Japanese Yakuza Aid Earthquake Relief Efforts. Between sketchy Whatsapp messages and mysteriously moved household items, the prosecution won’t rest until even the little things make a big difference. “You’re trying, and it’s not working. Your version is so improbable that nobody would ever think it is reasonably possible.” A fan, a duvet and a plug adapter could mean the difference between freedom and life in prison for South African Paralympian Oscar Pistorius, who is currently on trial for the murder of his girlfriend, 29-year-old model and law graduate, Reeva Steenkamp. State prosecutor Gerrie Nel, who has been relentless in his vicious cross-examination of the accused, cornered Pistorius in the final minutes of today’s proceedings by demonstrating that the placement of one of the fans, the adaptor it was connected to, the duvet and the drawn curtains all suggested that Pistorius never went to retrieve two fans from the balcony as stated in his affidavit.
“So let’s just sum this up. “That is correct, My Lady,” Pistorius responded. Interesting Falklands, Argentina and Bureaucracy. While Britain has been involved in a number of conflicts since the Falklands War 28 years ago, it remains Argentina's only war in more than 100 years. Its defeat - and the issue of the island's sovereignty - continues to dominate on both a national and a personal level. Constantino Davidoff played a small but significant role in a small but significant war. At the end of March 1982, a party of Argentine scrap metal merchants landed on the distant and inhospitable South Georgia island - 900km (600 miles) east of the Falkland Islands. He was the owner of a company contracted to dismantle a whaling station on the British-owned island.
It was a simple business deal that promised to make him a lot of money - but ended up provoking a war and ruining his life. I meet Mr Davidoff at his small, neat apartment in the working class Avellaneda neighbourhood, just south of Buenos Aires. He still deals in scrap metal from a garage below his home. Military invasion The 39 scrap metal workers were detained. Who is on UK 'least wanted' list? Sixteen people banned from entering the UK since October last year for fostering extremism or hatred have been named by the Home Office for the first time. A total of 22 people have been excluded in that time, although the identities of six of them have been withheld by the government in the "public interest".
The named individuals are: Preacher. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence. Preacher and Hamas MP. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and to provoke others to terrorist acts. Former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard who set up racist website Stormfront. A prolific speaker and writer. Neo-Nazi. Jewish militant. Television preacher. Kashmiri militant group leader. Hezbollah militant. Preacher. US touts Afghan mineral wealth potential. Wikileaks site unfazed by arrest of US army 'source' 8 June 2010Last updated at 17:41 By Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks has said that the detention of an alleged confidential source by the US military does not compromise its work.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told BBC News that other potential whistle-blowers should not be put off from sending material to the site. The US has detained US military analyst Bradley Manning on suspicion of leaking classified material to the site. Mr Assange would not confirm whether Mr Manning was a source. "We endeavour to protect our sources," he told BBC News. "We do not know if Mr Manning is a source, but we understand there are allegations that are being taken seriously so we are naturally inclined to try to defend [him].
" The US army in Iraq has said that Specialist (Spc) Manning was in Kuwait and had been "placed in pre-trial confinement for allegedly releasing classified information". 'Sacred oath' Continue reading the main story “Start Quote. BBC - Meeting Spain's last anarchist. Hours after flying on a rickety 19-seater propeller plane and landing on a dirt strip, you get to the village of San Buenaventura in the heart of the Bolivian Amazon. Here, in a simple one-storey brick house next to a row of wooden shacks, is the home of Antonio Garcia Baron. He is the only survivor still alive of the anarchist Durruti column which held Francoist forces at bay in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the founder of an anarchist community in the heart of the jungle. Mr Baron, 87, was wearing a hat and heavy dark glasses. He later explained that they were to protect his eyes, which were damaged when he drank a cup of coffee containing poison nine years ago.
