Berlusconi says left wants advance of foreigners

ROME Wed Feb 24, 2010 8:30am EST Related News Bribery scandal clouds Berlusconi"s election hopesTue, Feb 16 2010Berlusconi"s approval dips, opposition rises: pollTue, Feb 16 2010Demand for bonds show markets confident in Italy-PMWed, Feb 10 2010

How Ciudad Ju�rez was crippled by Mexicos drug wars

Ruth Maclean, Ciudad Ju�rez & , : {}

At first sight, Ciudad Juárez is a Mexican city much like any other. An affluent border town of Wal-Marts and Holiday Inns, with old people waiting at bus stops and children walking happily home from school.

In daylight, there are few signs of its dubious distinction of the worlds most violent city with a murder rate of 191 per 100,000 inhabitants until you are shown them.

Denisse Guerrero points out the bridges from which the Juárez drug cartel hang decapitated bodies and narcomantas, banners displaying messages from the narcotráficos, as we drive past. A schoolteacher in one of Juárezs state schools, Ms Guerrero was a close friend of Lesley Enriquez, the American consulate worker killed with her husband as she drove away from a childrens party last week.

I am from one of the very few old families in Ciudad Juárez I am fourth generation, she says, driving through one of Juárezs many stretches of wasteland. My parents live here, and I like it here. We are not all narcos, as the Mexican Government likes to make out. There are a lot of good people in this city but then a lot of them are leaving.

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Abandoned houses, their windows plastered over with concrete, haunt the citys sprawling residential areas. Many of Juárezs citizens have escaped over the border to El Paso, the second-safest city in America and a short car journey for those who have the means. There, ex-juarenses have established a mini-Juárez, complete with its old restaurants, selling the burritos that were invented here.

Ciudad Juárez used to be a small, sleepy town famous for giving express divorces to couples of any nationality during the 1930s. It began to grow in the 1960s with the advent of the maquiladoras, the many foreign factories that take advantage of Mexicos cheap labour and flexible taxation and that now number more than 400. Migrants have come from all over Mexico to earn around 30 per week, and Juarez is now Mexicos sixth-biggest city. The people who join the drug gangs are often the children of these migrants, says Ms Guerrero. They see a fast way to make some money. Sometimes my pupils get involved. Two of them were killed six weeks ago.

The undeclared war on drugs has been the ill-fated centrepiece of President Felipe Calderóns programme. He has sent more than 10,000 soldiers and police to Juárez since the beginning of his presidency in 2006, and yet in that time the annual number of murders has more than doubled. We have hope for the future, said Jorge Torres, another friend of Mrs Enriquez. The situation may yet get worse, but it has to get better eventually, because if it doesnt the citizens of Juárez will take things into their own hands. Even if it means revolution.

Bush help Karl Rove insists waterboarding is not torture

Philippe Naughton & , : {}

George W Bush"s former tip confidant has pronounced he is "proud" of the have make use of of of oppressive inquire techniques - together with waterboarding - during the War on Terror.

Karl Rove, the Republican strategist at large well known as "Bush"s Brain", pronounced in a BBC talk that he did not hold waterboarding, or unnatural drowning, amounted to torture.

"I"m unapproachable that we used techniques that pennyless the will of these terrorists and gave us profitable report that authorised us to foil plots such as drifting aeroplanes in to Heathrow and in to London, bringing down aircraft over the Pacific, drifting an aeroplane in to the tallest construction in Los Angeles and alternative plots," Mr Rove told the BBC.

"Yes, I"m unapproachable that we kept the universe safer than it was, by the have make use of of of these techniques. They"re appropriate, they"re in consent with the general mandate and with US law."

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Mr Rove gave the talk to symbol the announcement of a discourse - Courage and Consequence - in that he argues that story will see agreeably on Mr Bushs two-term presidency, quite his preference to wage fight Iraq.

In the book he calls the 2003 advance the majority material action of the Bush presidency and a pardonable reply to the apprehension attacks of Sep 11, 2001 - even though al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, not Saddam Hussein, were responsible.

