Policing the World-17

The 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact is controversial even today, with historians divided over its importance. In the first of a series of articles marking the outbreak of World War II 70 years ago, the BBC Russian Service's Artyom Krechetnikov and Steven Eke analyse the significance of a treaty that helped set the scene for war.

Signed on 23 August 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was accompanied by a secret protocol that detailed the reshaping of Europe's map.

Substantive talks on forming a political alliance between Nazi Germany and the USSR had begun that month.

They built on earlier discussions aimed at boosting economic co-operation, and were accompanied by military and even cultural co-operation in the form of exchanges of high-profile delegations.

The pact was signed by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and his Russian counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, in Moscow.

It led to the carving-up of Poland between Nazi Germany and the USSR, as well as the annexation by the USSR of eastern Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and northern Romania.

The western parts of Ukraine and Belarus, formerly Polish territory, were also incorporated into the Soviet Union.

At that point, believe some historians, a war in Europe became unavoidable. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8212451.stm>

Handguns, electric drills and mock executions were used by CIA agents to elicit information from terror suspects, US media have reported.

The reports contain details of a 2004 review by the CIA's inspector general that has been kept secret but is now due to be released next week.

Publication of the CIA report was ordered after a by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The US has banned harsh interrogation methods, including death threats.

The gun and the drill were brought into an interrogation session of suspected USS Cole bomber and alleged al-Qaeda commander Rahim al-Nashiri, according to reports in the Washington Post, Newsweek magazine and AP news agency.

The CIA report says the drill was held near Saudi-born Mr Nashiri's head and repeatedly turned on and off, the reports said. The agents showed him the gun and tried to frighten him into thinking he would be shot.

In another case, a gun was fired in another room to lead a detainee to believe another suspect had been killed.

CIA documents already released under ACLU pressure indicate that Mr Nashiri is one of several Guantanamo Bay detainees who were subjected to waterboarding - a practice that simulates drowning.

Waterboarding was one of a number of "enhanced" interrogation techniques approved by the Justice Department in 2002 under President George W Bush.

President Barack Obama has since said waterboarding constitutes torture. US law on torture forbids threatening detainees with imminent death.

US Attorney General Eric Holder is considering whether to investigate the Bush administration's interrogation practices.

A retired CIA official who lead the 2004 investigation said the report about to be released is a comprehensive review of what the CIA did under the secret detention and interrogation programme began after the 11 September 2001 attacks, AP said. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8215722.stm>

Brazil's leader has called on US President Barack Obama to meet South American leaders to calm fears about the US military presence in Colombia.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva expressed his concerns in a phone call to President Obama, Brazil's foreign minister said.

He wants guarantees that US troops will be restricted to fighting drugs and terrorists within Colombia only.

The US and Colombia are finalising an agreement to give the US military greater access to seven bases.

'Winds of war'

Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said President Lula told Mr Obama it was "very important" that he attend a South American summit in Argentina starting next Friday.

The Unasur meeting has been specifically called to address the Colombian bases issue.

On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to calm fears by saying the US would not establish its own bases and would not increase troop levels in Colombia, where 800 US soldiers and 600 US contractors are already based.

Mrs Clinton said the accord would respect Colombian sovereignty and other countries would not be affected.

Venezuela and Ecuador had expressed fears the move amounted to preparation for an invasion of their countries by US forces.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned that "the winds of war were beginning to blow" across the region. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8215504.stm>

The first meeting between North and South Korean officials in nearly two years has taken place unexpectedly in the South Korean capital Seoul.

A spy chief said to be close to the North's leader Kim Jong-il met Seoul's Unification Minister Hyun In-taek.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak was considering meeting the Northern delegates, who have said they want better relations on the peninsula.

They were in Seoul to pay respects to late ex-President Kim Dae-jung.

The Northern official in charge of inter-Korean relations, Kim Yang-gon, said there was an urgent need to improve the frosty relations between the two countries.

"After meeting with several people [in the South], I felt the imperative need for North-South relations to improve," Mr Kim said ahead of his talks with Mr Hyun.

President Lee's office said he was being briefed by Mr Hyun on the meeting with the delegation and was considering a meeting with them. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8215563.stm>

The US army officer convicted for his part in the notorious My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War has offered his first public apology, a US report says.

"There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened," Lt William Calley was quoted as saying by the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer.

He was addressing a small group at a community club in Columbus, Georgia.

Calley, 66, was convicted on 22 counts of murder for the 1968 massacre of 500 men, women and children in Vietnam.

Cold blood

"I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry," the former US platoon commander said on Wednesday.

He was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the killings in 1971. Then-US President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to three years' house arrest.

But Calley insisted that he was only following orders, the paper reported.

He broke his silence after accepting a friend's invitation to speak at the weekly meeting of the Kiwanis Club, a US-based global voluntary organisation.

At the time of the killings, the US soldiers had been on a "search and destroy" mission to root out communist fighters in what was fertile Viet Cong territory.

Although the enemy was nowhere to be seen, the US soldiers of Charlie Company rounded up unarmed civilians and gunned them down.

When the story of My Lai was exposed, more than a year later, it tarnished the name of the US army and proved to be a turning point for public opinion about the Vietnam War.<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8215556.stm>

Pakistani intelligence officials have cast doubt on the claimed selection of a new leader to the country's Taliban.

The movement's deputy leader, Maulvi Faqir Mohammed, earlier told the BBC that a Taliban council had chosen Hakimullah Mehsud to lead it.

Pakistani intelligence officials have said the claim is a ruse to disguise factional fighting within the Taliban.

Pakistani and US officials believe the previous leader, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a US drone strike.

