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A US defence department analyst has admitted giving classified information about military communication systems to a businessman working for China.

Gregg Bergersen, 51, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to disclose national defence information "to persons not entitled to receive it".

Mr Bergersen faces up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced on 20 June.

Correspondents say his admission comes amid growing concern in Washington about the activities of Chinese spies.

Four others were arrested in separate case last month for allegedly passing secret details about the space shuttle and other US aerospace programmes to China.

Air defence system

Mr Bergersen, a weapons systems policy analyst at the US Defence Security Co-operation Agency (DSCA), was arrested last month with joint Taiwanese-US national Tai Shen Kuo and Yu Xin Kang, a Chinese national living in the US.

The FBI said Mr Bergersen had received thousands of dollars for passing on classified information to Mr Kuo, a New Orleans-based furniture salesman who has also been accused of turning over that information to the Chinese government.

The US government said that Mr Bergesen thought Mr Kuo was closely affiliated with Taiwan's ministry of defence and was unaware he was in contact with Chinese officials.

Mr Bergesen's lawyer, Mark Cummings, said that there had been no explicit exchange of money for information. For instance, Mr Bergesen had won $3,000 from Mr Kuo in cash in a poker game in Las Vegas in April 2007, he said.

"In hindsight, he understands that the money was given to him in anticipation that he would provide documents," Mr Cummings added.

Ms Kang ferried the information between Mr Kuo and Chinese officials, the FBI alleged.

Mr Kuo, 58, and Mr Kang, 33, face a more serious charge of "conspiracy to disclose national defence information to a foreign government". They face up to life in prison if convicted.

The information passed on related to Taiwan's new Po Sheng air defence system. Taiwanese officials said that some damage had been caused by the disclosures, but that they had not compromised key technology.

The Chinese government has dismissed the espionage accusations as groundless and accused the US of "Cold War thinking".

BBC News

[OMEN]

Mexico's "Little Old Lady Killer," a female ex-wrestler who strangled and beat to death 11 elderly women in their homes after offering them domestic help, was sentenced to life in prison.

Juana Barraza, dubbed "Mataviejitas" in Spanish, murdered at least 11 people in the capital since 2000 and may have killed close to 40 in total, making her one of the worst serial killers in Mexico's recent history.

The muscular, ginger-haired former wrestler would cruise the streets of Mexico City, sometimes dressed up as a nurse, and win the confidence of frail old women by offering to wash their clothes or help with other household chores.

Once in their homes, she would strangle her victims with items like women's tights, a curtain cord or a phone cable, or bludgeon them to death with household objects.

She would also steal symbolic "trophies" like ornaments or religious items.

Barraza, who is about 50 years old, was sentenced to 759 years in prison for the crimes, but under Mexican law she can only serve a maximum of 50 years.

Her lawyers have 50 days to appeal the ruling.

She was arrested in 2006 after a witness spotted her fleeing from the home of woman in her 80s who had been strangled with a stethoscope.

She told police she killed to get revenge on older women after her mother gave her away to a man who sexually abused her when she was a child.

As a professional wrestler she was known as "The Silent Lady." She also worked as a popcorn vendor at fights.

After her arrest, police found an altar in her home to the death cult figure "Santa Muerte" (Saint Death), a folk saint popular with thieves and drug smugglers.

When she heard the court's ruling, she said: "Let God forgive me and not abandon me," Mexican media reported.

Reuters

[OMEN]

Riot police in armoured carriers deployed in two of Harare's opposition strongholds as suspicions grew that President Robert Mugabe was trying to rig Zimbabwe's most important election since independence.

A resident of one of the townships said a convoy of riot police in about 20 vehicles moved through the vast area. "There are a lot of patrols here," said the resident, adding people had been told to stay off the normally teeming streets.

More than 48 hours after polls closed, only 66 of 210 parliamentary constituencies had been declared, showing the ruling ZANU-PF one seat ahead of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Two of President Robert Mugabe's ministers lost their seats.

No results have been announced for the presidential vote, in which Mugabe faces the most formidable political challenge of his 28 years in power.

The opposition has accused the veteran leader of delaying the issuing of the results in a bid to steal the election, which Zimbabweans hoped would help rescue a country ravaged by an economic crisis.