Mr Rove admits in the discourse that the disaster to find weapons of mass drop after the advance of Iraq had really bad shop-worn the credit of the Bush Administration.

He blames himeslf, as the White House"s tip domestic confidant at the time, for not carrying pushed behind opposite claims that Mr Bush had taken the nation to fight underneath fake pretences.

The use of waterboarding - effectively authorised by a array of authorised memos from the White House in 2002 - was one of the majority argumentative aspects of the fight opposite terrorism.

The afterwards Director of the CIA, Michael Hayden, told Congress in 2008 that waterboarding had usually ever been used on 3 comparison al-Qaeda detainees and not given 2003. The use was strictly criminialized by President Obama last year.

In his BBC interview, Mr Rove was asked either he thought waterboarding was torture. "No it"s not," he said.

"People need to review the memos that outline what was slight and not slight prior to they have a settlement about these things.

Every one of the people who were waterboarded had a alloy who had to discern that there had been no long-lasting earthy or mental repairs to the individual."

Mr Rove pronounced US soldiers were subjected to waterboarding as a unchanging piece of their training. A less serious form of the technique was used on the 3 suspects - together with the purported 9/11 tract personality Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - interrogated at the US troops jail at Guantanamo Bay, he added.

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Nokia patents the initial self-charging phone

Murad Ahmed, Technology Reporter & , : {}

Youre at work, on holiday, or median by a critical review about last nights television. Suddenly, you realize the phones battery is about to run out. Its a really complicated disaster, but one that could shortly be at an end.

Nokia, the mobile phone makers, are building a self-charging phone that will make make make use of of of the kinetic appetite combined when a chairman moves around to safeguard that the mobile never runs out of juice.

The plan is suggested in a obvious focus seen by The Times and filed with US authorities. The new device could appetite a phone, but the judgment could send on to any unstable electronic device - such as a song player, healing apparatus or games console - and so could do afar with the need for batteries and chargers altogether.

The appurtenance would work by the make make make use of of of of piezoelectric crystals, a piece that creates an electric stream when focussed or compressed, for e.g. in the igniter of a cigarette lighter or in a gas oven.

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In the past, creation highly-efficient crystals that could be used inside of a tool such as a phone was impossible, as they would have to be combined at high temperatures that would fall short majority materials, similar to cosmetic or rubber. But new developments, together with work by scientists at Princeton University that would concede piezoelectric crystals to be printed on to a flexible, rubber-like material, equates to they might shortly be used in unstable devices.

In Nokias due design, the heavier components of a phone, such as the air wave aerial and battery, are upheld on a clever frame. This support can move to one side dual sets of rails. One rail allows the support to move up and down, the alternative from side to side.

Strips of piezoelectric crystals would lay at the finish of each rail. They would emanate an electric stream when strike and dense by the frame. So when a chairman gets up, walks opposite a room or in any approach moves the phone, the movements would emanate electricity. The appetite combined would assign up a capacitor that would in spin assign up a battery, keeping it surfaced up constantly.

Nokia would not exhibit when such a device would crop up on the market. A orator for the Finnish organisation said: Power government has been an critical subject given the early days of mobile communications and so continues to be one of the areas for research, but we cannot criticism on either or when inventions described in obvious applications might in the future crop up in products.

Scientists contend that the human physique is a vital hustler that is really bad utilised. For example, if a chairman walked fast down a street, as their feet strike the ground, they could emanate around 70 watts of energy. That is customarily some-more than sufficient to light a tuber or even run a little computer screens.

Piezoelectric crystals are thought to be a great approach of harvesting appetite combined by a persons physique movements. The Princeton scientists pronounced in the biography Nano Letters that the most appropriate approach to make make make use of of of their crystals that can be stored on a stretchable element would be to place them in shoes, that they hold would furnish sufficient appetite to keep an iPod charged. Nokias researchers have taken this serve by anticipating a approach to utilize them inside of a phone or tool itself.

