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REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS

REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS

Friday, 30 September 2011

Police warn they may not be able to afford Tesco's £3m riot compensation bill

 In total, the retailer has asked for nearly £3m in compensation from police forces around the country, following the riots that tore through some high streets in August. It is likely that this is the biggest request from a single retailer. The company is claiming under the Riot Damages Act, a piece of Victorian legislation that allows businesses and individuals affected by riot damage to claim directly from the police, rather than their own insurer. In the immediate aftermath of the civil disturbances, the British Retail Consortium urged small retailers to put in their claims to make sure their businesses were not harmed. However, the Greater...

Monday, 26 September 2011

Treasure hunters eye huge shipwreck haul

 When the SS Gairsoppa was torpedoed by a German U-boat, it took its huge silver cargo to a watery grave. Seventy years later, US divers said they are working to recover what may well be the biggest shipwreck haul ever. Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration on Monday confirmed the identity and location of the Gairsoppa and cited official documents indicating the ship was carrying some 219 tons of silver coins and bullion when it sank in 1941 in the North Atlantic some 490km off the Irish coast. That's worth about $200m today, which would make it history's largest recovery of precious metals lost at sea, Odyssey said. "We've accomplished...

Tony Blair is unaccountable over business interests, adviser says

 More questions have been raised over Tony Blair's lucrative business activities after an adviser in his role as a Middle East peace envoy said the former Prime Minister continued to operate outside a defined code of conduct. Channel 4's Dispatches, due to be broadcast tonight, claims that Mr Blair is not required publicly to disclose his commercial interests as he would if he were an MP. Mr Blair combines a £2m-a-year consultancy with the US investment bank JP Morgan with his unpaid post in Jerusalem, where he is heading international efforts in preparation for a future Palestinian state. He also advises the insurance group Zurich Financial,...

Sunday, 25 September 2011

Settling in Britain is a privilege not a right

 THE following is the summary of a speech delivered on September 15, 2011, by Britain’s Immigration Minister Damian Green at the Centre for Policy Studies [see full speech]. The speech is an indicator of the possible policy changes that will come out of the consultation currently underway into the reform of family migration. The consultation opened on July 13, 2011, and will close on October 6, 2011. It is important that as migrants to this country, we take time out to respond to this consultation as judging from Green’s speech it will have far reaching consequences for immigrants . Some of the proposals on the table include the following:...

Saturday, 24 September 2011

UBS CEO Gruebel resigns over rogue trading loss

 UBS chief executive Oswald Gruebel has resigned over a $2.3 billion loss caused by rogue trading at its investment division, which is to be restructured now to prevent similar incidents in future, the Swiss bank said Saturday. Gruebel, who had come under heavy pressure from shareholders over the scandal, said he hoped his resignation would allow the bank to restore its reputation in the eyes of clients and investors. Article Controls EMAIL REPRINT NEWSLETTER SHARE "As CEO, I bear full responsibility for what occurs at UBS ( UBS - news - people )," he said in a memo to staff. "From my first day on the job I placed the reputation of the...

Media group faces new hacking blows

 New allegations about the phone-hacking scandal have hit News International, with claims of more victims and fresh legal rows. It was revealed tonight that former News of the World editor Andy Coulson is suing News Group Newspapers, the publishing arm of the media giant. Papers were served at the High Court on Thursday "regarding the termination of the payment for his legal action". A spokesman for law firm DLA Piper, which represents Mr Coulson, said: "We can confirm that proceedings have been issued." News International declined to comment. It had been reported earlier this month that News International was paying DLA Piper for their...

Friday, 23 September 2011

This is the buff soldier who exchanged numbers with Cheryl Cole.

Andy Baker plans to meet up with the former X Factor judge after the pair met during her morale-boosting trip to Afghanistan.The pair were introduced at an award presentation at Camp Bastion and met again a barracks dinner.New man? Soldier Andy Baker caught Cheryl Cole's eye during her moral-boosting trip to Afghanistan and he hopes to take her out for dinnerThey posed for several photos together and once Cheryl returned home, she said she planned...

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas makes UN statehood bid

 Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has submitted his bid to the UN for recognition of a Palestinian state. To rapturous applause in the General Assembly, he urged the Security Council to back a state with pre-1967 borders. He said the Palestinians had entered negotiations with Israel with sincere intentions, but blamed the building of Jewish settlements for their failure. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said he was reaching out to Palestinians...

