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| British TV shows student picture of "Jihadi John" in baseball cap | | | Sky News broadcast a photograph of the 26-year-old wearing a black cap with a logo that resembled the P from the Pittsburgh Pirates U.S. Major League Baseball team, which it said was stored by the University of Westminster where he studied. Two U.S. government sources have told Reuters that Emwazi is Jihadi John, the black-clad militant seen brandishing a knife and speaking with an English accent in videos released by Islamic State (IS). The document obtained by Sky News also showed that Emwazi had completed a degree in Information Systems with Business Management. |
| Teacher denies influencing Canadian teens headed to Syria | | | By Andrew Soong MONTREAL (Reuters) - A Muslim teacher once jailed by Canada as a security threat denied on Friday he had radicalized Canadian teens believed to have headed to Syria to fight with Islamic State, saying his school had had only brief contact with one of the six students. The students, four men and two women aged 18 and 19, left Montreal in January and February on their way to Turkey and then to Syria, according to media reports, the latest in a string of young Westerners who have become radicalized and have headed to the Middle East hoping to fight with Islamic State. The teacher, Adil Charkaoui, told a news conference in Montreal that anti-Muslim sentiment in Quebec is to blame for alienating Muslim students, not his classes, where he said only Arabic, the Koran and "basic notions" are taught. He said only one of the students who are believed to have left to fight for Islamic State took a course at his school, which rented classroom space from two colleges in the Montreal area. |
| SEBI cancels Sahara's portfolio management license | |  By Himank Sharma MUMBAI (Reuters) - The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has cancelled the portfolio management license of Sahara's asset management division, in yet another setback for a conglomerate that is trying to raise $1.6 billion to free its jailed boss. Sahara Chairman Subrata Roy has been held in a New Delhi jail since last March after he failed to comply with a court order to repay investors in a bond programme that was ruled illegal. SEBI said on Friday that Sahara Asset Management Company Private Ltd did not meet its "fit and proper" norms, due to the legal proceedings against some Sahara firms and officials, including founder Roy. SEBI member S. Raman wrote in his order cancelling the license that allowing Sahara to run its portfolio management business could "cause prejudice to the interests of investors and the safety and integrity of the securities market".
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| Four long-held Thai hostages released by Somali pirates | | | Somali pirates have freed four Thai nationals seized from a fishing vessel at sea in 2010, ending the longest-running hostage drama in the Horn of Africa state, the United Nations said on Friday. At one time Somali pirates made millions of dollars in ransoms from seizing ships but increased patrols by international navies in the Indian Ocean have greatly reduced incidents of piracy since 2012. "I am grateful to see the longest-held hostages released from Somalia, and thank all those involved who made it happen," said Nicholas Kay, the U.N. Secretary General's Special Representative for Somalia. The only other remaining hostages of Somali pirates are 26 crew members of the FV Naham 3 ship who were snatched in 2012. |
| Lenovo to allay security concerns with free McAfee LiveSafe | |  (Reuters) - China's Lenovo Group Ltd on Friday said it will offer free subscriptions to Intel Corp security software to customers who bought laptops that were shipped with a program known as "Superfish," which made PCs vulnerable to cyberattacks. Security experts and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security recommended the program be removed because it made users vulnerable to what are known as SSL spoofing techniques that can enable remote attackers to read encrypted web traffic, steal credentials and perform other attacks. Pre-loaded programs will include Microsoft Corp's Windows operating system, security products, Lenovo applications and programs "required" to make unique hardware such as 3D cameras work well, Lenovo said.