Others have attempted to find ways to take value of kinetic appetite in sequence to assign devices. Two designers, Song Teaho and Hyejin Lee, have come up with the thought for a spinning battery. The battery would be built with a hole in one end, by that you can put a finger. When a phone is low on power, it would be recharged simply by twirling it around that finger.

However, even the designers confess this process would not emanate most energy, with thirty twirls generating sufficient appetite for dual mins of speak time, or twenty-five mins on stand-by.

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Arsene Wenger right to subject earthy enlightenment of English football

Matt Dickinson, Chief Sports Correspondent & , : {}

When Arsène Wenger preached not long ago about Arsenal as a sole force for great in an nauseous football world, he was righteously slapped down in multiform quarters, this mainstay in between them, for one-eyed sermonising.

That box opposite him stands, but it does not meant we should right away boot his concerns about the severe strategy in use opposite Arsenal.

When Wenger asks either it is a fluke that his group have lost 3 players to critical injuries in new seasons, we should admit a reasonable, intense inquiry.

Because when players finish up in anguish with one of their legs hold together usually by a sock, the issues are as well critical to omit or to bat away, as most would cite to, as the whinings of a Frenchman and a group who dont similar to it up em.

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It is not usually an insult to Wengers comprehension but to everyones to fake that Arsenal do not come in for harder diagnosis than alternative teams. They are roughed up.

How can it be denied when Ricardo Fuller, the Stoke City striker, says: Some people contend prior to the games, We know how to fool around Arsenal . . . we have to flog them. Nobody in the total nation is dissapoint by that.

More divulgence still is that such a matter should go unremarked. Kick Arsenal? Well of march you do. You arent going to kick them with flattering passing.

Even Manchester United have resorted to such boisterous fool around strategy opposite them on occasion, notoriously for the revisit of the Invincibles in 2004. There is an excusable extent for intimidation, and United strayed unequivocally close to that line.

This is the context in that Wenger asks, not unreasonably, either it is a fluke that Eduardo da Silva, Abou Diaby and Aaron Ramsey have suffered critical injuries.

This is the credentials opposite that he wants Ryan Shawcrosss crunching plunge into on Ramsey on Saturday to be re-examined; and the drawn out view, that I share, that the plea did not intend to equates to such disgusting damage does not have the exploration less valid.

Wengers point is that distressing accidents are some-more expected to occur if one group are some-more vigilant on kicking the alternative than they are in their alternative 36 Premier League matches if one side are furiously revved up to get in the others faces and to interrupt them by sincerely earthy means.

Does that have Stoke and Bolton Wanderers, Blackburn Rovers, etc as well hard? Or Arsenal as well soft? Wenger competence be disposed to bouts of self-indulgent cant, but as Ramsey sits in a sanatorium bed we owe it to the Welshman to stop and cruise the argument.

After all, no one in Spain kicks Barcelona. Few teams in La Liga can compare them for ability and verve, but you dont listen to of opponents final that booting them is the usually option.

I checked with a Spanish publisher yesterday who couldnt stop any one articulate about kicking Barcelona out of a compare nonetheless he did recollect one try at boisterous fool around tactics.

When Juande Ramos took a burned out Real Madrid to the Nou Camp in Dec 2008, he educated his players to get heavily stranded in. Sergio Ramos dumped Lionel Messi on the building multiform times, but Real lost the diversion and it was seen as a one-off, the strategy of last resort.

Kicking to stop a group when required isnt the enlightenment in La Liga, but, sometimes, quite with Arsenal in opposition, it is ours.

We applaud the physicality in the game, we multiply players who flower in a difficult environment. This is English football, warts and all, and we competence have the box that Wenger knows the league, with the expectations of mad physicality. We competence interpretation that he should buy his own enforcers.

But we should additionally admit what Barcelona, what Spain, what the rest of Europe competence contend if they listened that Pep Guardiolas group were going to fool around an additional bar lets call them Stoke and the pre-match speak was full of threats about roughing them up and attack them with aggression.

