (Boston Breakers). Those clubs will join the Chicago Red Stars, FC Kansas City, Sky Blue FC, Washington Spirit, and the as-yet-unnamed Seattle club. US Soccer will also subsidize the salaries of up to 24 US women's national team players while the Canadian Soccer Association and Federation of Mexican Football will each do the same for up to 16 players. Since the US women began their tour celebrating their gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics, the question has lingered: Where will these women play when this is all over? From the moment when the WPS had to suspend its operations, the US national team players have been bullish on the ability of a league to come back. But at the beginning of the post-Olympic tour, when asked where they would be playing next season, the overwhelming response from the players was "I don't know". For Abby Wambach and Hope Solo, who are past the soccer magic age line of 30, certainly there's been a good deal of soul searching over the last year. Emerging stars like Alex Morgan suddenly had a wrench thrown in their future. That the North American soccer federations are now willing to subsidize the salaries of its players goes to show just how serious the organisation is about giving their national team stars a home. Canada is slated to host the Women's world cup in 2015, and the thrilling match between Canada and the US during the 2012 London Olympics is still fresh in everyone's mind. The goal now is to carry that excitement over the next three years. This is the third such attempt in the United States to have a top-level women's soccer league. The Women's United soccer league after the 1999 Women's World Cup was the first attempt at a fully professional league. Attendance and TV ratings didn't meet expectations, and the league burnt through a $40 million nest egg in one year (it was supposed to last five). The WUSA folded before the next Women's World Cup. By the time its successor WPS got up and running all of the first generation stars had retired, even though revival efforts began as soon as the WUSA folded. The Sports Business journal wrote in 2009 that the WUSA had relied on brand bomb advertising, while the WPS was going to use grassroots promotion. Coming off the heels of the quite successful Women's World Cup in the US, with its picturesque final, it was assumed that getting the word out loudly would attract that same audience. The blast didn't pay off and proved too costly. The WPS' grassroots effort wasn't a grand success either. The league played in smaller stadiums (5k capacity instead of 10k) and instead of traditional American team names like the Washington Freedom of WUSA there were more European style names (FC Gold Pride) and sponsor-named teams (magicJack). Having a match of the week on the Fox Soccer channel was supposed to help get the word out about the quality of the league. One hit wonder LA Sol folded despite a championship appearance, the best women's player in the world, and AEG footing part of the bill. Simply having a good product doesn't always mean success in the sports business world. Elsewhere in the world, for example in England, the women's game is semi-pro and often affiliated with a men's club. Same story with the women's basketball league in America, and yet MLS has not been involved in anything relative to women's soccer. The downside of a semi-pro league is the necessity for a secondary source of income. Rachel Yankey, who plays for Arsenal Ladies Football Club and was on Team GB at the London Olympics, has worked as a coach in schools. Her teammate Kelly Smith came over and played in the American leagues attaining professional status. So here we have another women's professional league, with another eight teams across the country. The optimistic perspective suggests waiting to see how the talent is distributed before judging anything. The pessimist perspective has history on its side. This time top player salaries will be subsidized, meaning teams may be more likely to stick with domestic stars instead of trying to import players from Brazil. The LA Sol were paying Marta a reported $500,000 - more than most MLS players make currently. If the league can stick to domestic talent, advertise well enough to keep attendance up, and expand enough to set up regional divisions cutting down on cross country travel, it's possible that this could finally be the women's professional league that works. However, even after a decade and two failed leagues, this is still a pioneering effort. We know what doesn't work, but there's little concrete evidence of what does. There's no fun in being pessimistic about women's professional soccer in America; defending this fledgling league would be much nicer. There are so many talented young women playing college soccer in this country that deserve a place to play and a place to get noticed by the national team. With the information we have now, there's just little to suggest fans are going to turn out for this league when they haven't over the last decade. Or that the Pacific Northwest trip this largely East Coast-based league will have to make at least once a season won't be a financial burden. So here's hoping for success. However, let's not set those hopes too high. Josie Becker writes the SBNation blog LAGConfidential.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Justice Department says no federal charges will be brought in Florida related to 'alleged acts of cyberstalking' The US Justice Department is dropping its investigation into whether Paula Broadwell, the woman who had an affair with former CIA director David Petraeus, stalked a romantic rival online. Broadwell's lawyer, Robert Muse, gave the Associated Press a letter from US attorney Robert O'Neill that says no federal charges will be brought in Florida related to "alleged acts of cyberstalking." Petraeus, a four-star general who had served in the military for nearly 40 years, resigned as CIA director in November after acknowledging the extramarital affair, which was exposed after Broadwell emailed Tampa socialite Jill Kelley, allegedly warning Kelley to stay away from Petraeus and General John Allen, the US commander in Afghanistan. Kelley reported the emails to the FBI, triggering an investigation that led the FBI to Kelley's emails to the married Allen, who is now under investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Boehner proposes bill that would prevent tax rises for Americans earning less than $1m in move to put pressure on Obama Republicans in Congress went on the offensive over the fiscal cliff negotiations on Tuesday, threatening to unilaterally introduce a plan B before the end of the year to prevent tax rises for anyone earning less than $1m a year. The House Republicans are proposing to introduce a speedy bill that would enshrine these proposals. The tactic, unveiled by Republican House speaker John Boehner at a press conference in Congress, is aimed at putting pressure on Barack Obama. It would remove one of the main pieces of leverage the White House has over the Republicans: the likelihood they will be blamed if most taxpayers are hit with rises next year. Plan B may be aimed as much at the Republican party caucus as the White House. If a deal is reached, Boehner will be able to claim Obama caved in. The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, responding to plan B, said Obama is not willing to accept a deal that does not ask enough of the very wealthiest in taxes. "The speaker's plan B approach doesn't meet this test because it can't pass the Senate and therefore will not protect middle class families, and does little to address our fiscal challenges with zero spending cuts. The president is hopeful that both sides can work out remaining differences and reach a solution so we don't miss the opportunity in front of us today." The Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, echoing the White House, confirmed that there was no chance of plan B getting through the Democratic-controlled Senate. The backwards and forwards between the White House and Congress looks like part of the traditional