"It is now clear that there is something fishy. The whole thing is suspicious and totally unacceptable," MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.

An independent Zimbabwean election monitoring group forecast Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the largest faction of the MDC, would win the most votes in the presidential poll but not by a big enough margin to avoid a second round.

The Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) said its projections giving him 49.4 percent were based on a random sample of 435 polling stations across the country's 10 provinces.

It predicted Mugabe would win 41.8 percent and ruling ZANU-PF party defector Simba Makoni would get 8.2 percent.

Seven European countries and the United States expressed concern over the delay, and called on Zimbabwe's Electoral Commission to quickly release the results, especially for the presidential election.

Electoral Commission chairman George Chiweshe said the slow pace was due to the complexity of holding presidential, parliamentary and local polls together for the first time.

FAIR AND CREDIBLE

Mugabe, 84, is under unprecedented pressure from a two-pronged attack by veteran MDC rival Tsvangirai and Makoni, who both blame him for Zimbabwe's ruin.

Zimbabweans are suffering the world's highest inflation of more than 100,000 percent, chronic shortages of food and fuel, and an HIV/AIDS epidemic that has contributed to a steep decline in life expectancy.

And although the odds seemed stacked against Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, analysts believe his iron grip on the country and solid backing from the armed forces could enable him to ignore the results and declare victory.

He rejects vote-rigging allegations.

The U.S. State Department called on Zimbabwe's electoral commission to put aside "partisan sympathies" and "follow the letter and spirit of the law".

Marwick Khumalo, head of an observer group from the Pan-African parliament, said the elections themselves were free, fair and credible overall.

But he added: "The mission is concerned that two days after the closure of the polls, the overall outcome of the elections remains unknown."

Official results so far showed ZANU-PF with 31 seats, MDC with 30 and a breakaway MDC faction with five.

The MDC said its tally showed it had won 96 parliamentary constituencies out of 128 counted. Makoni had 10 percent of the unofficial presidential vote count.

The MDC said unofficial tallies showed Tsvangirai had 60 percent of the presidential vote, twice the total for Mugabe, with more than half the results counted. Private polling organisations also put Tsvangirai well ahead.

"In our view, as we stated before, we cannot see the national trend changing. This means the people have spoken, they've spoken against the dictatorship," MDC Secretary-General Tendai Biti said.

In his first public comments since the vote, Makoni criticised the way results were being announced. "We are very worried by the manner in which things are unfolding," he said.

Tsvangirai and some international observers accused Mugabe of stealing the last presidential election in 2002.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Public Affairs Minister Chen Chimutengwende both lost their seats.

The government has warned that any early victory claim would be regarded as an attempted coup.

Reuters

[OMEN]

An international pilot was arrested as he landed in Sydney yesterday and charged with carrying suitcases stuffed with cash out of Australia in a multimillion-dollar drug-running and money-laundering operation.

The Australian Crime Commission has accused senior Vietnam Airlines pilot Quoc Viet Lai of taking bribes to smuggle almost $4 million in drug money out of the country in previous trips dating back to 2005.

He is alleged to have picked up suitcases of cash in Melbourne and Sydney and carried them onto planes back to Vietnam, using his privileged status as an airline pilot to bypass customs bag checks.

The experienced pilot was charged last night with 40 counts of money laundering and will appear in a Sydney court today.

The arrest gives a glimpse into one of the nation's most secretive and significant operations fighting organised crime.

In its last annual report, the Crime Commission revealed that since March 2005, Operation Gordian had arrested 63 people, stopped the sale of drugs worth $1 billion and tracked $93 million in drug money leaving Australia. That figure is believed to have ballooned since then.

Lai is the second international pilot from Vietnam's government-owned carrier to be arrested by the commission for allegedly carrying suitcases filled with drug money onto planes bound for Vietnamese airports.

The first pilot, Van Dang Tran, was jailed for 4½ years last August for attempting to smuggle $6.5 million out of Australia.

Lai, who was arrested yesterday morning after flying from Ho Chi Minh City to Sydney, is accused of collecting the proceeds of drug sales on 17 occasions in 2005 and 2006 from Vietnamese money remitters in Footscray and the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta.