It is a satisfactory theory they would not shrug their shoulders, but be appalled. And they competence think it over a fluke if critical damage resulted.

Poll taxed by try to clear Vidic decisionIf Graham Poll is in truth a refereeing expert, as he has set himself up to be given retirement, it is no consternation that we are continually at a loss with the complete profession.

On Monday he attempted to urge Phil Dowds disaster to boot Nemanja Vidic in the Carling Cup final, and I found myself conflicting with each word.

First, he lectured us on the laws of football. Gabriel Agbonlahor was not, he said, relocating towards the idea when Vidic hauled him down; thus the corruption did not merit a red label underneath Law 12.

So where was the Aston Villa striker heading? Towards the dilemma flag? The critical line in that rule, as any dimwit knows, is the rejection of an viewable goalscoring opportunity. There has frequency been a clearer example. Agbonlahor was goalbound. The round was watchful to be thumped past Tomasz Kuszczak.

But where Poll unequivocally lost me was in explaining that Dowd would have looked for any reason he could not to send that player off since of the arise an reason that competence usually have Martin ONeill hyperventilating in fury.

Since when was it the referees pursuit to confirm if it will be a improved diversion if it stays eleven opposite 11? I watched a compare not long ago would you hold it was in between Aston Villa and Manchester United all the some-more constrained since it pitched eleven opposite Uniteds unaffected ten.

But that was a Barclays Premier League compare and not what Poll deems an occasion. We are left to theory what an arise is. Does it embody semi-finals? Or play-offs? You try to request a little usual sense, Poll said. Sorry, no you dont. You request the rules. Thats your job.

The good Leonardo da Vinci heist: barrister indicted of £4m coercion tract Art and pattern The Guardian

Leonardo’s Madonna of the Yarnwinder on arrangement at the National Gallery of Scotland. The portrayal was stolen from the Duke of Buccleuch by dual men posing as tourists in Aug 2003. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA

A barrister has been indicted along with 4 alternative men of melancholy to fall short a stolen Leonardo da Vinci magnum opus unless they were paid £4.25m, in a swindling allegedly hatched in the offices of one of Glasgow"s heading law firms.

Marshall Ronald, 53, a counsel from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, has left on hearing for allegedly assisting to organize a tract to extract the income from the Duke of Buccleuch for the protected lapse of Leonardo"s Madonna of the Yarnwinder.

The high justice in Edinburgh was told currently that the swindling was organized with the assistance of dual co-accused from Glasgow and dual alternative men from Ormskirk, Lancashire.

The five purported conspirators are indicted of perplexing to extract £4.25m from the count and his son Richard, the 10th and stream duke, by "menacing them" and "putting them in a state of fright and warning and apprehension" that the portrayal would be shop-worn or broken if the ransom was not paid.

Valued at £30m to £50m, the portrayal was the centrepiece of the afterwards duke"s pick up at Drumlanrig castle, nearby Dumfries, conjectural to be the UK"s majority profitable pick up in in isolation hands, when it was stolen in Aug 2003 in a illumination robbery. The heist stays the UK"s greatest art theft.

The portrayal was recovered in Oct 2007 after military raided the offices of the law firm, HBJ Gateley Wareing, in Glasgow. The duke, a penetrating excellent art collector, had died elderly 83 a month prior to it was recovered.

The justice was told that the dual purported thieves, not between the five men on trial, had in jeopardy to kill a immature debate guide and brandished an mattock at alternative staff when they took the portrayal from the protecting case.

The casually-dressed men had been posing as tourists, and transient by a window at Drumlanrig castle, the genealogical home of the dukes of Buccleuch, carrying the Leonardo underneath their arms.

Alison Russell, afterwards an 18-year-old who had only started her initial deteriorate as a debate guide, told the justice the dual men were the initial visitors to arrive at the art studio housing the painting, rught away after the palace non-stop one sunrise in late Aug 2003.They had abandoned all the castle"s alternative galleries and her try to report the collection.

