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[broadsword]

Are these the biggest cheats in sporting history? Staggering story of the healthy Spanish basketball team who PRETENDED to be mentally handicapped to win Paralympic gold

By Simon Tomlinson

PUBLISHED: 14:48 GMT, 14 October 2013 | UPDATED: 12:36 GMT, 15 October 2013


A former Spanish basketball boss has been found guilty of fraud 13 years after he presided over one of the biggest scandals in sporting history.

Fernando Martin Vicente, the former head of the Spanish Federation for Mentally Handicapped Sports, fielded athletes with no disabilities at the 2000 Paralympics in Sydney in order to win the gold medal.

A Madrid court has now fined him 5,400 euros (£4,600) and ordered him to return 142,355 euros (£120,500) in government subsidies which the federation received for the athletes without disabilities.

Stolen gold: Members of the Spanish intellectually disabled basketball team with their medals after winning the Sydney 2000 Paralympics. Only two of the 12 athletes suffered from disability

Caught out: The deceit began to unravel when a picture like this of the team celebrating their win was published in a Spanish sports magazine, and readers revealed that some of them didn't have any disabilities

The scandal broke in November 2000 when Carlos Ribagorda, a member of Spain's gold medal-winning intellectually handicapped basketball team in Sydney, claimed that he and other athletes in categories such as track and field, table tennis and swimming were not mentally deficient.

'Of the 200 Spanish athletes at Sydney at least 15 had no type of physical or mental handicap - they didn't even pass medical or psychological examinations,' he wrote in the magazine Capital just days after the Paralympics ended.

Ribargorda said he had played for the Spanish Paralympic basketball team for over two years but had no mental handicap.

He said the only test he had been asked to complete at his first training session was six press-ups, after which his blood pressure was taken, nor did he face an intelligence test when he was in Australia.

The final team did comprise two players with IQs below 70 as required, but the other ten posed as mentally disabled players with the help of fake medical certificates they were provided with.

Spanish basketball team pretended to be disabled to win gold

Shameful legacy: The players were forced to return their medals and the category of intellectual disabled basketball was removed from the Paralympic program after the 2000 Games

Spain (in white) in action in the final against Russia: The sports boss who recruited the fraudulent players has been found guilty of fraud 13 years after the scandal

Dark arts: Spain (in white) in action in the final against Russia. The sports boss who recruited the fraudulent players has been found guilty of fraud 13 years after the scandal

At one point during the first game of the tournament, when they were leading China by 30 points, Ribagorda claimed the coach told the players: 'Lads, move down a gear or they’ll figure out you’re not disabled.'

They went on to beat Russia in the final. But their deceit began to unravel when a picture of their victory celebrations on the court was published by Spanish sports daily Marca.

Soon, readers started commenting that they recognised some of the players and revealed how they weren't disabled at all, it was reported by The Local.

Martin Vicente resigned as the head of the Spanish Federation for Mentally Handicapped Sports, which was responsible for screening some participants in the Paralympics in Sydney shortly after the Capital article was published, saying he accepted 'total responsibility'.

They were forced to return their medals and the category of intellectual disabled basketball was removed from the Paralympic program after the 2000 Games.
Carlos Ribagorda
The Spanish basketball team in action

Uncovered: The scandal broke in November 2000 when Carlos Ribagorda (left), a member of the gold medal-winning team, claimed that he and other members of the squad were not mentally deficient

He had argued that psychological evaluations of mentally deficient athletes as difficult and that mistakes had been made.

'If someone wants to cheat, it's difficult to detect. It's easy to pretend you have little intelligence but the opposite is difficult,' he said when he announced his resignation.

Eighteen other people, including members of the basketball team that went to Sydney and managers of the Spanish Federation for Mentally Handicapped Sports, were also charged over the affair but the court on Monday dropped the charges.

Spain had their most successful Paralympics in Sydney, winning 107 medals to finish third in the medals table after Australia and Britain.

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[no_name]

Don't see the joy of winning a rigged match like this. Thought prize money was not as much of an incentive as professional sports.

