|  |  |  | | | | | The Guardian World News | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Minneapolis police say bodies of four victims found after man opened fire at signmaking business, with four others wounded A gunman has killed four peoplein Minneapolis before fatally shooting himself, police have said. In a statement released early on Friday, Minneapolis police said the bodies of four victims were found shortly after officers arrived on Thursday afternoon and evacuated the area. Four other people were wounded, including three critically, during the shooting at Accent Signage Systems. The signmaking company is in a residential area in the city's north side. Police initially said at least two people had been killed, but later said "several" bodies had been found inside. The suspected gunman was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Neither his name nor the names of the victims have been released.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Seven British and five Chinese passengers on board plane en route to Everest when it crashed shortly after takeoff Seven Britons were among 19 people killed when a small plane crashed soon after takeoff from Kathmandu airport, Nepal, possibly after hitting an large bird of prey. Five other tourists, believed to be from China, also died along with four Nepali passengers and the plane's crew. The plane, a twin-engined Dornier run by the local Sita Air, crashed on the banks of the Manohara river at 6.18am on Friday morning. The seven Britons had arrived in Nepal on Wednesday for a trek in the Khumbu Region around Mount Everest. According to Sherpa Adventure Travel, the Kathmandu-based tour company that organised their trip, they were due to return on 16 October. No immediate cause was obvious, the deputy police chief at the Tribhuvan international airport (TIA), Superintendent Rabiraj Shrestha said, but hitting a large bird may be one possibility. The weather was clear. Shreshtra said rubbish dumped along the sides of the airport attracted large numbers of birds and a dead eagle was recovered from among the wreckage. "A bird might have been sucked into the engine and caused problems due to which the pilot might have took decision for emergency landing and as a result the plane crashed," he told reporters. Eyewitnesses say a fire broke out as soon as the plane made an emergency landing on the banks of the Manohara. The flight's destination was the small airstrip of Lukla, which is the start of many treks in the Everest region. Late September and October are favoured periods for walking and mountaineering in the Nepali Himalayan ranges as the summer rains have cleared and winter temperatures are yet to bite. With often hazardous weather conditions and complex terrain, accidents are common. Regulation of the domestic aviation sector in poverty-stricken Nepal is lax. Rubbish beside the runway of a busy airport would normally be considered a significant hazard. In September 2011, 19 people including 16 tourists were killed when a Buddha Air flight crashed on a similar route. In August 2010, 14 passengers including four Americans, a Briton and a Japanese nationals were killed after a plane heading to the Everest region crashed due to bad weather. Similarly, in December 2010, all 22 passengers were killed when another plane came down. The Foreign Office in London said:"We can confirm that there were British national fatalities. The embassy in Kathmandu remains in contact with the Nepalese authorities." A spokeswoman added that the ambassador, John Tucknott, had gone to the hospital where the bodies were taken. The FO would not release any details of the numbers or names of those killed until those had been confirmed and next of kin had been told, she said. Concerned relatives should ring 020 7008 1500.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nakoula Basseley Nakoula declared a flight risk by US federal court judge The California man behind a crudely produced anti-Islamic video that has inflamed parts of the Middle East has been declared a flight risk and detained by a federal court judge. Citing a lengthy pattern of deception, US central district chief magistrate judge Suzanne Segal said Nakoula Basseley Nakoula should be held after officials said he violated his probation from a 2010 check fraud conviction. "The court has a lack of trust in this defendant at this time," Segal said. Nakoula had eight probation violations, including lying to his probation officers and using aliases, and he might face new charges that carry a maximum two-year prison term, authorities said. After his 2010 conviction, Nakoula was sentenced to 21 months in prison and was barred from using computers or the internet for five years without approval from his probation officer. In July, a 14-minute trailer for the film Innocence of Muslims was posted on YouTube, leading to protests around the Middle East. The trailer depicts Muhammad as a womaniser, religious fraud and child molester. Nakoula, a Christian originally from Egypt, went into hiding after he was identified as the man behind the trailer. In court on Thursday, assistant US attorney Robert Dugdale said Nakoula was flight risk, partially because of the uproar over the film. The violence in the Middle East broke out on 11 September and has spread since, killing dozens. "He has every incentive to disappear," Dugdale said. The full story about the video still isn't known. The movie was made last year by a man who called himself Sam Bacile. After the violence erupted, a man who identified himself as Bacile spoke to media outlets including the Associated Press, took credit for the film and said it was meant to portray the truth about Muhammad and Islam, which he called a cancer. The next day, the AP determined there was no Bacile and linked the identity to Nakoula, a former gas station owner with a drug conviction and a history of using aliases. Federal authorities later confirmed there was no Bacile and that Nakoula was behind the movie. Before going into hiding, Nakoula acknowledged to the AP that he was involved with the film, but said he only worked on logistics and management.
When the judge asked him during Thursday's hearing what his true name was, Nakoula said his name was Mark Basseley Youseff and had been using that name since 2002. Lawrence Rosenthal, a constitutional and criminal law professor at Chapman University school of law in Orange, said it was "highly unusual" for a judge to order immediate detention on a probation violation for a non violent crime, but if there were questions about Nakoula's identity it was more likely. "When the prosecution doesn't really know who they're dealing with, it's much easier to talk about flight," Rosenthal said. "I've prosecuted individuals who'd never given a real address. You don't know who you're dealing with, and you're just going to have very limited confidence about their ability to show up in court." A film permit listed Media for Christ, a Los Angeles-area charity run by other Egyptian Christians, as the production company. Most of the film was made at the charity's headquarters. Steve Klein, an insurance agent in Hemet and outspoken Muslim critic, has said he was a consultant and promoter for the film. The trailer still can be found on YouTube. The Obama administration asked Google, YouTube's parent company, to take down the video. But the firm has refused, saying the trailer didn't violate its content standards. Meanwhile, a number of actors and workers on the film have come forward to say they were tricked. They say they were hired for a film titled Desert Warrior and there was no mention of Islam or Muhammad in the script. Those references were dubbed in after filming was completed. Actress Cindy Lee Garcia has sued to get the trailer taken down, saying she was duped.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a Christian originally from Egypt, had been banned from using computers since conviction in 2010 The California man behind a crudely produced anti-Islamic video that has inflamed parts of the Middle East has been arrested for violating his probation, US authorities said. Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was convicted for federal cheque fraud in 2010. Under the terms of his probation, he was not to use computers or the internet for five years without approval from his probation officer. He was taken into custody on Thursday, said US attorney's spokesman Thomas Mrozek. A district court hearing was closed to media and the public. Protests erupted on 11 September over a 14-minute trailer for the film was posted on YouTube. Innocence of Muslims depicts the prophet Muhammad as a womaniser, religious fraud and child molester. Nakoula, a Christian from Egypt, went into hiding after he was identified as the man behind the trailer. The movie was made last year by a man who called himself Sam Bacile. After the violence erupted, a man who identified himself as Bacile called media outlets including the Associated Press, took credit for the film and said it was meant to portray the truth about Muhammad and Islam, which he called a cancer. The next day, the AP determined there was no Bacile and linked the identity to Nakoula, a former petrol pump owner with a drug conviction and a history of aliases. Federal authorities later confirmed there was no Bacile and that Nakoula was behind the movie. Nakoula admitted he was involved with the film, but said he only worked on logistics and management. A film permit listed Media for Christ, a Los Angeles-area charity run by other Egyptian Christians, as the production company. Most of the film was made at the charity's headquarters. Steve Klein, an insurance agent in Hemet and outspoken Muslim critic, has said he was a consultant and promoter for the film. The trailer still can be found on YouTube. The Obama administration asked Google, YouTube's parent, to take down the video but the company has refused, saying it did not violate its content standards. Meantime, a number of actors and workers on the film have come forward to say they were duped. They say they were hired for a film titled Desert Warrior and there was no mention of Islam or Muhammad in the script. Those references were dubbed in after filming was completed. Actor Cindy Lee Garcia has sued to get the trailer taken down, saying she was duped.