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| Spain arrests eight accused of joining pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine | | | Spain on Friday arrested eight citizens who recently returned from fighting alongside pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine, the first such arrest in the European Union of foreign citizens involved in the conflict, the Interior Ministry said. A ministry statement said the eight, rounded up in a nationwide operation, were suspected of crimes that compromised Spain's peace and independence and violated the neutrality it maintains in relation to the international community. "The accused travelled to Ukraine during 2014 and have recently returned to Spain. It said that while in Ukraine, the eight shared information and photos through social media of their training in how to use assault weapons and explosives, while dressed in paramilitary uniforms. |
| Mexico captures most wanted drug kingpin, 'La Tuta' | | | By Anahi Rama MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico has captured the most wanted drug lord in the country, Servando "La Tuta" Gomez, police said on Friday, delivering a boost to a government battered by gang violence. The 49-year-old former teacher was the prime target of President Enrique Pena Nieto's effort to regain control of Michoacan, a western state wracked by clashes between Gomez's Knights Templar cartel and heavily armed vigilantes trying to oust them. The early morning arrest comes as Pena Nieto seeks to quell public outrage in Mexico after the late September abduction and apparent massacre of 43 trainee teachers by corrupt police in league with gang members. |
| Soccer great Ronaldinho may help unlock media elite for Mexican magnate | |  By Gabriel Stargardter QUERETARO, Mexico (Reuters) - When Brazilian soccer superstar Ronaldinho signed for struggling Mexican team Queretaro in September, Olegario Vazquez Aldir, the club's new owner, took a step closer to becoming the country's next media mogul. Although Ronaldinho, a two-time FIFA World Player of the Year, is well past his best, he is still one of the glitziest footballers ever to play in Mexico and signing him for $2 million a year was a coup for Vazquez Aldir as he uses soccer to muscle into Mexico's plutocrats' club. The second-generation boss of privately owned media, hotels, construction and hospitals firm Grupo Empresarial Angeles (GEA), Vazquez Aldir is widely expected to land at least one of two new public television networks to be auctioned in March.
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| Life sentence for Rwanda's genocide-era justice minister upheld | | | By Clement Uwiringiyimana NAIROBI (Reuters) - Rwanda's high court on Friday upheld the life sentence of the s genocide-era justice minister, who was convicted six years ago for her role in the 1994 slaughter that killed 800,000 people. Agnes Ntamabyariro is the only senior official in the former government to have been brought to justice in Rwanda. Others were tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in the Tanzanian city of Arusha and elsewhere. Ntamabyariro was found guilty in particular for her role in the murder of Jean Baptiste Habyarimana, the head of Butare prefecture in southern Rwanda, who was a Tutsi. |
| Thousands protest in Maldives, calling for president to quit | | | By Daniel Bosley and Shihar Aneez MALE/COLOMBO (Reuters) - Thousands came by boat to the capital of the Maldives to protest on Friday against the arrest of former president Mohamed Nasheed and demand that current leader Abdulla Yameen resign. Supporters of Nasheed's Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) and the Jumhooree Party, which has broken away from Yameen's ruling coalition, converged by boat from across the nation of 1,190 islands after a call to rally in Male. The entire population of the Maldives, a popular destination for sun-seeking tourists, is less than 400,000. Mohamed Hussain Shareef, a minister in Yameen's office, said police had found on protesters rods, machetes and knives. |
| Nepal army officer accused of torture in London court | |  By Estelle Shirbon LONDON (Reuters) - A Nepali army officer was accused by a British prosecutor on Friday of torturing two men in 2005, during his country's civil war, in a rare use of laws that allow British courts to prosecute certain serious crimes wherever they took place. Kumar Lama, 48, is on trial at London's Old Bailey court, charged with two counts of torture on Nepali citizens at an army barracks in Nepal. In the first, Afghan national Faryadi Zardad was jailed for 20 years in 2005 for torture and hostage-taking. At least 16,000 people were killed during Nepal's 1996-2006 civil conflict and both sides have been accused of human rights abuses, but calls for perpetrators to be brought to justice in Nepal have remained unanswered.
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| Turkey police detain suspect claiming to have bomb outside U.S. consulate | | | Turkish police detained a suspect outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul who claimed to have a bomb, the consulate said on Friday. The consulate said it had taken measures to protect its staff and visitor "An individual claiming to have a bomb parked a vehicle in front of the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul," the consulate said. Istanbul police said in a statement a 33-year-old man with the initials E.C. had been subdued and detained, although they did not find him to be carrying illegal materials during a search of his person and car. Istanbul has been on high security alert since January, when a suicide bomber blew herself up at a police station in the historic Sultanahmet district, killing one officer and wounding another. |
| British PM Cameron vows to hunt down 'Jihadi John' | |  By Michael Holden and Ahmed Aboulenein LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed on Friday to use all means at his disposal to hunt down militants such as "Jihadi John" after the killer was unmasked as a Kuwaiti-born computer programming graduate from London. The black-clad militant brandishing a knife and speaking with an English accent was shown in videos released by Islamic State (IS) apparently decapitating hostages including Americans, Britons and Syrians. "When there are people anywhere in the world who commit appalling and heinous crimes against British citizens, we will do everything we can with the police, with the security services, with all that we have at our disposal to find these people and put them out of action," Cameron said. Cameron refused to go into the unmasking of "Jihadi John" as 26-year-old British militant Mohammed Emwazi, but said that people should get behind the security services, which he praised as impressive and dedicated to defending Britain.