 

[ManilaBoy45]

Philippines Takes China's Sea Claims to Court

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By Andrew Browne
Oct. 14, 2013 12:40 p.m. ET

Paul Reichler, a Washington-based lawyer, has spent much of his career representing small countries against big ones: Nicaragua versus the U.S.; Georgia versus Russia; Mauritius versus the U.K., Bangladesh versus India.His first big victory made headlines in the 1980s when the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled that U.S. support for Contra rebels trying to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government of Nicaragua violated international law.That is one reason to pay attention to the case he launched this year at a United Nations arbitration body: the Philippines versus China.Mr. Reichler is the lead lawyer representing Manila in its legal challenge against China's claim to almost all of the South China Sea, signified by the "nine-dash line"—a U-shaped protrusion on Chinese maps that brushes the coastlines of smaller states, including the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.

The Philippines brought the case in January under the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which governs the world's oceans. China is a signatory. The heart of the case is that the line has no basis under the U.N. convention, which states that coastal states are entitled to a territorial sea extending 12 nautical miles as well as a 200-mile economic exclusion zone in which they have rights to fish and extract undersea resources."Of course we're aware of the enormity of taking on a country like China," says Mr. Reichler, a litigator with the U.S. law firm Foley Hoag.The Arbitral Tribunal has appointed a five-person panel of judges and issued a timetable for handling the case, including a deadline for the Philippines to submit its evidence by March 30 next year.It's the first time that Beijing has been taken to a U.N. tribunal and China is furious. It showed its displeasure by making clear that Philippine President Benigno Aquino III wouldn't be welcome at a trade event in southern China in August. Beijing has said it will ignore the legal proceedings, without giving any reasons. The Chinese Foreign Ministry didn't respond to requests for comment on the arbitration action.

 

[Franklin]

I think this is what you can call the Snowden effect. China has used the Snowden affair to push the country to use more domestic alternatives in IT technology and if there is no domestic alternatives available then buy European. Rather this is just a excuse to help give the domestic tech firms a boost or these measures comes out of genuine security concerns. Eitherway US tech giants are hurting bad from this.

The worst thing about IBM's bad earnings report? China

IBM doesn't normally break out China's results in its earnings reports, but this time it had little choice. IBM's Asia Pacific business overall was down 5 percent from last year's levels, and a huge portion of the problem appears to be in China.

"China was down 22 percent," Chief Financial Officer Mark Loughridge said on the company's call to analysts and reporters. "We experienced a slowdown in demand across the board, but most significantly in hardware, which was down about 40 percent and makes up about 40 percent of our business in China."

Loughridge went on to say that the China hardware implosion accounted for a whopping 1.2 points of the 1.6-point constant-currency revenue decline across IBM -- roughly $300 million. IBM stock tanked on the news, falling 6 percent after hours to $175.45.

The big question now, the day after: Could this problem be bigger than IBM?

It could. I spoke to a C-level executive at another top-tier tech firm in the hours after IBM's report, and to him it seemed to make sense. His theory: China might be targeting big U.S. tech and hardware firms that have an outsized presence there for something of a squeeze. The rumor is, he said, that the Chinese power structure wants to direct more that business to domestic firms.

There were actually rumblings about this over the summer, after the NSA spying revelations from former contractor Edward Snowden. Chinese state media in June pushed for the country to develop its own Internet technology rather than rely on U.S. firms, suggesting that spies may have compromised equipment from U.S. firms. U.S. tech firms have denied that their equipment is compromised and that they monitor customer data.

And there are already China anomalies popping up in the results of some of the biggest U.S. tech names. At Cisco last quarter, sales in India and Mexico were up double digits, Russia and Brazil were flat, but China was down 6 percent. Apple's business in mainland China was up only 5 percent in the June quarter, a startlingly low number given that it had been up 8 percent and 67 percent in the previous two.

Of course, any long-term China concerns might be overdone. Loughridge said he believes the real issue is that Chinese officials are overhauling their economic reform plan, and customers have just hit pause on their purchases ahead of that report, which is expected to be out in about a month. Demand, he said, could pick up after the first quarter of 2014.

That's a long time to wait, since Loughridge is saying not to expect any signs of a China turnaround until its July report at the soonest. In the meanwhile, we'll be looking for signs of China strain in Apple and Cisco's reports over the next couple of weeks.

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[kwaigonegin]

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Police in a southern Indian port city on Friday arrested the crew of a U.S.-owned ship on charges of illegally transporting weapons and ammunition in Indian waters.

