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Hamas executes two Israel 'collaborators'

Written By Unknown on Sabtu, 22 Juni 2013 | 19.51

HAMAS has hanged two men accused of collaborating with Israel, a statement from the interior ministry of the Islamist movement's government in the Gaza Strip said.

The ministry said on Saturday that it had executed the two men in accordance "with what Palestinian law stipulates", identifying them as "the collaborator with the occupation A.G., 49, and the collaborator H.K., 43."

A military court in Gaza had sentenced the two to "death by hanging after the tribunal convicted them 10 years ago of charges ranging from collaborating with a hostile foreign entity", to involvement in "killing and espionage".

A number of representatives from civil organisations attended the execution, the statement said.

The Hamas government executed three men in April 2012 after they were accused of "collaborating" with Israel.

On Thursday, a Palestinian man found guilty of the same charge was sentenced to death by a military court in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas.

It was the fifth such sentence handed down by the authorities in the coastal enclave since the beginning of the year.

Under Palestinian law, collaboration with Israel, murder and drug trafficking are all punishable by death.

All execution orders must be approved by the Palestinian president before they can be carried out, but Hamas no longer recognises the legitimacy of Mahmud Abbas, whose four-year term ended in 2009.

Israeli security forces use Palestinian informers to thwart militant attacks and assist in the assassination of top militants.

Since the September 2000 outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, dozens of Palestinians accused of collaborating have been condemned by Palestinian martial courts or killed by militants in both Gaza and the West Bank, which is governed by Abbas's Palestinian Authority.


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Malaysian rally calls for polls reform

ABOUT 20,000 Malaysian opposition supporters have gathered in the capital demanding the resignation of the country's Election Commission in the wake of contentious polls.

The opposition claims bias by the commission cost them a historic win against Malaysia's 56-year-old ruling coalition and has filed petitions challenging results in some areas, claiming fraud.

The rally in central Kuala Lumpur on Saturday was the 15th since the May 5 elections, in which the Barisan Nasional (National Front) clung to power despite losing the popular vote in its worst showing ever.

"We have won the elections," opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim told the crowd.

"So we will continue our protests in parliament and outside."

The rallies had raised the spectre of political instability but fears have ebbed as the opposition has tempered its demands after initially refusing to accept the results.

Turnout on Saturday was far lower than opposition officials had predicted, perhaps in part due to a recent spike in pollution from forest fires in nearby Indonesia that also has blanketed Singapore.

"The momentum is dying down," rally participant Faisal Ooi, 55, told AFP.

The government, led by Prime Minister Najib Razak, has rejected charges of cheating. Ruling party figures accuse Anwar of risking instability out of sour grapes over the election result.

Parliament opens Monday and the opposition has said it will not boycott.

The opposition says voter rolls for May's elections were full of irregularities. Supposedly indelible ink introduced by the Election Commission to prevent multiple voting also easily washed off.

Barisan developed Malaysia's economy over the decades but many analysts say the country is losing its competitive edge. The opposition has blamed corruption and repressive tactics by Barisan, and pledged to free up society and improve governance.

The opposition says the Barisan-constructed electoral system unfairly favours the ruling bloc.

Anwar points to the May 5 polls - in which the opposition won the popular vote, but Barisan won more seats thanks to the layout of constituencies - as proof.


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Militants kill two police in India Kashmir

TWO Indian policemen have been shot dead by suspected militants in a high security area of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, police say.

The policemen were shot from point blank range when they were on a regular patrol near the main court complex located in a busy commercial district of Srinagar, a senior police official said on Saturday.

"Both the policemen died at the spot. We don't know as yet who carried out the attack," city police chief Ashiq Bukhari said.

The attack comes at a time when security is being stepped up in the region ahead of a visit by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh early next week.

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan along the UN-monitored Line of Control (LoC), but both countries claim the region in full and have fought two of their three wars over it.

Rebels opposed to Indian rule of the territory have been mounting shoot-and-run attacks on security personnel at regular intervals in recent times.

In April, armed militants attacked a police patrol near the northern Kashmir town of Sopore, killing four.


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Kerry calls for end to Syria 'imbalance'

US Secretary of State John Kerry says supporters of the Syrian opposition will step up military and other aid in a bid to end an "imbalance" on the ground in President Bashar al-Assad's favour.