dance before an agreement is reached. Obama and Boehner, who have spoken several times over the last few days, are closing in on a sweeping deal that would raises taxes on the wealthiest and implement deep cuts to federal spending programmes, including welfare. The two met for 45 minutes on Monday and spoke by phone in the evening, suggesting a deal is in the offing. If there is no deal in place by 1 January, all taxpayers face an automatic rise and across-the-board spending cuts will kick in. Boehner, at the press conference, said: "I believe it important we protect as many American tax payers as we can. Our plan B would protect American taxpayers who make $1m or less and have all of their current rates extended." He added: "I continue to have hope that we can reach a broader agreement with the White House that would reduce spending as well as have revenues on the table. I think it would be better for our country but at this point we have a back-up plan to make sure as few American taxpayers would be affected by this increase as possible." The House majority leader, Eric Cantor, also at the press conference, hinted that Boehner and Obama are close to a deal, in spite of talk of a plan B. "The president is not yet there. He has not come to where he needs to be in order for us to push through a bill that really does begin to address the problem. As the speaker said, that is why we are now discussing an alternative plan if the president and White House can't come our way." Both Obama and Boehner have moved a long way from their original starting points. Obama made an important concession on Monday; having campaigned hard on raising tax for everyone earning $250,000 or more, he agreed in negotiations with Boehner to raise the threshold to $400,000. The president also lowered his target for the tax revenue he is seeking from $1.4tn to $1.2tn over the next 10 years and set out specific spending cuts including $400bn in health. Obama also proposed to slow the growth in social security by linking payments to a less generous inflation formula, chained consumer price index (CPI). The move could mean lower payments for millions of Americans and had already drawn fire from the left. "The largest cuts resulting from the chained CPI would be to young, permanently disabled veterans," senator Bernie Sanders, Congress's only avowed socialist, said on Twitter. Obama held out against Republican proposals to raise the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67. The White House signalled that this was not Obama's final offer. The sticking points appear bridgeable. Obama wants an over-arching deal that will include the debt ceiling, which is having to be raised annually and has turned into an annual White House versus Republican showdown. Obama wants the debt ceiling removed as an issue for the next two years. Boehner is also seeking to raise the age at which Medicare begins raised from 65 to 67, which the White House has so far resisted.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | South African president trounces challenger Kgalema Motlanthe to effectively secure country's leadership until 2019 Amid apartheid-era songs and hoots from vuvuzelas, South African President Jacob Zuma has swept to victory in his party's leadership contest, effectively securing the continent's most powerful office until 2019. Zuma trounced his only challenger, deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe, who ran a largely muted and reluctant campaign, by 2,983 votes to 991 at the African National Congress (ANC) conference. A beaming Zuma came to the stage immediately after the announcement (video), waving to the cheering crowd with both hands. Motlanthe did not contest the deputy presidency, ending a 15-year career in the party's "top six". The position was won resoundingly by Cyril Ramaphosa, a struggle hero turned millionaire tycoon making a long-awaited return to frontline politics. Some believe he is hoping to play "prime minister" to Zuma's head of state. The results were greeted by a cacophony of cheers and whistles at the conference marquee in Bloemfontein, in Mangaung municipality. Zuma's supporters turned his opponents' rolling hand motion – signalling that he should be substituted like a footballer – against them, mimicking the gesture then throwing their arms apart and hollering in unison. Later, the president broke from the conference programme to "address one of the fundamental principles of the ANC: the unity of the African National Congress". He said: "The conference has spoken and all of us are part of that decision." His three-quarter majority defied political gravity in a year that witnessed police massacre 34 striking mineworkers amid spreading unrest, chaos in the education sector, and a scandal over expensive security upgrades to his own home. Somehow he emerged stronger than ever. It helped that he was up against a challenger who showed little stomach for the fight. The buildup to the conference has also been plagued by disrupted provincial meetings, threats and shootings of local ANC officials and corruption allegations against the president's campaign. Moreover, the populist Zuma – a Zulu traditionalist with four current wives – retains the loyalty of party rank and file members who may often ignore or even resent newspaper headlines attacking one of their own. The 70-year-old gave a characteristically crowd-pleasing performance at the conference opening on Sunday, singing a liberation song associated with Nelson Mandela that was all but impossible to boo. "Zuma is as brilliant a tactician in the party as he is an underperformer in the state," said Eusebius McKaiser, a political analyst and associate of the Wits Centre for Ethics. "Soft power has had value in South Africa political culture. South Africans' relationships with politicians and political parties are not reducible to data-driven decisions." Less predictable was the comeback by Ramaphosa, especially in a year that saw his role in the Marikana massacre scrutinised. The former mineworker's union leader is on the board of mining company Lonmin and called for intervention against the striking workers. Forbes magazine estimates his net worth at about $675m (£416m). A potential conflict of interest between his business and political careers is likely to be a major issue for possibly South Africa's next president. McKaiser added: "One of the known unknowns is which Cyril Ramaphosa will be deputy president. His CV has so many competing roles and achievements that are ideologically in conflict: the trade unionist versus the corporate giant." Ten years younger than Zuma, Ramaphosa may be hoping to be the power behind the throne as Thabo Mbeki was during Mandela's often symbolic presidency. But McKaiser said Zuma was unlikely to step back. "He is concerned with building a legacy based on state performance." Among the biggest losers this week was Julius Malema, who was expelled as president of the ANC youth league earlier this year. A letter from Malema asking the conference to reinstate him has been roundly ignored. Zuma's annihilation of his "forces of change" lobby appears complete. Meanwhile, four white South Africans have been charged with treason for plotting to bomb the conference and kill Zuma "execution-style". Prosecutor Shaun Abrahams said the men had planned to attack the meeting as a step towards creating an independent Boer republic. The four, named as Mark Trollip, John Martin Keevy, Johan Prinsloo and Hein Boonzaaier, were brought into court surrounded by police and security guards armed with assault rifles. Their alleged plan, which the plotters codenamed "The Slaughter of Mangaung", included a mortar bomb attack on marquees housing ANC delegates. That was to be followed by a ground assault targeting Zuma and cabinet ministers as they had dinner, Abrahams told the court. Zuma and others were to be shot "in execution-style". The intention of the group, which had been trying to buy AK-47 assault rifles, was "directly aimed at eliminating the leadership of this country", Abrahams added.