Eight crew and 25 security guards aboard the MV Seaman Guard Ohio were arrested after they failed to produce documents allowing them to carry the weapons, Foreign Secretary Sujata Singh told reporters.

The ship is owned by Virginia-based security company AdvanFort but is registered in Sierra Leone. It was detained Oct. 12 and has been in Tuticorin port in Tamil Nadu state.

The ship's captain told investigators that the company provides armed escorts to merchant vessels traveling in pirate-infested waters in the Indian Ocean.

Police seized 35 automatic weapons and nearly 5,700 rounds of ammunition from the security guards on the ship, police said.

The men were charged with illegal possession of weapons and ammunition and entering India's territorial waters without permission, Singh said.

"The crew and security guards are cooperating with the investigators," she said, adding that information about the case had been shared with representatives from the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi.

The embassy said it had no comment on the matter.

AdvanFort's president, William H. Watson, denied that the ship was navigating in Indian waters.

"The Indian coast guard approached us and asked us to follow them into the port. We would never have entered Indian waters otherwise," Watson said.

He said the company was cooperating with Indian investigators.

The ship had 10 crew members and 25 armed security guards from India, Britain, Estonia and Ukraine. Two of the crew members were not arrested and were allowed to stay on board the ship to carry out maintenance work.

India is very sensitive about the presence of armed security guards on merchant ships after the shooting deaths of two fishermen by armed Italian marines last year. The marines were part of a military security team on a cargo ship when they fired at the fishermen, mistaking them for pirates. The two Italians are facing trial in India for the deaths.

 

[AssassinsMace]

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France, Mexico seek answers on 'shocking' US spy claims

Paris (AFP) - France and Mexico have angrily demanded prompt explanations from Washington following fresh, "shocking" spying allegations leaked by former US security contractor Edward Snowden.

The reports in French daily Le Monde and German weekly Der Spiegel revealed that the National Security Agency secretly recorded tens of millions of phone calls in France and hacked into former Mexican President Felipe Calderon's email account.

French Interior Minister Manuel Valls described the revelations in Le Monde newspaper as "shocking", in an interview Monday with Europe 1 radio.

The spy agency taped 70.3 million phone calls in France over a 30-day period between December 10 and January 8 this year, Le Monde reported in its online version, citing documents from Snowden.

According to the paper, the NSA automatically picked up communications from certain phone numbers in France and recorded text messages under a programme code-named "US-985D."

Le Monde said the documents gave grounds to believe that the NSA targeted not only people suspected of being involved in terrorism but also high-profile individuals from the world of business or politics.

Valls said the revelations would call for "precise explanations by US authorities in the coming hours."

US authorities declined comment to the French daily on the "classified" documents.

The Le Monde article followed similar revelations by Der Spiegel -- also based on documents provided by Snowden -- that US agents had hacked into the Mexican presidency's network, gaining access to Calderon's account.

According to the report, the NSA said this contained "diplomatic, economic and leadership communications which continue to provide insight into Mexico's political system and internal stability."

The agency reportedly said the president's office was now "a lucrative source."

Mexican authorities said they would be seeking answers from US officials "as soon as possible" following the allegations.

"The Mexican government reiterates its categorical condemnation of the violation of privacy of institutional communications and Mexican citizens," Mexico's foreign ministry said in a statement Sunday.

"This practice is unacceptable, illegitimate and contrary to Mexican law and international law," the statement read.

Snowden, who has taken refuge in Russia, is wanted in the United States for espionage and other charges after leaking details of the NSA's worldwide snooping activities, which triggered a global furore when published in major newspapers in June.


The fugitive had been in hiding in Hong Kong since May and flew to Moscow on June 23, where he stayed in the transit area for more than a month before being given temporary asylum and leaving the airport for a safe location.

US President Barack Obama has since proposed reforms of US surveillance programmes in the wake of the furore.

I believe I read before that France and other countries have benefitted from the NSA sharing intelligence. It would be easy for the US to diffuse this anger by divulging that a complaining country has benefited from this very intelligence gathering. But then I guess that would damage relations with key allies.