However the Taliban continue to insist that he is still alive, despite the announcement of a new leader being appointed <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8216726.stm>

Former President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani has urged Iran's political factions to follow orders from the supreme leader, in an apparent conciliatory move.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has endorsed the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June, but Mr Rafsanjani has backed the opposition.

Correspondents say his statement seems to contradict a speech last month when he said the country was in crisis.

Official news agency Irna said he has also called for action to foster unity.

At least 4,000 people were arrested in protests following last month's election, alleging the result was rigged. Hundreds still remain in jail. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8216533.stm>

A sudden phone call gave the BBC's Sri Lanka correspondent Charles Haviland rare access to the the war-battered north of the island. He saw Tamils languishing in a vast refugee camp - but also scenes of ethnic harmony at a Catholic shrine.

You do not expect, in northern Sri Lanka, to encounter a red double-decker London bus, but there it was, trundling along in front of us.

The buses were brought over by the British in the 1940s, someone explained. They were still going strong.

We were travelling through the lands on the edge of the old war zone.

Since the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels, Sri Lanka is unified again. But this is still a zone of crossing over, into Tamil country, a place still raw from conflict.

Here were Tamil shop names and Hindu temples but at the same time, flags of the Sri Lankan state and its Buddhist majority, and an advertisement for the army.

Incarceration

The message was clear - the government's writ runs here.

But access to the north remains tightly controlled. My surprise visit sprang from a sudden call from the information ministry.

They were inviting me and other reporters to Sri Lankan Catholics' most revered shrine, Our Lady of Madhu.

I had been there before, in 2002, when it lay in what was then the Tamil Tigers' state-within-a-state. The tables were now turned.

A woman was pounding away at grain outside her house.

Then came the vast expanse of Menik Farm, the refugee camp which the Sri Lankan government wishes the world's media and human rights groups would stop talking about.

About 250,000 Tamils displaced in the war's final months are now detained there.

The government has said the careful screening of these people is the only way it can guarantee the country's future security, as they lived among the Tamil Tigers.

However its critics have said it is unacceptable to keep people incarcerated in such a way.

The journalists' bus did not stop. Beyond the barbed wire, though, we saw youngsters playing cricket, hundreds of tents, and huts with iron roofs.

We saw people queuing, waiting, for what, we did not know.

On the camp fences we saw many huge posters of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, alone, or with his two beloved brothers, both of them also top officials.

After the camp, there were no more villagers to be seen. The north is largely depopulated, most of its people now in camps like Menik Farm. Soldiers stalk this landscape.

Schools have been emptied of their pupils and become barracks. Within minutes, torrents of unseasonal rain had transformed the red-brown soil into streams and mud.

Later the news filtered out that parts of the camp had been inundated.

But ahead of us in the mud were not refugees, but pilgrims. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8212770.stm>

In the second of a series of articles marking the outbreak of World War II 70 years ago, historian Orlando Figes analyses what the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact meant for Europeans in 1939 - and what it means today.

Seventy years on, the pact between Hitler and Stalin still casts a shadow over Europe. Its memory continues to divide.

For the Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and Bessarabians, the pact began the reign of terror, mass deportations, slavery and murder which both the Nazi and the Soviet armies brought along with them when they co-ordinated their invasions of these countries in line with the pact's notorious secret protocols - by which Stalin and Hitler had agreed to divide Eastern Europe between their regimes.

For the Jews of all these lands, the pact was the licence for the Holocaust. For the European Left, the idea that the leader of the USSR could sign a pact with Hitler symbolised the moral bankruptcy of the Soviet regime.

We are not opposed to war [between Germany and the Western states] if they have a good fight and weaken each other Josef Stalin, speaking in 1939 Pact that set the scene for war

For a long time, apologists for Stalin tried to rationalise his ideological turn-around as a pragmatic necessity to "buy time" for the Soviet Union to arm itself against the threat of Germany.

Certainly, by the summer of 1939, Stalin had good reason to be sceptical that France and Britain were serious about a military alliance with the Soviet Union. The Poles' understandable refusal to allow Soviet troops on to Polish soil was the major stumbling block. This drew the Soviet leader towards Hitler's offer of security.

But Stalin did not see this as buying time for the war with Germany that finally occurred in 1941.

He made no distinction between the liberal capitalist states and the fascist dictatorships - both were enemies.

Through the pact he thought to play them off against each other by giving Hitler a free hand to invade Poland and go to war against its Western allies without intervention by the Soviet Union.

"We are not opposed to war [between Germany and the Western states] if they have a good fight and weaken each other," Stalin said in 1939. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8214391.stm>

The US military has begun notifying the Red Cross of the identities of terror suspects being held at secret camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, US reports say.

The International Committee of the Red Cross would not comment on the report, which the New York Times carried quoting unnamed US officials.

The policy reportedly took effect this month with no public announcement.

Correspondents say that, if confirmed, the move represents a victory for human rights groups.

Citing three senior military officials, the New York Times said the policy would give the Red Cross access to dozens of suspected foreign fighters captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They are being held at so-called "temporary screening camps" run by US special forces at secret locations in Balad in Iraq, and Bagram in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has previously said that providing information about these detainees could jeopardize counter-terrorism efforts.

It has refused to comment on the latest reports.

This week, the detention policies of the former Bush administration are likely to come under further scrutiny with the publication of a CIA report dating from 2004 into its interrogation practices at that time. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8216576.stm>

Tens of thousands of people in Mali's capital, Bamako, have been protesting against a new law which gives women equal rights in marriage.

The law, passed earlier this month, also strengthens inheritance rights for women and children born out of wedlock.

The head of a Muslim women's association says only a minority of Malian women - "the intellectuals" as she put it - supports the law.

Several other protests have taken place in other parts of the country.

The law was adopted by the Malian parliament at the beginning of August, and has yet to be signed into force by the president.