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Four women in Karachi and 17-year-old volunteer in Peshawar killed in series of attacks blamed on Islamist militants Five female health workers vaccinating children against polio have been shot dead in Pakistan in a series of attacks blamed on Islamist militants. One victim was a 17-year-old schoolgirl volunteer. Four of the killings, which officials said were carried out by masked men on motorbikes, took place in the southern city of Karachi, Pakistan's commercial capital, on the second day of a drive to eradicate the disease from the country. The fifth, of the schoolgirl, occurred in the violent western city of Peshawar. According to some reports, a sixth health worker, a man, was also killed in Karachi. It was not clear who was behind the shootings, but Taliban insurgents have repeatedly denounced the anti-polio campaign as a western plot. The Pakistani government and United Nations partner organisations involved in the anti-polio campaign are meeting on Tuesday night to discuss the security situation. "Operations will be reviewed … and suspended where necessary. We're concerned for the safety of frontline workers. They are the true heroes," said Michael Coleman, a spokesman for the United Nations children's fund, Unicef. In Karachi, the local health minister, Saghir Ahmed, said the government had told 24,000 polio workers it was suspending the drive in the city. In Peshawar, officials said the campaign would continue for now. The volunteers were taking part in a three-day government-led drive, supported by the World Health Organisation and Unicef, to vaccinate tens of millions of children at risk from polio in Pakistan. After a decades-long struggle by multilateral organisations, governments and NGOs worldwide, the disease is now endemic only in three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Relatives said several of the victims had received death threats in recent days. Some Islamists and Muslim preachers in Pakistan and elsewhere say the polio vaccine is a western plot to sterilise Muslims to stop population growth. Other religious leaders have taken part in campaigns aimed at debunking that myth. Resistance is particularly strong in Pakistan, where there has been a severe backlash against immunisation for polio and other diseases since the CIA used a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, to set up a fake vaccination programme as the agency closed in on the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in his hiding place in the town of Abbottabad, in the north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, last year. In July, a Ghanaian doctor was shot in Karachi, a day after leaders of factions of the Pakistani Taliban backed a ban on immunisation in the country's restive tribal areas. This month a teenage student and volunteer on a polio vaccination programme was murdered by gunmen in an eastern Afghan village. Women and girls are frequent targets of militants. A veteran Swedish NGO worker who trained midwives was killed recently in the eastern city of Lahore. In October, the shooting of 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai by Islamic militants angered by her demands for education for girls made international headlines and provoked much debate in Pakistan. Yousafzai is recovering in a British hospital. Officials said the girl killed in Peshawar had received repeated threats that had forced her to move between houses of friends and relatives at least three times in recent days. She was accompanied by her sister, who escaped unhurt. Details remained sketchy of the attacks. The Peshawar incident took place in the Shagai suburb, which borders the lawless Mohmand tribal area, said Janbaz Afridi, a senior health official in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. In Karachi, the attacks occurred in three poor areas spread across the city. According to an official report seen by the Guardian, one was in the sprawling Orangi township. The second, in which two women were killed, took place in the eastern Landhi neighbourhood. A third attack was in Baldia town, in the west of the city. None of the victims appear to have had police protection. Statistics released in October showed an improvement in the polio situation in Pakistan, with 47 children paralysed by the disease in 27 districts compared with 154 cases in 48 districts in 2011. However, in 2005 only 28 new cases were registered. Fears of religious extremism in Karachi have grown in recent years. Large numbers of refugees from the violence-hit north-west have sought refuge there along with a number of senior militant leaders from groups including the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida. The influx has altered the demographic balance of the city and contributed to a recent surge in violence. However, extremist groups have been based in Karachi for many decades. Officials say there is reason to be optimistic that polio can be eradicated in Pakistan. In neighbouring India, a mass vaccination campaign involving more than a million volunteers reduced cases nationally by 94% between 2009 and 2010, from 741 to 42, and down to the single case last year. A key factor was the support for the campaign of clerics from poor Muslim communities.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | House Republicans meet to discuss latest offer by White House while John Boehner floats a 'plan B' stopgap on taxes
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | US journalist and his colleagues were rescued after a gun battle between their captors and rebel fighters When the threats of execution began for the team of NBC journalists kidnapped by a group in Syria loyal to President Assad, they were underlined by a terrible reality. For even as Richard Engel and his colleagues working for the US television network were taken into captivity five days ago, blindfold and bound, it was in the knowledge that one of their rebel guides had already been shot and killed. Their ordeal came to an end at 11pm on Monday evening in a dramatic gun battle when a group of opposition fighters discovered and freed Engel and four other members of his team, who were being moved by car. "As we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn't expected. We were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan," an unshaven Engel told NBC's Today programme. "The kidnappers saw this checkpoint and started a gunfight with it. "Two of the kidnappers were killed. We climbed out of the vehicle and the rebels took us. We spent the night with them." "It was a very traumatic experience," Engel said. He said he believed the kidnappers were a Shia militia group loyal to the Syrian government, adding that they executed at least one of his rebel escorts on the spot at the time he was captured. "They kept us blindfolded, bound," said the 39-year-old reporter, who is one of the most high-profile television foreign correspondents in the US. "We weren't physically beaten or tortured. A lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings," he added. "They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government," said Engel. "This was … the Shabiha. This is a government militia. These are people who are loyal to President Bashar Assad." Engel said he was told the kidnappers wanted to exchange him and his crew for four Iranian and two Lebanese prisoners being held by the rebels. He said the captors were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militant group. Both Iran and Hezbollah are close allies of the embattled Syrian regime. Engel's team crossed back into neighbouring Turkey on Tuesday. NBC did not identify the others who were kidnapped along with Engel. The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing. The Syrian government has barred most foreign media coverage of the civil war, which has killed more than 40,000 people since the uprising began in March 2011. Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by information ministry minders. Many foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers. Several journalists have been killed covering the conflict. Among them are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Rémi Ochlik and Britain's Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for the New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria. Engel joined NBC in 2003 and was named chief foreign correspondent in April 2008. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, including during the US invasion of Iraq. He has lived in the Middle East since he graduated from Stanford University in 1996, according to his biography from NBC. He speaks fluent Arabic.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Human rights ombudsman condemns 'shameless' retaliatory move after US banned Russians implicated in lawyer's death Russia is threatening to ban Americans from adopting Russian children in retaliation for a new US law that forbids Russian officials accused of human rights abuses from travelling to the US. The proposed ban has sparked an outcry among Russia's human rights community and opposition, who have accused the country's rubberstamp parliament of holding children hostage to politics. Members of the ruling United Russia party are expected to introduce amendments with the adoption ban on Wednesday, when the parliament considers on a crucial second reading a new bill that would ban Americans who have been "implicated in violations of rights of Russian citizens". The bill was given initial approval on Friday. "I think it will be approved," Sergei Neverov, the deputy speaker of the Duma, said this week. Yet the reaction to the move may have forced the government to change tack. Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, said late on Tuesday that he thought the ban was "not right". "The Russian foreign ministry thinks it is not right to forbid Americans from adopting Russian children, but the US must take responsibility for the adoption of Russians," Lavrov said, according to Russian news agencies. "I am sure that, in the end, the Duma will take an informed decision." Russian officials have been seething at Barack Obama's signing of the Magnitsky Act on Friday. The new law imposes a visa ban and financial sanctions on Russians implicated in the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died an excruciating death in jail while investigating corruption. The Russians have named their bill after Dima Yakovlev, a 21-month-old who died in the US after his adoptive father left him locked in a car for nine hours. A US court acquitted the father of charges of involuntary manslaughter. Yakovlev is one of 19 adopted Russian children who have died in the US since the early 1990s, Russian lawmakers allege. Kremlin critics responded by noting the high death rate among children inside the country as well as the woefully poor state of Russian orphanages, which remain filled to the brim with children seeking homes. According to RIA Novosti, a state-run news agency, around 1,220 adopted children died in Russia in the 15 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, including 12 who were killed by their parents. Russia's human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, called the proposed bill "absolutely abnormal, cynical and shameless". "So it turns out that if suddenly the Americans cancel the law, we'll give them children. What is that? It's trading in children. This is a monstrous thing that brings shame to the country," he said, according to Interfax. Even some inside government expressed shock at the proposed measure. "The logic is to be 'an eye for an eye', but the logic is incorrect because it could harm our children who cannot find adopters in Russia," Dmitry Livanov, minister of education and science, wrote on Twitter. Vladimir Putin's press secretary said on Tuesday that the president remained "undecided" about whether to support the bill. Yet Putin reportedly told lawmakers on Monday: "What bothers us most aren't the tragedies, although they are the scariest thing that could happen, but rather authorities' reaction to them: exoneration. That's the bad part." The proposed bill comes as Russian-US relations spiral ever lower following Putin's return to the presidency.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Queen Elizabeth Land, table mats and hope of a shorter speech among jubilee gifts in first cabinet visit by a monarch since 1781 The Queen has become the first monarch since 1781 and American war of independence to attend cabinet, where she sat in on a full-length discussion of the political and military situation in Afghanistan and advised ministers that the Queen's speech next year should be shorter rather than longer. She otherwise remained silent apart from wishing the rest of the cabinet a merry Christmas on her departure. On the advice of Buckingham Palace the cabinet clubbed together to give her 60 lacquered table mats showing images of the palace and its grounds taken from the Royal Archive. They also submitted a donation to her jubilee charity, but the prime minister's spokesman refused to disclose the size of the donation. In a further gift, the Foreign Office declared that a tract of frozen land about twice the size of the UK in Antarctica was to be named after her as Queen Elizabeth Land. The land in the British Antarctic territory had been previously unnamed. The prime minister's spokesman was unable to say whether it had any flowers, fauna or people. The idea of asking the Queen to a meeting of the cabinet had come from David Cameron as a way of celebrating her achievements in her jubilee year. She was given a lightning tour of Downing Street, being taken from the Terracotta room to the Pillared room and then, with the prime minister and the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, accompanying her, into the cabinet room itself where at least 30 politicians were waiting. Cameron opened the session by saying that it was the first time a monarch had attended a full cabinet since George III in 1781. He said Anglo-American relations had improved since then. Previously Downing Street had briefed that she was the first monarch to attend cabinet since Queen Victoria, and there had been suggestions that George VI had also attended cabinet during the war, but this emerged not have been a full cabinet meeting. The Queen sat on Cameron's left, between the prime minister and the foreign secretary, William Hague. The two politicians normally sit alongside each other. She listened to a discussion led by Hague and the defence secretary, Phillip Hammond, but said nothing except during a brief discussion of the Queen's speech, at which point she ventured the opinion that it should be shorter rather than longer. The communities secretary, Eric Pickles, said cabinet members had been on their best behaviour. "All the shoes were shiny, freshly polished, with the exception of Ken Clarke's Hush Puppies," he said.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | US private equity firm bows to pressure from teachers' pension funds, saying the massacre was a 'watershed moment' A US private equity firm is selling off its stakes in the firearms company that made the AR-15 rifle that was used to shoot dead 20 children in a Connecticut primary school last week. Cerberus Capital Management said on Tuesday it was preparing to sell off its investment in gunmaker Freedom Group following mounting pressure from California's teachers' pension funds. Cerberus, which manages more than $20bn (£12bn) of investments, said Adam Lanza's massacre of 20 children and six adults was a "watershed moment" that had raised the debate on gun control to an "unprecedented level". The investment fund said it was not its role to enter the debate but added: "There are, however, actions that we as a firm can take." "Accordingly, we have determined to immediately engage in a formal process to sell our investment in Freedom Group. We will retain a financial adviser to design and execute a process to sell our interests in Freedom Group, and we will then return that capital to our investors," it added. "As a firm, we are investors, not statesmen or policymakers. Our role is to make investments on behalf of our clients who are comprised