Kerry, speaking at a conference of foreign ministers in Qatar on Saturday, said that the United States remained committed to a peace plan that includes a conference in Geneva and a transitional government picked both by Assad and the opposition.

The rebels need more support "for the purpose of being able to get to Geneva and to be able to address the imbalance on the ground," Kerry said.

"The United States and other countries here - in their various ways, each choosing its own approach - will increase the scope and scale of assistance to the political and military opposition," Kerry said.

Kerry said that the governments at the conference - which include stalwart supporters of the rebels Qatar and Saudi Arabia - would work to "coordinate our support" to the opposition's Supreme Military Council.

Kerry accused Assad of an "internationalisation" of the conflict which has claimed nearly 100,000 lives by bringing in the support of Iran and the Lebanese Shi'ite movement Hezbollah.

"Reliable civilian governance and a stronger and more effective armed opposition will better enable the opposition to be able to provide the counterweight to the initiative of Assad," he said.

President Barack Obama has announced plans to step up assistance to the rebels after concluding that Assad crossed his stated red line by using chemical weapons.

But the United States has said little about its own assistance, with Obama voicing concern about becoming too involved in the increasingly sectarian conflict.


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Dutch boys, 5 and 7, joyride in nan's car

DUTCH police have briefly detained two brothers aged five and seven who crashed a car after a short joyride.

"A police patrol this morning saw a car with the doors open and two young boys stood next to it," in Bloemendael, west of Amsterdam, police spokeswoman Lenny Beijerbergen said on Saturday.

"The seven-year-old boy told police that he had driven the car around one-and-a-half kilometres, hit a metal post on the pavement and come to a standstill," Beijerbergen said.

A policeman tweeted a photo of the crash scene, saying the car belonged to the boys' grandmother.

The photo, which was quickly removed from Twitter, showed the boys, the car and the uprooted post in a residential street strewn with debris from the car.

"At least I had my seat belt on! And my brother was in the child's seat," the seven-year-old driver said when police turned up, national news agency ANP reported.

"The boys were taken to the police station, given a talking to and made aware of what they've done," Beijerbergen said.

"Then they were taken home. Thankfully they were both unhurt."

She said there was considerable damage to the car and the pavement.

"This is really quite remarkable. I've never seen anything like it. Seven is very young," Beijerbergen said.


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Stonehenge draws 20,000 for solstice

Written By Unknown on Jumat, 21 Juni 2013 | 19.50

POLICE say more than 20,000 celebrants have gathered at England's famed Stonehenge monument to mark the summer solstice.

The cloud cover on Friday morning prevented bright sunshine at dawn of the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere but a joyous spirit prevailed.

Police say there were fewer arrests than usual with 22 people taken into custody, most for drug-related offences.

The solstice has typically drawn a wide and varied crowd to the mysterious set of standing stones whose purpose remains unclear.

The ancient stone circle on the Salisbury Plain about 130km southwest of London, was built in three phases between 3000BC and 1600BC.


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Bomb kills 14 at Pakistan Shi'ite mosque

A suicide attack on a Shi'ite mosque in northwest Pakistan has killed at least 14 people. Source: AAP

A BOMB attack has killed 14 people and wounded more than 25 others at a Shi'ite Muslim mosque and seminary on the outskirts of Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar, police say.

"It was a suicide attack in which 14 people were killed and more than 25 others were wounded," senior police official Shafi Ullah told AFP at the scene on Friday.

"The suicide bomber, who was on foot, first opened fire at police guards who were deployed outside the mosque, then entered the prayer hall where he blew himself up amid worshippers just before the start of prayers."

The mosque and madrassa complex is in Gulshan Colony, a Shi'ite-dominated area on the edge of Peshawar, a city which abuts militant strongholds in the northwestern tribal belt on the Afghan border.

Two other police officials Shaukat Khan and Imran Shahid confirmed the fresh death toll of 14.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but sectarian violence targeting Pakistan's minority Shi'ite community has been on the rise in recent years.

The attack came just days after US officials said they hoped to open peace talks with the Afghan Taliban in Doha, capital of the Gulf state of Qatar.