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| Traces of sedatives found in Kazakh dissident hanged in Austrian jail | | | Sedatives have been found in the body of Rakhat Aliyev, a prominent Kazakh dissident found hanged in an Austrian prison this week in what authorities say was suicide. An initial toxicological test on Aliyev showed traces of barbiturates, a spokeswoman for prosecutors in Vienna said, stressing it may take days for the final autopsy report to come through. The barbiturates discovered are a kind of sedative hard to come by in Austria, according to one of Aliyev's lawyers, Manfred Ainedter. |
| Former pop star Gary Glitter sentenced to 16 years for child sex offences | |  Former British pop singer Gary Glitter, who shot to fame in the 1970s as a "glam-rock" star but was later convicted of child sex crimes, was sentenced to 16 years in prison after being found guilty of indecently assaulting three girls. Glitter, 70, whose real name is Paul Gadd, rose to prominence with the hit song "Rock and Roll", and became renowned for his figure-hugging shiny silver jump suits and platform shoes. "It is difficult to overstate the depravity of this dreadful behaviour," he said at Southwark Crown Court.
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| Quarter-century after $500 million art heist, Boston mystery endures | |  By Elizabeth Barber BOSTON (Reuters) - A 122-year old Venetian-style palazzo tucked into Boston's marshy Fens section stands as one of the city's more popular tourist attractions and the site of one of its longest-unsolved crimes. It has been almost 25 years since 13 artworks worth some $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the largest art heist in U.S. history. The statute of limitations for prosecuting the thieves has long expired but officials at the private museum and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have not given up hope of recovering the missing works, which include including Rembrandt's "Storm on the Sea of Galilee," Vermeer's "The Concert" and Manet's "Chez Tortoni." The Gardner's remaining collection is sizable, boasting some 2,500 pieces that range from a Roman mosaic of Medusa to ancient Chinese bronzes, reflecting the eclectic tastes of the turn-of-the-century collector from whom it takes its name.
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| Danish police arrest man suspected of links to Feb 14-15 shootings | | | Danish police said they arrested a young man on Friday and charged him with complicity in the shootings in Copenhagen on Feb. 14 and 15 in which two people were killed and five police officers wounded. Danish media reports described the man as personally connected with the gunman, Omar El-Hussein, who was shot dead by police on Feb. 15. State-owned DR TV reported that all three men charged with complicity in the shootings knew each other, and lived in the same neighbourhood as Hussein. |
| China draft counterterror law strikes fear in foreign tech firms | |  By Michael Martina and Krista Hughes BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China is weighing a far-reaching counterterrorism law that would require technology firms to hand over encryption keys and install security "backdoors", a potential escalation of what some firms view as the increasingly onerous terms of doing business in the world's second largest economy. A parliamentary body read a second draft of the country's first anti-terrorism law this week and is expected to adopt the legislation in the coming weeks or months. The initial draft, published by the National People's Congress late last year, requires companies to also keep servers and user data within China, supply law enforcement authorities with communications records and censor terrorism-related internet content. Its scope reaches far beyond a recently adopted set of financial industry regulations that pushed Chinese banks to purchase from domestic technology vendors.
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| Some staff say Sahara has not paid salaries for months | |  By Sumeet Chatterjee and Clara Ferreira-Marques MUMBAI (Reuters) - Some staff at conglomerate Sahara say they haven't been paid for several months, as the company tries to raise $1.6 billion to bail its boss Subrata Roy out of jail. Reuters interviewed 11 employees independently contacted in separate units in Delhi, Mumbai and Lucknow this week, and found workers at what was once one of India's highest profile firms frustrated over a lack of information about the group's future.
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| China censorship sweep deletes more than 60,000 Internet accounts | |  Some of China's largest Internet companies deleted more than 60,000 online accounts because their names did not conform to regulations due to take effect on Sunday, the top Internet regulator said. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd , Tencent Holdings Ltd , Baidu Inc , Sina Corp affiliate Weibo Corp and other companies deleted the accounts in a cull aimed at "rectifying" online names, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said. The purge is notable as a step toward China's government locking down control over people's internet account names, an effort which censors have struggled with in the past, despite numerous efforts to introduce controls.
