North Koreans Unveil Vast New Plant for Nuclear Use
By DAVID E. SANGER
Published: November 20, 2010
WASHINGTON – North Korea showed a visiting American nuclear scientist earlier this month a vast new facility it secretly and rapidly built to enrich uranium, confronting the Obama administration with the prospect that the country is preparing to expand its nuclear arsenal or build a far more powerful type of atomic bomb.
Whether the calculated revelation is a negotiating ploy by North Korea or a signal that it plans to accelerate its weapons program even as it goes through a perilous leadership change, it creates a new challenge for President Obama at a moment when his program for gradual, global nuclear disarmament appears imperiled at home and abroad. The administration hurriedly began to brief allies and lawmakers on Friday and Saturday – and braced for an international debate over the repercussions.
Oscar-winning producer says fear is behind neglect of British film-making talent
Jeremy Thomas, Oscar-winning producer of The Last Emperor, says successive governments’ policies fore UK fil-makers abroad while US projects use top British studios
Vanessa Thorpe
The Observer, Sunday 21 November 2010
One of Britain’s leading film producers has lashed out at successive governments for neglecting homegrown talent while encouraging American film-makers to dominate the country’s state-of-the-art Pinewood production studios.“These places are full up with films from the United States,” said Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning, London-based producer of The Last Emperor, Crash and Sexy Beast.t.
USA
Guns used to kill police officers: Where they come from and how they get in the hands of criminals l
By Cheryl W. Thompson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 21, 2010; 12:32 AM
Hattie Louise James was sitting on her front porch in Charlotte when two police detectives emerged from their car. There had been a shooting, they said. Two officers were dead. The gun had been traced back to her.”I liked to had another heart attack,” said the 72-year-old James, a retired hospital worker.The .32-caliber revolver used to kill Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers Sean Clark and Jeff Shelton in April 2007 started out as a legally owned weapon. James bought it in 1991 at Hyatt Coin and Gun Shop in Charlotte, but it was stolen a year later from her husband’s car.
Extensive insider trading investigation drawing to close, official says
The years-long federal inquiry into allegations of stock-trading irregularities could result in many arrests, a government official says.
By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau
November 21, 2010
Reporting from Washington – Federal investigators in New York are wrapping up an extensive investigation into allegations of insider trading and other stock-trading irregularities that could bring criminal charges or monetary fines against a large number of Wall Street executives and investors, a Washington official who has been briefed on the inquiry said Saturday.Speaking anonymously so as not to jeopardize the case, the official said the investigation has been underway for “several years” and is likely to result in the prosecution of traders “around the country.”
Europe
Eric Cantona’s call for bank protest sparks online campaign
Thousands of French protesters have taken up the former Man United footballer’s call for a mass cash withdrawal
Kim Willsher
The Observer, Sunday 21 November 2010
As students and public sector workers across Europe prepare for a winter of protests, they have been offered advice from the archetypal football rebel Eric Cantona.Cantona was once a famous exponent of direct action against adversaries on and off the pitch. In 1995 he was given a nine-month ban after launching a karate kick at a Crystal Palace fan who shouted racist abuse at the former Manchester United star after he was sent off. But while sympathising with the predicament of the protesters in France, the now retired Cantona is urging a more sophisticated approach to dissent.
The European ‘dream’ has finally collided with reality
The drive towards a European superstate has had its flaws exposed at last, says Christopher Booker.
Twelve years ago, I stood on the plinth of Nelson’s Column in the pouring rain, addressing a crowd of 10,000 people. We had marched through central London in the biggest ever demonstration against Britain joining the euro, a course then being daily urged on us by the BBC, with the aid of such Euro-zealots as Michael Heseltine, Chris Patten, Kenneth Clarke and Sir Leon Brittan.
At the time, Mayor Ken Livingstone was calling for the removal of the two statues of Victorian generals that stand on each side of Trafalgar Square.
Middle East
Iraqi parliament to get down to work
The Iraqi parliament meets on Sunday to begin in earnest the job its members were elected to do in March.
By Gabriel Gatehouse BBC News, Baghdad 21 November 2010
MPs finally ended an eight-month period of deadlock the week before last, when they chose a speaker and reappointed Jalal Talabani as president.That cleared the way for caretaker Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to form a new government.
But progress was interrupted by the Muslim holiday of Eid, which ended on Saturday.
Sunday’s session will see the start of another round of horse-trading over ministerial portfolios.
Rights group cautions Egypt on election harassment
By PAUL SCHEMM, Associated Press
CAIRO – The London-based Amnesty International called on Egyptian authorities to refrain from harassing election candidates as hundreds of opposition members have been arrested.
The statement came as the opposition Muslim Brotherhood said Sunday that several of its rallies have been disrupted and more than a thousand of its members have been detained since the banned group announced their intention to contest elections last month.
“The Egyptian authorities must uphold the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly and ensure that peaceful protesters are not arbitrarily arrested and detained,” the rights group’s Mideast director, Malcolm Smart, said in the statement issued late Saturday.
Asia
Deep in a mine, the phone rings unanswered
In New Zealand, 29 men are missing, and tempers fray as rescue is delayed
By Kathy Marks Sunday, 21 November 2010
With fears of a second explosion preventing rescuers from entering a New Zealand coalmine where 29 men have been trapped since Friday, the anguish and impatience of relatives boiled over yesterday.Families of the men, who include two Britons, endured a second night of not knowing whether their loved ones were alive or dead. There has been an ominous silence since two miners stumbled out on Friday, a few hours after a blast so violent it sent a fireball shooting through the mine and out of the single ventilation shaft.
‘Anyone Can Be Arrested at Any Time’
Burmese Opposition Leader Suu Kyi
Burmese Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi has called for a fundamental transformation in her country. Only a few days after her release from a house arrest, she discussed the problems in Burma in an interview with SPIEGEL. “The economy is devastated, ethnic tensions are increasing, there are political prisoners and too many refugees who are leaving the country,” she said.The problems, the Burmese opposition politician said, need to be addressed using “peaceful means.”
Africa
South African township struggles to cope with killing of Anni Dewani
Since 2005, there have been 700 murders in Gugulethu. But Dewani’s death stunned even the most hardened residents
Alex Duval Smith
The Observer, Sunday 21 November 2010
Round the back of Table Mountain, far from the Robben Island ferry quay or the fashionable cafés of Cape Town’s Long Street, people really know about crime. Langa, Crossroads, Khayelitsha and Gugulethu are the sprawling townships that give South Africa the terrifying statistics everyone has heard of – 50 murders a day, 14,000 car hijackings a year and, somewhat less plausibly, a rape every seven seconds.Yet in the den of iniquity that Gugulethu is supposed to be, no one can comprehend the cold-blooded killing last weekend of 28-year-old Anni Dewani, a tourist on her honeymoon with no connection to the township.
Paul and Rachel Chandler: British mercenaries hired to take on the Somali pirates
The Government is in secret talks to send taxpayer-funded British mercenaries to war torn Somalia to confront the pirates attacking commercial shipping and behind the kidnapping of Paul and Rachel Chandler.
By Jason Lewis, Investigations editor
A Sunday Telegraph investigation can reveal that senior Foreign Office officials have held detailed discussions with a British security firm employing former members of the Special Boat Service (SBS) about setting up and running the operation.
The controversial plan – indirectly funded with aid money from British taxpayers – will see the ex-special forces team sent to train Somali nationals to take on the pirates along the country’s lawless coastline.
The revelation comes days after the release of the Chandlers, from Tunbridge Wells, who were held hostage by Somali pirates for more than a year after being captured on their yacht while on a retirement sailing holiday.