1kg of Radioactive Material Seized

Reuters - Slovaks seize 1 kg of radioactive material

Slovak and Hungarian police seized a kilo (2.2 lbs) of radioactive material and arrested three people in a joint operation on Wednesday, a spokesman said.

Slovak police spokesman Martin Korch said the material was being examined and did not confirm a report carried by the Slovak news agency SITA that it was enriched uranium.

"This one kilogram should have been sold for one million U.S. dollars," spokesman Martin Korch said.

The spokesman said the police raid took place along the eastern part of the two central European countries' common frontier, near their borders with Ukraine.

"Three people have been taken into custody, two in Slovakia one in Hungary," he said. "Further information will be provided tomorrow."

Uranium enrichment can yield either fuel for nuclear power stations, or be used for nuclear warheads.

Anti-torture Activist Banned from YouTube

UPDATE - December 28, 2007. 6:44 pm: I noticed today that his account has been restored by YouTube. It can be seen at: http://youtube.com/user/waelabbas

Reuters - YouTube stops account of anti-torture activist

The video-sharing website YouTube has suspended the account of a prominent Egyptian anti-torture activist who posted videos of what he said was brutal behaviour by some Egyptian policemen, the activist said.

Wael Abbas said close to 100 images he had sent to YouTube were no longer accessible, including clips depicting purported police brutality, voting irregularities and anti-government demonstrations.

YouTube, owned by search engine giant Google, did not respond to a written request for comment. A message on Abbas's YouTube user page, http://youtube.com/user/waelabbas, read: "This account is suspended."

"They closed it (the account) and they sent me an email saying that it will be suspended because there were lots of complaints about the content, especially the content of torture," Abbas told Reuters in a telephone interview.

Abbas, who won an international journalism award for his work this year, said that of the images he had posted to YouTube, 12 or 13 depicted violence in Egyptian police stations.

Abbas was a key player last year in distributing a clip of an Egyptian bus driver, his hands bound, being sodomised with a stick by a police officer - imagery that sparked an uproar in a country where rights groups say torture is commonplace.

That tape prompted an investigation that led to a rare conviction of two policemen, who were sentenced to three years in prison for torture. Egypt says it opposes torture and prosecutes police against whom it has evidence of misconduct.

YouTube regulations state that "graphic or gratuitous violence" is not allowed and warn users not to post such videos. Repeat violators of YouTube guidelines may have their accounts terminated, according to rules posted on the site.

Rights activists said by shutting down Abbas's account, YouTube was closing a significant portal for information on human rights abuses in Egypt just as Cairo was escalating a crackdown on opposition and independent journalists.

The internet has emerged in Egypt as a major forum for critics of the Egyptian government.

"The goal is not showing the violence, it is showing police brutality. If his goal was just to focus on violence without any goal, that is a problem. But Wael is showing police brutality in Egypt," said Gamal Eid, head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information.

This year, for the first time, an Egyptian court convicted and jailed a blogger over his internet writings.

A string of court rulings since September has seen at least 12 Egyptian journalists ordered jailed on charges from defaming President Hosni Mubarak to misquoting the minister of justice.

Elijah Zarwan, a prominent blogger and activist in Egypt, said he thought it was unlikely that YouTube had come under official Egyptian pressure, and was more likely reacting to the graphic nature of the videos.

"I suspect they are doing it not under pressure from the Egyptian government but rather because it made American viewers squeamish," he said. "But to shut them down because some people might find the truth disturbing is unconscionable."

Taser Death Video

My previous post: Witness Disputes RCMP Version of Airport Taser Death, RCMP Won't Show Video

The video has been released.

Google Video - Polish Man Tasered to Death by RCMP at Vancouver Airport

Homeless Veterans

AP - Study: 1 out of 4 homeless are veterans

Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday.

Terrorist Watch List

USA Today - Terror watch list swells to more than 755,000

The government's terrorist watch list has swelled to more than 755,000 names, according to a new government report that has raised worries about the list's effectiveness.