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| German lawmakers approve Greek bailout extension | |  By Stephen Brown BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's parliament approved an extension of Greece's bailout on Friday after Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who has voiced doubts about whether Athens can be trusted, promised he would not let Greece "blackmail" its euro zone partners. With 542 members of the Bundestag voting "yes", including almost all of Chancellor Angela Merkel's right-left coalition and the opposition Greens, it was the biggest majority so far for a euro zone rescue package. "We Germans should do everything to keep Europe together as far as we can and bring it together again and again," said 72-year-old Schaeuble, who makes no secret of his doubts about how far Greece's leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis can be trusted to deliver on reforms. Addressing public misgivings in Germany about making further concessions to Greece - whipped up by top-selling daily Bild's front-page campaign for lawmakers to say "NEIN!" - Schaeuble said no new financial aid was at stake.
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| Two Japan ministers latest to deny illegal funding | | | Two Japanese ministers denied wrongdoing on Friday after media said they appeared to have received improper funding, the latest embarrassment for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, three of whose ministers have quit over scandals since October. Abe returned to power for a rare second term with a 2012 election win, promising to reboot an economy plagued by deflation, and his ruling coalition cruised to another big election win in December. The latest reports involve the environment and justice ministers. The Asahi newspaper said a branch of Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) headed by Environment Minister Yoshio Mochizuki, collected 1.4 million yen ($11,724) from a logistics company which had received government funds. |
| China to blacklist officials who interfere in court cases | | | China will start blacklisting and punishing officials who interfere in judicial investigations and trials, state media said on Friday, as the country hastens efforts to boost the rule of law. The ruling Communist Party unveiled broad legal reforms last year to make it tougher for officials to exert control over the judiciary. "Party and government officials bear an important responsibility for realising the rule of law in China, and should refrain from meddling with judicial investigations and trials," it added. Despite the legal reforms, Chinese President Xi Jinping's administration has shown no interest in political change and has detained dozens of dissidents, including lawyers. |
| Prime Minister Modi says willing to make changes in land bill | |  The government is ready to make changes in an executive decree it had issued to make it easier for businesses to buy farm land for infrastructure and industry, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told lawmakers on Friday.
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| Schaeuble urges German lawmakers to extend Greek bailout | |  By Stephen Brown BERLIN (Reuters) - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble urged parliament on Friday to take what he acknowledged was a difficult decision and approve an extension of Greece's bailout, assuring them Athens would not be allowed to "blackmail" its euro zone partners. "We Germans should do everything to keep Europe together as far as we can and bring it together again and again," Schaeuble said before a vote which Chancellor Angela Merkel's right-left coalition, which has a huge majority, looked bound to win. Addressing public misgivings in Germany about making further concessions to Greece - whipped up by top-selling daily Bild's front-page campaign for lawmakers to say "NEIN!" to the bailout extension - Schaeuble said no new financial aid was at stake. Despite public misgivings - one poll this week showed only 21 percent of Germans back an extension for Greece - lawmakers in Merkel's conservative block signalled they would approve it by a huge majority in a test ballot on Thursday.