Shi'ites account for 20 per cent of the mostly Sunni Muslim population in the nuclear-armed state, which suffers from a Taliban insurgency and al-Qaeda-linked violence.

Extremist Sunni militant faction Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed responsibility for a series of bloody attacks on Shi'ites in the southwestern city of Quetta that killed at least 25 people on June 15.

Earlier on Friday, officials said two members of a pro-government militia were killed when militants armed with guns and rockets attacked their homes in the tribal district of Bajaur on the Afghan border.

About a dozen insurgents attacked the homes near Khar, the main town in Bajaur, late on Thursday, administration official Abdul Haseeb said.

The two elders, who were members of a pro-government tribal militia, were killed and two tribal policemen were wounded, Haseeb told AFP.

Pakistan has for years been fighting homegrown Taliban insurgents in its northwestern border areas with Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan's business capital Karachi gunmen shot dead a politician, his son and a passer-by outside a mosque on Friday.

Sajid Qureshi and his 25-year-old son were targeted in a drive-by shooting as they left the mosque after attending Friday prayers.

"Gunmen on a motorcycle fired at (Sindh) provincial assembly member Sajid Qureshi, his son and a pedestrian when they were coming out of mosque," senior police official Amir Farooqi told AFP.

Qureshi was a member of the secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement, the most powerful political party in Karachi now considering whether to join the government in southern Sindh province.


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UK teacher jailed for abducting pupil

A BRITISH teacher has been sentenced to five years and six months in jail for abducting and having sex with a 15-year-old pupil, nine months after they fled to France and sparked an international manhunt.

Jeremy Forrest, a married 30-year-old maths teacher, was convicted of abduction by a jury on Thursday, and on Friday admitted five further counts of sexual activity with a child.

He was not originally charged with sex offences for legal reasons linked to his extradition from France.

When Forrest was convicted on Thursday after a two-week trial, he had told the girl "I love you" as he was led from the court.

The teenager, who cannot be named for legal reasons, burst into tears as the verdict was announced and told him: "I'm sorry."

Prosecutors had labelled Forrest a paedophile who had groomed a vulnerable girl, who he first kissed when she was 14. They said he "grossly abused" the trust placed in him as her teacher.

The girl, now 16, said in evidence that she had encouraged the relationship and had gone willingly to France in September when they realised their affair was about to be exposed.

But she was under age at the time - the age of sexual consent in Britain is 16.

She had used a passport belonging to Forrest's wife to get the ferry to France, where the couple were finally caught one week later in Bordeaux after Forrest tried to find work in a bar.

Their secret escape from Britain caused an international manhunt, and her family said in a statement on Thursday that the past nine months had been "like living out your worst nightmare".


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Mount Etna wins World Heritage status

ITALY'S Mount Etna, one of the world's most "active and iconic" volcanoes, has been granted World Heritage status by UNESCO in recognition of its scientific and cultural importance.

The tallest active volcano on the European continent at 3,300 metres, Mount Etna has been written about for 2,700 years and has "one of the world's longest documented records of historical volcanism", according to UNESCO.

"The diverse and accessible assemblage of volcanic features such as summit craters, cinder cones, lava flows, lava caves and the Valle de Bove depression have made Mount Etna a prime destination for research and education," UNESCO said.

The volcano, in the east of Sicily, is one of the most-studied in the world and "continues to influence volcanology, geophysics and other earth science disciplines", UNESCO added.

"Mount Etna's notoriety, scientific importance, and cultural and educational value are of global significance."

Situated near Catania, Sicily's second city, the volcano, which is some 200 kilometres in circumference, was created by a series of eruptions beneath the sea off the ancient coastline of Sicily some 500,000 years ago.

There are still periodic eruptions at the central crater. Lava flows down the sides of the volcano have sometimes threatened villages, which are built up to around 800 metres.

Catania city has been hit several times during eruptions, including being almost completely destroyed by one of the largest recorded eruptions in 1669, after which it was rebuilt in the Baroque style.

The zone listed by UNESCO - largely undeveloped except for a few seismic monitoring stations and some shelters along mountain paths - is part of the Mount Etna National Park, created in 1987.

UNESCO also inscribed the Namib Sand Sea, "the world's only coastal desert that includes extensive dune fields influenced by fog", to the World Heritage list.