The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004. Some lawmakers, security experts and civil rights advocates warn that it will become useless if it includes too many people.

USA Today - 15,000 want off the U.S. terror watch list

More than 15,000 people have appealed to the government since February to have their names removed from the terrorist watch list that delayed their travel at U.S. airports and border crossings, the Homeland Security Department says.

John Anderson of Minneapolis, who turned 6 on July 4, is among those who have been inconvenienced.

Pakistan Turned into Police State

Reuters - Musharraf tries to stifle outcry over emergency rule

Police detained hundreds of Pakistani opposition figures and lawyers on Sunday as military ruler President Pervez Musharraf tried to stifle the outcry over his imposition of a state of emergency.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said national elections, due in January, might be rescheduled because of General Musharraf's decision on Saturday to announce emergency rule, which was condemned by the United States and other Western allies.

BBC - Musharraf targets key opponents

Pakistani opposition leaders and activists have been detained in the wake of President Pervez Musharraf's decision to declare emergency rule.

The acting head of the party of exiled former PM Nawaz Sharif was arrested, senior lawyers have been detained and the country's chief justice sacked.

BBC - Musharraf takes on Pakistan's judges

The proclamation of emergency in Pakistan has made one big difference. All the nearly 30 TV news channels have gone off the air. And with them has gone all the cacophony about the political, judicial and military crisis in the country.

Pakistan's military ruler, Gen Pervez Musharraf, suspended the constitution and proclaimed emergency rule in a televised address on Saturday evening.

Soon afterwards, TV cable operators said they were asked by the government to stop beaming all local and foreign news channels, except the official Pakistan Television Corp (PTV).

Meanwhile, resentment is brewing among the judges of the higher judiciary. More than 60 judges, out of a total of 97, have declined to take oath under the new Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO).

Their homes have been placed under strict security, presumably to prevent them from going to the courts on Monday, as some of them plan to do.

In a hurriedly-called sitting on Saturday evening, seven Supreme Court judges issued an order barring the government from proclaiming emergency rule, and advising the state functionaries not to carry out emergency orders, if issued.

AP - Pakistani police detain 500 activists

Police and soldiers emboldened by state of emergency powers swept up hundreds of activists and opposition members on Sunday, dragged away protesters shouting "Shame on you!", and turned government buildings into barbed-wire compounds.

Witness Disputes RCMP Version of Airport Taser Death, RCMP Won't Show Video

UPDATE - November 15, 2007. 6:15 pm: The video has been released. It can be seen in my new post by clicking here.

CanWest - Witness disputes RCMP version of airport taser death

The young man who filmed the final minutes of 40-year-old Robert Dziekanski's life has given a disturbing account of what he believes was a preventable Taser death.

Paul Pritchard, 25, was on his way home to Victoria when he happened to witness an RCMP officer Taser Dziekanski to death in the arrivals section of Vancouver International Airport on Oct. 13.

Pritchard, an English teacher in China, says he was waiting in the arrivals lobby when he noticed Dziekanski acting strangely as he paced back and forth. After watching for a few minutes, he decided to use his cellphone camera to film Dziekanski.

While others in the waiting area called for security, it took some 25 to 30 minutes before security and police arrived, recalled Pritchard.

But upon their arrival, it was clear that the police had decided to use a Taser gun before they even got near Dziekanski, said Pritchard.

"I heard 'Can I or should I Taser him?' before they even got to Mr. Dziekanski," says Pritchard. "Right away they Tasered him."

Three police officers then struggled to handcuff Dziekanski, who by now was on the floor. Dziekanski was unconscious about a minute later, said Pritchard.

Police immediately called "Code Red" and medics arrived about five to eight minutes later - a time period that Pritchard believes was too long.

Pritchard said that in the 25 minutes prior to security and RCMP officers arriving on scene, at least five people - including women - went up to Dziekanski to offer help.