Operation Gordian, which includes assistance from the Australian Federal Police, Austrac and state police forces, monitors drug money as it leaves Australia instead of retrospectively tracing proceeds of crime after a drug bust.

The operation has uncovered how several sophisticated drug syndicates send their money from drug sales in Australia back to South-East Asia via electronic money transfers and physical couriers.

John Broome, former chairman of the Australian Crime Commission's predecessor, the National Crime Authority, said Australia was a highly lucrative market for South-East Asian drug barons.

"If we don't stop the laundering of funds out of Australia, we are giving them enough to buy a huge amount of extra heroin to send back here," he said.

Recent media reports have revealed that Australian law enforcement agencies are concerned about an increase in the amount of heroin reaching Australia.

Mr Broome, who has been a critic of the lack of action taken by some agencies to combat money laundering, said it was too early to tell whether last year's changes to anti-money-laundering legislation were having an effect. He said an obsession with terrorism meant some agencies had "dropped the ball" on organised crime.

"If you ask what is more damaging to Australian society, major crimes like drug trafficking and money laundering or terrorism, the answer is clear: it is drug trafficking and money laundering."

It is estimated that between $2 billion and $3 billion is laundered in Australia each year.

The arrest of a second international airline pilot also puts the focus back on airport security. While recent changes, arising from the 2005 Wheeler report on airport security, would have reduced the alleged ease with which the pilots allegedly smuggled the drug money onto their planes, sources say vulnerabilities remain.

AAP

[OMEN]

A rights group report blamed local security forces for the massacre of 17 Sri Lankan tsunami aid workers in 2006 and accused the government of an outright cover-up.

At the time, the killing of the local workers from aid group Action Contre La Faim (ACF) in the island's northeast was the worst attack on humanitarian workers since the 2003 bombing of the United Nations compound in Baghdad.

The mainly ethnic Tamil workers, who had been involved in rebuilding after the 2004 tsunami, were found shot in the head and lying face down in the ACF compound in the predominantly Muslim town of Mutur in August 2006.

The military said they were trapped in fighting between troops and rebels.

The University Teachers for Human Rights (UTHR), a Sri Lankan group that has been criticised by both sides throughout the two decade civil war, named a local Muslim home guard – a police auxiliary – and two constables as the killers of most of the group.

"The evidence shows state security forces, including police, killed the 17 aid workers and that senior police officers covered it up," said Rajan Hoole of UTHR.

"The killing of civilians during time of conflict is a war crime. The perpetrators and their superiors should be brought to justice."

Most Mutur residents had fled the town by the time of the massacre. The first aid team into the town days later found the bloated bodies in the ACF compound, most shot at close range.

The Sri Lankan government has denied responsibility and blamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

International monitors recently told the government they were withdrawing from the inquiry because of official interference and lack of internationally acceptable standards.

The report said the brother of a Muslim home guard had been killed by a Tiger gunman the previous day and he had vowed revenge.

It also said a special forces commander in the town ordered security forces to "finish off" any Tamil speakers in plain clothes if they had any suspicions after another rebel disguised as a civilian killed troops.

It said witnesses described an "air of celebration" at Mutur police station after the massacre, adding that the anger of the Muslim home guard appeared to have simply been "a pretext" and senior figures in the nearby northeastern town of Trincomalee apparently also backed the killings.

The report said the execution-style murder of five Tamil students in Trincomalee earlier in 2006 had also been covered up and one of the responsible officers promoted, fostering a culture of impunity as a 2002 ceasefire collapsed into open war.

International group Human Rights Watch described the report as a "brilliant piece of investigative work".

"It does more than name the names of those responsible for the brutal ACF killings," said Human Rights Watch senior legal adviser James Ross. "It shows the government investigations into the massacre were little more than a bad joke played out on the victims' families and the international community."

UTHR said publishing the report was not without risk, particularly as three witnesses had already been killed, a fourth had gone missing and others fled the country – part of a wider pattern of disappearances and killings

.

Reuters

[OMEN]

The Canadian government has asked for clemency in the case of Mohamed Kohail, who has been sentenced to death by beheading in Saudi Arabia.
Canada's ambassador to Saudi Arabia is set to meet Tuesday with a Montreal man facing execution in the Middle Eastern country.
Mohamed Kohail, 23, was convicted of murder and sentenced on March 3 to a public beheading following a schoolyard brawl in 2007 that left an 18-year-old student dead.