One of the most contentious issues in the new legislation is that women are no longer required to obey their husbands.

Hadja Sapiato Dembele of the National Union of Muslim Women's Associations said the law goes against Islamic principles.

"We have to stick to the Koran," Ms Dembele told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme. "A man must protect his wife, a wife must obey her husband."

"It's a tiny minority of women here that wants this new law - the intellectuals. The poor and illiterate women of this country - the real Muslims - are against it," she added. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8216568.stm>

Venezuelan police have fired teargas to stop thousands of protesters against a new education law from breaking past a security cordon in the capital Caracas.

Protesters accuse the government of President Hugo Chavez of indoctrinating children into backing socialist values.

Health officials said dozens of people were treated for minor injuries.

Rallies for and against the law, which passed last week, have been held for over a week. Last Friday's protests also met a tough response from police.

Elsewhere in the capital on Sunday, thousands of Chavez supporters held a counter-rally.

They say the new law will give everyone equal access to education, regardless of their economic position.

'Bolivarian Doctrine'

The government says changes to the law - which among other things, broadens state control over schools and makes the education system secular - were long overdue.

But the Catholic Church and university authorities in Venezuela have opposed the law.

The BBC's Will Grant in Caracas says some parents have threatened to take their children out of school if there is any socialist material on the new curriculum, while teachers' unions warn that they will boycott classes, and university students say they will stage further protests.

Analysts say parts of the law are open to interpretation and that it will only become clear how it will be applied once students return from their summer break.

The law requires schools to base their teaching on "the Bolivarian Doctrine" - a reference to the ideals of 19th Century independence hero Simon Bolivar, such as Latin American unity and national self-determination.

A previous attempt at education reform was one of the factors that led to mass protests in 2002, eventually culminating in a failed coup attempt against Mr Chavez. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8216588.stm>

The US justice department is calling for some dozen prisoner abuse cases to be reopened, the New York Times says.

The recommendation could lead to the prosecution of CIA employees and contractors over the treatment of terrorism suspects, the newspaper says.

The call comes as justice officials are set to disclose previously censored parts of a report into detainee abuse.

These show how electric drills and mock executions were used by CIA agents to elicit information, US media say.

A heavily censored version of the 2004 internal Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report was released last year but in an almost meaningless form because so much remained classified, the BBC's Daniel Sandford reports from Washington.

A federal judge ordered more details to be released on Monday, after a legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union (Aclu).

FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE More from BBC World Service

According to US media, the report by the CIA's inspector general details how a gun and an electric drill were brought into an interrogation session of suspected USS Cole bomber and alleged al-Qaeda commander Rahim al-Nashiri in a bid to frighten him.

In another case, a gun was fired in another room to lead a detainee to think another suspect had been killed.

The US has banned harsh interrogation methods, including death threats.

Even under the Bush administration's controversial interpretation of the law, causing "severe mental pain" by the "threat of imminent death" was considered illegal. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8217414.stm>

Iraqi TV has broadcast what it says is the confession by a former policeman to recent devastating bombings in Baghdad.

The man said he had orchestrated the attacks with a Syrian-based leader of the outlawed Baath party.

The blasts at two ministries and other attacks in Iraq's capital killed at least 95 people on Wednesday.

Senior Iraqi officials have said that members of the Iraqi security forces may have collaborated with the attackers in the bombings.

Correspondent say officials and members of parliament have traded blame for the bombings and the failure in security measures.

US forces pulled back from Iraqi cities at the end of June, handing responsibility to Iraqi security forces.

'Order from Syria'

The television confession, which was broadcast late on Sunday, was by a man identifying himself as Wisam Ali Khazim Ibrahim.

The 57-year-old suspect said he was a member of the banned Baath Party, the party through which Saddam Hussein governed Iraq.

KEY ATTACKS SINCE US PULLBACK 19 Aug: At least 95 killed in wave of attacks in central Baghdad 31 July: Twenty-seven dead in bombings outside five Baghdad mosques 9 July: 50 killed in bomb attacks at Talafar (near Mosul), Baghdad and elsewhere 30 June: US troops withdraw from Iraqi towns and cities. Car bomb in Kirkuk kills at least 27 people Attacks threaten stability claims Can Iraqis move past divides?

"I received a call a month ago from my boss in the [Baath] party, Sattam Farhan, in Syria, to do an operation to destabilise the regime," Mr Ibrahim said in the broadcast confession.

Many Baathist officials fled to Syria soon after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, following the US-led invasion in March 2003.

Mr Ibrahim said his organisation had paid $10,000 (£6,000) to a facilitator who knew the security arrangements on the roads from Muqtadiya in Diyala province, north-east of Baghdad.

Mr Ibrahim was claiming responsibility for the bombings at the Iraqi finance and foreign ministries.

Surveillance video widely broadcast on Iraqi television stations showed a truck carrying three large red water tanks, in which the explosives were hidden, approach the gate in front of the foreign ministry, near the heavily-protected Green Zone.

A refrigerated truck was used in the finance ministry attack. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8217879.stm>

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has proposed a new regulation that would prevent most Israeli Arabs from becoming career diplomats.

He said that only those who complete military service should be eligible for training with the foreign ministry.

This would exclude most Arab citizens, who do not serve in the army, as well as ultra-Orthodox Jews, who are exempted from conscription.

Mr Lieberman said he would propose a law to parliament, if necessary.

Current Israeli law guarantees all citizens equal access to the civil service.

Anyone who wants to represent the country [Israel] in the outside world must take part in our obligations Avigdor Lieberman Q&A: Israeli Arabs Israeli Arabs struggle for land

More than five Israeli Arabs, Muslims and Christians, currently work as diplomats in the foreign ministry, the Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported.

Mr Lieberman's proposal came at a foreign ministry administrative meeting.