 

[TerraN_EmpirE]

23 October 2013 Last updated at 17:00 ET
Merkel calls Obama about 'US spying on her phone'
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called US President Barack Obama after receiving information that the US may have spied on her mobile phone.
A spokesman for Mrs Merkel said the German leader "views such practices... as completely unacceptable".
Mrs Merkel called on US officials to clarify the extent of their surveillance in Germany.
The White House said President Obama had told Chancellor Merkel the US was not snooping on her communications.
"The United States is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of the chancellor," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Wednesday.
The US has been on the receiving end of anger from allies over spying allegations based on material said to originate from fugitive American leaker Edward Snowden.
'Breach of trust'
Mr Carney told reporters that Washington was examining concerns from Germany as well as France and other American allies over US intelligence practices.
But the spokesman did not address whether Mrs Merkel's phone had been monitored in the past.
Berlin demanded "an immediate and comprehensive explanation" from Washington about what it said "would be a serious breach of trust".
In a statement it said: "Among close friends and partners, as the Federal Republic of Germany and the US have been for decades, there should be no such monitoring of the communications of a head of government."
The statement also said that Mrs Merkel had told Mr Obama: "Such practices must be prevented immediately."
The BBC's Steve Evans in Berlin says because the statement was issued after the phone call, there were indications that Mrs Merkel had not been reassured.
He says the issue of state monitoring of phone calls is a real one in Germany - Angela Merkel grew up in East Germany, where phone tapping was pervasive.
President Obama had assured Chancellor Merkel when he visited in June that German citizens were not being spied upon and our correspondent says she was criticised then by political opponents for not being more sceptical.
The German government would not elaborate on how it received the tip about the alleged US spying.
But news magazine Der Spiegel, which has published stories based on material from Edward Snowden, said the information had come from its investigations.
Mrs Merkel's call comes a day after US intelligence chief James Clapper denied reports that American spies had recorded data from 70 million phone calls in France in a single 30-day period.
He said a report in Le Monde newspaper had contained "misleading information".
A number of US allies have expressed anger over the Snowden-based spying allegations.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff cancelled a visit to the US this month in protest at alleged electronic espionage by the NSA against her country, including of communications at her office.
In a speech at the United Nations, she rejected arguments put forward by the US that the interception of information was aimed at protecting nations against terrorism, drugs trafficking and other organised crime.
The Mexican government has called the alleged spying on the emails of two presidents, Enrique Pena Nieto - the incumbent - and Felipe Calderon, as "unacceptable".
US officials have begun a review of American intelligence gathering amid the international outcry.

23 October 2013 Last updated at 17:26 ET
Explosion near airport in Damascus 'causes blackouts'
An explosion near the airport in Syria's capital, Damascus, has been followed by a blackout in parts of the country, state media say.
Power was reportedly cut after rebel artillery hit a gas pipeline.
Residents say the entire capital has been plunged into darkness, while officials have described the power cuts as countrywide.
Many parts of Syria have been struck by major power cuts since the start of the country's civil war.
"A terrorist attack on a gas pipeline that feeds a power station in the south has led to a power outage in the provinces, and work to repair it is in progress," Syria's state news agency SANA quoted Electricity Minister Imad Khamis as saying.
President Bashar al-Assad calls his opponents foreign-backed "terrorists".
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said opposition shelling was aimed at the town of Ghasula, around 2km (1.2 miles) from the airport.
"It is likely this was a large-scale operation planned well in advance," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Activists say a huge fire was seen blazing near the airport. It is unclear whether anyone was hurt.
Meanwhile the SOHR says a car bomb has hit a military checkpoint in a western suburb of Damascus, causing multiple casualties among security forces.
Damascus 'co-operating'
The head of the body tasked with destroying Syria's chemical arsenal has said that Damascus is due to hand over its disarmament plan on Thursday.
In a press conference on Wednesday, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said it expected Syria's initial declaration within the next 24 hours.
The OPCW and the UN have had a team of 60 experts and support staff in Syria since 1 October.
They have said that the Syrian government has been co-operating with the watchdog's work.
The OPCW's mission to rid Syria of chemical weapons was set up by a UN resolution.
It followed international outrage at a chemical weapons attack near Damascus in August.

