Tag: InternationalNews

{{The trial of a Russian opposition leader accused of embezzling half a million dollars’ worth of timber from a state-run company was adjourned shortly after its start Wednesday in a northwestern city.}}

Lawyer and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny, who spearheaded anti-government protests in 2011, and his former colleague are accused of leading an organized criminal group that embezzled 16 million rubles ($500,000) worth of timber from a state-owned company in the city of Kirov.

The charges not only threaten to send the 36-year-old Navalny to prison, but strike at the essence of his image as an anti-corruption activist.

Navalny says the charges are an act of revenge for his exposure of high-level corruption.

Navalny’s lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, asked the court in her opening remarks to adjourn the trial for a month because her client was not given enough time to read the case files.

Mikhailova also contested the court’s refusal to submit financial documents that could prove that what the prosecutors describe as embezzlement was a regular business deal.

Even before Navalny became a key figure in the anti-government protests that erupted in 2011, the lawyer was a persistent thorn in the establishment’s side with his extensive blogging on Russia’s staggering high-level corruption.

Authorities admit the trial is connected to his prominent activities, although they deny overt political motivations.

AP

{{New reports have indicated that the U.S.’s Boston Marathon bombing was carried out — with kitchen pressure cookers packed with explosives, nails and other lethal shrapnel — but said they still didn’t know who did it and why.}}

An intelligence bulletin issued to law enforcement and released late Tuesday included a picture of a mangled pressure cooker and a torn black bag the FBI said were part of a bomb.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly pleaded for members of the public to come forward with photos, videos or anything suspicious they might have seen or heard.

“The range of suspects and motives remains wide open,” Richard DesLauriers, FBI agent in charge in Boston, said at a news conference. He vowed to “go to the ends of the Earth to identify the subject or subjects who are responsible for this despicable crime.”

Officials found that the bombs in Boston consisted of explosives put in ordinary 1.6-gallon pressure cookers, one with shards of metal and ball bearings, the other with nails, according to a person close to the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe was still going on.

The bombs were stuffed into black duffel bags and left on the ground, the person said.

DesLauriers confirmed that investigators had found pieces of black nylon from a bag or backpack and fragments of BBs and nails, possibly contained in a pressure cooker.

He said the items were sent to the FBI laboratory at Quantico, Va., for analysis.

The FBI said it is looking at what Boston television station WHDH said are photos sent by a viewer that show the scene right before and after the bombs went off.

The photo shows something next to a mailbox that appears to be a bag, but it’s unclear what the significance is.

{Associated Press}

While many in Europe discard potentially contaminated meat, butchers in one country report surge in sales.

An investigation into Europe’s horsemeat scandal has found a drug discovered in the animals is of little risk to humans.

Horse was found in products across the continent that were labelled as beef, but the scandal has not dented the French appetite for horsemeat.

The 2013 meat adulteration scandal is ongoing in Europe; foods advertised as containing beef were found to contain undeclared horse meat, as much as 100% of the meat content in some cases and other undeclared meats, such as pork.

The issue came to light on 15 January 2013, when it was reported that horse DNA had been discovered in frozen beefburgers sold in several Irish and British supermarkets.

While horse meat is not harmful to health and is eaten in many countries, it is considered a taboo food in many countries including the UK and Ireland.

The analysis stated that 23 out of 27 samples of Beef burgers contained pig DNA.

{{The Vatican said Monday that Pope Francis supports the Holy See’s crackdown on the largest umbrella group of U.S. nuns, dimming hopes that a Jesuit pope whose emphasis on the poor mirrored the nuns’ own social outreach would take a different approach than his predecessor.}}

The Vatican last year imposed an overhaul of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious after determining the sisters took positions that undermined Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Investigators praised the nuns’ humanitarian work, but accused them of ignoring critical issues, including fighting abortion.

On Monday, the heads of the conference met with the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, who is in charge of the crackdown. It was their first meeting since Mueller was appointed in July.

In a statement, Mueller’s office said he told the sisters that he had discussed the matter recently with Francis and that the pope had “reaffirmed the findings of the assessment and the program of reform.”

The conference, for its part, said the talks were “open and frank,” and noted that Mueller had informed them of Francis’ decision.

“We pray that these conversations may bear fruit for the good of the Church,” the conference said on its website.

The Vatican crackdown unleashed a wave of popular support for the sisters, including parish vigils, protests outside the Vatican’s embassy in Washington, D.C., and a U.S. Congressional resolution commending the sisters for their service to the country.

Following Francis’ election, several sisters had expressed hope that a Jesuit pope devoted to the poor and stressing a message of mercy rather than condemnation would take a gentler approach than his predecessor, Benedict XVI.