Although he was clearly distressed and behaving strangely "none of us felt threatened at any time. We weren't scared, women were going right up to him," said Pritchard.

Pritchard's account is in stark contrast to that given by the RCMP, who said Dziekanski had been behaving violently and erratically in the international arrivals area and they were unable to calm him.

Pritchard had turned over his video footage to police on the understanding it would be returned to him within 48 hours.

But police have since changed their minds, saying the release of Pritchard's footage may taint other witness testimony.

Investigators told Pritchard it could be a year to two years before he gets the footage back.

Now Pritchard is suing the Mounties to get the video back in a bid to show the public what actually happened and put to rest the questions surrounding Dziekanski's death.

"I'm watching all these interviews and all these press conferences and there's all this guesswork. . . But there's a clear image of what happened - why are they hiding it?" said Pritchard at a Victoria news conference.

Pritchard's lawyer, Paul Pearson, will be arguing in B.C. Supreme Court on Friday for the return of the video footage.

"The police have not cited any legal authority for holding onto the footage," said Pearson. "They've been generally stating that it's an investigation. . .To us, that is not a legal reason."

Pearson added that when police seize personal items, they typically write a report to the justice.

"Those, as I understand it, have not been followed," said Pearson. "Effectively, they are people who are holding onto my client's property."

Dziekanski, who spoke no English, flew to Vancouver Oct. 13 to immigrate to Canada and join his mother in Kamloops, B.C.

The Taser death at Vancouver Airport has caused international repercussions - Poland's embassy in Ottawa has sent a diplomatic note to Canada expressing concern over the death.

Dziekanski's mother, Zofia Cisowski, was too distraught to comment publicly on Thursday.

"She buried her only son yesterday," said a friend. "She's devastated, absolutely devastated."

Karen Hughes Quits

Reuters - State Department's image guru Karen Hughes quits

The U.S. State Department's public diplomacy chief and image guru Karen Hughes, one of the last survivors of President George W. Bush's original inner circle, said on Wednesday she would quit and return to Texas.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Hughes would step down in mid-December but the former television reporter would remain a consultant for the State Department.

Call for Surveillance Cameras in Terror Suspect’s Home

AP - Canadian officials call for surveillance cameras to be placed in terror suspect's home

Canadian officials took the unprecedented step of asking a judge to install closed-circuit video cameras inside a terrorism suspect's home.

Government lawyer Donald MacIntosh said Monday that he hopes the Federal Court will approve the heightened surveillance for Mahmoud Jaballah, an Egyptian asylum-seeker who Canadian officials have accused of being a "communications link" in al-Qaeda's 1998 African embassy bombings.

MacIntosh said he knows of no jurisdiction that has tried installing closed-circuit cameras in a suspect's home, but he intends to submit a formal argument before a hearing next month.

Jaballah, who already lives under extremely strict house arrest, has never been charged with a criminal offense but spent nearly all of 1997 to 2007 in a Canadian jail. Attempts to deport him to Egypt, a country known to torture fundamentalists, failed on humanitarian grounds.

He is being held under Canada's controversial "security certificate" system, which allows the government to detain and deport foreign-born terrorist suspects without charging them or providing them with evidence of their allegations. Aspects of the certificate system were ruled unconstitutional by Canada's Supreme Court in February.

Jaballah recently agreed to live under extraordinary surveillance, in return for being let out of jail in April.

Past measures have included having suspects submit to being followed by federal agents during their few weekly excursions, having their calls monitored, staying away from computers and having video cameras installed outside the home. Never before has any Canadian prisoner on bail been known to have had to countenance cameras inside their house.

Prosecutors in the Jaballah case argued last week in court that surveillance in his home is critical for reasons of national security.

Lawyers acting for Jaballah are resisting added surveillance and fighting for increased liberties.

The Federal Court is currently weighing a motion for Jaballah, a former principal at a Toronto Islamic school, to be let out of his Toronto home to teach school lessons to Muslim children. He currently lives at home with his wife and five children.