European banks head towards another meltdown

 Shares in some of Europe's largest banks fell by 10pc as the cost of insuring European lenders' senior bonds rose to record levels, according to credit default swap prices. The Markit iTraxx Financial Index of contracts on the senior debt of 25 banks and insurers climbed to an all-time high 315.5 basis points. The last banking crisis was regarded by most eurozone members as an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon caused by lax lending controls that resulted in major UK and US institutions either collapsing or having to take costly state-funded bail-outs. To offset the threat of another crisis spreading across the eurozone, European regulators ordered...

signs of an institutional run on French banks

 Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, urged Europe's leaders to bail out their fragile banks, as the boss of the eurozone's biggest bank, BNP Paribas, rejected fears that the financial sector was "in peril". Addressing journalists in Washington at the opening of the IMF's annual meeting, Lagarde said that Europe must tackle "this twin problem of sovereign debt and the need to strengthen capital buffers". She said: "It is critical that to fuel growth, banks be in a position to finance the economy, to finance enterprises, to finance households, to finance local governments. To do that they need to...

Thursday, 22 September 2011

Europe leaves Bulgaria, Romania out in Schengen cold

 Europe left Bulgaria and Romania out in the cold Thursday, when Finland and the Netherlands blocked their entry into the passport-free Schengen travel area. The Dutch and the Finns refused to let them in, at a meeting of EU interior ministers dogged by concerns about illegal migration, citing poor progress in the fight against corruption and organised crime. "Two member states today made it impossible for us to make a decision on Schengen enlargement," Polish Interior Minister Jerzy Miller, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, lamented after the talks. "This leads me to a rather sad conclusion regarding mutual trust among the...

French court fines women for wearing veils

 France's fines on women for wearing the full-face covering niqab veil, imposed for the first time by a court on Thursday, are a "travesty of justice," Amnesty International says. Police have issued several on-the-spot fines since the ban came into force in April but the hearing saw the first two court-issued fines, and the Muslim women vowed to appeal their case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights. "This is a travesty of justice...

Muammar Gaddafi has fled Sabha

 The National Transitional Council are investigating an unconfirmed report that Muammar Gaddafi has fled from Sabha, NTC spokesman reports.  NTC spokesman also states that Libyan government forces now control most of Sabha with small pockets of resistance from pro-Gaddafi snipe...

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

A top surfer has been killed after a quick and brutal shark attack on the French-owned island of Reunion.

   Mathieu Schiller, 32, was dragged off his surfboard on Boucan Canot beach in the Indian Ocean by a man-eating tiger shark and quickly killed in an attack that lasted less than 30 seconds.Schiller, who was a European team body boarding champion in 1995, was one of a large group surfing in the area when the attack happened.Fellow surfers searched for the Frenchman's body but police later said it had been carried away by the waves."There...

IMF cuts growth forecast for UK for 2011 and 2012

 The International Monetary Fund has cut its growth forecasts for the UK, in a report warning that the global economy is in a "dangerous new phase". UK gross domestic product is predicted to grow 1.1% in 2011, down from the 1.5% forecast in the IMF's previous World Economic Outlook report in June. The growth forecast for 2012 has been slashed from 2.3% to 1.6%. Foreign Secretary William Hague said the UK had the "discipline and determination" to tackle its deficit. But shadow chancellor Ed Balls called them "deeply concerning forecasts for both the UK and world economy". Independent economists are currently forecasting average UK growth...

Debt Crisis Infects Companies via Bank Loan Costs

 Banks in Spain and Italy are curbing loans and charging customers more as aftershocks from the sovereign debt crisis drive their own borrowing cost higher. “They can’t lend what they don’t have, I suppose,” said Francesc Elias, the owner of Bomba Elias, a pumps and filters maker near Barcelona, which shelved a 100,000-euro ($144,000) plan to open a Bahrain office when it couldn’t get an affordable bank loan. “The banks are very clever about finding new ways to charge us more.” Spanish and Italian government bond yields surged to euro- era records this quarter as Greece struggled to avoid default, driving the cost of insuring against nonpayment...

Turner Says Murdoch 'Going to Have to Step Down' From News Corp.

 Billionaire Ted Turner said News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rupert Murdoch will probably have to leave the helm of his media company after a phone-hacking scandal that began at one of its newspapers. "I think he's going to have to step down," Turner, 72, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. "He hadn't survived anything like this. This is serious." News Corp., based in New York, has come under fire this year over allegations...

Tuesday, 20 September 2011

Scotland Yard drops Official Secrets Act bid against Guardian

 Scotland Yard had intended to take the Guardian newspaper to court on Friday in an attempt to force the newspaper into revealing how it obtained information that missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s mobile phone had been hacked. However, following discussions with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), the force has abandoned its application for production orders against the newspaper. The decision comes following heavy criticism of the force’s attempt to make the Guardian, and one of its journalists, hand over information which would have revealed the source of many of the newspaper’s phone hacking stories. Various MPs, including the shadow...