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Civilian lawyer calls for dismissal of all charges against soldier, who has been in held military custody for more than two years By the time Bradley Manning goes to trial next February for the alleged transmission of state secrets to WikiLeaks he will has spent as much time in military custody as it would take to build the Empire State building twice over, his lawyer has protested. David Coombs, Manning's civilian lawyer, has filed a motion with the army court hearing the US soldier's court martial calling for all charges against him to be dismissed on grounds that his right to a speedy trial have been violated. The US government has been so lethargic in pursuing the case, Coombs argues, that it has made "an absolute mockery of [Manning's] fundamental right". Manning was arrested at forward operating base Hammer outside Baghdad on 27 May 2010 on suspicion of being the source of the biggest leak of confidential state documents in US history. He faces 22 charges relating to the transferral of hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, videos and war logs to the whistleblowing website. Under the US military rule book, a soldier must be arraigned and his trial officially started within 120 days of him being put into captivity. Yet in an exhaustive 117-page motion that Manning has been so far spent 845 days in pretrial confinement "and still has not had his day in court". Should the trial kick off on 4 February next year, as it is currently scheduled to do, he will have been held for 983 days. "The Empire State building could have been constructed almost two-and-a-half times over in the amount of time it will have taken to bring PFC Manning to trial," Coombs writes. Manning's right to a speedy trial is enshrined in the sixth amendment of the US constitution, the military rule book and article 10 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That article states that "the government must move diligently to trial and the entire period up to trying the accused will be reviewed for reasonable diligence". Manning's military prosecutors have argued that they have not breached the soldier's rights because they applied for, and were granted by the convening authority, permission to exclude periods of time from the 120-day speedy trial clock. Coombs protests that many of the delays were unexplained and inappropriate. He accuses the government of dragging its feet, pointing to numerous periods of apparent prosecutorial inactivity in processing the case. In total, Coombs counts 327 days of delays that have been excluded from the speedy trial clock without any reasonable explanation. He accuses the army of having "trampled upon PFC Manning's rights" and calls for the court to dismiss all charges with prejudice for lack of a speedy trial.
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | President tells supporters in Virginia change 'can't happen if you write off half the nation' as new ads target controversy Barack Obama called for a new era of "economic patriotism" as he launched a fresh series of attacks on Mitt Romney for his comments disparaging 47% of Americans as freeloaders. As the first votes were cast in the White House election, Obama placed the 47% remarks at the heart of his campaign, telling supporters in Virginia that change in cannot be achieved in one term and "it can't happen if you write off half the nation before you take office". Romney's comments were caught on a secretly recorded video when the Republican presidential candidate addressed a small group of wealthy donors in May. The attack was reinforced in new ads released Thursday. In one, Romney's voice is heard dismissing the 47% of the population who he said are dependent on the government and take no responsibility for their own lives. On screen, as Romney speaks, are pictures of the groups the Democrats suggest he was referring to: the elderly, veterans, Latinos, children and working-class women. It is a potent election message, and Romney's remarks are proving to be one of the most destructive moments of the whole White House campaign. Another Obama ad deals with "economic patriotism", a new label for the president's economic promises, which include creating 1m manufacturing jobs and hiring thousands of new teachers. They are to be broadcast in seven swing states: Virginia, Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. But they are not being shown in North Carolina, a sign that the Obama campaign may have written the state off as a gain for Romney. The "economic patriotism" promotes economic growth from the bottom up and contrasts this with Romney's trickle-down approach. "This country doesn't succeed when only the rich get richer," Obama said in his speech. "We succeed when the middle class gets bigger, when there are ladders of opportunity for all who strive to get into the middle class, when everybody who's willing to work hard has a chance to get ahead and live up to their God-given potential." Then, turning directly to the secret video, Obama added: "I don't think we can get very far with leaders who write off half the nation as a bunch of victims who never take responsibility for their own lives." Both Obama and Romney were campaigning in Virginia on Thursday in areas with a strong military presence. The president was in Virginia Beach while Romney was in Springfield. Obama opted for a broad appeal to voters while Romney flailed about in the wake of disastrous poll figures showing him badly trailing the president in swing states. Obama is ahead in Virginia in spite of predictions he would not be able to hold it after his 2008 win. Early voting began in Iowa on Thursday and starts in Ohio next week and elsewhere round the country. An estimated 30%-40% of those voting will have cast their ballots before election day November 6. In his speech, Obama, echoing Romney's secret video, said that wherever he visited in America, including Virginia, he did not find victims as Romney contended but hardworking Americans. "I see students trying to work their way through college. I see single moms, like my mom, putting in overtime to raise their kids right. I see senior citizens who have been saving for retirement your entire lives," Obama said. "I see a whole bunch of veterans who served this country with bravery and distinction." In what could be a rehearsal for the first presidential debate in Denver on Wednesday, he noted that Romney had picked up on a comment he had made that change in Washington does not come from the inside and that change in Washington had to come the outside. "And for some reason, this got governor Romney really excited. And he rewrote his speech, and he stood up at a rally and he proudly declared: 'I'll get the job done from the inside' – which got me thinking, what kind of inside job are you talking about?," Obama said, proving that not only does he have better delivery than Romney, he has better speech-writers. As the laughter subsided, Obama continued: "Because if it's the inside job of rubber-stamping the top-down, lobbyist-driven agenda of this Republican Congress, we don't want that. If it's the inside job of letting oil companies write energy policy, insurance companies writing health care policy, outsourcers writing our tax code, we don't need that. If it's the inside job of trying to control the health care choices that women are perfectly capable of making themselves, we'll take a pass on that. We don't need an inside job." He added, ramming home his point about Romney's speech: "In 2008, 47% of this country did not vote for me. But the night of the election, I said to all those Americans, I said, I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voice. I need your help. I will be your president, too."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Edith Windsor's case is one of several challenges winding their way through US courts for possible supreme court hearing An 83-year-old marriage equality campaigner was at New York's federal appeals court on Thursday for the latest stage of her fight against a federal act that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. Lawyers for Edith Windsor argued that her marriage to Thea Spyer, in 2007, should offer the same federal rights as a union between a man and a woman. Windsor's legal team say the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (Doma) discriminates against her and others by limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. Thursday's hearing was the latest in many legal battles for same-sex equality across the United States; supporters ultimately hope a supreme court ruling will overturn the law. Windsor, a former IT worker, met Spyer in 1965. They became engaged in 1967 and finally married in Toronto in 2007. Spyer died in 2009 after battling multiple sclerosis for many years, but, unlike opposite-sex married couples, Windsor was not entitled to any tax relief on her inheritance. Windsor had to pay $363,000 in federal estate taxes. "The Defense of Marriage act discriminates against gay people," she said outside New York's second circuit court of appeals. "Not only is it illegal, as my lawyers argued today, but it refutes, it really challenges the basic principles on which this country was founded: fairness and equality." Windsor and her supporters say current federal law violates the 14th amendment of the US constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law. The Obama administration said in 2011 it considered Doma unconstitutional and would no longer defend it. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the case on behalf of Windsor earlier this year, and in June a federal district judge in New York ruled in her favour. But House speaker John Boehner convened what became known as the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group to defend Doma in court after Obama withdrew his administration's support. Boehner's group appealed the district judge's verdict on Windsor, prompting Thursday's hearing. The second circuit court expedited the case due to Windsor's age and poor health – she told the Guardian she had "a number of major illnesses" – while Windsor has also asked the supreme court to review her case. Federal courts in Massachusetts, California and Connecticut have previously found the law unconstitutional, and those cases are pending before the supreme court, which has until Monday to decide whether to take up the issue in its next term. "In the last few years virtually every case that has addressed the issue has struck down Doma," said Windsor's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. She said she was confident the judges would find in Windsor's favour but would not be drawn on how long that might take. The justice department has filed petitions in all four cases, asking the high court to review the constitutionality of the law's definition of marriage. A lawyer for the department was in court on Thursday, essentially providing evidence in support of Windsor's case. Also present in the packed courtroom were various supporters of Windsor, some of whom were embroiled in their own legal battles elsewhere. Joanne Pederson, who is bringing her own Doma challenge in Connecticut, was in court with her wife, Ann Meitzen, to "show our support for Edie". Pederson, who held a civilian position in the US navy for 30 years, says she cannot add Meitzen, who has health problems, to her health insurance plan because of Doma. "Just because we're a same-sex couple, it shouldn't mean we don't receive life benefits," she said. It is likely to be several weeks before a ruling on Windsor's case in the second circuit court. Any supreme court verdict would not likely come before the election.
"I look forward to the day when federal government recognises all marriages as legal, and I'm very hopeful that that day will come while I'm still alive," Windsor said on Thursday. "I know my spouse Thea, who shared my life for over 40 years, is here in spirit, and I'm sure she's very proud that we've got this far."
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Israel's prime minister tells UN general assembly that Iran is more than 70% of the way to producing a nuclear weapon Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, called on the international community on Thursday night to set a "clear, red line" to stop the progress of the Iranian nuclear programme, which he claimed was little more than a year away from making its first bomb. In a demonstration of his fears, he presented the UN general assembly in New York with a crude diagram of a bomb with a burning fuse and used a red marker pen to indicate where he thought the line should be drawn. Netanyahu argued that the Iranians, by producing tonnes of low-enriched uranium and beginning to make medium-enriched uranium, were well over 70% of the way to producing a nuclear weapon. By as early as next summer, he said, they would be 90% of the way to that goal. He drew his red line along that 90% line. "I believe that, faced with a clear red line, Iran will back down," the Israeli leader said, arguing that would give more time for sanctions and diplomacy to work towards the dismantling of the Iranian programme. Netanyahu has attempted, without success, to persuade the Obama administration to agree to such red lines. US officials have rejected his proposal, arguing that such a declaration would represent an invitation to Iran to develop its programme up to that line and would limit the president's choices at a critical moment. Iran denies that its programme is intended for making weapons. There has been considerable speculation in the past few months that Israel might take unilateral military action aimed at setting back the Iranian programme. That threat appears to have receded with Netanyahu's presentation, which put the "red line" back into next year. Obama has said that he would not allow Iran to build nuclear weapons and US intelligence has found no evidence that Iran has made a political decision to build such weapons. Netanyahu sought to counter US arguments that the world would have notice of any Iranian attempt to put a warhead together. He said a nuclear detonator could be made in a workshop the size of a classroom, and a warhead could be assembled in a small space that would also be very hard to find in a country the size of a large part of Europe. He said that although he had great faith in his intelligence agencies, the security of the planet could not be made dependent on them finding such a facility in such a vast area. Therefore, he argued, the red line had to be drawn on the Iranian uranium enrichment programme, which requires large plants. "Iranian plants are visible and they are still vulnerable," Netanyahu said. He rejected suggestions that a nuclear-armed Iran could be contained, claiming that there was no real difference between contemplating a nuclear-armed Iran and a nuclear-armed al-Qaida, as both were dangerous terrorists. Netanyahu devoted almost all his UN address to the Iranian nuclear threat, and only a couple of minutes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some European and US officials have conceded that by his increasingly dire warnings about the Iranian programme, the Israeli leader may not have persuaded the US to take military action but he has succeeded to marginalising the plight of the Palestinians, significantly reducing the international pressure on him to stop the spread of Jewish settlements across occupied Palestinian territory. Barely an hour before Netanyahu took the lectern, the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, addressed the general assembly and accused the Israeli government of carrying out a campaign of "ethnic cleansing" by the demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. However, in a reflection of Palestinian weakness in the current international climate, he put off a call for Palestine to be granted observer status at the UN, saying only that consultations were under way to that end. Palestinian officials said that a vote might take place in November. Facing the diplomats at the UN general assembly, he asked that if Iran succeeded in making a nuclear weapon, "who among of you would feel safe in the Middle East? Who would be safe in Europe? Who'd be safe in America? Who'd be safe everywhere?" Western governments have significantly increased sanctions on Iran this year because of its continued refusal to heed security council calls to suspend uranium enrichment, and because of its failure so far to explain evidence presented by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of past experimentation with nuclear weapons design. Netanyahu argued that the sanctions, which include a EU embargo on purchasing Iranian oil, had badly damaged the Iranian economy but had not slowed the progress of the nuclear programme. Therefore, he said, the setting of red lines was the last peaceful means of stopping it. "The hour is getting late, very late," he said. "The Iranian nuclear calendar doesn't take time out for anyone or anything. Its not only my right to speak out, it's my duty to speak out."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates as Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu speak to the UN general assembly