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| Atheist U.S. blogger killed in machete attack in Bangladesh | | | Machete-wielding assailants hacked to death a blogger in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka, in the latest of a series of attacks on writers who support freethinking values in the Muslim-majority nation. Avijit Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin, and his wife and fellow blogger, Rafida Ahmed, were attacked on Thursday while returning from a book fair. They said they were investigating the involvement of Ansarullah Bangla Team, an Islamist extremist group based in Bangladesh that claimed responsibility on Friday for the murder. "Islamist radicals are behind my son's murder," Ajay Roy told reporters on Friday after filing a murder case with police. |
| Pakistanis on trial in massacre of 10 foreign climbers escape jail | | | By Syed Raza Hassan ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Two Pakistani militant suspects facing trial for the massacre of 10 foreign climbers two years ago escaped from jail on Friday, an official said. The 2013 killing of the climbers and their local guide in a pre-dawn attack on their base camp on Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain in the world, dealt a severe blow to Pakistan's mountaineering tourism industry. Two other prisoners were shot and killed in the jailbreak in northern Gilgit agency early on Friday morning, said Sultan Faisal, the prison's deputy inspector general. The two who escaped were among about a dozen suspected Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants jailed while on trial for the Nanga Parbat massacre, Faisal said, adding that two jail officials had been suspended pending an investigation. |
| Three killed over gold discovery on Mali-Guinea border | | | Mali said three of its nationals were killed in a village near the Guinean border during a violent skirmish between miners over a gold discovery. Guinean miners armed with guns and knives killed them in the village of Sanafara, about 100 kilometres west of the capital, according to a Malian government statement. |
| Turkish Airlines says aiding investigation into British school girls | | | ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Flag carrier Turkish Airlines said on Friday it was assisting an investigation into three British schoolgirls believed to have gone to Syria to join Islamic State militants. "Turkish Airlines is assisting the relevant government bodies in their inquiries but is unable to respond to or comment specifically in relation to the subject matter of ongoing investigations," it said in an e-mailed statement. ... |
| Islamic State aims to eradicate Iraq minorities - rights groups | |  By Kieran Guilbert LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Islamic State militants have abducted, injured and killed thousands of civilians across northern Iraq and uprooted millions from their homes in a bid to eradicate the country's ethnic and religious minorities, rights groups said on Friday. Several minority communities, including Christians, Yazidis and Turkmen, have been subjected to killings, rape and sexual enslavement, and women and children have been targeted in particular, a report by four human rights organisations said. Islamic State seized the Iraqi city of Mosul in June last year while sweeping through the north towards Baghdad, meeting virtually no resistance from the army and declaring a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria under its control. Around 8,000 civilians were killed and more than 12,000 wounded between June and December 2014, the United Nations said.
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| U.S. calls for due process, room for Bangladesh political opposition | |  WASHINGTON/DHAKA (Reuters) - The United States hopes due process will be followed after an anti-corruption court in Bangladesh issued arrest warrants for former prime minister and opposition leader Khaleda Zia, the top U.S. diplomat for South Asia said on Thursday. Nisha Biswal, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, told a news briefing the political tension needed to be addressed internally, but the United States stood ready to help. "It's also equally important that the government provides space for peaceful political opposition to be able to exist and to create an inclusive political processes," she said. Her Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) stepped up protests last month, aiming to force Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to step down and hold an election under a neutral caretaker administration.
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| Draft Chinese law paves way for counter-terror operations abroad | | | By Michael Martina BEIJING (Reuters) - China is close to approving a law that will create a legal framework for sending troops abroad on counter-terrorism missions, as Beijing seeks to address the vulnerability of the country's growing global commercial and diplomatic interests. Experts said Article 76 of the draft anti-terrorism law would allay concerns among the military elite about the lack of a formal mechanism for carrying out such operations, as well as mark a shift in foreign policy thinking and military doctrine. China has rarely been the target of terrorist acts overseas but it has vast energy interests, construction projects and mines in unstable parts of the world, including the Middle East and Africa. The risk to those projects was highlighted in 2011 when the government evacuated thousands of Chinese workers from Libya during the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi. |
| Hong Kong woman jailed for six years for abusing Indonesian maid | |  A Hong Kong mother of two who punched her maids, beat them with mops and threatened to kill their relatives was jailed for six years on Friday in a case that triggered outrage and exposed the plight of millions of domestic helpers across Asia. Former beautician Law Wan-tung, 44, looked stunned as the sentence was passed after being found guilty of 18 of 20 abuse charges. The charges included inflicting grievous bodily harm and criminal intimidation against Erwiana Sulistyaningsih and an another maid, also from Indonesia. Judge Amanda Woodcock read out her verdict saying "damning evidence" revealed "how little care and kindness the defendant showed" for Erwiana.
