World News joined 0012

[JohnCenaFan28]

That's disgusting!

[JohnCenaFan28]

A US military jury at Guantanamo Bay has convicted Osama Bin Laden's former driver of supporting terrorism.



The verdict on Salim Hamdan is the first to be delivered in a full war crimes trial at the US prison in Cuba.

The jury found Hamdan guilty of five of eight charges of supporting terrorism but acquitted him of two separate, more serious, charges of conspiracy.

A sentencing hearing is now under way. Hamdan, a Yemeni aged about 40, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The White House said the trial was fair and looked forward to more tribunals.

The defence team has said it plans to appeal, while rights groups have condemned the trial as unjust.

'Vital role'

Hamdan, who was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001, was initially impassive when the verdict began to be read out. But the BBC's Kim Ghattas, at the trial, said he later appeared to break down in tears.

Our correspondent says the defence team's appeal could go as far as the Supreme Court.

One of the defence lawyers, Michael Berrigan, said: "Is material support a war crime? The defence believes it is not. That issue will go forward on appeal."

The jury of six military officers had deliberated for about eight hours over three days in the first US war crimes trial since World War II.

The prosecution had said Hamdan played a "vital role" in the conspiracy behind the 9/11 attacks. But defence lawyers said he was a low-level employee.

The BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington says US President George W Bush will hope to use the conclusion of the first full trial as evidence that the Guantanamo Bay system does actually work.

In its first response, the White House said Hamdan had received a "fair trial".

Spokesman Tony Fratto said: "The Military Commission system is a fair and appropriate legal process... We look forward to other cases moving forward to trial."

However, defence lawyers had said they feared a guilty verdict was inevitable and that the system was geared to convict.

Rights group Amnesty International said the trial was "fundamentally flawed" and called for all the remaining military tribunals to be halted and for proceedings to be moved to civilian courts.

'Guilt by association'

Hamdan had admitted working for Bin Laden in Afghanistan from 1997 to 2001 for $200 (£99) a month, but said he worked for wages, not to make war on the US.

The defence said the case was "guilt by association".

But the prosecution said Hamdan was an "uncontrollably enthusiastic warrior" for al-Qaeda.

Prosecutor John Murphy had said: "He has wounded, and the people he has worked with have wounded, the world."

About 270 suspects remain in detention in Guantanamo Bay.

Among the dozens of other inmates due to be tried there in the coming months are men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

The International Committee of the Red Cross has voiced grave concern over what it says is Colombia's apparent "deliberate misuse" of its symbol.



The ICRC said it had seen video footage that suggested the emblem was used deliberately in July's military mission to free 15 hostages from rebel hands.

The government has apologised to the ICRC but also condemned the leak of the military video to Colombian TV.

Intentional misuse of the symbol would be a breach of the Geneva Conventions.

The Geneva-based ICRC says the footage shown on Colombian TV on Monday indicates that the emblem was being used before the operation to free the hostages from Farc guerrillas had even begun, indicating intentional misuse.

"If authenticated, these images would clearly establish an improper use of the Red Cross emblem, which we deplore," said ICRC deputy director of operations Dominik Stillhart.

Mr Stillhart said they were seeking further clarification from the Colombian government.

'Nervous soldier'

Rescuers tricked rebels into releasing French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and the other hostages by posing as international aid workers.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe subsequently acknowledged that a Red Cross symbol was worn by a member of the military taking part in the 2 July rescue mission.

Mr Uribe said he had apologised to the Red Cross for the error, which he said had been made by a nervous soldier acting against orders.

Speaking on Tuesday, after the video was shown on Colombian TV, Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos apologised again to the ICRC.

"The emblem...was used from the beginning of the operation. We are very sorry that this has happened. But the government, the president and (armed forces chief) General Padilla said the truth that we knew at the time," Mr Santos said.

But Mr Santos also condemned the leak of the video, saying those responsible had been identified and would be punished.

"This video contains material that was leaked by members of the security forces, from our army. This leak was a product of disloyalty, possibly corruption or even treason because it puts at risk the lives of people who are dedicated to defending the fatherland," he said.

Neutrality

The Colombian government has said the rescue was the result of long preparation, eavesdropping on rebel communications and deception of guerrillas on the ground, allowing the hostages to be liberated without loss of life.

Officials also stressed how the mission had been carried out without loss of life.

Falsely portraying military personnel as Red Cross workers is against the Geneva Conventions because it could put humanitarian workers at risk when carrying out missions in war zones.

It also undermines the neutrality of the Red Cross.

At the end of July, Farc guerrillas handed eight people they had kidnapped the week before to ICRC representatives, suggesting the rebels have not lost faith in the humanitarian organisation, correspondents say.

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) have been fighting the Colombian state for more than four decades and are believed to still hold several hundred hostages.

BBC News

[OMEN]

Nine firemen are believed dead after a helicopter transporting them to a northern California wildfire crashed, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said.

FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said on a recorded telephone message that another four aboard the helicopter were critically burned in the crash on Tuesday evening approximately 35 miles (56 km) northwest of Redding in remote terrain.

The helicopter, with a two-person crew and carrying 11 firefighters, crashed under unknown circumstances, Gregor said.

FAA and National Transportation Safety Board investigators are on the way to the scene of the crash, Gregor added.

Reuters

[OMEN]

REST IN PEACE: The body of writer and former Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn lies in state at the Academy of Science in Moscow.
Clutching a bunch of blood red roses, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin joined hundreds of elderly Russians laying flowers at the foot of Soviet dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn's open coffin.

Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel laureate who won international fame by showing the world the horror of Soviet labour camps through his books, died of heart failure on Sunday aged 89.

Four Russian soldiers stood to attention at each corner of his coffin in the Russian Academy of Sciences, the hallmark of an official lying-in-state. A large portrait of Solzhenitsyn and a Russian flag completed the backdrop.

Outside the mammoth white building overlooking the River Moskva, a steady trickle of mainly elderly Russians shrugged off heavy rain to mourn their hero.

Solzhenitsyn's widow Natalia and his sons looked on as mourners brought small bouquets of white or red flowers to lay before his coffin.

"Solzhenitsyn was one of the most important people in the history of Russia; he wrote exactly what he thought and needed to be remembered," said maths professor Alexander Romanov, 60.

"It's a shame that not all young people understand how important he is."

At around 1 p.m. Putin, a former agent of the KGB security service that led the persecution campaign against Solzhenitsyn, strode into the hall flanked by burly security guards.

He laid flowers at the foot of the coffin, quickly looked at Solzhenitsyn's white, waxy face, crossed himself and turned towards the family.

Putin then spoke to Solzhenitsyn's widow for about five minutes before walking off.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev plans to attend the funeral on Wednesday.

Solzhenitsyn attracted international attention after the publication in 1962 of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", which chronicled the life of a labour camp prisoner.

CRITICAL OF MODERN RUSSIA

Josef Stalin's forced collectivisation of farmers and purges in the 1930s, followed by fierce repression after World War Two, killed millions of people in the Soviet Union.

Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 and later wrote "The Gulag Archipelago", a chronicle of his own and thousands of other prison camp experiences.

The Soviet Union stripped him of his citizenship in 1974 and he moved to the United States until the fall of Communism.

Since his return, Russian leaders have treated Solzhenitsyn with great deference, though he became increasingly critical of corruption in modern Russia, which has grown rich over the last decade due to high energy and commodity prices.

His influenced waned as he grew older, and for most young Russians Solzhenitsyn had already become a historical figure.

"The young know he wrote important books about the camps and that he received the Nobel prize, but that's all we really know. He's more important for the older generations," said football trainer Alexander Selemenev, 27, on his way to work.

He said he respected Solzhenitsyn because he was not afraid to tell the truth. "But recently in politics, for Russia, it's not clear what he has done," he said.

Russia's main television channels ran lengthy reports on their news programmes and documentaries on Solzhenitsyn's life.

But not all media reports remembered Solzhenitsyn kindly. The Communist party newspaper Pravda called him a radical critic who produced one-sided accounts of Stalin's rule.

"He became one of the main battering rams in destroying both the state and nation ... that is why he is being applauded so rapturously by both Russian President Medvedev and U.S. President Bush!" it wrote in a commentary.

Reuters

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

Thanks for the news.

[JohnCenaFan28]

A serious oil supply crisis is looming, which could push prices above $200 a barrel, a think tank has warned.



A "supply crunch" will affect the world market within the next five to 10 years, the Chatham House report said.

While there is plenty of oil in the ground, companies and governments were failing to invest enough to ensure production, it added.

Only a collapse in demand can stave off the looming crisis, report author Professor Paul Stevens said.

"In reality, the only possibility of avoiding such a crunch appears to be if a major recession reduces demand - and even then such an outcome may only postpone the problem," he said in The Coming Oil Supply Crunch.

Lack of funding

Prof Stevens warned that investment in new oil supplies has been inadequate as oil firms prefer to return profits to shareholders rather than reinvest it.

Furthermore, oil producing cartel Opec has failed to meet plans to expand its capacity since 2005.

He also argued that a "resurgence of resource nationalism" means that governments are "starving" their national oil companies of investment by excluding international oil firms from helping to develop capacity.

"While the forecast is controversial and extremely bullish, even allowing for some increase in capacity over the next few years, a supply crunch appears likely around 2013," he added.

"The implication is that it will quickly translate into a price spike although there is a question over how strategic stocks might be used to alleviate this."

Unpopular measures

However, Prof Stevens does conclude that only "extreme policy measures could achieve a speedy response" in boosting supplies and lowering oil prices - a move that is likely to be "politically unpopular".

Other, longer-term moves suggested by the report include offering support to help oil-exporters to manage "resource curse" - where an abundance of natural resources can damage a country's economy - and allowing Opec to join the International Energy Authority's emergency sharing scheme.

The report comes just days after oil prices slipped from peaks near $150 a barrel.

BBC News

[JohnCenaFan28]

At least 21 people have been killed by a car bomb in northern Iraq.



About 70 people were also injured when the bomb exploded in a vegetable market in Tal Afar, 420km (260 miles) north-west of Baghdad.

The town, near Mosul, is in a region where al-Qaeda in Iraq is said to have regrouped since being forced from Baghdad by a US and Iraqi offensive.

The vehicle was parked when it exploded by the market, which was crowded with shoppers on the Muslim day of rest.

In March 2006, Tal Afar was hailed as a model Iraqi town by US President George W Bush, but almost exactly a year later it was the target of one of the deadliest attacks in Iraq's insurgency, when more than 150 people were killed in a truck bombing.

In recent months there have been military operations in the area, says the BBC's Crispin Thorold in Baghdad.

But this attack demonstrates once again that Sunni Muslim insurgents still have the ability to bring death to Iraq's streets, our correspondent adds.

BBC News

[Black Widow]

thanks for the news