22 October 2013 Last updated at 10:04 ET
Cuba to scrap two-currency system in latest reform
Cuba is to scrap its two-currency system in the latest financial reform rolled out by President Raul Castro, official media report.
Since 1994 Cuba has had two currencies, one pegged to the US dollar and the other worth only a fraction of that.
The more valuable convertible peso (CUC) was reserved for use in the tourism sector and foreign trade.
Now its value will be gradually unified with the lower-value CUP, ending a system resented by ordinary Cubans.
No fixed timetable
The Cuban economy is almost entirely state-run and the tourism sector has boomed since the collapse of the Soviet Union plunged Cuba into economic isolation and hardship.
The two-currency system was supposed to protect Cuba's fragile economy but angered locals paid in the much lower-value CUP and denied access to goods only available for those with convertible pesos.
The policy exacerbated the creation of a two-tier class system in Cuba which divided privileged Cubans with access to the lucrative tourist and foreign-trade sectors from those working in the local economy - all-too-visibly contradicting Cuba's supposedly egalitarian society.
The council of ministers has approved a timetable for implementing "measures that will lead to monetary and exchange unification", the official Communist Party newspaper Granma said.
Unification is "imperative to guarantee the re-establishment of the Cuban peso's value and its role as money, that is as a unit of accounting, means of payment and savings", it said.
It gave no details of how quickly the change would be implemented, though Reuters news agency quoted Cuban economists as saying it would take about 18 months.

23 October 2013 Last updated at 12:14 ET
British links to al-Shabab revealed
By Dominic Casciani and Secunder Kermani
BBC News
The names of almost 50 people from Britain who have links to al-Shabab - and related organisations - have been established by the BBC.
Most of those on the list travelled to Somalia to fight or attempted to do so.
Somali-based militants al-Shabab carried out the deadly attack on the Westgate mall in neighbouring Kenya.
Lawyers for the family of one British recruit known to have died in Somalia are investigating whether he was killed in a raid involving western military.
Al-Shabab is fighting to impose a brutal version of Islamic law on the country and the group is linked to al-Qaeda.
Fate unknown
The 47 names compiled by the BBC are based on a combination of sources, including public records from courts in the UK and abroad, and further first-hand research and accounts.
It is not a complete list of people from the UK who are suspected of having gone to fight because it is impossible to establish or estimate with any certainty how many Westerners have taken up arms in Somalia.
The research found that security chiefs believe at least 32 of the identifiable individuals went to fight.
A further seven were named in British court cases as having attempted to enter Somalia, but their plans were discovered and disrupted.
Others have been accused or convicted of raising money for al-Shabab, or facilitating the travel of others.
Seven people on the list returned to the UK - but the fate of most of the others is completely unknown.
'A disservice'
Four of the men on the list are known to be dead, including men who featured on a video released by the group a week ago.
The video included a message from a young man named as "Talha", who asked Muslims in Tower Hamlets - a borough in east London - to join the jihad in Somalia.
Talha, whose real name was Taufail Ahmed, died in Somalia in November 2012.
The Foreign Office said it had confirmed the death to his family, who are of Bangladeshi origin.
He grew up in Stepney Green in east London. The BBC has tracked down people who knew him at school.
They say he fell into a life of gang crime before leaving that world behind in favour of an extreme interpretation of Islam, before disappearing from the UK.
"For British Muslims he's doing a disservice," said one former schoolmate. "For Muslims around the world, he is doing a disservice."
In the al-Shabab video, the narrator says that "Talha" died after an attack involving American and British forces.
The government has not commented on that claim but his family has asked the legal charity Reprieve to investigate.
"The family were notified by British police officers. The FCO [Foreign Office] have knowledge of the incident and have told us that Taufail Ahmed received a Muslim burial," said Kat Craig from Reprieve.
"We have reason to believe that there are Somali eyewitnesses who identified those involved as British personnel and for those reasons we believe that further inquiries need to be made and that the family has quite legitimate questions that need to be answered."

Snicker.....
laugh....
Falls over.... Laughing
Hay Kerry how about having a policy that will work First!

October 23, 2013 NYT
Kerry Seeks to Reassure Israel on Iran
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
ROME — Secretary of State John Kerry, facing new frictions with America’s most important Middle East allies over its policies in the region, sought to assure Israel on Wednesday that the United States would insist on strict constraints on Iran’s nuclear program in its newly reinvigorated negotiations with Tehran.