Briton dies in Cannes after brawl 'over cost of drinks at lapdancing club'

 Thirty-seven-year-old Lee Elton Fischer, a trade delegate from London, was visiting the French Riviera city, home of the world-famous Cannes Film Festival, with two friends. It has been claimed that Mr Fischer sparked a fight in the belief that he had been 'ripped off' during a night out with colleagues on Sunday. A spokesperson for the local police confirmed that Mr Fischer appeared to have been hit several times in the face, before dying after his head struck the pavement. Police have arrested three French nationals in connection with the incident and the men, all aged between 25 and 30, are now being questioned on suspicion of manslaughter....

Pakistan bus attack kills dozens

 25 Shia Muslim pilgrims have been killed after gunmen opened fire on a bus in western Pakistan, officials said. The pilgrims were going through Mastung district in Baluchistan province, en route to the Iranian border, when the attack occurred, said a senior district official, Saeed Umrani. Two motorcycles blocked the path of the bus and three gunmen stormed the vehicle, opening fire on the roughly 40 pilgrims inside, said a local tribal police officer, Dadullah Baluch, after interviewing survivors and eyewitnesses. At least 25 people were killed and more than a dozen injured in the attack on Tuesday, he added. The dead and wounded were...

Taliban turban bomber kills Afghan ex-president

 A Taliban suicide bomber with concealed explosives in a turban on Tuesday assassinated former Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani, who was leading government peace efforts, police said. The bomber struck during a meeting at the Kabul home of Rabbani, who was last year appointed chief of the Afghan High Peace Council that President Hamid Karzai tasked with negotiating with the Taliban. His death is the most high-profile political assassination since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted the Taliban from power and comes just two months after Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai was also killed. The attackers arrived at Rabbani's house with Mohammad...

Jonathan Dimbleby has admitted he tried cocaine and marijuana in his 20s.

 Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the GuardianVeteran broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby has admitted that he tried cocaine once and called on middle-class people dabbling in drugs to think again about the misery they are causing in south America. The host of long-running BBC Radio 4 show Any Questions? said he has a "contempt for cocaine sniffers in this country who are intelligent middle-class people but do not realise...

Gadhafi spotted as rebels capture parts of south Libya town

 Fugitive Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi was spotted in the southern city of Sabha a few days ago, the regional daily Asharq al-Awsat reported on Tuesday, citing an eyewitness. The witness claimed that Gadhafi was living in the city, located around 750 kilometers south of the capital Tripoli. Anti-Gadhafi fighters firing a cannon near Sirte, the hometown of deposed leader Muammar Gadhafi, September 17, 2011. Photo by: Reuters Gadhafi's...

Monday, 19 September 2011

Iran arrests six 'BBC Persian film-makers'

 The Iranian authorities have arrested a group of film-makers and accused them of working for the BBC Persian service, which is banned in the country. State TV reports that the group of six were paid to make secret reports for the Farsi-language service. The BBC says no-one works for the Persian service inside the country - either formally or informally. The arrests came a day after the service showed a documentary on Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The BBC's James Reynolds says the channel's signal, which is sometimes accessible inside Iran, was disrupted during the broadcast. Increasing pressure The corporation said the...

Sunday, 18 September 2011

Tony Blair 'visited Libya to lobby for JP Morgan'

 A senior executive with the Libyan Investment Authority, the $70 billion fund used to invest the country's oil money abroad, said Mr Blair was one of three prominent western businessmen who regularly dealt with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of the former leader. Saif al-Islam and his close aides oversaw the activities of the fund, and often directed its officials on where they should make its investments, he said. The executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, said officials were told the "ideas" they were ordered to pursue came from Mr Blair as well as one other British businessman and a former American diplomat. "Tony Blair's visits...

Saturday, 17 September 2011

11 of the 54 prisoners in Menorca jail are British

 11 of the 54 prisoners being held in prison on Menorca are British, according to the prison authorities, who says their presence on the island is dependent on the air connections to the UK, which allows family visits to the inmates. The same sources, quoted by Menorca.info, say that none of the Britons have a ‘conflictive’ profile. The jail on the Carretera de Sant Lluís also currently holds 23 prisoners who are of Menorcan origin or who have links to the island. Another 20 are being held ahead of their appearance in cou...