Other sites to win World Heritage status on Friday included the El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve in Mexico thanks to their "dramatic combination of desert landforms, comprising both volcanic and dune systems as dominant features".

UNESCO also inscribed 16 wooden tserkvas (churches) in the Carpathian mountains of Poland and Ukraine, saying they were "outstanding examples of the once widespread Orthodox ecclesiastical timber building tradition in the Slavic countries that survives to this day."

UNESCO is currently holding a 10-day annual meeting in Phnom Penh where it is considering whether to add 31 sites to the 962-strong World Heritage List of sites of "outstanding universal value".


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Strong quake felt across north Italy

A STRONG earthquake has been felt across northern Italy, from Milan, to Venice, Turin, Bologna and Florence, according to Italian media reports, which put the epicentre in Tuscany.

The national earthquake and volcano centre (INGV) said it was a 5.2-magnitude earthquake which hit at a depth of 10km on Friday.


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Bob Hewitt to face South African court

Written By Unknown on Kamis, 20 Juni 2013 | 19.51

Australian tennis great Bob Hewitt has been summonsed to appear in a South African court. Source: AAP

FORMER tennis doubles champion Bob Hewitt has been summonsed to appear in a South African court following allegations he sexually abused young girls he coached decades ago.

South Africa's National Prosecuting Authority told The Associated Press on Thursday that the summons had been served on the 73-year-old Australian on Saturday.

Hewitt was ordered to appear at Boksburg Magistrate's Court near Johannesburg on August 16, when he will learn what criminal charges he faces.

The NPA would not say what the charges are against Hewitt.

NPA spokesperson Phindi Louw said Hewitt, who is believed to live in the town of Addo on South Africa's south coast, would be informed of the charges when he appears in court.

Hewitt denied all the accusations when contacted by the AP.

Hewitt confirmed by telephone that he had received the summons and would "of course" appear in court, but wouldn't say what the charges were as "they had not been made public".

"I'll keep it private," he said. "I'm innocent of all charges and these accusations have caused untold hardship on my family."

Hewitt also said he intended to sue his accusers.

Hewitt has been at the centre of a long investigation into accusations he abused and raped girls as far back as the 1970s and through to the 1990s.

Recognised as one of the greatest doubles players of all time and a winner of 15 Grand slam doubles titles, Hewitt was indefinitely suspended from the International Tennis Hall of Fame last year due to the allegations.

When contacted by the AP on Wednesday, a man who identified himself on the telephone as Hewitt said he had no knowledge of any charges.

"I think it is best you call me in a month or so," he said, before declining further comment.

Two of Hewitt's alleged victims, Suellen Sheehan and Twiggy Tolken, accuse him of abusing them when he was their coach in South Africa.

Sheehan asked South African police to open an investigation in 2011, and accuses Hewitt of raping her when she was 12.

Tolken, who now lives in New Zealand, said Hewitt also began abusing her when she was 12.

A third woman, Heather Conner, of West Newbury, Massachusetts, also accuses Hewitt of abuse in the United States.

Conner said she was sexually abused from the age of 15, being forced to have sex with him near a high school in Massachusetts.

All three women agreed to be named by the AP.

Sheehan said she felt "numb" at the news that he was to appear in court and face charges.


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Allowing homelessness 'socially repugnant'

Corporate leaders in NSW have sleep on the streets of Sydney help to raise money for the homeless. Source: AAP

AS CEOs step out of the boardroom and onto the footpath for a cold night sleeping rough, an advocacy group is calling for a federal commitment to reduce homelessness across the country.

On Thursday night, CEOs will sleep on the streets to raise awareness and money for homelessness.

Today's homeless are very different to even 10 years ago, says Homelessness NSW CEO, Gary Moore.

Families, older people and migrants have now swelled the numbers of homeless people, joining women and children fleeing domestic violence, vulnerable teens, indigenous Australians, chronic rough sleepers and people leaving jail.

"Tolerating unacceptable levels of homelessness is an economically wasteful and social repugnant state of affairs," Mr Moore said in a statement.

He noted successive Commonwealth and NSW governments since 2009 have embraced reform of homeless services and extra funding, but he said the post-2009 funding tap will be turned off at June 30 next year.

"The scale and complexity of homelessness requires a generational suite of actions to make a real difference," Mr Moore said.