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | MegaUpload founder posts teaser video on YouTube featuring The Black Keys and will.i.am New Zealand tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom is preparing to launch a new music site called Megabox, he has claimed. A video teaser, posted on YouTube on Wednesday, showed off search, community, location and sentiment tracking features, and showed a developer team apparently working on the site with the introduction: "This is what they don't want you to have. Unchaining artists and fans. Megabox is coming soon." The video followed a tweet on Saturday that claimed: "Code was 90% done. Servers on the way. Lawyers, partners and investors ready. Be patient. It's coming." Today's teaser highlighted four artists – The Black Keys, Rusko, Two Fingers and will.i.am – as "exclusive" artists that are part of a site that Dotcom has said will "give artists full control over their work". The site is understood to let users access music for free and compensate artists with a share of advertising revenue by using the Megakey app, which would replace existing ads with Megabox adverts. Megabox appears to be a reinvention of the infamous MegaUpload site that led to Dotcom's dramatic arrest on 20 January this year. Dotcom has been charged with internet piracy and breaking copyright laws with a business that made as much as $175m (£100m) allegedly distributing copyrighted material. Now released on bail, Dotcom faces fresh attempts by the US authorities to extradite him but will not face an extradition hearing until March 2013. Dotcom's arrest and the closure of Megaupload.com by the US Department of Justice triggered attacks on several high profile sites including the DoJ and Universal Music. The New Zealand government was forced to apologise to the entrepreneur today after an official report showed that the country's spy agency had carried out illegal surveillance on him. But house arrest has not deterred the industrious German national, who officially changed his name from Kim Schmitz in 2005. Dotcom has entertained himself by making music videos with his family, as well as hosting visits from people including Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Can Andre Braugher save the Last Resort? Will Ryan Murphy finally figure out a plot? Will these train wrecks actually be good? With every new television season comes a new list of winners and losers, the unqualified successes and the dismal failures that audiences will celebrate or shun. But the most interesting television shows aren't the great ones or the terrible ones. Oh no. That distinction belongs to a special class of show – the "hate-watchable". What characteristics define such a show? Ask anyone who slogged through an entire season NBC's Smash or suffered in silence until the finale of HBO's The Newsroom (ie me). In my view there are a number of important characteristics, some or all of which must be present: • Promising elements that don't seem to come together in the execution. • Fascinating premise that falls apart once the season cranks up. • An amazing cast that can't seem to make the material fly. • Impressive pedigree that suggest greatness but fails to live up to expectations. And there's a fifth, compulsory ingredient: • Show must be neither good, nor too bad to stop watching outright. Now that the 2012 fall season is upon us, which of the crop of new offerings compete for the hate-watchable crown? Here are my the top three contenders: The New Normal (NBC, 9.30pm Tuesdays)Premise: Successful gay couple (Andrew Rannels and Justin Bartha) recruit a flighty waitress (Georgia King) to carry their baby in this single-camera comedy that explores the idea of what makes a family. Hate-watchable because: Co-created by Ryan Murphy, who has practically made hate-watchability his stock-in-trade between Glee and American Horror Story. Murphy's shows are quick-witted and outrageous, but at the cost of grounded characters or logical development. Hilarious zingers abound, but so do noxious stereotypes, like the gay couple who decides to have a baby to carry around as a fashion accessory. Could solidify over time if the voice becomes a little less histrionic, but for now it's a curiosity at best. Last Resort (ABC, 8pm Thursdays)Premise: Navy submarine captain (Andre Braugher) flouts official orders to fire a nuclear weapon on Pakistan; crew subsequently declared enemies of the state and forced to inhabit an island until they can figure out a solution. Hate-watchable because: Re-read the premise again. Sometimes shows that have self-limiting concepts turn out to be great. But more often than not, when you watch a pilot that makes you say "how is this going to work as a weekly show?" the answer winds up being: "it isn't going to work." This is definitely a case of a show that doesn't seem to have a ton of breathing room for a whole season, let alone several, and the pilot doesn't instill confidence. On the other hand, its creator is Shawn Ryan (the man behind The Shield and Terriers) so it's hard to believe he doesn't have some kind of plan, and Braugher is such a commanding presence, it might be worth sticking with for him alone. The Mob Doctor (Fox, 9pm Mondays)Premise: Promising Chicago surgeon (Jordana Spiro) is drawn into the mafia when she decides to barter her services to pay off her ne'er-do-well brother's gambling debts. Hate-watchable because: The title and the premise make it sound less hate-watchable than just, y'know, hateable, and there's an undeniable cheese factor that permeates the pilot. But Spiro is a charming enough actress to sell even the flimsiest material. And she's supported here by a fairly impressive cast including Michael Rapaport, Zach Gilford of Friday Night Lights fame, and Zeljko Ivanek, who took home an Emmy in 2008 for Damages. But talented actors end up in terrible shows all the time; the real hook of The Mob Doctor lies in Spiro's lead character, who in the pilot seems to gravitate back towards her mafia duties even when there seems to be a simple way out. Does she stay because she has to, or because she wants to? If the show's writers can properly finesse that question, this one won't be risible for long. I'm sure you'll have other contenders: 666 Park Avenue seems worthy of consideration, as does Elementary (otherwise known as Not Sherlock). But those are my picks. We should also note, finally, that it's not uncommon for a television show to start out wobbly, only to find its footing later in the season – or even well into the second season. This was the case with NBC's Parks and Recreation, which boasted Amy Poehler as its star and the showrunner behind The Office as its creator, but premiered with a lackluster six-episode season before maturing into one of television's best comedies. It was, during that inauspicious season, the perfect example of a hate-watchable show: it was fun to pick apart while you waited to see if it would get better.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow the day's developments as Syrian activists reported the highest daily death toll as world leaders remained divided over the crisis at the UN
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates as Syrian activists report the highest daily death toll as world leaders remain divided over the crisis at the UN
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Government announces slowing recovery as growth figures an indication of a weakening manufacturing sector ahead of election The fragile state of the US's economic recovery was thrown into focus once more Thursday as the government announced growth was slowing and orders for long-lasting goods plunged in August, the latest sign of a weakening manufacturing sector. US gross domestic product (GDP) – the broadest measure of the economy – grew at an annual rate of 1.3% between April and June, the commerce department said Thursday. The figure was revised down from a previously reported 1.7% gain. Meanwhile the commerce department said durable goods orders fell 13.2% last month, the largest fall since January 2009. The measure of orders for goods designed to last three months or more is a key indicator of economic growth. The decrease followed three consecutive monthly increases including a 3.3% rise in July. August's figure was a seasonally adjusted $198.49bn, the lowest dollar figure since February 2011, and far below most economists predictions. The collapse was driven in large part by by declining transportation orders, particularly for aircraft. Transportation equipment orders fell 34.9% following four consecutive monthly increases. Orders for civilian aircraft plunged. Boeing received 260 orders in July and just one in August. Australia's Qantas airline cancelled an $8.5bn order with Boeing in August, triggering a net decline in new orders for the month. Motor-vehicle and parts orders dropped 10.9%. Outside of transportation, August orders slid 1.6%. But not all the news was bad. Non-defence capital goods orders excluding aircraft, a closely watched barometer of business spending plans, rose 1.1% after falling for the previous two months. The increase was above economists' expectations for 0.5% gain. Paul Dales, senior economist at Capital Economics, said the aircraft figures had skewed the latest figures but they still showed the fundamental weakness of the US's recovery. "It's not as nasty as it looks but it's still quite dire," he said. "There is a downward trend, whether businesses are worried about the global outlook or US fiscal issues isn't clear but there is clearly some concern," he said. Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist at BTIG, said: "Yes 1.3% growth is worse than 1.7% but the larger story is that growth in the second quarter was really bad." He said cuts in government spending were a major drag on the economy but it was also clear that consumers and businesses were also becoming more cautious. The figures came as the latest weekly number for people claiming unemployment insurance for the first time fell sharply. Some 359,000 people filed for jobless benefits for the first time in the week ending last Saturday, down 26,000 from the previous week, the labor department said. The number is close to the 350,000 economists see as a benchmark for recovery in the jobs market. The less volatile four-week average was 374,000, down 4,500 from the previous week. Next week the monthly nonfarm payroll report will give a wider snapshot of the US jobs market. The closely watched indicator has become a monthly flashpoint in the 2012 election. The latest economic figures present arguments for both sides with the presidential election just weeks away. In his latest TV ads President Barack Obama claims the economy is "moving forward again", after reminding viewers of the depth of the economic crisis the country faced when he took office. "It's time for a new economic patriotism, rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong, thriving middle class," says Obama. "Read my plan. Compare it to Governor Romney's and decide for yourself." Romney and his vice-presidential pick Paul Ryan have stepped up their attacks on the president. In an interview with 60 Minutes last Sunday Romney said a vote for Obama was a vote for continued economic woes and higher deficits.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | With early voting underway in Iowa and other states, the Obama and Romney campaigns start their final pitch
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | • Spanish budget delayed until 2pm
• UK shrank less than thought in Q2
• Eurozone consumer sentiment falls
• Italian bond auction lowers yield
• US Q2 GDP 1.30pm
• Blogging now: Martin Farrer
  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Follow live updates as Syrian activists report the highest daily death toll as world leaders remain divided over the crisis at the UN
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ayman al-Zawahiri has also revealed that his predecessor was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood in his youth Al-Qaida's leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has revealed that his predecessor, Osama bin Laden, was blind in one eye and confirmed that in his youth he had been a member of the Saudi Arabian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. In a video posted on a jihadi website, the third in a series entitled Days with the Imam, Zawahiri narrates stories about Bin Laden, who was killed by US navy commandos in May 2011 at his compound in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad. Dressed in a white cloak and turban, Zawahiri revealed "for those who do not know" that the Saudi-born Bin Laden was left blind in the right eye after an unspecified accident in his youth. According to al-Arabiya TV, Zawahiri confirmed that Bin Laden was a member of the Saudi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood before being ejected for insisting on waging jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Acquaintances of Bin Laden have described in the past how he was formally recruited into the brotherhood as an adolescent in Jeddah and thrown out over disagreements about Afghanistan. But Zawahiri's testimony has special value because he was there at the time as a leader of the Egyptian jihad organisation, which became part of al-Qaida in 1988. Zawahiri said Bin Laden had travelled to Pakistan to deliver cash to jihadis in Peshawar but had defied orders from the Brotherhood and joined the armed struggle. The Muslim Brotherhood, the world's oldest Islamist movement, has eschewed violence in recent years and now counts itself as a democratic movement that is one of the big winners of the uprisings of the Arab spring. It dominates the political scene in Tunisia and Egypt and is highly influential from Libya to Syria. Zawahiri is thought to be in hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas and apparently experiencing the difficulties of communication that have plagued what security experts call "al-Qaida central" in recent years. The latest video appeared to be around two months old as he offered greetings to Muslims for the start of Ramadan, which ended on 20 August. On September 11, Zawahiri appeared in a video that was released on the anniversary of the 2001 attacks, declaring that the United States was at war with Islam and that American Muslims should prepare for a "holocaust". Earlier Zawahiri issued a video confirming the death of his deputy, Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was killed in a US drone strike in June.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Challenge is against the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman A New York federal appeals court will hear arguments against the Defense of Marriage Act on Thursday, in the latest battle for same-sex equality in the US. Lawyers for 83-year-old Edith Windsor argue that the act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional. Although certain states in the US recognise same-sex marriage, those unions are not recognised by the federal government. Judges have already found against the Defense of Marriage Act in other states and four appeal cases are waiting to go before the supreme court. Windsor married her partner Thea Clara Spyer in Toronto in 2007, but when Spayer died in 2009, Windsor had to pay $363,000 in federal estate taxes. Windsor's lawyers say she would not have had to pay the tax were it not for the Defense of Marriage Act, and argue that the 1996 law violates the 14th amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the case on behalf of Windsor earlier this year. In June a federal district judge in New York ruled in Windsor's favour, finding that a central provision of the Defense of Marriage Act discriminates against married same-sex couples, but that was not the end of the legal battle. Although the Obama administration said last year it considered the law unconstitutional and would no longer defend it, a group appointed by the Republican majority in the US House of Representatives is defending the law in courts across the country. That group appealed the district court's decision in the Windsor case to the 2nd circuit court, which expedited the appeal due to Windsor's poor health – she suffers from a serious heart condition – and will hear the case on Thursday. Windsor has also asked the supreme court to review her case before the 2nd circuit reaches a decision. Federal courts in Massachusetts, California and Connecticut have previously found the law unconstitutional. Those appeals are now pending before the supreme court, which has not yet decided whether it will take up the issue in its next term. The justice department has filed petitions in all four cases, asking the high court to review the constitutionality of the law's definition of marriage.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | • Spanish budget expected at 2pm
• German unemployment figures 8.55am
• UK Q2 GDP revision at 9.30am
• US Q2 GDP 1.30pm
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | The Italian master's challenging and difficult L'Avventura was booed at its premiere in Cannes. But nowadays the director gets something far more hurtful: indifference This is the centenary year of Michelangelo Antonioni. He was born on 29 September 1912 and died in 2007 at the age of 94, having worked until almost the very end. As well as everything else, he gave us one of the founding myths of postwar cinema: The Booing of L'Avventura. For film historians, it's as pretty much important as the audience riots at the 1913 premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. At the Cannes film festival on 15 May 1960, Antonioni presented his L'Avventura, a challenging and difficult film and a decisive break from his earlier work, replete with languorous spaces and silences. This was movie-modernism's difficult birth. The film was jeered so ferociously, so deafeningly, that poor Antonioni and his beautiful star Monica Vitti burst into tears where they sat. There was yet more booing when it got a special jury prize the following week. But nowadays Antonioni and L'Avventura get something more hurtful than boos: indifference. His great work, once a fixture of the Sight & Sound Top 10 list, this year plummeted out of the charts. This remarkable director has become a bit unfashionable: his kind of high European cinema doesn't command attention the way it did. So who were those boo-ers anyway, those scarlet-faced, dinner-jacketed objectors? (The critic Alexander Walker once wryly told me they were standard-issue French bourgeoisie who didn't realise this wretched film was going to be so long, and were hungry for their dinner.) If they wanted to persuade the world that this emperor was naked, they didn't succeed. But were they just a bunch of grotesque philistines? Over past few months, I've been taking a look at this brilliant film-maker's body of work, and now I wonder if the booing isn't more complicated than I thought. The title refers, ambiguously, to