It was, he said, the last of more than 100 attempts on his life, which began in Paris, where he moved in 1945 after five years in the Mauthausen Nazi concentration camp, and continued in Bolivia, his home since the early 1950s. Stateless On the walls of Mr Baron's house is a picture of him taken in the camp. Business | Daewoo leases African plantation. South Korean firm Daewoo has unveiled plans to plant corn on one million acres of land in Madagascar, to sharply cut its reliance on US imports. Daewoo is leasing the vast tract of land - half the size of Belgium - for 99 years and hopes to produce 5 million tonnes of corn a year by 2023. It will use South African expertise and local labour on the plantations. Asian countries have been trying to ensure access to food supplies after grain prices soared earlier this year. Daewoo will also grow palm oil on another 300,000 acres of land leased in Madagascar. The conglomerate is already developing a 50,000-acre corn farm in Indonesia in partnership with South Korea's biggest feed maker, Nonghyup Feed.
Other countries short of arable land, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have also been seeking agricultural investments in Africa or Asia. And some African countries have expressed interest in receiving foreign investors. Americas | Q&A: CIA jails allegations. Fourteen European states have colluded with the CIA in secret US flights for terror suspects, a report for Europe's human rights watchdog has concluded. The seven-month inquiry was sparked by media allegations that the US intelligence agency ran secret jails abroad for terror suspects. The US admits to picking up terrorism suspects but denies sending them to other countries to face torture. BBC News examines the investigations, accusations and legal implications of the claims. What have investigators found? Swiss senator Dick Marty has reported to the Council of Europe that 14 European governments have colluded with the CIA over the transport of terror suspects around the world for interrogation - a practice known as "extraordinary rendition".
Spain, Turkey, Germany and Cyprus provided "staging posts" for rendition operations, while the UK, Portugal, Ireland and Greece were "stop-off points", the report said. What were the allegations? What is 'extraordinary rendition'? CIA jails in Europe 'confirmed' A Council of Europe investigator says he has evidence to prove the CIA ran secret jails in Poland and Romania to interrogate "war on terror" suspects.
Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, has been investigating CIA operations on behalf of the European human rights body. In his new report, released on Friday, Mr Marty says secret CIA prisons "did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania". The governments of both countries have strongly denied any involvement. A spokesman for the CIA told the BBC that "the CIA's counter-terror operations have been lawful, effective, closely reviewed, and of benefit to many people - including Europeans - by disrupting plots and saving lives". Mr Marty says he drew on multiple sources and used his own intelligence methods to investigate the CIA's "extraordinary renditions", the process under which terror suspects were transported around the world for interrogation. Milan trial Mistreatment. UK | UK Politics | UK apology over rendition flights. David Miliband has admitted two US "extraordinary rendition" flights landed on UK territory in 2002.
The foreign secretary said in both cases US planes refuelled on the UK dependent territory of Diego Garcia. He said he was "very sorry" to have to say that previous denials made in "good faith" were now having to be corrected. The renditions - the transport of terror suspects around the world for interrogation - only came to light after a US records search, he said.
BBC world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds said the revelations were "a serious embarrassment for the British government". Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and former Prime Minister Tony Blair made statements in 2005, 2006 and 2007 saying there was no evidence that rendition flights had stopped on UK territory. Water boarding But he said he would compile a list of all flights in UK territory about which concerns had been expressed to send to the US for "specific assurance" they were not used for rendition. 'Widespread concern'
Americas | CIA admits waterboarding inmates. The CIA has for the first time publicly admitted using the controversial method of "waterboarding" on terror suspects. CIA head Michael Hayden told Congress it had only been used on three people, and not for the past five years. He said the technique had been used on high-profile al-Qaeda detainees including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Waterboarding, condemned as torture by rights groups and many governments, is an interrogation method that puts the the detainee in fear of drowning. Mr Hayden was speaking as National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell presented his annual threat assessment. Congress has been debating banning the use of waterboarding by the CIA. President Bush has threatened to veto such a bill. Kuwaiti-born Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is accused of masterminding the 11 September attacks on the United States.
The two other men Mr Hayden said the CIA had also used waterboarding against are also top al-Qaeda suspects, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, both from Saudi Arabia. British Asians 'outsourcing murder' A BBC investigation has uncovered the deadly practice of Britons travelling to India to hire contract killers. Family and business associates, who are lured to the sub-continent, are often the targets. In a country where murder is cheaper and less fraught with risk, the perpetrators of these crimes are rarely brought to justice. Campaigners in both India and the UK believe this to have claimed the lives of hundreds of victims over several years. These armchair murder plots are hatched in the living rooms of Britain and executed mainly in the rural Indian state of Punjab. 'Foul play' I made the journey to India to investigate these sinister crimes.