Brazil judge's murder points to vigilante power

 Judge Patricia Acioli was known for wielding a "heavy hammer," especially against rogue police who have formed illegal vigilante gangs. She had put more than 60 officers behind bars, most of them for murder. The Rio de Janeiro state judge paid for that fearlessness: Acioli was shot to death in front of her house last month. And all of the 21 bullets that hit her came from a lot issued to police, including some in Sao Goncalo, the city where she worked. While violence and impunity are common in Brazil, the brazen murder of Acioli was an especially heavy blow, a message of intimidation from the vigilante militias. The slaying was "a wound...

Friday, 16 September 2011

Moroccan maids may ‘spell’ trouble, warn some women

 Saudi women have voiced reservations against recruiting domestic helpers from Morocco as suggested by the chairman of the Saudi recruitment committee. This is due to an old belief that Moroccan women use black magic to lure men to marry them. Some Saudi women urged the Shoura Council to intervene, while others threatened to quit their jobs to look after their homes if housemaids from the country were brought in. Najla, a 32-year-old teacher at a private school, said she felt threatened by the news, pointing out that Moroccan women are known for being pliant and willing to adjust to varying situations, and this posed a threat to a working...

Thursday, 15 September 2011

At least two die in fire on Norwegian cruise ship

 Two crew members have died in a fire on a cruise ship off the coast of Norway. At least a dozen people were injured, two seriously, as the blaze forced rescuers to evacuate more than 200 passengers from the ship, the Nordlys. The ship was sailing close to the port of Aalesund in western Norway when a fire broke out in the engine room. Police believe there was an explosion, but do not know what caused the blast. Some people were taken hospital for treatment for smoke inhalation. Television pictures showed clouds of thick black smoke rising from the ship after it was taken to Aalesund. The Nordlys, which belongs to the Hurtigruten company,...

Holloway lawyer smuggled drugs into Pentonville Prison in oversized shoes

 Five people are facing years behind bars after smuggling drugs and mobile phones into Pentonville Prison – including a lawyer who stuffed illicit goods into his oversized shoes. Ritesh Brahmbhatt, 31, took phones, high-strength cannabis and the stimulant mephedrone into the prison in Caledonian Road, Holloway, in a pair of size-12 slip-ons bought from menswear store High and Mighty. The revelations come within a month of a scathing report by the prison’s independent monitoring board, which revealed a drug problem is stoking gang trouble and violence in the jail. It also emerged that a drugs counsellor from Canonbury is to stand trial next...

Aussie Poker Pro David Saab Gaoled For Drug Smuggling

 Professional poker player David Saab from Victoria in Australia faces a lengthy period away from the game after being convicted of smuggling 14.6kg of cocaine into the country.  The drugs, which had an estimated street value of AU$6.5 million (£4.22m) were hidden inside agricultural machinery imported from Canada.  Saab was convicted alongside fellow players Darren Francis Hughes and Robert Alan Remeeus; he faces 14 years in prison while his accomplices both received 8-year sentences. The highlight of Saab’s poker career was his victory in the Manila leg of the Asian Poker Tour in 2008, a win which netted him $280,000.  He...

Briton arrested for drug smuggling

 Customs and Excise officers at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport have foiled an attempt to smuggle 6.5 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine (shabu-shabu) worth Rp 13 billion and arrested a British national. The head of the Customs Office, Oza Olivia, said the suspect was identified as Gareth G.D, 32, who flew from Istanbul, Turkey and arrived at the airport with Turkish Airlines on Tuesday evening. “Members of our tactical unit conducted profile analyses of passengers at Terminal II-D and began to suspect him of carrying illegal items,” she told reporters on Wednesday. Oza said officers were suspicious and decided to search the...

Monday, 12 September 2011

Madeleine Cops In Portugal

 They may not have welcomed the order from Downing Street to launch an investigation into Madeleine McCann's disappearance, but at least Scotland Yard detectives have made a first visit to Portugual. I can't imagine they were given a warm welcome by their Portuguese colleagues whose work (failure to solve the mystery) the Met team is reviewing. Still, it's a step in the right direction and officially the two groups met "with very good co-operation and liaison will continue." There are 30 Met officers - the equivalent of a murder squad - working on the review and I'm told that a senior officer is having to give regular spending updates to...

Sunday, 11 September 2011

Traces of Gaddafi's gilded life

Image Credit: AFP/EPATent commandments: A picture combo shows revolutionaries taking souvenir pictures inside the tent where Libyan leader Gaddafi used to receive foreign dignitaries at the Bab Al Aziziya compound in Tripoli and Gaddafi meeting with Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila in the same tent on July 17, 2008 (top and bottom). Top right: A man plays the piano in the ransacked seaside summer house of Hannibal...

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