It’s insane how a person in this country can be detained for such a ridiculous amount of time and have basic freedoms taken away without ever being convicted and in this case, without even being charged.

Drug Firms Bribing Doctors

The Guardian - Drug firms try to bribe doctors with cars

Multinational drug companies are targeting doctors in developing countries with dinners and lavish gifts, such as air conditioners, washing machines and down-payments on cars, as incentives to prescribe their drugs, a report reveals today.

The report from Consumers International (CI) says that self-regulation by the multinational drug giants has failed, citing drug adverts by companies such as Glaxo-SmithKline, Wyeth, Novartis and Pfizer that would be considered misleading in Europe, as well as the heavy promotion by all companies of products to doctors.

Here is a related post: Bristol-Myers Squibb to Pay $515 Million for Doctor Kickback Scheme

Water Shortage

AP - Many states seen facing water shortages

An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn't have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York's reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year. Across America, the picture is critically clear — the nation's freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.

The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

Photographer Was Told Diana Was to Announce Engagement or Pregnancy

Daily Express - GET TO RITZ FAST...DIANA ANNOUNCING PREGNANCY

PAPARAZZI photographers had been told to expect Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed to announce their engagement or a pregnancy on the night they died, the inquest heard yesterday.

Thierry Orban, a photo-reporter with the Sygma photo agency, told the police his duty chief editor Guillaume Vall­abreque had phoned him at home between 9pm and 9.30pm to ask him to go the Ritz Hotel specifically because news was expected.

“He told me that there was a rumour of an announcement that Diana was getting married or having a baby and he asked me to go to the Ritz to take a few photos of Diana with Dodi Al Fayed,” he said in a statement read to the jury.

Mr Orban, however, said he initially refused because he was having dinner at home with friends.

He was called again at around 11pm by his colleague Jacques Langevin, who asked him to take over from him outside the Ritz, but he again refused.

Around two hours later, he was told there had been a crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel. He went there and found Mr Langevin and other paparazzi near the wreckage of Diana and Dodi’s Mercedes.

He said he stayed at the scene until a police van carrying a group of photographers and an ambulance taking the stricken Princess to hospital left the tunnel.

Mr Orban, 52, followed the ambulance, taking a photograph when it stopped just a short distance from the Pitie Salpetriere Hospital, where Diana eventually died.

“The ambulance stopped, the driver got out and got into the back. That was when I took the only photograph of the ambulance, which in any case was blurry,” he said.

“It was rocking as if they were doing a cardiac massage.”

“Then the ambulance carried on to the Pitie Salpetriere Hospital. From there, I turned back.”

The inquest jury also heard parts of a statement made by hire car chauffeur Eric Li-Falandry, who was driving past the tunnel shortly after the crash and stopped to help.

He told the police he approached the car and saw people tending to the front seat passenger, bodyguard Trevor Rees-Jones – now known as Trevor Rees – and a woman passenger in the back, although he did not realise at the time that the woman was Princess Diana

Mr Li-Falandry, 47, described the moment Diana opened her eyes.

“I looked in the back of the car and saw a woman sitting on the floor with her back against the rear right-hand door as someone attended to her,” he said.

“I noticed her open her eyes. I said to myself that she was alive and therefore went on to the driver.

“I saw his white hand and knew that he was dead. I could not see his face.

“As I was about to help the person tending to the woman, I noticed the police arrive. Not wanting to hinder the emergency services and, upset by what I had just seen, I decided to return to my vehicle. It was only later, on listening to the radio, that I found out that it was the Princess.”

A British solicitor told crash investigators he saw two cars he believed were fleeing the area around the Alma tunnel at high speed about the time of the crash.

Extracts from statements made by Gary Hunter, now dead, were read to the jury yesterday.

He said he saw a small black car followed by a larger white car travel beneath his hotel window.

British police officers suggested the two cars could have had nothing to do with the crash because, if they had emerged from the tunnel and followed the proper traffic signals, they would have had to travel one-and-a-half miles, to get to the position where Mr Hunter saw them, in around one minute.