an adventure, or an affair. Antonioni himself was taking his audience on an adventure, away from conventional film-making, out into open waters, like the fateful boat journey in the movie's first act. Then he cut the motor, just as they were out of sight of land. However boorish, the boo-ers might just have been registering understandable dismay at the farewell to Antonioni's early "realist" period of the 1950s, in which he made conventionally paced and structured films, whose own mysterious brilliance has been forgotten. L'Avventura ushered in a phase of Antonioni's work for which he is well known and well parodied. But maybe the vast bulk of his career is effectively a kind of Jamesian "late" period, which shouldn't be allowed to overshadow those stunning first films. The 1950s classics: The Lady Without Camelias, The Friends, The Vanquished – these are the DVDs which I now feel like shoving into people's hands and saying: watch this. In L'Avventura, famously, something mysterious happens and then, defying the rules of movie narrative, it refuses to un-happen. The mystery is unsolved. A group of well-to-do vacationers go on a trip to Lisca Bianca on Panarea, one of the Aeolian islands off the coast of Sicily; there one unhappy young woman, Anna (Lea Massari), vanishes and her perplexing disappearance brings together her fiance Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti) and best friend Claudia (Vitti) in a doomy and melancholy affair in which they experience a kind of existential fear – and appreciate the advantages of non-being. As for Anna, she might theoretically have just run away, escaped from a marriage she was dreading and become another missing-person statistic. But it could also be that this island, like the mysterious Australian rock formation in Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock or the Marabar Caves in EM Forster's A Passage to India, have somehow become the epicentre of occult metaphysical crisis. Anna has dematerialised. Her atoms have been blown away in the wind. She has had a very human yearning for absence, for the annulment of all the cares that torment her. All this, in a kind of anti-miracle, has been granted her. There are some extraordinary set-pieces. The final sequence in the hotel foreshadows the nightmare-puzzle of Alain Resnais's Last Year in Marienbad (1961) and the bizarre scene in which vast, excitable crowds in Palermo mob a sexy celebrity writer called Gloria Perkins is very like that in Godard's Breathless (1960), in which Jean Seberg's Patricia goes to interview the famed author Parvulesco, played in cameo by Jean-Pierre Melville. L'Avventura surely influenced Michael Haneke and the Iranian director Asghar Farhadi. I am a bit more agnostic about the movies that followed. La Notte, or The Night, in 1961 has wonderful performances from Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau as Giovanni and Lidia, the unhappily married couple in fashionable society who attend a smart all-night party, their mood drenched in ennui and clouded by Giovanni's obvious infatuation with another woman – again, Monica Vitti. But I found the ending contrived and contorted. The Red Desert in 1964 was Antonioni's first colour film and I think one of the best of his "high" period of opaque existential anxiety. Vitti is the industrialist's wife who is suffering from depression following a car wreck, and the brutal, polluted landscape makes northern Italy look like another planet, like the Paris of Godard's Alphaville (1965). Reading this on mobile? Click here to watch video Antonioni's three English-language films come after this, and here is where I part company from many pundits. Blow-Up (1966) is the swinging-London tale of a fashion photographer, played by David Hemmings, who accidentally takes a photo of a murder in a London park, and only realises it when he begins to enlarge the background in grainy detail. It's is a metaphysical mystery in what critic Richard Hofstadter called the "paranoid style", perhaps inspired by the endlessly scrutinised Zapruder home-footage of the Kennedy assassination. Now I have to admit something: I've often felt like booing the weak ending – which offers neither conventional plot resolution nor an interesting restatement of metaphysical mystery. Hemmings's scrutiny of the photographs is revealed with a superbly disturbing sequence of black-and-white still images, accompanied by the eerie sounds of the wind in the trees remembered from the park. But the rest of the movie is distended with a series of wacky vignettes and redundant action, including a superfluous if entertaining and atmospheric scene in which Hemmings finds himself at a secret concert given by the Yardbirds in a basement club off Oxford Street. Reading this on mobile? Click here to watch video The second and third English-language movies are far superior. Zabriskie Point (1970) is Antonioni's fascinating film about hippy protest and radical counterculture in late 60s America, a bad trip – very freaky, in a drawn-out, Antonioni-esque way – with its own premonition of the violence at Kent State. It urgently captures the times, with some great documentary-realist crowd scenes, very American, and yet the fugitive love affair at its centre is very Godardian. I have never seen a film which fuses European and American sensibilities so well, and the final apocalyptic vision of an explosion of consumer goods is a brilliant dream-spectacle. Reading this on mobile? Click here to watch video Zabriskie Point got Antonioni awful reviews in the US, but in many ways it's one of his most daring and experimental movies, though overshadowed by the star-power of The Passenger (1975), with Jack Nicholson as Locke, the world-weary reporter who vanishes – as in L'Avventura – by filching the identity of a dead stranger who turns out to be an arms dealer, and whose own inevitable death Locke must now calmly, even ecstatically accept. As for the rest of Antonioni's films, my neurotically completist mission to see all the features yielded a mixed set of reactions. His Chung Kuo – China (1972) is a punishingly long, three-and-a-half-hour documentary about that country which often looks like nothing more than a rather naive travelogue-cum-home-movie. But there is real archival interest there. The 1981 feature The Mystery of Oberwald, based on Cocteau's play The Two-Headed Eagle, was pioneeringly made on analogue video, with weird filter effects, though it now has the flat look of a laborious television play. (In fairness, I should say I could only locate a fuzzy VHS copy.) It certainly doesn't deserve to be forgotten, though, as it features Vitti's most mature and developed performance, as the queen who falls in love with a would-be assassin who was a doppelganger of her late husband. After this, Antonioni's career is something of a long goodbye. He began to take an interest in eroticism. His Identification of a Woman (1982) features some notably explicit sex scenes and, disconcertingly, it does look a little like a porn film. Antonioni suffered a stroke in the mid-80s, but it was a testament to his energy and stamina that he was able to keep writing short stories, and returned with his final film Beyond the Clouds (1995) based on some of his stories, made with the assistance of Wim Wenders. Again, it has a rather softcore-erotic feel. But it interestingly restates the themes of Blow-Up, as its lead character, played by John Malkovich, says: "I only discovered reality when I began photographing it, photographing and enlarging the surface of things around me …" Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau are brought back for a moving cameo as an elderly couple. And so Antonioni gradually faded from view, a shadow of his former self, whose last work in 2004 was a pallid short film contributed to a collection called Eros – a film whose supposed eroticism was unconvincing. So now it is a really thrilling experience to return to the almost-forgotten prehistory of Antonioni, those punchy, cerebral but often highly experimental realist pictures of the 1950s, beginning with the Greeneian, downbeat Story of a Love Affair (1950), about a forbidden relationship rekindled by the snoopings of a private detective. The film precedes by one year the publication of Greene's The End of the Affair and in its seediness resembles Patrick Hamilton's Gorse novels, or Gerald Kersh's Night and the City. Antonioni's The Lady Without Camelias (1953) is a wonderful film, and in fact my favourite of his. It's a brilliant tragicomedy about the movie business: the missing link between Truffaut's Day for Night (1973) and Sturges's Sullivan's Travels (1941). I think its desperate sadness and emotional maturity entitle it to neglected-masterpiece status. Lucia Bosé plays Clara, a former shop assistant from Milan who has been discovered by ambitious movie producer Gianni Franchi (Andrea Checchi). Without ever consciously choosing a film career, or being in any way happy or fulfilled in it, she is swept up into huge commercial success in light musicals and comedies. Poor