Before meeting with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the residence of the American ambassador here, Mr. Kerry said the Obama administration welcomed the change of tone by Iran but “words are no substitute for action.”

Mr. Kerry is on the final leg of a three-day visit to European capitals focused on Middle East diplomacy, most notably American efforts to help start a peace conference on the Syrian conflict. But the trip has been punctuated by criticism directed at the United States from its main strategic allies, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and Mr. Kerry has been making an effort to assuage them both.

The Saudis, who are strong supporters of the Syrian insurgency, have been particularly upset over what they view as the Obama administration’s lack of resolve in acting against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, who is now in some ways stronger politically than he was a year ago. Last week the Saudis rejected taking a seat on the United Nations Security Council in part to express their displeasure.

They have also voiced alarm over the Obama administration’s steps toward rapprochement with Iran, Saudi Arabia’s main rival in the Middle East, and are fearful that the United States could make compromises in negotiations for a deal over Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

The Israelis are even more alarmed at the possibility that the United States might be too pliant in trying to pursue a compromise with Iran. Mr. Netanyahu has called Iran’s nuclear program a guise for weapons development and the most serious security threat facing his country.

Mr. Kerry’s public statements before his meeting with Mr. Netanyahu were focused largely on reassuring the Israelis.

“No deal is better than a bad deal,” Mr. Kerry said, a phrase that American officials have frequently used in recent weeks to try to reassure lawmakers in the United States as well as Israel and Persian Gulf states that the White House will not make risky concessions.

But Mr. Netanyahu listed a range of steps that Israel says Iran needs to take to demonstrate that it is not developing nuclear weapons, steps that appeared to go well beyond a compromise that the United States and other world powers are prepared to explore with Tehran, which insists its nuclear program is for civilian use only. The United States and other world powers are scheduled to resume talks with Iran in Geneva on Nov. 7.

Mr. Netanyahu, in a joint appearance with Mr. Kerry, said Iran must get rid of all of its fissile material and should not be allowed to have any centrifuges to enrich uranium. Iran should also close its underground nuclear facilities and abandon its construction of a heavy-water plant that would produce plutonium, Mr. Netanyahu added.

Having staked out broad demands on the Iranian nuclear program, Mr. Netanyahu argued that the international sanctions against Iran should not be eased in return for a “partial deal.”

The negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians were also a major subject on Mr. Kerry and Mr. Netanyahu’s agenda, though not one they were prepared to discuss publicly in detail.

Trying to convey the impression that there is momentum in those talks, Mr. Kerry said Israeli and Palestinian negotiators had met 13 times and “are meeting even now.” Martin S. Indyk, Mr. Kerry’s special envoy for those talks, is in Jerusalem to facilitate the discussions, the secretary of state emphasized.

Despite the multiple meetings, it is not apparent what, if any, headway has been made. When the talks began in July, Mr. Kerry said the goal was to complete a comprehensive Middle East peace agreement in nine months, and a third of that time has elapsed.

Mr. Kerry has been trying to move the talks along; he met recently in London with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and has had frequent conversations with Mr. Netanyahu. The Israeli leader told reporters on Wednesday that he and Mr. Kerry talk virtually every other day. And Mr. Kerry has set side the entire afternoon and evening for his discussions here with Mr. Netanyahu.

On Monday in Paris, Mr. Kerry met with senior diplomats from the Arab League to maintain Arab support for the talks.

In an apparent effort to influence Israeli public opinion, Mr. Kerry noted on Monday that Prince Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia had endorsed the concept of Middle East peace, one in which Israel would have normal relations with all Arab and Muslim nations.

“That’s a vision, and it’s a vision worth fighting for,” Mr. Kerry said.

But Qatar’s foreign minister, Khalid bin Mohamed al-Attiyah, suggested in a joint appearance with Mr. Kerry on Monday that the United States needed to put more pressure on Israel and play more of an active role in suggesting compromises. Mr. Attiyah said “actual” American participation in the negotiations was needed.

“I would like to thank my friend John for the serious effort that is expended, but we would like him to be fully engaged in this process,” Mr. Attiyah said.