Israeli Arabs, who make up about a fifth of Israel's population, roughly 1.45 million people, are of Palestinian Arab descent.

During the war that surrounded the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, hundreds of thousands of Arabs were forced from or fled their homes.

Those who remained within what became Israel, and their descendents, have been granted citizenship and are known as Israeli Arabs.

Israeli Arabs are citizens of Israel - although their "civic duty" differs as they are exempt from compulsory military service.

But Israeli Arabs frequently describe themselves as "second-class citizens" and say they face institutional and social discrimination.

Mr Lieberman, a hard-line nationalist, has previously tried to sponsor laws requiring Israeli Arabs to swear allegiance to Israel as a Jewish state and to ban Israeli Arabs from marking the Nakba - the Palestinian "catastrophe" of 1948.

These measures have not been enacted, though laws stopping state funding for organisations and activities that reject the existence of Israel as a Jewish state have.  <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8218564.stm>

The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is on the cusp of launching a major revamp to how people contribute to some pages.

The site will require that revisions to pages about living people and some organisations be approved by an editor.

This would be a radical shift for the site, which ostensibly allows anyone to make changes to almost any entry.

The two-month trial, which has proved controversial with some contributors, will start in the next "couple of weeks", according to a spokesperson.

"I'm sure it will spark some controversy," Mike Peel of Wikimedia UK, a chapter of the organisation that operates Wikipedia, told BBC News.

However, he said, the trial had been approved in an an online poll, with 80% of 259 users in favour of the trial.

"The decision to run this trial was made by the users of the English Wikipedia, rather than being imposed."

The proposal was first outlined by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales in January this year. It was met by a storm of protests from Wikipedia users who claimed the system had been poorly thought out or would create extra work. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8220220.stm>

By Syed Shoaib Hasan BBC News, Islamabad

Zulfiqar Mehsud, who the Taliban say is their new leader in Pakistan, came to prominence in 2007 after a number of spectacular raids against the army.

At that time Zulfiqar, now known commonly as Hakimullah, was one of several commanders under Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who officials say was killed in a US drone strike in early August.

When I met Zulfiqar Mehsud in South Waziristan in October 2007 he had just been appointed Baitullah's chief spokesman.

His audacious capture of 300 Pakistani soldiers had led to us travelling to meet the kidnapped troops.

Still only 28 at the time, Zulfiqar Mehsud was clearly someone to be reckoned with.

Despite his pleasant demeanour and cheeky smile, danger radiated from the man.

The kidnapping incident added to his prestige. Pakistan's government eventually released several high-profile militants in line with Taliban demands.

Since then, Zulifiqar Mehsud's star has continued to rise. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8219223.stm>

Retailers who sell violent video games and 18-rated DVDs to children cannot be prosecuted because of a legal blunder 25 years ago.

Dozens of prosecutions under a 1984 Act have been dropped because the government of the day failed to notify the European Commission about the law.

But previous prosecutions will stand, according to the Department for Culture Media and Sport (DCMS).

The Lib Dems said the error had "thrown film censorship into chaos".

The Video Recordings Act (VRA) was brought in by Margaret Thatcher's government and set down that videos and video games must be classified and age rated by the British Board of Film Classification.

It made it illegal to sell violent video games to children and the most explicit adult films could be sold only in licensed sex shops. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8219438.stm>

In the fourth of a series of articles marking the outbreak of World War II 70 years ago, the BBC Russian Service's Artyom Krechetnikov assesses Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's motivations behind the 1939 Soviet-Nazi pact.

Soviet government documents released since the USSR's collapse give us a clear idea of what drove Stalin's thinking in concluding the non-aggression treaty - the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact - with Nazi Germany.

On 19 August 1939, just days before the agreement was signed in Moscow, in a speech to a hastily-convened session of the Politburo, Stalin said the "question of war and peace is entering a decisive phase".

He predicted that the outcome would depend entirely on whichever strategic position the USSR decided to adopt.

Should the Soviet Union form an alliance with France and Britain, he opined, Germany would be forced to abandon its territorial demands on Poland.

This, Stalin suggested, would avoid the threat of imminent war, but it would make "the subsequent development of events dangerous for the Soviet Union".

Our aim is to ensure Germany can continue to fight for as long as possible, in order to exhaust and ruin England and France Joseph Stalin in 1939

Should the USSR sign a treaty with Germany, Stalin suggested, Berlin would "undoubtedly attack Poland, leading to a war with the inevitable involvement of France and England".

Looking ahead, Stalin suggested that "under these circumstances, we, finding ourselves in a beneficial situation, can simply await our turn [to extract maximum advantage]".

What is clear is that Stalin not only appeared unconcerned about the prospect of an attack from Nazi Germany, he actually considered such an attack impossible.

"Our aim is to ensure Germany can continue to fight for as long as possible, in order to exhaust and ruin England and France," he said. "They must not be in a condition to rout Germany.

"Our position is thus clear… remaining neutral, we aid Germany economically, with raw materials and foodstuffs. It is important for us that the war continues as long as possible, in order that both sides exhaust their forces." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8218887.stm>

Profile: Hafiz Mohammad Saeed

Interpol has issued an international wanted notice for the head of a Pakistan-based Islamic charity over the 2008 Mumbai (Bombay) attacks.

The wanted man is Hafiz Saeed who heads Jamaat-ud-Dawa, accused of being a front for the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group blamed by India for the attacks.

He denies involvement. Gunmen killed more than 160 people in the attacks.

Earlier this month, Pakistan's Supreme Court adjourned a hearing seeking Mr Saeed's re-arrest.

A lawyer acting for Hafiz Saeed said the prosecution was not prepared for the case.

He was released in June by a Lahore court which found insufficient evidence for his continued detention.