However, Michael Mansfield QC, for Dodi’s father Mohamed Al Fayed, asked whether the Scotland Yard team working for former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens had investigated if the cars could have come from the slip road beside the tunnel.

The court was told the Scotland Yard team, which spent £3.69million of taxpayers’ money investigating conspiracy theories around the crash, had not. The police agreed to look into it yesterday.

The inquest continues.

Other posts about the inquest can be seen here.

Witness at Diana Inquest: I Saw a Flash

Daily Express - ANOTHER WITNESS: I SAW BLINDING FLASHES

AN American businessman who was in a taxi overtaken by Princess Diana’s Mercedes described last night seeing a “significant flash of light” a second before the crash.

Brian Anderson said he saw the Mercedes being pursued by at least three motorcycles a few hundred yards before it reached the Alma tunnel.

And then suddenly, after they disappeared from view, there was a “pretty significant flash of light”. He said the light appeared to come from towards the front and left of his car – perhaps from boats on the River Seine – as it sped along the riverside expressway.

“I saw the flash of light, which again didn’t strike me at the time because it’s where the illumination of the boats takes place, but a pretty significant flash of light,” he said.

Asked whether it had come from the boats on the Seine, he replied: “Yes, it came from that vicinity.”

A second later, he heard what sounded like an explosion. Describing the sequence, he said: “Flash. Explosion. Audio noise. It was a very large noise that sounded like an explosion. There was a half second between them.”

Mr Anderson, 53, who was giving evidence by video link from California, told the inquest his car stopped between 40 and 100 yards from the tunnel entrance.

“We came to a rapid stop and I saw an object passing in front of us and into the right side of the tunnel. It was the black Mercedes,” he said.

Seconds earlier, he had seen the Mercedes driving rapidly in the left lane of the carriageway down the expressway with three motorbikes just behind. In a statement to police, he said: “The bikes were in a cluster, like a swarm, around the Mercedes.” One of the motorcycles had two riders and the others had just one, he told the hearing.

Driving past the wreckage, Mr Anderson said he thought he saw one of the motorbikes parked in front of the mangled Mercedes.

On Monday, Francois Levistre told the hearing he had seen a bright flash of light in the tunnel.

Mr Anderson was interviewed by Scotland Yard officers between 2004 and 2006. He said he had also given an interview to French police but they claimed they had never spoken to him.

Ian Burnett, QC, for the coroner, said that Mr Anderson had given differing accounts of what he saw in five interviews with US media organisations in 10 years. He had not previously mentioned seeing a bright flash of light from the river and he had described seeing only two motorcycles.

Asked why his accounts varied, Mr Anderson, an international management consultant, said that thinking about what he had seen over the years had triggered further memories.

Other posts about the inquest can be seen here.

Iran Wins Neighbors' Pledge Not to Help U.S. Attack

Bloomberg - Iran Wins Neighbors' Pledge Not to Help U.S. Attack

Iran, facing U.S. pressure over its nuclear program, secured a pledge from Russia and the other three nations that surround the Caspian Sea not to allow America or its allies to launch an attack on it from their soil.

The presidents of Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan signed a joint declaration in Tehran today to prohibit third countries from using their territory for attacks on one another "under any circumstances.''

Secret Cremations Hide Burma Killings

The Sunday Times - Secret cremations hide Burma killings

THE Burmese army has burnt an undetermined number of bodies at a crematorium sealed off by armed guards northeast of Rangoon over the past seven days, ensuring that the exact death toll in the recent pro-democracy protests will never be known.

Other related posts can be seen here.

Diana Crash Witness Statements

Daily Mail - Diana witness had to swerve to avoid slow moving 'light-coloured' car seconds before the crash

A driver has told how he was forced to avoid a 'light-coloured' car driving 'extremely slowly' into the Alma tunnel just seconds before the crash which claimed Princess Diana's life.