Tuesday's NSW Budget papers revealed only one of NSW's four measures of progress in tackling homelessness is being achieved - reducing the rate of indigenous homelessness.

At the time of the 2011 census, the overall rate of homelessness had increased.

New investment to reduce the risk of homelessness, to get people out of the homeless services system quickly and to focus on post-crisis support are key, Mr Moore said.

As the federal election approaches, he called for a bipartisan approach to funding, which he said would save a fortune in less than 10 years' time.

Mr Moore said measures like social impact bonds, NDIS-style consumer payments, targeted tax breaks for community housing investment, encouraging better use of under-utilised dwellings, and more effective rental brokerage and tenancy maintenance schemes should all be examined.


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Koo Stark cleared of painting theft

THE Duke of York's ex-girlfriend Koo Stark has walked free from court after she returned a STG40,000 ($A67,200) painting she was accused of stealing from a former partner.

The 57-year-old, of Knightsbridge in London, was appearing at Isleworth Crown Court, in west London, on Thursday after she allegedly took the artwork from the flat of Warren Walker, father of her daughter Tatiana.

But before the case went to trial, prosecution and defence reached an agreement for her to return the Anthonie van Borssom oil painting, which depicts a moonlit coastal landscape.

Stark - real name Kathleen - remained calm as she was cleared of one count of theft.

The American-born actress, then aged 26, dated the Duke of York after his return from the Falklands War in 1982. They went out together for 18 months.

Prince Andrew went on to marry Sarah Ferguson in 1986.

The painting was brought to court and handed over to a solicitor representing Walker.

Stark's defence said she believed it was hers when she took it.

Judge Andrew McDowall told her barrister Edward Henry: "It is an unfortunate fact that for many years these parties have been locked in battle in the civil and family courts.

"At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is if your client had acted through the civil courts, it would have been dealt with there and if she had not gone to the property and taken away the painting, this would never have happened."

In a statement read outside court by Stark's solicitor, Jules Azzopardi, she said: "Today I have been cleared of a charge that should never have been brought against me.

"I leave court with my liberty and my good name, but it should never have come to this."


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Facebook broke Indonesian terror case

SEFA Riano didn't try to hide his plans or his beliefs.

A Facebook page police traced to him is plastered with photos of bearded men in camouflage uniforms holding rifles and banners hailing "The Spirit of Jihad."

One status update in late April apologises to his parents before telling them goodbye.

Another declares ominously, "God willing, I will take action at the Myanmar Embassy, hope you will share responsibility for my struggle."

It ends with a yellow smiley face.

Days later, police arrested Riano, whose Facebook name is Mambo Wahab, just before midnight in central Jakarta.

Police say he and another man were on a motorbike carrying a backpack filled with five low-explosive pipe bombs tied together.

Riano, 29, is awaiting charges related to allegations that he plotted to bomb the embassy to protest the persecution of Muslims in Buddhist-majority Myanmar.

A police investigator revealed Riano's connection to the page, which was still online Thursday, to The Associated Press.

The investigator spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to talk to reporters.

The investigator said Riano caused his own downfall by publicising his mission on Facebook, but added that police believe it was another Facebook page that drew him to radical Islam to begin with.

Police said a growing number of young people in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, are being targeted for recruitment by terrorists on the social media site.

More than one in four of the country's 240 million people are on Facebook, thanks in large part to cheap and fast internet-capable phones.

While it is not clear how many terrorists are actually recruited through Facebook, the use of social networking to groom potential attackers poses new challenges for authorities struggling to eradicate militant groups that have been weakened over the last 10 years.

Though Facebook shuts down pages that promote terrorism when it learns of them, police say new pages are easily created and some have attracted thousands of followers.

Muhammad Taufiqurrohman, an analyst from the Centre for Radicalism and De-radicalisation Studies who works closely with Indonesian anti-terrorism officials, said 50 to 100 militants in the country have been recruited directly through Facebook over the past two years.

He said there were at least 18 radical Facebook groups in Indonesia, and one of them has 7000 members.

Police said some sites where radical discussion takes place focus on Islam, while others engage in talk about committing violence, such as how to make bombs.

Access is blocked unless group administrators allow users to participate.