Interpol has also issued a similar red notice against Pakistan-based Zaki Ur Rehman Lakhvi, who India says is one of the masterminds of the Mumbai attacks.

The Interpol notices followed the decision of a court in Mumbai to issue non-bailable arrest warrants against the two men for their alleged role in the Mumbai attacks.

Many Interpol member countries view a red notice as a legal basis for arrest or detention of a suspect, but they are not required to do so. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8221674.stm>

East Timorese victims of the violence of 1999 and of Indonesia's occupation have yet to receive any justice, says a report by Amnesty International.

Many perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity between 1975 and 1999 have still not been brought to trial, the human rights group says.

Amnesty says East Timor is haunted by a "culture of impunity" - a decade after voting for independence from Indonesia.

The group has called on the UN to set up an international criminal tribunal.

Donna Guest, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific deputy director, said the victims of the atrocities need a "clear commitment" from both the Indonesian and Timorese governments as well as the UN to investigate all allegations and bring those responsible to trial.

"Disappointed Timorese victims provided testimonies time and time again to various mechanisms, but they have still not seen significant signs of accountability," she said.

The Timorese and Indonesian governments have "chosen to avoid justice for the victims", which has "weakened the rule of law in both countries", she went on to say. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8223686.stm>

By Martin Vogl BBC News, Bamako

The president of Mali has announced that he is not going to sign the country's new family law, instead returning it to parliament for review.

Muslim groups have been protesting against the law, which gives greater rights to women, ever since parliament adopted it at the start of the month.

President Amadou Toumani Toure said he was sending the law back for the sake of national unity.

Muslim leaders have called the law the work of the devil and against Islam.

More than 90% of Mali's population is Muslim.

Some of the provisions that have proved controversial give more rights to women.

For example, under the new law women are no longer required to obey their husbands, instead husbands and wives owe each other loyalty and protection.

I have taken this decision... to ensure calm and a peaceful society, and to obtain the support and understanding of our fellow citizens President Amadou Toumani Toure To love, honour and obey in Mali

Women get greater inheritance rights, and the minimum age for girls to marry in most circumstances is raised to 18.

One of the other key points Muslims have objected to is the fact that marriage is defined as a secular institution.

Tens of thousands have turned out at protests in Bamako in recent weeks and there have been other demonstrations against the law across the country.

It is a political defeat for President Toure, who was a strong backer of the new law.

It has only been the continuing angry protests by Muslim groups that have forced him to send the law back to parliament.

In his statement on national television the president was forced to admit that the population is yet to be convinced by the new code.

"After extensive consultations with the various state institutions, with civil society, with the religious community and the legal profession, I have taken this decision to send the family code for a second reading to ensure calm and a peaceful society, and to obtain the support and understanding of our fellow citizens."

It was clear from his speech that the president also thinks there has been a lot of false information circulating about the code and the government will no doubt also try to address this in the coming weeks.

The head of Mali's High Islamic Council says he was pleased with the president's decision.

Women's groups are heartbroken - they have been trying for more than 10 years to get the law changed. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8223736.stm>

A senior United Nations human rights official has criticised Australia's measures to fight child abuse and alcoholism in Aboriginal communities.

Prof James Anaya said the measures were discriminatory and stigmatised indigenous people.

He spoke after a tour of Aboriginal townships prompted by complaints that the government intervention was racist.

The restrictions include rules on how welfare payments can be spent and a ban on alcohol and hard core pornography.

The intervention was launched under the conservative government of former Prime Minister John Howard, but was kept largely in place by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd after he took office in 2007.

Dozens of townships in Australia's Northern Territory were taken over by the federal authorities, and the government suspended the Racial Discrimination Act to allow the controversial policy to be implemented.

These measures overtly discriminate against Aboriginal peoples Prof James Anaya

Medical staff and social workers were also deployed as part of the intervention, in an attempt to combat violence and the rampant abuse of children in some Aboriginal communities. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8223881.stm>

By Richard Lister BBC News, Washington

Millions of Americans turned on their morning news shows on Wednesday to sombre voices and solemn music marking the death of Senator Edward Kennedy.

The American flag is at half-mast over Capitol Hill, the White House and other Federal buildings. The airwaves and internet are full of mostly glowing tributes to one of America's most influential politicians.

Those conservatives who regarded his politics with disdain (and there are many) seem to have acknowledged that it is too soon to be discussing their true feelings about the "Liberal Lion" of the Senate.

So the overall impression in the American news media is of the passing of an icon.

The tributes were led by a "heartbroken" President Barack Obama, who summed up the senator's achievements by saying that "for five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts". <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8223636.stm>

A blind man who complained to police about cars parking on a pavement was arrested when he threatened to let down the vehicles' tyres.

Daniel Duckfield, from Narberth, Pembrokeshire, said he and his guide dog had to walk in the road when paths were blocked by illegally-parked cars.

He has complained about being cautioned and put in a cell after his arrest.

Dyfed-Powys Police said it was investigating Mr Duckfield's complaints.

Mr Duckfield, who became blind in December 1999, claimed police were not doing enough to tackle motorists parking illegally on pavements near his home.

He said he had repeatedly complained to officers about cars blocking his path when he went out of his house, forcing him and his guide dog to walk on a main road.

Last week, after phoning officers and feeling he was getting no help, he went a step further.

He said: "I said all right, if you're not going to do anything I'll do something myself, I'll let the tyres down and I'll write 'no parking' on the windscreen.

"I went to the door [and] locked the door. By the time I got 50 yards down my street there was a policeman running towards me.

"He told me he was going to arrest me because I had threatened to let tyres down and threatened to write on windscreens."

Mr Duckfield said he was taken to a police station and held in a cell before being cautioned.