David Laurent claimed the car, possibly a Fiat Uno, was travelling at little more than 18mph, forcing him to pull at speed into another lane.The limit in the underpass is 31mph.

Other posts about the inquest can be seen here.

Richard Tomlinson to Make Statements at Diana Inquest

Daily Express - DRIVER 'MET MI6 SPY' ON CRASH NIGHT

Renegade spy Richard Tomlinson will tell the Princess Diana inquest that he believes Ritz hotel security chief Henri Paul met an MI6 handler on the night she died.

Today we also reveal a French spy chief allegedly seen chatting to Paul on the night of the crash is refusing to give evidence at the inquest.

Mr Tomlinson, a former MI6 officer once jailed for leaking Government secrets, will make sensational claims via a videolink from his bolthole in France to the inquest in London.

He is refusing to return to Britain to give evidence in person because he fears he will be arrested and jailed. Cambridge-educated Mr Tomlinson, 40, will give evidence supporting the claim by Harrods tycoon Mohamed Al Fayed that there was an Establishment plot to kill Diana to stop her marrying his son, Dodi, a Muslim.

Private testimony that Mr Tomlinson gave earlier caused ructions within MI6, leading to him being closely monitored by the British security services. Mr Tomlinson told the French examining magistrate Herve Stephan that a Frenchman working in the security department at the Paris Ritz was on MI6’s books.

He added: “I cannot claim that I remember from reading this file that the name of the person was Henri Paul but I have no doubt with the benefit of hindsight that it was he.”

In 2001 he claimed: “Henri Paul, who was the driver at the time of the accident, was an MI6 informer and, rather interestingly, he was missing for about half an hour before the accident.

“No one knows where he was and then when he was killed he was found with a very high alcohol level in his blood and a very substantial amount of money in his pocket.

“Now putting those three pieces of circumstantial evidence together, I suspect that shortly prior to his death he was in a meeting with his MI6 handler.

“I think that MI6 should hand over his personal file as a witness statement because clearly in an inquest into his death, knowing where he was for that missing half hour, who he was with and how much alcohol he had drunk are very important factors.

“What I am saying is that there is important information in MI6 files and I think that they should be handed over to the judge in charge of the inquest.”

Speaking exclusively to the Sunday Express from his home in France, Mr Tomlinson said he will reveal discussions he had within MI6 in May 1992 with a colleague about an assassination plot.

The Sunday Express has been given the identity of the MI6 man he spoke to but we are not publishing his name on the grounds that his security may be compromised.

Mr Tomlinson said: “I was having a serious discussion with a colleague on developing and targeting operations in the Balkans. These were known as P/40s. He handed me a Y-file, identified as most restricted by the yellow stripe on the front. Inside was a document, two typed pages long, with a small yellow card attached to signify it was an accountable account rather than a draft proposal.

“Accountable meant it was in a ready to act state. It was entitled ‘The Need to Assassinate President Milosevic of Serbia’. I distributed it to senior MI6 officers.

“There were detailed discussions and the consensus was that a stun device could be used to dazzle the driver’s gaze of Milosevic’s car as it passed through the Geneva tunnel, forcing him to crash.”

Milosevic was to attend an international conference on the former Yugoslavia.

Mr Tomlinson added: “What later struck me about the deaths of Diana and Dodi was that the claims how they had died mimicked what was in the document on how to assassinate Milosevic.

“I will testify that the Y-file document shows Henri Paul could have been blinded as he drove through the Paris underpass by a high-powered flashlight.

“The Y-file proves this was a technique which, at the time of Diana and Dodi’s deaths, was consistent with MI6 methods.”

The inquest into the death of Diana and Dodi has seen CCTV footage of the couple in and around the Ritz Hotel in Paris on the night of August 30, 1997.

But the inquest has been told there were gaps in the movements of Henri Paul, the hotel’s acting head of security. He left the hotel between 7pm and 10pm, thinking his duties were over, but returned when Diana and Mr Fayed unexpectedly returned to the hotel for a meal.