The ambassador will meet with Kohail, his family and legal counsel to discuss the young man's case, according to Foreign Affairs spokesman Rodney Moore. Kohail's appeal hearing Monday was not said to go well, after Kohail's lawyer was ejected from the courtroom during the proceedings.

A family spokesman, Mahmoud Al-Ken, said the judges threatened to revoke the lawyer's licence, although he did not say why.

Kohail's family has argued that he did not receive a fair trial in Saudi Arabia, and hoped the sentence would be changed through the appeal process.

Moore said the ambassador will also meet with officials from the Saudi Justice Ministry, in an effort to ensure that due process is being followed.

Kohail's younger brother Sultan, 17, was convicted of similar charges after the schoolyard brawl, and family members fear he will also receive the death penalty at his sentencing in early April. A Saudi national has also been charged.

The federal government has indicated it will seek clemency for Kohail at the request of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Last Wednesday, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day's department released a statement saying the minister brought up the case while meeting with the head of Saudi Arabia's general intelligence service, Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud.

"I reiterated the Canadian government's position that a review of the decision made by the Saudi judiciary be carried out with a view to ensuring a full and fair hearing," Day said in a statement.

"We urge Saudi authorities to overturn the death sentence."

Al-Ken said on Thursday that Day had met the wrong people, and should have asked to see someone higher up.

Liberal Opposition critic Dan McTeague had said on Wednesday that Day should have met with his direct counterpart in Riyadh, rather than his deputy, as well as with the Saudi justice minister, instead of that country's intelligence chief

.

CBC

[OMEN]

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier says there's no rush to find a NATO partner for Canada's deadly combat mission in Afghanistan — although he expects a deal very soon.

Bernier made the comments Monday, just hours before Prime Minister Stephen Harper was to depart for a NATO leaders' summit in Bucharest.

It's been expected that Canada's demand for reinforcements in the volatile Kandahar region would be settled at the summit.

But both Harper and Bernier suggested Monday that the matter will take longer to resolve.

Harper said he's confident that Canada's military allies will come through with 1,000 additional troops and equipment "in the not too distant future."

Bernier later suggested the matter could be settled "in a couple of weeks," adding that there's no hurry.

"We have until February 2009 to find more troops and to find the equipment that we need, so we still have time," Bernier said.

Harper, with the support of the Liberals, won parliamentary support for a motion to extend Canada's military mission in Kandahar until the end of 2011.

However, the motion also makes it clear that the mission will end in February 2009 unless NATO steps up with 1,000 additional troops and battlefield helicopters and unmanned surveillance planes for use by Canadian troops.

Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae was surprised by Bernier's assertion that there's no rush for reinforcements.

"I think that's wrong," he said. "We owe it to our troops and we owe it to everyone else to get this settled much more quickly than that."

Rae noted that the government insisted on holding the vote to extend the mission several weeks ago, contending that parliamentary support would strengthen Harper's hand at the NATO summit. He questioned why Bernier has now changed his tune.

"My own view is it's not a matter just of Canada. I don't think NATO itself can afford this kind of indecision and this kind of delay. We owe it to our own people, we owe it to the people of Afghanistan to be clearer."

Only hours before his departure for the NATO summit, Harper reiterated the threat to withdraw from Kandahar if the 1,000 troops aren't pledged.

"I have always been clear; if our conditions are not met, we would withdraw," Harper told the House of Commons.

"That said, our discussions with our allies, and also our equipment procurement, continue to go very well. I have every reason to believe that these conditions will be fulfilled in the not too distant future."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has committed an additional 1,000 troops for Afghanistan but they are likely to be deployed in the eastern region, near Kabul. Such a move could free up American forces to join Canadian soldiers in Kandahar.

The United States has already deployed 3,200 marines in Kandahar but only for a brief seven-month stint to counter an anticipated spring offensive by Taliban insurgents.

Other NATO countries, including Spain and Germany, refuse to deploy troops in Kandahar, where the insurgency is extremely dangerous.

Poland, meanwhile, appears ready to increase its offer of helicopter support for Canadian troops in Kandahar.

CBC

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Thanks for the news.