He said: "I thought it was absolutely disgusting. I came back here and I sat down and I almost cried but I thought, no, the temper took over me."

Mr Duckfield said the arrest meant he would no longer be asked to visit schools with his guide dog.

Dyfed-Powys Police said the force had held a crackdown on illegal parking in Narberth last month.

A spokesperson added: "It is unfortunate Mr Duckfield decided to take matters into his own hands on this occasion."

The spokesperson added Mr Duckfield's complaints would be fully investigated. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_west/8225778.stm>

A Dutch court has put a 13-year-old girl under state care for two months, stalling her bid to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world.

The decision by three Utrecht judges means Laura Dekker's parents, who support her plans, temporarily lose the right to make decisions about her.

A child psychologist will now assess her capacity to undertake the voyage.

Laura's father, Dick Dekker, had earlier had a request for her to miss two years of school turned down.

Miss Dekker - who was not at the court - will continue to live with her father, who did not make any immediate comment on the judge's decision.

She had planned to spend about two years aboard her 26-foot (8m) boat, Guppy, to break the record set this week by a 17-year-old UK boy.

Mike Perham tackled 50ft waves, gale force winds and technical problems during the 28,000-mile circumnavigation, which took him nine months.

'Live freely'

The judges ruled Miss Dekker would face mental and physical risks if she were allowed to go ahead with her planned record attempt.

"The parents are going to have to negotiate all important decisions regarding Laura [Dekker] with the child protection services," said a court statement.

"This means that Laura cannot start her round-the-world trip without their [child protection services] agreement."

Caroline Vink, a senior adviser on youth protection in the Netherlands, said the case needed to be "looked into".

"We're talking about a 13-year-old," she told the BBC. "You can also question whether she's able to take this decision for herself, and whether the parents are making the decision in the best interests of Laura."

Miss Dekker was reportedly born on a yacht off the coast of New Zealand during a seven-year world trip.

She had a yacht by the age of six and began sailing solo when she was 10.

"Since I was 10 years old, I've known that I would like to sail around the world," she had earlier told Dutch television.

"I want simply to learn about the world and to live freely." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8226196.stm>

Left-wing South American leaders have condemned US plans to increase its military presence in Colombia at an emergency summit in Argentina.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez said it was part of a US strategy to dominate the region. Bolivia and Ecuador also said the deal was a threat to peace.

But Colombian President Alvaro Uribe defended the plan, which will give US forces access to seven military bases.

Mr Uribe said it was needed to combat drug-traffickers and insurgents.

"We are not talking about a political game, we are talking about a threat that has spilled blood in Colombian society," he said after holding up pictures of victims of attacks by leftist Farc rebels. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8228012.stm>

The man who swam to the lakeside home of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken of his sorrow that his action led to her arrest and trial.

John Yettaw told the BBC that he had a dream that Ms Suu Kyi was going to be murdered, and swam to her home wearing home-made flippers to warn her.

Mr Yettaw was sentenced to seven years in prison but is now back home after US Senator Jim Webb intervened.

Ms Suu Kyi was sentenced to 18 months' further house arrest.

Mr Yettaw, a devout Mormon from Falcon, Missouri, told the BBC's Newshour programme that he had had many strong visions or dreams which he called "impressions" or "camcorder moments".

In one he says he foresaw an official plot to murder Ms Suu Kyi and this prompted him to swim twice to her home to warn her of the danger.

On the first occasion he says he left some Mormon scriptures for her but did not enter her home.

As he left he was challenged by an armed guard. He says he shook hands with the guard who then walked away and he took a taxi away from the scene. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8228098.stm>

The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has backed calls for a public inquiry into the atrocity.

Speaking to Scotland's The Herald newspaper from his home in the Libyan capital, Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi said he was determined to clear his name.

He also said an inquiry would help families of the victims know the truth.

Megrahi, who is suffering from terminal prostate cancer, was released from Greenock Prison in Scotland last week on compassionate grounds.

He returned to a hero's welcome in Libya after serving eight years of a minimum 27 years sentence for murdering 270 people in the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over the town of Lockerbie, in southern Scotland. The scenes prompted international condemnation.

I support the issue of a public inquiry if it can be agreed Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi

The Herald quoted Megrahi as saying he would help Dr Jim Swire, whose 23-year-old daughter Flora died in the disaster and who has frequently called for a full public inquiry, by handing over all the documents in his possession.

In his first interview since being released, Megrahi told The Herald: "I support the issue of a public inquiry if it can be agreed.

"In my view, it is unfair to the victim's families that this has not been heard. It would help them to know the truth. The truth never dies. If the UK guaranteed it, I would be very supportive."

But Megrahi said he believed the UK government would avoid a public inquiry as it would cost a lot of money and also "show how much the Americans have been involved".

He said he dropped his appeal in the Scottish courts because he knew he would not live to see the outcome and was desperate to see his family, and insisted there was no pressure from Libyan or Scottish authorities. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/8228219.stm>

Roddick questions Twitter ruling

Signs posted around the USTA National Tennis Center read: "Important. Player Notice. Twitter Warning."

The Tennis Integrity Unit warns that Twitter messages could violate anti-corruption rules, and that tweeting is not allowed on court during matches.

First-round action gets under way at Flushing Meadows, New York, on Monday.

"I think it's lame the US Open is trying to regulate our tweeting," Roddick posted on his own Twitter page. "I understand the on-court issue but not sure they can tell us if we can or can't do it on our own time.... we'll see.

"I definitely respect the rule about inside info and on court, but you would seriously have to be a moron to send 'inside info' through a tweet. Not very subtle/smart .... come on."

The signs are posted in the players' lounge, locker rooms and referee's office, and read: "Many of you will have Twitter accounts in order for your fans to follow you and to become more engaged in you and the sport - and this is great.