of the pension plans of firemen, teachers, policemen and other municipal workers and unions, endowments, and other institutions and individuals. It is not our role to take positions, or attempt to shape or influence the gun control policy debate. That is the job of our federal and state legislators." Cerberus, which was founded by Steven Feinberg, an avid shooter and hunter, said it was "shocked and deeply saddened" by the shooting on Friday and it "cannot comprehend the losses suffered by the families and friends of those killed by the unthinkable crimes". Cerberus, which bought an undisclosed stake in Freedom Group in 2006, said the firearms company did not sell weapons or ammunition to consumers and all sales were restricted to federally licensed firearms dealers. "We do not believe that Freedom Group or any single company or individual can prevent senseless violence or the illegal use or procurement of firearms and ammunition," it said. In its latest financial statement Freedom Group boasts that it is the nation's largest manufacturer of military-style semi-automatics, which it calls "modern sporting rifles". It said the market for those weapons, including the semi-automatic Bushmaster .223 rifle used by Lanza, grew by 27% between 2007 and 2011. "The continued adoption of the modern sporting rifle has led to increased growth in the long gun market, especially with a younger demographic of users and those who like to customize or upgrade their firearms," it added. Freedom said the increase in demand would have "significant long-term benefits" for the firm. It reported sales of $677m in the nine months to the end of September, a 19% increase on the same period a year earlier. The company's semi-automatic rifles have been used in at least four high-profile mass shootings since 1999, including a 2009 incident that left 10 dead across southern Alabama, and a 2010 shooting spree in Virginia that killed eight people over 19 hours. A Bushmaster .223 rifle was used by the so-called Beltway snipers, John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo, who killed 15 people in 2001 and 2002. George Kollitides, a former managing director at the firm and one of the original Cerberus executives assigned to build Freedom Group, was appointed chairman and chief executive earlier this year. Kollitides had tried to run unsuccessfully for a seat on the board of the National Rifle Association, a powerful pro-gun lobby. The California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS), the second-biggest pension fund in America, had threatened to withdraw the $751m it had invested in Cerebus unless the private equity fund sold out of the firearms company. The California treasurer Bill Lockyer said he would propose that CalSTRS and California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) – the two biggest pension funds in the US – sell off all investments in firearms manufacturers that make guns prohibited under state law. California prohibits semi-automatic assault weapons, specifically including the Bushmaster, and magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Muslim Council of Britain says it is appalled by 'utterly discriminatory' legislation on same-sex marriage Muslim leaders have demanded the same legal exemptions as the Church of England in legislation to introduce gay marriages. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), with more than 500 affiliated mosques, charities and schools, said it was "appalled" by "utterly discriminatory" legislation on same-sex marriage set out by the government. The proposals would allow faith groups to conduct gay marriages but would ban the CofE and the Church in Wales from doing so. The MCB secretary-general, Farooq Murad, said his organisation had strongly opposed gay marriage alongside other religions and was seeking an urgent meeting with culture secretary, Maria Miller, to express the concerns of many Muslims over the proposals. "No one in their right mind should accept such a discriminatory law," he said. "It should be amended to give exactly the same exemption to all the religions." The criticism from the MCB comes after the CofE last week attacked the government's lack of consultation over its gay marriage plans, saying senior ecclesiastical figures learned of them only when Miller announced them to parliament. But the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it would have been "inappropriate" to discuss the fine print of its plans before telling parliament. Miller told the House of Commons she was putting in place a "quadruple lock" of measures to guarantee religious organisations would not be forced to marry same-sex couples. Under the plans, four legal "locks" will be included in the legislation. No religious organisation or individual minister could be compelled to marry same-sex couples or to permit this to happen on their premises. It would be unlawful for religious organisations or their ministers to marry same-sex couples unless their organisation's governing body has expressly opted in to provisions for doing so. The Equality Act 2010 would be amended to ensure no discrimination claim could be brought against religious organisations or individual ministers for refusing to marry a same-sex couple. The legislation will also explicitly state that it will be illegal for the CofE and the Church in Wales to marry same-sex couples, she said. As the established church, CofE vicars must marry any eligible couples regardless of their faith. Under the Church of England's canon law, marriage is defined as between a man and a woman. Any change to this to introduce same-sex unions would have to be approved by the General Synod of the Church of England.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Election panel to consider motions against Haneen Zoabi, who took part in Gaza flotilla in 2010, and two Arab parties An Arab member of the Israeli parliament is facing an attempt to disqualify her from standing in next month's general election, a move she has likened to fascism. The state elections committee will hear a motion against Haneen Zoabi's candidacy on Wednesday. She is accused of undermining the state of Israel and "inciting against its government, its institutions" and the military, according to a written submission to the committee. Ofir Akunis, an MP with the ruling rightwing Likud party, said her actions amounted to a denial of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, making her liable for disqualification from running from Israel's parliament, the Knesset. Zoabi, one of 11 MPs representing Arab parties, has faced a vigorous campaign against her since she took part in a flotilla of ships attempting to breach Israel's blockade of Gaza in May 2010. Nine Turkish activists were killed when Israeli commandos stormed the lead ship, the Mavi Marmara, on which Zoabi was a passenger. "I believe that Zoabi will be disqualified because it is the most correct, just and moral thing," Akunis told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. "She has no place in the Knesset. She took part in the Mavi Marmara terror attack, and according to [the law] anyone who participates in armed struggle against Israel or supports it cannot run for the Knesset." Another Likud MP, Danny Danon, submitted to the election committee a petition signed by 11,000 people calling for Zoabi to be banned from the election. Zoabi "belongs in prison and not in parliament", he told the Jerusalem Post. "There's no difference between the words and actions of an Islamic Jihad member from Khan Yunis [in Gaza] and those of Zoabi." According to an opinion poll published last week, almost 70% of Israelis say Zoabi should be barred from standing for parliament, with 13% saying her candidacy should be allowed. In response to the move to disqualify her, Zoabi said: "This is the time to choose between fascism and democracy." Only "dark regimes" could be proud of disqualifying candidates, she added. "The rightwing has become accustomed to setting itself above the law, above human rights and above the rules of democracy," Zoabi said. Its goal, she said, was to "completely eliminate freedom of speech, political pluralism and the deviation from a narrow ideological consensus, which views an Arab who fights for his rights and his place as a great enemy." The central election committee will also hear motions to ban two Arab parties, Balad and Ra'am-Ta'al, from fielding candidates in the election on 22 January. The motions are based on article 7A of Israel's basic law covering the Knesset, which says a party or an individual candidate can be disqualified if their actions deny Israel to be a Jewish and democratic state, incite racism, or support armed struggle, an enemy state or a terrorist organisation. The elections committee reflects the political composition of the Knesset, thus giving it a rightwing majority. However, candidates and parties may appeal to the supreme court against its decisions. In 2003, 2006 and 2009 the supreme court overturned the committee's disqualification of Arab parties. But according to Adalah, a legal centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, which is representing Zoabi and the two parties, the composition of the supreme court is more conservative than in the past. It says the motions should be seen in the context of the past four years of Binyamin Netanyahu's government, in which 20 laws that "target and discriminate against Arab citizens of Israel" have been passed. "This process should be understood as a direct continuation of escalating measures taken against Israel's Arab-Palestinian citizens and their elected representatives," said Hassan Jabareen, of Adalah. "It is not acceptable for the majority to exclude minority representatives from the parliamentary process; there is no legal basis to do so and this step risks the gradual disenfranchisement of 20% of Israel's population." In its response to the motions, which it described as racist, Adalah said there was insufficient evidence or a legal basis for disqualification. Israel's attorney-general has also said there is insufficient evidence to disqualify Zoabi or the two Arab parties. Arab citizens make up around one in five of Israel's population, a figure not reflected in parliamentary representation. According to a recent opinion poll, 82% of Israeli Arabs have little or no faith in the government, and half say they will not vote in next month's election. Two-thirds say they lack confidence in Arab parties. Zoabi's parliamentary privileges were revoked after she participated in the Gaza flotilla a year after being elected in 2009. An attempt to bring criminal charges against her failed. She was assigned special protection after a number of death threats were made against her. Last month, she spoke out against the Israeli offensive on Gaza, saying Israel was breaking international law and "no military force can crush the people's survival instinct".
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Medical team trying to stabilise condition of leader known for mediating between Iraq's various ethnic groups Iraq's president Jalal Talabani has suffered a stroke and his medical team is still trying to stabilise his condition, his spokesman announced on Tuesday. Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki is at the hospital in Baghdad where the president is being treated, said his spokesman, Ali al-Moussawi. He said doctors have not decided whether Talabani will continue to be treated in Baghdad or flown to another country for treatment. The presidency is a largely ceremonial post, although it does retain some powers under the constitution. The president must sign off on laws approved by parliament and has the power to block executions. Talabani, a member of Iraq's Kurdish minority, has frequently used the post to mediate between Iraq's various sects and ethnic groups. He has recently been working to resolve a standoff between the central government and the Kurds, who have their own fighting force. Last month, the two sides moved additional troops into disputed areas along the Kurds' self-rule northern region, prompting fears that fighting could break out. Talabani last week brokered a deal that calls on both sides to eventually withdraw troops though there is as yet no timetable. Talabani met Al-Maliki earlier on Monday. They agreed that Al-Maliki would invite a delegation from the Kurdish regional government to Baghdad to continue the talks, according to Al-Maliki's office.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Rights groups protest as Mathieu Ngudjolo cleared by international criminal court of leading rebel attack on village The international criminal court has acquitted a Congolese militia leader of all charges of leading fighters who destroyed a village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2003, hacking to death and raping about 200 people including women and children. The acquittal of Mathieu Ngudjolo on charges including rape and murder is only the second verdict in the court's 10-year history and the first time it has cleared a suspect. Judges said the testimony of three key prosecution witnesses was unreliable and could not prove definitively that Ngudjolo led the rebel attack on the village of Bogoro, but they emphasised that Ngudjolo's acquittal did not mean no crimes occurred in the village. "If an allegation has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt … this does not necessarily mean that the alleged fact did not occur," said the presiding judge, Bruno Cotte of France. Prosecutors say villagers were hacked to death with machetes and many of them raped by rebel fighters. Rights organisations called on the court to explain the acquittal to victims and survivors in Bogoro, in Congo's eastern Ituri region, and improve its investigations. "The acquittal of Ngudjolo leaves the victims of Bogoro and other massacres by his forces without justice for their suffering," said Geraldine Mattioli-Zeltner, international justice advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "The ICC prosecutor needs to strengthen its investigations of those responsible for grave crimes in Ituri, including high-ranking officials in Congo, Rwanda and Uganda who supported the armed groups fighting there." Judges ordered Ngudjolo's immediate release, but the court's chief prosecutor, Fatou Besnouda, said she would appeal against the verdicts and asked for Ngudjolo to be kept in custody. The court scheduled a hearing for later on Tuesday to consider the request. Ngudjolo showed no emotion as Cotte acquitted him. Parts of eastern Congo remain virtual war zones, with rebel fighters believed to be backed by Rwanda locked in conflict with government forces. While Ngudjolo was the first defendant cleared by the ICC, other war crimes tribunals based in The Hague and elsewhere have in the past acquitted other suspects from conflicts in war zones including the former Yugoslavia. Judges are still considering the evidence against another militia leader who stood trial with Ngudjolo, Germain Katanga, and are expected to deliver verdicts next year. The only other ICC verdict, handed down earlier this year, convicted another Congolese rebel leader, Thomas Lubanga, of using child soldiers in battles in Ituri. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for the US network NBC, and members of his team have been freed unharmed from their Syrian captors after a firefight. They had been held for five days. The group disappeared shortly after crossing into north-west Syria from Turkey last Thursday (13 December). NBC had no contact with the kidnappers and asked for a news blackout about the incident, which was observed by mainstream news outlets. There was no request for a ransom during the time Engel and his crew were missing. After being abducted they were put into the back of a truck and blindfolded before being transported to an unknown location, believed to be near the small town of Ma'arrat Misrin. Throughout their captivity they were blindfolded and bound, but otherwise not physically harmed, said the network. Early yesterday, the prisoners were being moved to a new location when their captors ran into a checkpoint manned by members of the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, a Syrian rebel group. There was a confrontation and a firefight ensued. Two of the captors were killed, while an unknown number of others escaped. None of the NBC crew suffered any injuries. They remained in Syria until this morning when they made their way to the border and re-entered Turkey. According to NBC, all were in good health. The network "expressed its gratitude to those who worked to gather information and secure the release of our colleagues". Engel is widely regarded as one of America's leading foreign correspondents for his coverage of conflicts around the world over the last 15 years. Most recently, he was recognised for his reporting of the 2011 revolution in Egypt, the conflict in Libya and unrest throughout the Arab world. Source: NBC