Francis has called for a more “tender” church and one that serves society’s poorest — precisely a message American sisters have stressed in their ministry in hospitals, hospices, soup kitchens and schools that serve some of the most marginalized in the U.S.

The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit author who has been a staunch supporter of the U.S. sisters, cautioned against reading too much into the Vatican statement.

{Agencies}

{{Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been increasing for a third year in a row and is heading for a record high, the U.N. said in a report released Monday.}}

The boom in poppy cultivation is at its most pronounced in the Taliban’s heartland in the south, the report showed, especially in regions where troops of the U.S.-led coalition have been withdrawn or are in the process of departing.

The report suggests that whatever international efforts have been made to wean local farmers off the crop, they are having little success.

Increased production has been driven by unusually high opium prices, but more cultivation of Afghanistan’s premier cash crop is also an indication that Afghans are turning to illicit markets and crops as the real economy shrinks ahead of the expected withdrawal of foreign combat troops at the end of 2014.

Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient in heroin, and last year provided about 75% of the global crop — a figure that may jump to 90% this year due to increased cultivation.

{Afghanistan Opium farmers attending to their field}

AP

{{Two bombs exploded in the crowded streets near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday, killing at least three people and injuring more than 140 in a bloody scene of shattered glass and severed limbs that raised alarms that terrorists might have struck again in the U.S.}}

A White House official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still unfolding said the attack was being treated as an act of terrorism.

President Barack Obama vowed that those responsible will “feel the full weight of justice.”

As many as two unexploded bombs were also found near the end of the 26.2-mile course as part of what appeared to be a well-coordinated attack, but they were safely disarmed, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigation.

The fiery twin blasts took place about 10 seconds and about 100 yards apart, knocking spectators and at least one runner off their feet, shattering windows and sending dense plumes of smoke rising over the street and through the fluttering national flags lining the route.

Blood stained the pavement, and huge shards were missing from window panes as high as three stories.

AP

Police in France and Belgium were intensively searching Sunday for a dangerous convicted bank robber who dynamited his way out of a French prison on the weekend with the help of as-yet unidentified accomplices.

A Europe-wide alert for the fugitive, 40-year-old Redoine Faid, is in effect, as is an Interpol bulletin, and France has set more than 100 investigators on his trail.

Faid, who was serving time for past robberies and who risked a heavy sentence over the 2010 death of a policewoman, used explosives to blast his way out of the Sequedin penitentiary just 15 kilometres (10 miles) from the Belgian border.

Armed with a pistol, he briefly took four guards hostage for his escape.

All the hostages were released unharmed. The first getaway car was found burnt along the highway, where Faid is believed to have switched to a second vehicle.

The spectacular jailbreak was reminiscent of a Hollywood movie — the sort of film Faid told an interviewer three years ago he used as an “instruction manual” on how to stage his equally dramatic heists.

French police, though, remain stumped as to how Faid got his hands on the weapon and the explosives.

His brother, who visited the prison the morning of the escape, was kept in detention for questioning all day Sunday, but was finally released when investigators confirmed he had had no contact with Faid.

“It’s a painstaking investigation that has started. Obviously, he (Faid) had one or several accomplices. The role of the investigators is to work out how he was able to possess explosives and a weapon in prison,” the prosecutor for the northern French city of Lille, Frederic Fevre, said.

A spokeswoman for Belgian Federal Police, Kaatje Natens, said roadblocks had not been ordered but that train stations and airports were being closely watched.

French officials have warned that Faid, who grew up in tough immigrant suburbs outside of Paris, is considered armed and “especially dangerous”.

His lawyer said Faid was a very intelligent man with good connections.

Faid was in prison since mid-2011 for breaking the terms of his parole over past convictions for bank robberies and brazen heists of cash-in-transit vehicles.

He is suspected of being the mastermind of a May 2010 armed robbery that turned into a gunfight in which a young policewoman was killed.

Evidence was being gathered to try him for that crime, which would have kept him in jail for decades if convicted.

He had been released from a previous stint of a decade behind bars after convincing parole officials that he regretted his criminal past and was determined to start afresh.

Faid co-authored two books, about his delinquent youth and rise as a criminal in Paris’s impoverished suburbs.

He said his life of crime was inspired by American films such as “Scarface” and “Heat” — where Robert De Niro’s armoured car heist has been cited as the model for real life attacks in South Africa, Colombia and other countries.

French authorities insist that there was no fault on the part of prison workers for Faid’s escape, emphasising its meticulously planned nature.

Faid launched his jailbreak early Saturday morning, while he was in a visitor’s room. Armed with the firearm and explosives, he took four guards hostage and in about half an hour blasted his way out of the prison, where an accomplice was waiting in a vehicle.

wirestory