"However popular it is, it is important to warn you of some of the dangers posted by Twittering as it relates to the Tennis Anti-Corruption Program Rules."

They add that sending "certain sensitive information concerning your match or other matches and/or players should be avoided. Depending on the information sent out this could be determined as the passing of 'inside information.'"

This is defined as "information about the likely participation or likely performance of a player in an event or concerning the weather, court conditions, status, outcome or any other aspect of an event which is known by a Covered Person and is not information in the public domain."
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/tennis/8228398.stm>

Bright pupils 'miss out' on place

Million+, which represents 28 new universities in England and Scotland, told BBC Breakfast the UK risked a "lost generation of wasted talent".

It is calling for investment in more places for 2010 after a cap on places added to problems this year.

A government spokesman said students should not panic but reapply next year.

A record 611,947 people have applied to UK universities this year - a more than 10% rise on last year.

Earlier this year, Westminster put a 10,000 cap on the expansion of places for this autumn because of budget restraints.

It later offered funding for 13,000 more places as numbers of applicants surged but not all universities took up this offer because places were not fully funded.

This year some 22,000 places are available through clearing - the system of allocating unfilled course places - compared with the 43,890 places allocated through the process last year.

Two years ago, about 120,000 applicants failed to get a place by the end of clearing.

The figure rose to 132,000 in 2008 but after record applications this year, Million+ estimates almost 170,000 will be turned down.

Professor Les Ebdon, from the think tank, said many of those missing out will have achieved good grades.

"This year there are about 40,000 extra well-qualified applicants who won't find places because the numbers have been capped to last year's numbers," he said.

"Those people will displace some from the job market or will have to find something to do for the year and try again next year. Some may have their hopes and aspirations dashed for a lifetime."

He also told BBC Breakfast: "By 2020, half of the jobs in this country are going to need people with high level skills and that's the case for investment."

'Completely devastated'

Lara Stephenson has decided to take a gap year after failing to get a place through clearing.

"My grades were not awful. In previous years it would have been easier to get in to university through clearing but not this year.

"It has been just horrible because I couldn't get in anywhere. Everywhere said they were full or my grades were not good enough. I'm completely devastated and now I'm being forced to take a gap year."
   
It has been just horrible because I couldn't get in anywhere
Student Lara Stephenson

Alastair Hunter, vice chairman of the University and College Union, warned some gap year students may be "forced to take run of the mill jobs that won't add to their educational experience".

Ben Whittaker, of the National Union of Students, also pointed out the risks of taking a gap year.

"These students will be competing with next year's cohort to get into university and I think for the government to be saying 'go out into the world go and get work experience' in a time of economic recession is absolutely ludicrous."

The increased pressure on university places is thought to be due to a bulge in the population (there are more 18-year-olds this year), the drive to get more young people into higher education and the effects of the recession encouraging both young and old to go to university.

'Absurd position'

Higher Education Minister David Lammy said record numbers of people were taking advantage of the highest-ever level of funded places on offer.

"Students who don't qualify for their offer should not panic though, they can apply for places through the clearing system, reapply the following year or seeking work experience or training supported by our Backing Young Britain campaign," he added.
   
Students who don't qualify for their offer should not panic
Higher Education Minister David Lammy

Shadow universities secretary David Willetts said the Conservatives have been calling for a "proper review of the funding of universities".

"The aim would be to ensure that we don't end up ever again in this absurd position where the government tries to control the detail of the exact number of places at each university, so that universities find themselves turning away well-qualified students," he said.

This year the overall pass rate for A-levels in England, Wales and Northern Ireland rose to the record level of 97.5%, adding to the clamour for places.

Students in Scotland, who received the results of their Highers earlier this month, had a head start on clearing. The pass rate for Highers also rose - by 0.8 percentage point to 74.2%.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8228126.stm>

Wire writer says adverts kill TV

David Simon was appearing at the Edinburgh International TV Festival.

He said: "Television as a medium, in terms of being literate and telling stories, has short-changed itself since its inception.

"That is because of advertising."

Simon, whose work originates on US subscription cable channel HBO, said: "Only when television managed to liberate itself from the economic construct of advertising was there a real emancipation of story.

"American television up until the point of premium cable was about the interruptions every 13 minutes to sell you cars and jeans and whatever else."

Sell products

He said the adverts became more important than the show.

"You had to bring the most number of eyeballs to that show and that meant dumbing down and making plots simple, gratifying people within the hour."

He said they achieved this through the use of sex and "more stuff that blows up".

Simon said HBO gave him 58 minutes where he was not interrupted by the need to sell products.

That meant he could concentrate on developing the story.

Simon, who appeared at an event hosted by TV critic Charlie Brooker, also said that ratings were of little importance to him.

"I don't need everyone to watch," he said.

"If you want to do your laundry and watch The Wire, or if you leave the room or carry on a conversation, I'm going to lose you.

"I did lose those people and it was ok.

"HBO did not need the maximum number of eyeballs in every show."

He added: "If everybody has to watch a show then it can't really say anything.

"At some point you have to believe the story, not believe in the audience."

He added that there were now a number of ways by which people could watch his programmes.

"In the fifth season we got the worst ratings ever and more people were watching the show," Simon said.

"Nobody was tuning in to watch the premiere on a Sunday night.

"They were getting it on demand or they were waiting for the dvds or they were getting it illegally off the bit torrent sites on the web.

"HBO came to the conclusion ratings no longer mattered. TV had become, at this level, a lending library. How you measure the impact of the show is a hard thing to do," he said.

Simon, who claims not to be a TV person despite his success, said that The Wire had not changed anything in his home town of Baltimore.

"I don't think there's been an impact one way or another," he said.