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Four people killed and two injured in attacks this week raising fears for drive to eradicate crippling disease Gunmen have shot six health workers on an anti-polio drive in a string of attacks in Pakistan this week, officials said, raising fears for the safety of workers immunising children against the crippling disease. It was not clear who was behind the shootings but Taliban insurgents have repeatedly denounced the anti-polio campaign as a western plot. Three women were killed and a man was wounded in two separate attacks on health workers in Karachi on Tuesday, said senior police superintendent Imran Shaukat. An anti-polio worker in the city was also shot dead on Monday, the UN said. The immunisation drive has now been suspended in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city with 18 million people, health officials said. In the north-western city of Peshawar, a woman supervising an anti-polio campaign was wounded on Tuesday when gunmen on a motorbike shot her in the head, said government official Javed Marwar. All of the victims were Pakistanis working with a UN-backed programme to eradicate polio, which attacks the nervous system and can cause permanent paralysis within hours of infection. It has been eradicated in all but a handful of countries but at least 35 children in Pakistan have been infected this year. In Karachi, health minister Saghir Ahmed said the government had told 24,000 polio workers it was suspending the drive in the province. Officials could not confirm if all of the attacks were linked to the health campaign, said Matthew Coleman, a spokesman for the UN Children's Fund. Many took place in areas notorious for gun violence but the situation was deeply concerning, he said. "We're concerned for the safety of frontline workers. They are the true heroes," he said. There have been at least three other shootings involving polio eradication workers this year. Some Islamists and Muslim preachers say the vaccine is a western plot to sterilise Muslims.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Five women killed and two men injured in attacks this week raising fears for drive to eradicate crippling disease Gunmen have shot dead five women health workers on an anti-polio drive in a string of attacks in Pakistan this week, officials said, raising fears for the safety of workers immunising children against the crippling disease. It was not clear who was behind the shootings but Taliban insurgents have repeatedly denounced the anti-polio campaign as a western plot. Four were gunned down in the southern port city of Karachi, and the fifth in a village outside the north-west city of Peshawar. Two men who were working alongside the women were also critically wounded in Karachi. The Karachi attacks were well-co-ordinated, occurring within 15 minutes in three different, far apart, areas of the city, said police spokesman Imran Shoukat, addign that two of the women were killed while administering children polio drops. The immunisation drive has now been suspended in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city with 18 million people, health officials said. In the north-western city of Peshawar, a woman supervising an anti-polio campaign was wounded on Tuesday when gunmen on a motorbike shot her in the head, said government official Javed Marwar. All of the victims were Pakistanis working with a UN-backed programme to eradicate polio, which attacks the nervous system and can cause permanent paralysis within hours of infection. It has been eradicated in all but a handful of countries but at least 35 children in Pakistan have been infected this year. In Karachi, the health minister, Saghir Ahmed, said the government had told 24,000 polio workers it was suspending the drive in the province. Officials could not confirm if all of the attacks were linked to the health campaign, said Matthew Coleman, a spokesman for the UN Children's Fund. Many took place in areas notorious for gun violence but the situation was deeply concerning, he said. "We're concerned for the safety of frontline workers. They are the true heroes," he said. There have been at least three other shootings involving polio eradication workers this year. Some Islamists and Muslim preachers say the vaccine is a western plot to sterilise Muslims.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates amid continuing clashes between pro and anti Assad factions of the Yarmouk Palestinian camp in southern Damascus
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates amid continuing clashes between pro and anti Assad factions of the Yarmouk Palestinian camp in southern Damascus
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ruling comes despite jury awarding US company over $1bn for patent infringement by Samsung in August Apple has been dramatically rebuffed by a California judge after its request for a US sales ban on a number of Samsung smartphones was turned down in the California court where a jury awarded it $1.05bn (£635m) in damages for patent infringement in August. But Samsung saw one of its biggest complaints about the verdict – that there had been jury misconduct, with the foreman Velvin Hogan being biased against it and introducing his own knowledge to the deliberation – thrown out. The rulings by Judge Lucy Koh mean that the two phone giants, which together control about half of the entire smartphone market worldwide, will both be dissatisfied with the outcome of the post-trial hearing – though Samsung will have more cause to celebrate because its infringement will only cost it in monetary, not sales terms. In her ruling, Koh said: "Samsung may have cut into Apple's customer base somewhat, but there is no suggestion that Samsung will wipe out Apple's customer base, or force Apple out of the business of making smartphones. The present case involves lost sales – not a lost ability to be a viable market participant." In effect, Koh told Apple that it is big enough to compete directly with Samsung – and that a sales ban would have little real effect on the market dynamics between the two companies. Samsung, from South Korea, is the world's largest mobile phone and smartphone maker. Apple is the second largest smartphone maker, but ships only about half as many smartphones as Samsung. It has a substantial lead in the tablet market, though. Apple had wanted US sales bans on a number of leading Samsung smartphones and tablets. Other parts of the US court system, however, are preparing to re-hear a call by Apple for sales bans on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone. Joff Wild, of Intellectual Asset Management magazine, said the decision by Koh was "the most sensational and unexpected twist" in the trial: "a [sales ban] is what Apple wanted and it is what Samsung most feared. For two companies swimming in cash, the jury award was neither here nor there." Apple is expected to appeal the decision by Judge Koh to deny any injunction. Florian Müller, who has followed the smartphone patent battles between companies in detail, noted: "It may be unprecedented in the legal history of the United States for an injunction motion to be denied across the board despite such a large number of infringement findings (roughly half a dozen) by a jury and, especially, in