Then, she told the court, one of the thieves "put his palm over my mouth and told me I had to distortion down on the belligerent or he would kill me if I didn"t".

Sarah Skene, 73, an additional debate guide, pronounced she listened "a commotion" in the staircase gymnasium housing the painting, and listened a masculine co-worker cheering "please don"t do it. Retreat, retreat."

She came in and saw one of the thieves wielding the axe. "He was station ensure on the picture," she said. "After it was done, they left out of the window."

The jury was shown dual CCTV images display the thieves: a stocky man wearing a white sunhat and a gilet-style waistcoat, and a slimmer man with a ball top and dark-coloured infrequent jacket. Both men walked underneath the CCTV camera with their faces vaporous by their hats.

Currently in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh on proxy loan, the painting, that measures 20in x 14in, shows the Madonna with the infant Jesus and the cross-shaped yarnwinder, a pitch of Christ"s crucifixion.

The charge claims that in Jul 2007, scarcely 4 years after the theft, Ronald, the solicitor, had contacted the duke"s insurers and their loss adjusters and claimed he could prepare for the painting"s return. He allegedly told dual clandestine military officers posing as the duke"s member that "volatile individuals" were concerned who would "do something really silly" if the military were informed.

Between 10 Aug 2007 and 4 Oct 2007, Ronald regularly asked the detectives to compensate £2m in to his own solicitor"s firm"s comment and an additional £2.25m in to a Swiss bank account, the charges said.

During those weeks, Ronald and dual co-defendants, Calum Jones, 45, and David Boyce, 63, drafted an agreement at the offices of HBJ Gateley Wareing to organize the protected lapse of the Leonardo, once the £2m had been paid to Ronald"s firm.

The charges lay that in late Sep and early Oct 2007, Ronald embezzled £500,000 from his clients" accounts and organised to take receive of the painting, from persons unknown.

On twenty-nine September, Ronald paid for acid-free paper and a folio case, allegedly to ride the painting. Four days later, he allegedly paid £350,000 to an additional of his co-accused, a builder from Ormskirk called Robert Graham, 57, for the painting.

With the last defendant, John Doyle, 61, additionally from Ormskirk, Ronald and Graham allegedly took receive of the stolen portrayal – an corruption identical to reception stolen products well well known as "reset" in Scots law – and afterwards took it to Jones and Boyce at their offices in Glasgow.

On 4 October, they allegedly showed the paintings to the dual clandestine detectives, who were well well known to them as David Restor and John Craig, perfectionist a sum of £4.25m on credit in dual large sums for the protected return.

The hearing continues and is approaching to last for up to 6 weeks.

Poland admits purpose in CIA delivery programme World headlines

The carry out building of the airfield in Szymany, Poland. Poland has certified a purpose in a CIA delivery programme. Photograph: AP

The Polish authorities have for the initial time certified their impasse in the CIA"s tip programme for the delivery of high-level militant suspects from Iraq and Afghanistan, it emerged today.

After years of stonewalling, Warsaw"s air carry out use reliable that at slightest 6 CIA flights had landed at a outworn troops air bottom in northern Poland in 2003.

"It is time for the authorities to yield a full accounting of Poland"s purpose in rendition," Adam Bodnar, of the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, said.

"These moody annals strengthen the discouraging commentary of central European inquiries and tellurian human rights groups, display complicity with CIA abuse opposite Europe."

For years, European and human rights investigators have believed Poland played a key purpose in the tip renditions programme, that became a human rights liaison for the George Bush administration.

An endless Council of Europe review in 2007 found that "especially supportive high-value detainees" were hold at a jail facility, rented by the CIA from the Poles, nearby the Szymany airfield in northern Poland.

The Polish authorities told the investigators they were not wakeful of moody interpretation that would exhibit the trade in kidnapping.

