Tag: InternationalNews

{{Portuguese police say they have made the largest ever seizure of fake euro notes, worth more than 380,000 euros (£331,000).}}

The 1,901 counterfeit 200-euro banknotes were seized in an operation in the northern city of Oporto, police said in a statement.

A 46-year-old foreign man was arrested, police added, but neither his identity nor his nationality have been revealed.

The counterfeit notes were “of exceptional quality”, officials said.

They are thought to be of a type that has been in circulation for a decade, with specimens turning up mostly in Spain, Italy, Germany, Bulgaria and Portugal.

This, police said, is the largest batch found so far.

The BBC’s Alison Roberts in Lisbon says it is the second seizure of counterfeit euros this month in Oporto.

Police recently dismantled a suspected ring composed of five Portuguese citizens, accused of counterfeiting and passing off 50 and 20-euro notes.

That operation resulted in the seizure of fake notes worth 30,000 euros.

Portuguese police said the euro’s growing importance as an international currency had made it an attractive forging target for organised crime in the European Union and beyond.

BBC

{{US immigration officials briefly detained the Palestinian director of the Oscar-nominated documentary 5 Broken Cameras on his way into Los Angeles for Sunday’s Academy Awards.}}

Emad Burnat said that when he arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from Turkey with his wife and eight-year-old son late on Tuesday, he was told he did not have the proper proof that he was a nominee.

“Last night, on my way from Turkey to Los Angeles … my family and I were held at US immigration for about an hour and questioned about the purpose of my visit to the United States,” he said in a statement.

“Although this was an unpleasant experience, this is a daily occurrence for Palestinians, every single day, throughout the West Bank.”

Burnat had earlier spent nearly six hours at an Israeli checkpoint as he attempted to drive to Amman to catch his flight to the US.

His detention in the US was first reported by filmmaker Michael Moore, a friend of Burnat’s, who said he received an urgent text message from Burnat from a holding pen at the airport.

According to Moore’s blog post, the director told Burnat to give Homeland Security his name and cell phone number to have him explain why Burnat was in the US.

Burnat had just been in the US two weeks earlier doing interviews alongside his co-director, Israeli activist Guy Davidi.

The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) did not comment on the case but said in a statement that it “strives to treat all travellers with respect and in a professional manner, while maintaining the focus of our mission to protect all citizens and visitors in the United States.

“Travellers may be referred for further inspection for a variety of reasons to include identity verification, intent of travel, and confirmation of admissibility.”

5 Broken Cameras features footage Burnat shot in his occupied West Bank village, Bilin – from everyday activities with his family to protests against the occupation and shootings.

The title refers to the number of smashed cameras since he began filming.

Aljazeera

Japan has hanged three death-row inmates, the first executions under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The three were put to death in the early hours of Thursday, the Justice Ministry has confirmed. One of them was convicted of killing a young girl.

Japan traditionally executes several prisoners at a time. These are the first executions since September 2012.

Japan is one of the few industrialised nations to retain the death penalty, usually reserved for multiple murders.

“I ordered the executions after giving careful consideration to the matter,” Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said in a press briefing.

“These were extremely cruel cases in which victims were deprived of their precious lives for very selfish reasons.”

The three men hanged were indentified as Kaoru Kobayashi, 44, who killed a seven-year-old girl, Masahiro Kanagawa, 29, who killed one man and injured seven others outside a Tokyo shopping mall in 2008, and Keiki Muto, 62, who killed a bar owner for money in 2002.

Rights group Amnesty International’s branch in Japan has said that it “strongly condemns” Thursday’s executions.

BBCnews

{{British Prime Minister David Cameron has raised the possibility of diverting hundreds of millions of pounds from foreign aid to defence and security.}}

Faced with anger in his ruling Conservative party about further possible defence cuts at a time when he says Britain must spend 0.7 percent of gross domestic product on foreign aid, Cameron told reporters he was interested in exploring ways to use money earmarked for foreign aid for wider security purposes.

He said the department for international development – whose budget for foreign aid is set to top 11 billion pounds by 2015 – already worked closely with the foreign and defence ministries, but that more could be done.

“If you are asking me can they work even more closely together, can we make sure that the funds we have at our disposal are used to provide basic levels of stability and security in deeply broken and fragile states, then I think we should,” he told reporters on Wednesday during a visit to India.

“Can we do more, can we build on this approach? I am very open to ideas like that.”

Britain deploys thousands of troops in Afghanistan and his comments could allow the government to use funds originally intended for foreign aid for what it regards as peace keeping, easing the strain on public finances.

That might placate some MPs in Cameron’s party who regularly ask him how he can justify spending so much on foreign aid at a time when Britain’s budget crunch is forcing the closure of hospitals, fire stations and police stations.

Britain’s gross government debt was 89 percent of GDP in 2012, up from 44 percent in 2007, according to the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook database.

{Reuters}

{{After almost a year of rumors and whispers, Sony has finally revealed the worst kept secret in gaming: The PlayStation 4 is on the way.}}

At a lavish press event in New York, the company showed off its next-generation console, a system it hopes will lure people away not only from competing machines from Microsoft and Nintendo, but from smart phones, tablets and other new gaming platforms.

It will be released this holiday season, though the company didn’t announce a price.

While the PS4 will feature improved graphical performance, Sony plans to use more than flashy hardware to appease finicky gamers.

The system will highlight social aspects, such as the ability to share gaming footage. It will include a new version of the company’s classic DualShock game controller, now featuring a touchpad, motion controls, and a built-in ‘share’ button.

Other features to look forward to include much quicker startup times, the ability to browse live gameplay videos of your friends and a partnership with Facebook and UStream that lets people play with their real world friends, as well as people they’ve met in games.

wirestory

{{A new North Korean video portrays President Barack Obama and American troops in flames and says the North conducted its recent nuclear test because of U.S. hostility.}}

The video follows a string of critical rhetoric against the United States. Another video posted earlier this month showed an American city being attacked by missiles.

The most recent video, posted Sunday by a YouTube account affiliated with a pro-reunification government agency, shows a blazing fire superimposed over footage of Obama, and ends with a generic simulation of a nuclear device exploding underground.

The United States currently is negotiating in the Security Council for stronger U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang following a Feb. 12 nuclear test in the far northeast, the country’s third since 2006.

AP