light of the competitive situation between the two as well as the jury's findings of willful infringement." The jury originally decided that a number of Samsung smartphones and tablets infringed a group of Apple patents, including the way that screens of data scrolled, and the appearance of the iPhone 3G introduced in 2008. Apple opened a number of lawsuits against Samsung in April 2011. Apple had wanted sales bans on 26 Samsung devices following the verdict, and had petitioned Judge Lucy Koh to that effect in a hearing on 6 December. But in a ruling handed down by Koh late on Monday in the San Jose court, she said that to win a ban, it would be necessary to show that "Apple must have lost these sales because Samsung infringed Apple's patents. Apple has simply not been able to make this showing." Koh said Apple had not shown that an sales ban would be necessary for restitution of any loss by Samsung's infringement, and that it had not shown that elements infringed by Samsung had been the key reason why people chose Samsung devices over Apple ones. Koh's denial of Samsung's claims of jury misconduct followed complaints by the company that Hogan had previously had a lawsuit involving Seagate, in which Samsung is a shareholder. But Koh ruled that Samsung had effectively waived its right to complain about Hogan because it had carried out pre-trial interviews with him – known as voir dire – and had not then followed up points he had raised. "Parties [in the trial] waive their right to challenge the jury's impartiality if they are aware of the evidence giving rise to the motion for a new trial or fail to exercise reasonable diligence in discovering that evidence," she wrote. Samsung's lawyers, she suggested, seemed to have been hoping that Hogan – and the jury – would rule in their favour, and only objected afterwards because the verdict went against them. Samsung's side, she said, showed "lack of reasonable diligence" in investigating Hogan's relationship with Seagate. She added that "it is not clear whether Mr Hogan was intentionally dishonest", and that Samsung had not shown whether he knew of any relationship between Samsung and Seagate, which he left in 1993 – nearly 20 years before the trial. Instead, "what changed between Samsung's initial decision not to pursue questioning or investigation of Mr Hogan, and Samsung's later decision to investigate was simple," Koh wrote. "The jury found against Samsung, and made a very large damages award. This is precisely the situation that courts have consistently found constitutes a waiver of the juror misconduct claim."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | During year-long mission to shed light on formation of solar system, gravity probes discovered that moon's crust is thinner than expected A pair of Nasa moon-mapping probes have smashed into a lunar mountain, ending a year-long mission that is shedding light on how the solar system formed. The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory – or Grail – spacecraft had been flying around the moon, enabling scientists to make detailed gravity maps. The probes sped up slightly as they encountered stronger gravity from denser regions and slowed down as they flew over less-dense areas. By precisely measuring the distance between the two probes, scientists discovered the moon's crust is thinner than expected and that the impacts that battered its surface did even more damage underground. Out of fuel and edging closer to the lunar surface, the probes were commanded to smash themselves into a mountain near the moon's north pole, avoiding a chance encounter with any relics from the Apollo landings or other debris left on the surface during previous expeditions. "We do feel the angst about the end of the mission," said Charles Elachi, director of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which oversaw the mission. "On the other hand, it is a celebration because this mission has accomplished tremendous science." The US space agency lost radio communications with the first spacecraft at 5:28pm EST (10.28pm GMT) on Monday and the second about 20 seconds later, a Nasa mission commentator said. The probes' final resting place was named after the first US woman in space, Sally Ride, who orchestrated Grail's educational outreach programme before her death in July. The spacecraft included cameras that were operated by students. After completing their primary mission in May, the Grail twins, each about the size of a small washing machine, moved closer to the lunar surface, dropping their orbits from about 34 miles (55 km) to less than half that altitude to increase their sensitivity. On 6 December, the probes, nicknamed Ebb and Flow, flew down to about seven miles (11km) to make one last detailed map of the moon's youngest crater. "Ebb and Flow have removed a veil from the moon," said Maria Zuber, the lead researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The discoveries will not only help scientists better understand how the moon formed and evolved, but what happened to Earth and the other inner planets that were similarly showered with comets and asteroids early in their history. Several follow-up studies are planned, including co-ordinating the moon's new gravity maps with the locations where Apollo soil and rock samples were collected, Zuber said.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Scientists discover moon's crust is thinner than expected as probes end year-long mission to shed light on solar system A pair of Nasa moon-mapping probes have smashed into a lunar mountain, ending a year-long mission that is shedding light on how the solar system formed. The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory – or Grail – spacecraft had been flying around the moon, enabling scientists to make detailed gravity maps. The probes sped up slightly as they encountered stronger gravity from denser regions and slowed down as they flew over less-dense areas. By precisely measuring the distance between the two probes, scientists discovered the moon's crust is thinner than expected and that the impacts that battered its surface did even more damage underground. Out of fuel and edging closer to the lunar surface, the probes were commanded to smash themselves into a mountain near the moon's north pole, avoiding a chance encounter with any relics from the Apollo landings or other debris left on the surface during previous expeditions. "We do feel the angst about the end of the mission," said Charles Elachi, director of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, which oversaw the mission. "On the other hand, it is a celebration because this mission has accomplished tremendous science." The US space agency lost radio communications with the first spacecraft at 5:28pm EST (10.28pm GMT) on Monday and the second about 20 seconds later, a Nasa mission commentator said. The probes' final resting place was named after the first US woman in space, Sally Ride, who orchestrated Grail's educational outreach programme before her death in July. The spacecraft included cameras that were operated by students. After completing their primary mission in May, the Grail twins, each about the size of a small washing machine, moved closer to the lunar surface, dropping their orbits from about 34 miles (55 km) to less than half that altitude to increase their sensitivity. On 6 December, the probes, nicknamed Ebb and Flow, flew down to about seven miles (11km) to make one last detailed map of the moon's youngest crater. "Ebb and Flow have removed a veil from the moon," said Maria Zuber, the lead researcher with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The discoveries will not only help scientists better understand how the moon formed and evolved, but what happened to Earth and the other inner planets that were similarly showered with comets and asteroids early in their history. Several follow-up studies are planned, including co-ordinating the moon's new gravity maps with the locations where Apollo soil and rock samples were collected, Zuber said.
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