Indonesian police say Facebook is one of many places where they've found terrorist activity online. They have detected militants using online games for attack drills.

A group was caught uploading propaganda videos on YouTube and terrorists are known to have purchased weapons using video calls, said Brigadier General Petrus Reinhard Golose, the director of operations at Indonesia's anti-terrorism agency.

Terrorists have used the internet for many years, but usually anonymously.

Groups such as al-Qaida have employed online discussion forums where people left comments but did not directly interact.

Today's smartphone generation appears to be operating more openly: As of Thursday, Riano still had about 900 Facebook friends.

The police investigator said authorities were alerted about "Mambo Wahab's" Myanmar bombing status update by other internet users.

Police used information collected from arrested militants in Riano's online networks to track his Web footprint.

After getting his internet protocol address and eventually linking that to a mobile phone, authorities say they were able to tap into conversations involving Riano and the plot's alleged mastermind, the investigator said.

The Mambo Wahab page has not been updated since Riano's arrest May 3.

Some people in Indonesian jails - even on death row - manage to post status updates, though others may be acting on their behalf.

Some Indonesian police want the law to address online communications that advocate or abet terrorism. Indonesia's information technology laws ban only pornography and illegal online financial transactions.

The government is drafting legislation that would criminalise hate speech and online terrorism activities.

Although police are starting to surf the internet as part of their work, many of those arrested for terrorism-linked activities on Facebook were caught not because of cyber patrolling, but because police received tips about their accounts.

Those cases include nine militants, including one woman, who were sentenced to up to 10 years in jail for funding terrorism activities by hacking into a Malaysian website and defrauding the company out $US800,000 ($A866,500) in cash and assets.

Indonesia has fought terrorism aggressively since the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.

There have been no large-scale attacks for several years, though there have been several smaller strikes targeting mainly the government, police and anti-terrorism forces.

Well-funded terror networks have been disrupted, but radical clerics continue to spread their ideology to militants who set up military-style training camps.


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Life sentence for Rwandan genocide

A RWANDAN-BORN man has been sentenced to life in prison by a Swedish court for committing massacres and crimes against humanity during the 1994 genocide in the Central African country.

Stanislas Mbanenande, 54, a Hutu who holds Swedish citizenship, was found to have instigated and to have been an accessory to murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to murder and kidnappings.

He was found guilty of complicity in the assault on Tutsis who fled attacks on the slopes of Ruhiro Mountain in the southern parts of Kibuye in western Rwanda in April 1994. Hundreds were shot and beaten to death.

Mbanenande was also found to have recruited militant Hutu youth in the mass slaughter of Tutsi civilians, inciting them to attack Tutsis at a Catholic church and a football stadium.

He was also convicted of attempted murder over shooting at crowds of people, the Stockholm District Court's ruling said.

The proceedings opened in November and was the Nordic country's first related to the genocide.

Mbanenande had denied all the charges against him, and his attorney said he planned to appeal.

The court said testimony from witnesses had been crucial in the case and, although the events took place more than 19 years ago, witnesses were able to focus on "key details such as looks [of a person] during extremely traumatic events."

The court rejected claims by the defence that Rwandan authorities had fabricated evidence against Mbanenande. However, it said evidence linking Mbanenande to a massacre in the town of Kibuye was not strong enough.

Hearings were held in Stockholm as well as in Rwanda. Claims for damages presented by 21 victims were rejected by the court, which referred such claims to Rwandan authorities.

Mbanenande was arrested in December 2011 after an extradition request from Rwanda, which Stockholm rejected because of his Swedish citizenship.

An estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the ethnic violence over 100 days.


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Suicide bombs kill 31 in Baghdad attacks

Written By Unknown on Selasa, 18 Juni 2013 | 19.51

TWIN suicide bombs on a Shi'ite Muslim religious hall in north Baghdad on Tuesday killed 31 people and wounded 57 others, officials say.

The two attackers struck after Tuesday midday prayers at the Habib ibn al-Mudhaher Hussainiyah in the capital's Qahira neighbourhood, an interior ministry official and medical sources said.

The first bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the hall, while the second ran through the ensuing chaos and set off his explosives inside the building itself, said the officials.

The Hussainiyah, a Shi'ite Muslim hall that can be used for religious functions as well as prayers, lies adjacent to the Imam al-Sadiq university, a private teaching institution.