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| Nepal Supreme Court rejects amnesty for war crimes | | | By Ross Adkin KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepal's Supreme Court has rejected the possibility of amnesty for perpetrators of serious human rights abuses during a decade-long civil war, in a victory for human rights activists and victims' groups. For years, Nepal has been grappling with how to bring justice to victims of humans rights abuses committed during the conflict between Maoist rebels and the security forces. "The court has struck down the amnesty provision from the law and said the consent of the victims is necessary for any reconciliation," Supreme Court official Baburam Dahal told Reuters on Friday. Government forces and Maoist rebels were both accused of war-time abuses, including unlawful killings, arbitrary arrests, disappearances, rape and torture. |
| Canadian woman accuses Bikram yoga founder of sexual assault | | | By Julie Gordon VANCOUVER (Reuters) - A Vancouver yoga instructor has become the sixth woman to accuse yoga guru Bikram Choudhury of sexual assault, alleging in a civil suit that the 69-year-old celebrity yogi forced sex on her multiple times over the course of three years. Jill Lawler filed the lawsuit with the California Superior Court earlier this month. Her lawyer said on Thursday that they plan to serve the defendant "any time now." "It's in progress," said attorney Mary Shea Hagebols, who is also involved in civil suits brought by five other women against Choudhury. Lawler said the sexual assaults continued over the remainder of the training course and throughout the following three years, when she worked for Choudhury's yoga studios and as a trainer. |
| Minnesota teen pleads guilty to conspiring to support Islamic State | | | A Somali-American teenager who was stopped at a Minnesota airport as he sought to fly to Turkey last year pleaded guilty in federal court on Thursday to conspiring to support Islamic State militants. Abdullahi Mohamud Yusuf, 18, was stopped by FBI agents at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in late May with a passport he had applied for on an expedited basis the previous month, prosecutors said. Yusuf was charged in November with conspiring to support Islamic State and has been staying at a halfway house. He pleaded guilty before U.S. District Chief Judge Michael Davis and was ordered released on bond. |
| Libya needs international maritime force to help stop illicit oil, weapons - U.N. experts | | | By Michelle Nichols and Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Libyan authorities are unable to halt the illicit trade in oil or the flow of weapons in and out of the country, and they need an international maritime force to help, United Nations sanctions monitors said in a new report. The confidential report by the U.N. Security Council's Panel of Experts on Libya, first seen by Reuters on Thursday, will likely increase pressure on major world powers to consider intervention to stop the North African state from spinning further out of control. "The capacity of Libya to physically prevent (arms) transfers is almost nonexistent and there is no authorization to enforce the arms embargo on the high seas or in the air as there were during the 2011 revolution," the panel wrote in the report. The 15-nation Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Libya in 2011 to stop delivery of weapons to the government of former leader Muammar Gaddafi during his crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations. |
| China bans ivory imports ahead of royal visit - Xinhua | | | China has announced a one-year ban on the import of African ivory carvings ahead of next week's visit by Britain's Prince William, a strong critic of the ivory trade. China will halt approval for imports until late February next year, newsagency Xinhua reported on Thursday, citing the State Forestry Administration, which regulates the trade. Prince William has previously been critical of China over its consumption of ivory, while animal rights groups say the country's growing appetite for the contraband material has fuelled a surge in poaching in Africa. "The move is to protect African elephants, and the one-year timeframe is designed to assess the effects," Xinhua said. |
| Pachauri told to stay away from TERI after harassment claim | |  By Nita Bhalla NEW DELHI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A court on Thursday ordered Rajendra Pachauri, a leading global voice on climate change, to stay away from his Delhi thinktank after a female employee accused him of sexual harassment. Pachauri, 74, quit as chair of the United Nations panel of climate scientists on Tuesday, ending 13 turbulent years in charge of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning group, after the employee, a 29-year-old researcher, made the accusation. Pachauri, who had been chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since 2002, denies the allegation. The Indian scientist remains director general of the non-profit thinktank The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), which was set up in 1974 and where he oversees about 1,200 staff.
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| Prosecutors back off charges in California train crash | |  By Dana Feldman VENTURA, Calif. (Reuters) - A driver who was taken into custody after his truck was hit by a Southern California commuter train in a fiery wreck that injured 50 people will not be criminally charged, at least for now, prosecutors said on Thursday. Jose Alejandro Sanchez-Ramirez, 54, was arrested on suspicion of hit-and-run after police said they found him walking and talking on a cell phone "in distress" more than a mile from the scene of Tuesday's destruction in Oxnard, California. Oxnard police have said Sanchez-Ramirez was taken into custody for leaving the scene of the crash and that they were investigating whether drugs and alcohol were a factor. "While charges will not be filed at this time, the arrest of Jose Alejandro Sanchez-Ramirez by the Oxnard Police Department was clearly appropriate and lawful," prosecutors said The crash in Oxnard flipped over three double-decker Metrolink rail cars, derailed two others and tore apart the Ford pickup that authorities said Sanchez-Ramirez had driven 80 feet (24 metres) onto the railroad tracks after making a wrong turn in the pre-dawn darkness.
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