Clara and her husband become obsessed with getting her into classy, quality cinema – a delicious irony, given Antonioni's own spectacular career arc. Clara's tragic destiny is to confuse love and contentment with a successful career in arthouse cinema: she has a fatal delusion that success in high art – just out of reach – is crucial to human happiness and self-respect. What a glorious film it is, Chekhovian in its wit and melancholy. The Vanquished (1953) is a captivatingly strange portmanteau film, featuring three brash and anxious tales from France, Italy and England, ripped from the newspaper headlines. Moody and alienated young delinquents are killing for thrills, for celebrity, for the sheer Dostoevskian hell of it. The Italian segment gives the clearest indication so far of the way Antonioni's film-making was going to develop. After killing a customs officer, a young man runs desperately away and falls, hitting his head. From here, he wanders around in a daze, not entirely lucid. His meanderings are a hint of the strange phases and altered states of L'Avventura. In The Friends (1955) a young woman called Clelia arrives in Turin to manage a new fashion house; she is played by Eleonora Rossi, with a resemblance to Ingrid Bergman. On her first night, she is shocked to discover the woman in the hotel-room next to hers has attempted suicide: this is Rosetta (Madeleine Fischer). At once, Clelia finds herself involved in the life of Rosetta's circle of excitable, mercurial friends. It is as almost as if these friends sense that, however much Rosetta recovers from her suicide attempt, she is now absent, and that Clelia is being groomed as a replacement "friend". It is a brilliant and disturbing serio-comedy, gossipy, soapy, melodramatic. The Cry (1957) shows Antonioni beginning to morph into the famous creator of the later movies. Aldo (Steve Cochran) has a furious row with the woman with whom he has had a child. He leaves and takes their daughter with him, on a quest to find a woman who could possibly be a replacement for his lost love and a mother to his girl. He wonders if he can make a new life for himself, perhaps efface his catastrophic life choices. Aldo is electrified by the tall tales of a dredger captain he meets, who says he made a modest pile working in Venezuela. Aldo actually goes so far as to get a map of that country, with some sort of booklet showing employment opportunities for a skilled mechanic. But then, on a despairing whim, a sudden, bleak realisation that this is all nonsense, he simply throws the map and the papers away – they flutter off on the wind. It is a superb, rather literary moment. Here is where the existential fume of Antonioni's work begins to be distilled: from the bones of plot arises the smoke of anxiety, disenchantment, alienation – but also a numbed kind of rapture and release at human helplessness. So this is my essential Antonioni viewing list, divided into early and late, or perhaps pre-Boo and post-Boo. All of them are the work of a master, and yet if I had to recommend one to start off with, it would be The Lady Without Camelias. You can't appreciate what a strange and wonderful director Antonioni is without watching that early gem. I think it is through a rediscovery of these early classics that Antonioni's reputation will rise once more. Early AntonioniLa Signora Senza Camelie (The Lady Without Camelias) (1950)
I Vinti (The Vanquished) (1953)
Le Amiche (The Friends) (1955)
Il Grido (The Cry) (1957) Late AntonioniL'Avventura (1960)
Il Deserto Rosso (The Red Desert) (1964)
Zabriskie Point (1970)
The Passenger (1975)
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | • Spanish budget expected at 2pm
• UK shrank less than thought in Q2
• Eurozone consumer sentiment falls
• Italian bond auction lowers yield
• US Q2 GDP 1.30pm
• Blogging now: Martin Farrer
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Wang Xuemei casts doubt on theory British businessman was murdered with cyanide by wife of ousted leader Bo Xilai A leading Chinese forensic scientist has publicly cast doubt on the conviction of Gu Kailai for murdering British businessman Neil Heywood with cyanide. The wife of ousted leader Bo Xilai was convicted and handed a suspended death penalty last month over the death of the 41-year-old Briton in Chongqing last year. But Wang Xuemei, an official at the Supreme People's Procuratorate, wrote in a blogpost on Wednesday night: "I feel very pained, upset and scared that our court believed the theory [Heywood] was poisoned with cyanide." Wang has had an unusually high media profile in the past, lauded in the Chinese media as the first female forensic scientist to work for the country's highest level prosecution body. But she told the Guardian that she had been pressing officials to move her from her position for almost a decade because she had an "empty title" with no real duties. Even so, it is extremely surprising that an official in her position would publicly question the verdict in such a politically sensitive case. Discussions of the case have been heavily censored online and almost no coverage has appeared in Chinese media beyond reproductions of reports from state news agency Xinhua. Wang asked why none of the obvious symptoms of cyanide poisoning were cited in the accounts that emerged from Gu's trial or that of the former Chongqing police chief, Wang Lijun. On Monday a Chinese court sentenced him to 15 years for covering up Heywood's murder, accepting bribes and abuse of power and defection. One simple explanation may be that few details of the scientific evidence used to convict Gu have emerged, although an unofficial account of her trial from a person in the court said her defence team questioned the scientific evidence against her. Her lawyers reportedly said Wang Lijun took two blood samples yet found no traces of poison, while a third sample that he took – tested only four months later – found low levels of a toxin, apparently insufficient to kill. Chinese trials often rely heavily on testimony from the accused and state media have said Gu confessed and to Heywood's murder. Wang Lijun's trial is also said to have heard a recording the police chief made secretly of Gu confessing to him the day after Heywood's death, though no details were given. After discussing Gu's mental health problems, including her alleged paranoia, Wang Xuemei also wrote that the 53-year-old trusted the former police chief deeply and added: "In other words, Wang Lijun could easily have used Gu to do whatever he wanted to do. "Who would benefit from Neil Heywood's death?" She told the Guardian: "I don't care how long the blog is up there. I just want to tell people I feel humiliated. "I think Chinese criminal doctors are not such idiots. I have done my duty and fulfilled my historical responsibility."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom receives apology over illegal surveillance, dealing fresh blow to US extradition efforts New Zealand's spy agency illegally carried out surveillance on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, an official report shows, prompting an apology from the prime minister and dealing a possible blow to US efforts to extradite him. Washington wants the 38-year-old German national, also known as Kim Schmitz, to be sent to the US to face charges of internet piracy and breaking copyright laws. The report, published on Thursday by the Inspector-General of Intelligence, the watchdog for New Zealand spy agencies, found the Government Communications and Security Bureau (GCSB) had spied on Dotcom, despite a law prohibiting it from snooping on New Zealand citizens and residents. The flamboyant Dotcom attained New Zealand permanent resident status in 2010. The prime minister, John Key, said: "It is the GCSB's responsibility to act within the law, and it is hugely disappointing that in this case its actions fell outside the law", adding the incident was caused by "basic errors". He apologised to Dotcom and all New Zealanders, saying they were entitled to be protected by the law but it had failed them. New Zealand police asked the GCSB to keep track of Dotcom and his colleagues before a raid in late January on his rented country estate near Auckland, in which computers and hard drives, artwork, and cars were confiscated. The illegal surveillance may deal another blow to the US extradition case after a New Zealand court ruled in June that search warrants used in the raid on Dotcom's home were illegal. The raid followed a request by the FBI for the arrest of Dotcom for leading a group that netted $175m (£108m) since 2005 by allegedly copying and distributing music, films and other copyrighted content without authorisation. Dotcom maintains that the Megaupload site was merely an online storage facility, and has accused Hollywood of lobbying the US government to prosecute him. American authorities are appealing against a New Zealand court decision that Dotcom should be allowed to see the evidence on which the extradition hearing will be based. The extradition hearing has been delayed until March.