Where Mr Paul went during those crucial three hours has never been fully explained. There is also a period when he went missing for eight and a half minutes from 10.22pm when he was not picked up on any CCTV cameras.

The investigation into the crash carried out by former Metropolitan Police chief Lord Stevens decided that Mr Tomlinson was unreliable and that he had embellished his accounts.

Scotland Yard detectives working for Lord Stevens carried out detailed investigations at MI6. They discovered that an MI6 officer, codenamed Fish, did write a proposal in 1993 to assassinate an extremist Balkans leader, but it was not Milosevic, and senior officers in the service said the man was acting alone and the plan would not have been sanctioned.

Mr Tomlinson said: “The two Stevens’ detectives said in their own inquiries at MI6 that it became very clear that what I had told them, and which they had confirmed in the MI6 files, would have an important influence on how the Stevens inquiry finally reported.

“There is no doubt at all there was a major intelligence presence in events leading up to the death of Princess Diana and Dodi.”

New Zealand born Mr Tomlinson joined MI6 as agent D/813317 in 1991. He worked as a “targeting officer”, serving in the Balkans and Moscow. Later he served in the East European Controllerate, one of the most important departments in the Secret Intelligence Service. It gave him access to the highly restricted Y-files.

He was sacked in 1995 and was jailed for a year in December 1997 for breaching the Official Secrets Act, a sentence which has left him with bitter memories.

He says he does not know why he was sacked, but admits he was depressed when he finished working in Bosnia because of the dreadful sights he witnessed. Last March the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it would not be prosecuting Mr Tomlinson for offences under the Official Secrets Act.

The then Attorney General Lord Goldsmith decided it would not be in the public interest to continue legal action against him.

It was alleged that Mr Tomlinson had committed blackmail offences by threatening to make more disclosures because Scotland Yard would not return computers seized from him.

Other posts about the inquest can be seen here.

Terror Charges for Owning a Book

BBC - Boy in court on terror charges

A British teenager who is accused of possessing material for terrorist purposes has appeared in court.

The 17-year-old, who was arrested in the Dewsbury area of West Yorkshire on Monday, was given bail after a hearing at Westminster Magistrates' Court.

It is alleged he had a copy of the "Anarchists' Cookbook", containing instructions on how to make home-made explosives.

His next court hearing has been set for 25 October.

The teenager faces two charges under the Terrorism Act 2000.

The first charge relates to the possession of material for terrorist purposes in October last year.

The second relates to the collection or possession of information useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism.

He stood in the dock wearing a baggy, blue hooded top and only spoke to confirm his name and date of birth.

After the 40-minute hearing, the teenager was released on bail under several conditions.

A second 17-year-old who is facing similar charges has already been remanded in custody and will also appear at the Crown Court on 25 October.

The Anarchist Cookbook

Bombshock archives

National Guard Troops Denied Benefits

NBC - National Guard Troops Denied Benefits After Longest Deployment Of Iraq War

When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.

1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

"It's pretty much a slap in the face," Anderson said. "I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers."

Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.

Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.

"Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month," Anderson said.

That money would help him pay for his master's degree in public administration. It would help Anderson's fellow platoon leader, John Hobot, pay for a degree in law enforcement.

"I would assume, and I would hope, that when I get back from a deployment of 22 months, my senior leadership in Washington, the leadership that extended us in the first place, would take care of us once we got home," Hobot said.

Both Hobot and Anderson believe the Pentagon deliberately wrote orders for 729 days instead of 730. Now, six of Minnesota's members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it -- So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.

Klobuchar said the GI money "shouldn't be tied up in red tape," and Coleman said it's "simply irresponsible to deny education benefits to those soldiers who just completed the longest tour of duty of any unit in Iraq."

Anderson said the soldiers he oversaw in his platoon expected that money to be here when they come home.

"I had 23 guys under my command," Anderson said. "I promised to take care of them. And I'm not going to end taking care of them when this deployment is over, and it's not over until this is solved."