Iran has insisted that the West acknowledge its “right” to enrich uranium as part of a negotiated compromise that puts limits on its nuclear program, a step the United States has not publicly taken.

Specific limits on Iran’s program have yet to be agreed upon. Another major issue for the next round is how fast to ease economic sanctions that have battered the Iranian economy.

The Iranians have pushed for a quick easing of the sanctions. The White House has been weighing a move to ease the effect by offering Iran access to billions of dollars in frozen funds.

But the United States has signaled that it does not want to remove major sanctions until its top demands are met, a position Israel has been urging be strengthened.

 

[joshuatree]

This warrants an update.

President forced to admit that Manila was wrong about Chinese building project as 'concrete' in disputed zone is 'very old'

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Manila has been forced into an embarrassing climbdown over accusations that China was building concrete blocks in a disputed shoal that has been a major source of tension between the two countries.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino said yesterday the "blocks" on Scarborough Shoal, a group of rocks China calls Huangyan Island 120 nautical miles off the coast of Luzon, were "very old" and "not a new phenomenon".

Last month, Philippine Defence Secretary Voltaire Gazmin told lawmakers China had violated a non-binding code by preparing to build structures on the shoal, showing lawmakers surveillance photos of the "blocks".

China denied the accusation and accused Manila of deliberately stirring up trouble over disputed waters in South China Sea.

Photos taken recently at the shoal show only natural rocks and coral jutting above the surface.

Philippines Says it Finds More Chinese Blocks on Reef

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POSTED: 04 Sep 2013 5:24 PM

MANILA: The Philippines said on Wednesday it had spotted more concrete blocks allegedly installed by China on a small group of reefs and rocky outcrops within Filipino territory in the South China Sea.Aerial surveillance discovered about 75 blocks scattered on a section of the Scarborough Shoal, said defence department spokesman Peter Galvez."These can be used for platforms (or) foundations, that is why we said earlier this could be a prelude to any other form of construction," he told reporters Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei rejected the Philippine allegations."What has been said by the Philippines isn't true. Huangyan Island is China's inherent territory," Hong told state television CCTV in an interview, using the Chinese name for the shoal.

The Philippines had earlier released an aerial photograph taken Saturday of what it said were about 30 concrete blocks at Scarborough.A second surveillance flight on Monday photographed more blocks scattered over a two-hectare (4.9-acre) section of the shoal, said Galvez, who did not release the newer photograph.It was unclear whether the extra blocks were newly laid or were missed by the earlier sweep, he said.He declined to speculate on whether Manila thought the Chinese would actually build structures there.Galvez said any construction would violate a 2002 non-binding agreement between China and its Southeast Asian neighbours to refrain from actions or hostile acts that could inflame tensions in the flashpoint region.

 

[broadsword]

This warrants an update.

President forced to admit that Manila was wrong about Chinese building project as 'concrete' in disputed zone is 'very old'

Face palm.

 

[SteelBird]

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October 24, 2013 - 17:33
The bodies of the two occupants of the Swiss Air Force fighter that crashed near Lake Lucerne on Wednesday have been recovered near the accident site, the Office of the Armed Forces Attorney General said on Thursday.
The pilot's body was found on Wednesday evening, but his passenger, a doctor with the Air Force's Aeromedical Institute, was not discovered until the next day – the searchers' work being hindered by the difficult terrain. The crash victims will be autopsied.

The plane’s data recorder, the so-called black box, has been retrieved. It could help determine the cause of the crash; however, it could take weeks to analyse warned the attorney-general's office.

The pilot of the other plane taking part in the training mission, who was able to land safely back at the base in Meiringen after making an emergency manoeuvre, still has to be questioned by investigators.

Experts are currently recording details of the site, which will be forwarded to the forensic institute in Zurich. Only once this has been completed will the wreckage be cleared.

The defence ministry had already warned there was little hope that either of the occupants had survived. The Armed Forces chief André Blattmann spoke on Wednesday of a “black day”.

The F/A-18 jet flew into a cliff overlooking Lake Alpnach, one of the branches of Lake Lucerne. It was one of two planes that had taken off from a base in Meiringen around 1.30pm. The other plane performed a 180-degree emergency manoeuvre near the crash site and returned safely to base.