But following a leisure of report debate from the Helsinki Foundation and the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency expelled moody interpretation display that at slightest dual of the aircraft used in the CIA operations flew from Kabul and Rabat, in Morocco, to Szymany at slightest 6 times in between Feb and Sep 2003.

"We know that CIA detainees were hold in those dual locations in the duration in question," the campaigners said.

The dual aircraft, a Boeing 737 and a Gulfstream V, were US-registered and formerly well known to be piece of the CIA operation.

"In the past, the Polish supervision denied the impasse in rendition. It unsuccessful to yield any of these moody annals to prior investigations," the campaigners said.

Analysis of the moody logs additionally indicated an attempted corner coverup by the CIA and the Polish authorities, with the aviation authorities being told that multiform of the flights were unfailing not for Szymany but for Warsaw.

"The CIA filed "dummy" and fake moody plans, or no moody plans at all, for the incoming and effusive flights of N379P," the campaigners added.

"[The Polish aviation authority] collaborated with the CIA by usurpation the charge of navigating these sheltered flights in to and out of Szymany airfield but adhering to the mandate of general moody formulation regulations.

"The majority conspicuous aspect is that the Polish government, that confirmed for some-more than 4 years that no such annals existed – or that, if they did, they were untraceable – has right away supposing an assumingly extensive list of these landings, gathered and presented in an nurse and awake fashion."

UN calls for movement on flourishing electronic rubbish Environment

Migrant workers in Guiyu, China, scavenge used electronic equipment, that mostly contains rarely poisonous material. Photograph: Jim Puckett/AP

The universe contingency do some-more to cope with the extreme climb in electronic waste, according to a UN investigate published today.

The inform suggests that in a small countries, the volume of e-waste being constructed – together with mobile phones and computers – could climb by as majority as 500% over the subsequent decade. Such fast growth, it argues, will emanate bullheaded problems for people"s health and the sourroundings as the waste, majority of it containing poisonous material, decays.

"The issue is exploding," pronounced Ruediger Kuehr, who oversees zero-emission initiatives at the United Nations University. "We see the craving for mobile phones, computers and additionally any alternative kind of electronic and electrical apparatus in a small building countries."

The commentary are being denounced at a assembly of the UN Environment Programme (Unep) in Bali today, along with a call for larger efforts to repair the problem.

"This is a tellurian question," pronounced Guido Sonnemann, programme military officer for Unep. "This complaint is not going away, it"s growing."

While majority of the materials used in electronic apparatus can be reused in new products, recycling genius is being outstripped by the expansion in direct for phones, computers and alternative devices.

Despite a series of conventions directed at preventing the unenlightened transfer of e-waste, the complaint is snowballing, with billions of people right away continually utilizing modernized electronics.

The complaint is quite strident in tools of west Africa, where ship-loads of e-waste are dumped on a every day basement and scavenged by young kids who mangle down the wiring to redeem profitable metals that they can sell.

Kuehr pronounced the issue was undeniably critical for countries where mercantile expansion is top and transfer majority prevalent.

"It"s really in the countries that have estimable enlarge in expenditure – countries similar to China and India, that are still estimable targets for bootleg imports of e-waste," he said. "The same relates for countries similar to Nigeria."

The complaint is not cramped to building countries, however.

"There"s still a high expansion rate in grown countries," pronounced Kuehr. "It"s an increasing, flourishing and dire complaint everywhere, together with Europe. The pick up rates are simply as well little."

Although there is legislation to inspire e-waste recycling in a small tools of the universe – together with the WEEE beginning in Europe – the UN argues that this alone is insufficient.

Instead, it advocates a series of solutions, together with ancillary internal communities to enlarge the volume of "informal" recycling, where profitable materials are scavenged for resale and reuse.

It additionally wants improved coercion of recycling and anti-dumping laws and larger movement from manufacturers, and is propelling internal governments and consumers to recycle old record rather than bail out it.

"We see the need for stronger recognition and movement to compromise the e-waste problem," pronounced Sonnemann. "You need to get a routine that is not harming health or the environment."