In a remote village, surrounded by lush green fields, a rickety ox-drawn cart trundles along the dusty lane. It is here that a British woman, who was on holiday with her husband visiting relatives, was killed - the apparent victim of a hit-and-run accident. But her relatives in India suspect foul play. "Her husband wanted to re-marry. 'Simple' Missing. GM plans to cut 10,000 Opel jobs. Peter Mandelson: "There will be a future for the Vauxhall plants in the UK" General Motors (GM) has confirmed that it plans to cut 10,000 jobs across its European car unit Opel, which includes the Vauxhall brand in the UK. The announcement comes a day after GM said it was cancelling its deal to sell Opel to Canadian car parts firm Magna. Unions in Germany said workers would begin walk-outs from Thursday in protest at GM's decision.
The German government, which had backed the sale of Opel, demanded GM repayment of a 1.5bn euro ($2.2bn; £1.3bn) loan. Union anger The 10,000 job cuts which GM now plans is broadly similar to the number Magna proposed, though the company has yet to reveal where the axe will fall. German trade unions now fear two of the four Opel factories in the country could close under the GM plan, whereas under the Magna agreement they had been given a guarantee that all four factories would have been kept going. UK relief Unite will now have to seek a fresh agreement with GM.
Lithuania hosted secret CIA prisons. The CIA set up at least two secret detention centres in Lithuania after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the US, a Lithuanian inquiry has found. A parliamentary committee report says in 2005 and 2006, CIA chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania. It says that no Lithuanian officials were allowed near the aircraft, nor were they told who was on board. Poland and Romania hosted similar CIA "black sites", say reports by ABC News in the US.
In Lithuania, one centre on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius had room for eight terror suspects at a time, according to ABC News. It was formerly a riding school and suspects were reportedly held there between 2004 and 2005. But the parliamentary report appears to absolve Lithuania's political leaders of responsibility for any human rights violations that may have been committed by the CIA, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes reports from Moscow. It says even the president was unaware of exactly what the US intelligence service was doing.
Pope 'has no UK arrest immunity' Dubaï : prison ferme pour un baiser en public. Diplomata israelense expulso por Londres é agente secreto. 24 de março de 2010 • 06h42 • atualizado às 07h31 O diplomata israelense expulso por Londres trabalhava na embaixada para o Mossad, o serviço secreto de Israel, e será substituído por outro agente do mesmo organismo, informou a rádio pública. A Grã-Bretanha anunciou na terça-feira a expulsão de um diplomata israelense, ao indicar que a "responsabilidade" de Israel ficou comprovada no caso do uso de passaportes britânicos falsos por um esquadrão que assassinou, em janeiro, um dirigente do grupo radical palestino Hamas em Dubai. Uma fonte do governo de Israel afirmou que o país não pretende retaliar a medida. "A prioridade agora é acalmar o jogo", disse a fonte. Segundo a rádio pública e o jornal israelense Yediot Aharonot, o diplomata, que de fato era um representante do Mossad na capital britânica, será substituído em breve por outro funcionário do organismo.
A rádio também citou um "alto funcionário" do governo israelense, não identificado, que criticou a Grã-Bretanha. UN body to look at meat and climate link. Livestock's Long Shadow calculated meat-related emissions from field to abattoir UN specialists are to look again at the contribution of meat production to climate change, after claims that an earlier report exaggerated the link. A 2006 report concluded meat production was responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions - more than transport. The report has been cited by people campaigning for a more vegetable-based diet, including Sir Paul McCartney. But a new analysis, presented at a major US science meeting, says the transport comparison was flawed. Sir Paul was one of the figures launching a campaign late last year centred on the slogan "Less meat = less heat". But curbing meat production and consumption would be less beneficial for the climate than has been claimed, said Frank Mitloehner from the University of California at Davis (UCD).
"Smarter animal farming, not less farming, will equal less heat," he told delegates to the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting in San Francisco. Israel reprimands officers over UN compound shelling. Business - Mulheres ganhando espaco no mundo ne negocios. Lithuania shuts its only nuclear power station.