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Anti-terrorism bill would increase authority of force suspected of involvement in disappearances of alleged militants Muslim leaders in Kenya fear a new anti-terrorism bill will give more powers to a widely distrusted police force that is suspected of involvement in the disappearances of several Muslims with alleged links to Somalia's al-Shabaab militant group. The disappearances, and the killing last month of radical Muslim cleric Aboud Rogo in Mombasa, have enraged Kenya's Muslims, who make up about 11% of the population, with the majority living along the Indian Ocean coast. After Rogo was gunned down by unidentified assailants, Muslims in the Indian Ocean city torched churches, looted shops and hurled grenades at police. Three officers were killed. Activists and community leaders warned that the anger, exacerbated on the coast by poverty, unemployment and perceived neglect by authorities, could erupt again if manipulated, either by politicians or foreign extremists. As Kenya prepares for its first elections since about 1,200 people were killed after a disputed poll in 2007, rising anger among Muslims is just one piece in a complex mosaic of ethnic, economic, and political pressures in east Africa's largest economy. Al-Amin Kimathi, a human rights activist and chair of the Muslim Human Rights Forum, said at least seven Muslims, most with alleged ties to the al-Qaida-linked Somali militants, had disappeared this year. "We have documented at least seven cases, with eyewitness accounts and … the modus operandi points to the same thing," Kimathi said. In April, the mutilated body of a Muslim cleric, Samir Khan, was discovered in Tsavo national park, a few days after men who identified themselves as police took Khan and a friend off a bus in Mombasa, according to witnesses. The friend is still missing. "The moment it is cloaked in the war on terror, nobody gives a damn … That's where I really feel very frightened about what is going on," Kimathi said. The police did not respond to requests for comment, but in the past, officers have suggested that some of the disappearances could have been the result of infighting among al-Shabaab sympathisers. Kimathi said some of the missing people probably had cases to answer with the Anti-Terrorism Police Unit (ATPU), but that inefficiencies within the police and courts were hampering investigations. "They reach a point where they get frustrated by the law and the court process and they have realised that the only way to deal with these people is to 'disappear' them," he said. Rogo was on US and UN sanctions lists for supporting al-Shabaab and reportedly had close ties to the Muslim Youth Centre, a Kenya-based ally of the Somali militants. Khan had been charged with recruiting for al-Shabaab. Kenya has a long history of extrajudicial killings, and the prospect of security agencies being given more powers under the new anti-terrorism bill worries many observers. In a 2009 report, the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Philip Alston, said: "Kenyan police are a law unto themselves. They kill often, with impunity." Ben Rawlence, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the recent disappearances were part of this pattern. "There is no real oversight or judicial control of the police. That structural lawlessness is very concerning," he said. In its current form, the anti-terrorism bill, which is due for a second reading in parliament this week, would increase the powers of the police to detain people on suspicion of terrorism, as well as to use techniques such as phone tapping. Rawlence said that "anything that increases the police's freedom of operation … is unlikely to be good for human rights". Hassan Ole Naado, the head of the Kenya Muslims Youth Alliance, said one concern was how quickly the bill was being pushed through. "Powers that ought to be the judiciary's powers are now being given to the police force and the executive … Those powers are prone to terrible abuse," he said. Kimathi said the ATPU felt able to act with impunity because of ties with US counter-terrorism forces in a volatile region where Kenya is viewed as an ally, but also a potential target for al-Shabaab and a source of recruits. Kenya receives millions of dollars in funding from the US state department's Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA), as well as training and FBI assistance on investigations. Kimathi said he believed the ATPU worked under the direction of the FBI. Asked to comment, an information officer for the US embassy in Nairobi said: "The FBI is in Kenya at the invitation of the Kenyan government to work with the Kenyan police." Kimathi also said members of a notorious police death squad, known as the Kwekwe and supposedly disbanded in 2007, were possibly involved in the recent disappearances. The battle against al-Shabaab outside and inside Kenya has sharpened divisions between Muslims and other communities, especially since Kenyan troops crossed into Somalia last October and al-Shabaab threatened to retaliate. Most Somalis are Muslim and some Kenyans have begun to equate Muslims with Somalis, and with al-Shabaab. Kimathi described how a man he challenged over dangerous driving typified these attitudes. "He looked at me, and said: 'Come on, who do you think you are? You are al-Shabaab … We'll take you back to Somalia, all of you.' So that is now what is getting into society. Any Muslim that you see is an al-Shabaab … He is a guilty person."
 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | WikiLeaks founder, speaking via videolink to the UN, says it is 'audacious' for US to take credit for Middle East progress The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has accused President Obama of seeking to exploit the Arab spring revolutions for political gain, claiming Obama's vocal support for freedom of expression had not been translated into action. Assange was speaking to a gathering of diplomats at the UN general assembly through a satellite videolink from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he sought refuge three months ago from extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on allegations of sex offences. The meeting was hosted by the Ecuadorean foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, who said he would once more demand the UK grant Assange safe passage to Ecuador when he meets his British counterpart, William Hague, later on Thursday. He accused the British government of violating Assange's human rights, saying he could be stuck in the embassy in London for 10 years, which would have a severe impact on his health. Assange, dressed in a shirt and half-knotted tie, appeared tired and unwell on the video. He had dark rings under his eyes and sniffed frequently during a prepared presentation. Assange focused largely on Barack's Obama address to the UN on Tuesday in which the president gave a staunch defence of freedom of speech, and voiced American support for the revolutions in the Arab world. Assange said that it was "audacious" for the US government "to take credit for the last two years of progress", given past American support for the ousted Arab dictators. He said Mohammed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street pedlar whose suicide from despair over his life in January last year sparked the revolt, "did not set himself on fire so that Barack Obama could get re-elected". He added that it was "disrespect to the dead to claim that the United States supported the forces of change". Instead, Assange claimed that it was the leak of classified US diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, allegedly by a US soldier in military intelligence, Bradley Manning, that "went on to help trigger the Arab spring". Referring to Obama's UN defence of the freedom of expression, Assange pointed to the treatment of Manning in US prison, where he was held in isolation, stripped and left naked for hours in his cell, and to the denunciation of WikiLeaks by American leaders. "The time for words has run out. It is time to cease the persecution of our people and our alleged sources. It is time to join the force of change, not in fine words but in fine deeds," Assange said. Assange and the Ecuadorean government argue that if he goes to Sweden to face the sexual assault allegations against him, he could be extradited from there to the US to face politically-motivated prosecution. The Sydney Morning Herald has published what it described as declassified US air force counter-intelligence reports which designated Assange and WikiLeaks as "enemies of the United States", the same legal category as al-Qaida and the Taliban. The British government said it is legally obliged to carry out Assange's extradition after the Australian's appeals in the British courts were rejected. It has also said that according to European law, it would not allow extradition to the United States on charges that could result in the death penalty. Patiño argued that the UK's human rights obligations overrode its duty under EU treaty. "The United Kingdom says it defends human rights," Patiño said. "Would it be human to try to keep Mr Assange in the embassy for months or years?" He added that Assange might spend up to 10 years in the embassy "without right to his life or his privacy".
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