The Army did not respond questions Tuesday afternoon.

Senators Klobuchar and Coleman released a joint statement saying the Army secretary, Pete Geren, is looking into this personally, and they say Geren asked a review board to expedite its review so the matter could be solved by next semester.

Minnesota National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Kevin Olson said the soldiers are "victims of a significant injustice."

Princess Diana Inquest

Yorkshire Post - Prince Philip 'told MI6 to murder Diana and lover'

SENSATIONAL claims that Princess Diana was murdered on the instructions of the Duke of Edinburgh after she expressed fears of an attempt on her life dominated the opening of the inquest into her death yesterday.

The jury heard allegations that Prince Philip was at the heart of a conspiracy to murder Diana and her lover, Dodi Fayed, after ordering MI6 to prepare a report on them for the Royal Family. The car crash that killed them both in Paris on August 31, 1997 was then engineered, the jury heard.

The claim of murder by Dodi's father, Harrods owner Mohamed al-Fayed, was at the heart of coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker's opening statement to the jury at the inquest at the High Court in London yesterday.

And the jury was told how Diana had expressed fears that she would be the victim of an arranged accident if, as she believed, the Queen abdicated and Prince Charles succeeded to the throne, saying that would create a need to "get rid of her, via some accident in her car such as prepared brake failure".

The judge told the jury of six women and five men that many had come to believe something "sinister" may lie behind the crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in which Diana, 36, and 42-year-old Dodi were killed with their driver, Henri Paul.

He added that Mr al-Fayed also believes MI6 had been commissioned to write a special report on his family to be presented to the Royal Family.

The judge said: "It is his belief that a decision was taken at that time to kill Diana and Dodi. He places Prince Philip at the heart of the conspiracy, you will have to listen carefully to the witnesses you hear to see whether there is any evidence to support this assertion."

Mr al-Fayed believes that Diana was carrying Dodi's child and that they would have announced their engagement on September 1 that year, the day after the crash, but the Royal Family "could not accept that an Egyptian Muslim could eventually be stepfather to the future King of England".

He is convinced that Henri Paul was in the pay of MI6 and French secret services, and the crash was caused by a combination of a collision with a mystery white Fiat Uno and a blinding flash from a stun gun deliberately fired. Two official inquiries concluded that Paul had been drinking and lost control of the car whilst driving too fast. But the inquest heard that Diana had written a note to her ex-butler, Paul Burrell, saying Prince Charles wanted her dead so he could marry their nanny, Tiggy Legge-Bourke. Diana also claimed Ms Legge-Bourke had undergone an abortion.

The jury was told of a note written by one of Diana's lawyers, Lord Mishcon, following a meeting at Kensington Palace in October 1995.

In the note, Lord Mishcon said: "Her Royal Highness said that she had been informed by reliable sources whom she did not wish to reveal ... that (a) The Queen would be abdicating in April and the Prince of Wales would then assume the throne and (b) efforts would be made if not to get rid of her (be it by some accident in her car such as prepared brake failure or whatever) between now and then."

Lord Justice Scott Baker also said Mr al-Fayed had claimed Diana had told him she believed her life was in danger.

He said: "Mohamed al-Fayed says during the summer holiday she often told him she would be murdered by the Royal Family.

"She would go up in a helicopter and never come down alive."

He went on: "It is clear that there are many members of the public who are concerned that something sinister may have caused the collision in which Diana and two others died.

"One of the purposes of the inquest is to investigate the incident thoroughly so that the public suspicion is either dispelled or substantiated."

He said there would be a "vigorous and searching" investigation of the evidence to find the truth.

Lord Justice Scott Baker told the jury: "Most, if not all, of you will remember where you were when you heard about the subsequent death of the Princess of Wales.

"None of you would for a moment have thought that over 10 years later you might be in a jury investigating the events related to that tragic August night."

The inquest is set to continue for up to six months.

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