As a result, many of the victims were students, the police source said.

Bombings elsewhere in Baghdad and north of the capital in Salaheddin province, meanwhile, left two people dead and six others wounded.

Violence has surged across Iraq recently, with May the deadliest month in Iraq since 2008, sparking fears of a revival of the brutal sectarian war that left tens of thousands killed in 2006 and 2007.


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Pakistan funeral bomb kills 10

A BOMB attack has killed 10 people, including a provincial politician, and wounded more than 40 others at a funeral in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, police say.

The attack took place in the town of Shergarh in Mardan district during funeral prayers on Tuesday for the owner of a local compressed natural gas (CNG) station, Abdullah Khan.


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Embattled shipping operators form alliance

THREE leading shipping companies have announced an alliance across the Pacific and two other crucial routes in a strategy to face over-capacity and declining demand for transportation.

CMA CGM of France, Maersk Line of Denmark and Swiss MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company said that the new so-called P3 Network would initially use 255 ships on three trade lanes: Asia-Europe, Trans-Pacific and Trans-Atlantic.

The venture would have capacity of 2.6 million standard-sized containers (TEU).

"Declining volume growth and over-capacity in recent years have underlined the need to improve operations and efficiency in the industry," the companies said in a statement on Tuesday.

In the scheme, each company will offer more shipping options to customers then they would individually "through better utilisation of vessel capacity," they added.

The companies intend to begin the program in the second quarter of 2014, but the go-ahead still requires regulatory approval as well as finalised contracts linking the companies.

Maersk Line, a unit of A P Maersk, will contribute 42 per cent of the joint shipping force. Italo-Swiss company MSC will pitch in 34 per cent and France's CMA CGM 24 per cent.

With world growth still yet to fully recover from the financial crisis, shippers are faced with declining traffic, lower volume demand and surging capacity as jumbo-sized ships come on line.


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G8 leaders agree not to pay ransoms

G8 leaders have agreed to stamp out the payment of ransoms for hostages kidnapped by "terrorists", British Prime Minister David Cameron's office says.

Downing Street said the world leaders meeting at a summit in Northern Ireland would also call on companies to follow their lead in refusing to pay for the release of abductees.

"Leaders agree to stamp out payment of ransoms to terrorists and call on companies to follow their lead," Cameron's office said on its Twitter feed.

The leaders of the world's most industrialised nations were focusing on counter-terrorism during talks on Tuesday, the second and final day of the summit.

British officials said Cameron had been keen to push the deal because funds raised by ransom payments were the main source of funding for terror groups, especially those in north Africa.

Britain was particularly focused on the subject following a hostage crisis at a gas plant in Algeria in January in which 37 foreign hostages were killed, among them six Britons.

Hostage-taking was worth $US70 million ($A74 million) to al-Qaeda-linked groups around the world over the last two years, British officials said.

Five of the G8 nations had been "shifting" on the issue while three did not pay ransoms as a matter of principle, British officials said.

In Britain, it is illegal to pay a ransom from the UK to anywhere else.


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Crew held as ship hits Philippine reef

EIGHTEEN Vietnamese crew members of a cargo ship have been detained after it ploughed into a coral reef in the central Philippines, the coastguard says.

The Unicorn Logger, a Panama-flagged freighter, ran aground at a protected marine sanctuary off the tiny island of Sambawan on Friday, coastguard spokesman Armand Balilo said.

"The crew are detained aboard their vessel as the damage to the reef is assessed," he told AFP on Tuesday.

The ship was carrying logs from Malaysia to Japan when it hit the reef, Balilo added.

A central Philippines coastguard spokesman, Ensign Jamaal Aceron, told AFP the ship will be towed for repairs to a shipyard in the central port of Cebu once the extent of the damage on the vessel is determined.

It was the latest in a series of maritime incidents at protected Philippine reefs this year.

A US Navy minesweeper ran aground at Tubbataha Reef, a World Heritage-listed marine sanctuary in the southern Philippines in January, leading to fines for reef damage and the dismantling of the ship.

A Chinese fishing vessel also ran aground at Tubbataha in April, causing even more damage.

The crew were arrested and charged for damaging the reef as well as for carrying endangered mammals.


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