"I bring a true story to the campfire and then move on. That's enough." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/8227864.stm>

Suspected militants have blown up more than 20 vehicles carrying Nato supplies from Pakistan's Karachi port to Kandahar in Afghanistan, police said.

Two people have been injured in the attack, they said. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack occurred when the border was closed to traffic after a dispute between Pakistani and Afghan officials.

The Taliban regularly carry out attacks on trucks ferrying supplies for Nato in Afghanistan.

In the latest incident late on Sunday, militants detonated remote-controlled explosives to destroy more than 20 oil tankers and trailers.

Police and witnesses said there was a huge explosion, presumably under one parked oil tanker.

The tanker burst into flames and the fire soon engulfed other oil tankers nearby.

Truckers' dispute

The border was closed on Saturday when Afghan truckers carrying fruits and other supplies into Pakistan accused Pakistani border guards of forcing them to offload their goods at the crossing for security checks.

They said the exercise was time consuming, and damaged the perishable fruits they were carrying.

On Sunday, at a press conference at Spin Boldak, the Afghan town near Chaman, Afghan truckers accused the Pakistani paramilitary Frontier Corps personnel of demanding bribes.

They said those truckers who paid the officials 500 rupees were not asked to offload their goods.

A spokesman of the Frontier Corps in Quetta, Murtaza Beg, refuted this claim.

"We have strict orders to check all trucks and containers coming in from Afghanistan since April this year when more than 40 Afghan nationals suffocated to death in a container in a human smuggling racket," he told BBC Pashto Service's Ayub Tarin.

Mr Beg denied that the truckers were being asked to offload their goods.

But a Pakistani customs official at Chaman border, Shahid Abbasi, told the BBC that the Afghan truckers blocked cross-border traffic when they were asked by the security forces to offload their goods.

"It is a dispute between the security forces and the Afghan government officials, and does not involve Pakistani customs officials who have no role in checking vehicles at this border crossing," he said. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8230030.stm>

By Robert Hall BBC News

At home in London, Lisa Midwinter packs for a journey into her past; four days during which she, her son, and her granddaughter will relive her childhood experiences; four days to retrace her route out of Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, and to meet the man whose actions saved her life.

In 1938, Nicholas Winton, then a young stockbroker, was due to go skiing with friends in Switzerland when he received a phone call urging him to change his plans and visit Prague, where an emergency was unfolding.

I think there is nothing that can't be done if it is fundamentally reasonable

The caller was his friend Martin Blake, a master at Westminster School and an ambassador for the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, which was helping adults escape.

Two months earlier, Hitler's troops had occupied the disputed territory of Sudetenland, on Czechoslovakia's border with Germany, driving thousands from their homes.

In other countries, refugee organisations had begun organising the "Kindertransports" - a series of trains carrying thousands of Jewish children out of central Europe. But no such plan existed in Czechoslovakia.

After visiting refugee camps outside Prague, Winton realised he had to act quickly.

"I found out the children of refugees and other groups of people who were enemies of Hitler weren't being looked after. I decided to try to get permits to Britain for them.

"Everybody in Prague said, 'Look, there is no organisation in Prague to deal with refugee children, nobody will let the children go on their own, but if you want to have a go, have a go'.

"And I think there is nothing that can't be done if it is fundamentally reasonable."

Concentration camps

After recruiting a team to organise a new series of trains, Winton returned to the UK to find homes for as many children as possible.

Between March and August 1939, eight Winton trains carried 669 children to safety; the last train, with 250 children on board, was due to leave on 1 September - the day war broke out.

At the last minute, German troops intervened; the children were never seen again. They, and most of the families left behind, were transported east to the concentration camps.

Vera Gissing's two cousins were on that train but instead of England, they ended up in Belsen. They, along with her mother, never made it out of the camp.

I remember this feeling of being all alone in a totally foreign place

The 10-year-old ended up in Bootle, Lancashire, while her sister Eva was sent to a boarding school in Bournemouth.

Their parents tried to keep smiling as the train pulled out, and she can remember shouting: "See you again in a free Czechoslovakia".

Alf Dubs, a former minister in the Blair cabinet, was another of "Winton's children". The six-year-old was met at Liverpool Street train station by his father, who had left Prague the day the Nazis arrived.

Lord Dubs said Winton, who is now Sir Nicholas, was a " phenomenal individual, one of the really great human beings".

"Without any doubt I owe my life to him. I think my chance of surviving and that of the others would have been pretty slim." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8227929.stm>

The high court in Sri Lanka has sentenced a prominent Tamil journalist to 20 years in prison after convicting him under anti-terrorism laws.

JS Tissainayagam was found guilty of "causing communal disharmony".

Mr Tissainayagam was arrested in 2008 and charged with inciting violence in articles in his magazine, the North Eastern Monthly, which is now closed.

He was also accused of receiving funds from the Tamil Tigers rebels. He denied supporting violence.

Mr Tissainayagam's lawyer says he will appeal.

'Widespread attention'

Mr Tissainayagam was found guilty of causing "racial hatred" and "supporting terrorism", a court official said.

The court found that he had received money from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to fund his website, the official said.

The BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo says Mr Tissainayagam insists he does not believe in violence.

The Tamil journalist was held for more than five months before he was charged with furthering terrorism by collecting funds for a magazine he published, and of inciting ethnically-based violence in two of its articles.

One of the pieces accused the government of shelling an eastern town and trying to drive out its population in the war which was going on at the time, our correspondent adds.

The case has received widespread attention in Sri Lanka. International rights group have been campaigning for his release - they say Sri Lanka is using anti-terror laws to silence peaceful critics.

Campaign groups say the country is fast becoming one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists.

Our correspondent says since the government's military victory over the Tamil Tigers in May, it has regularly denounced its critics.

Last week it described an exiled group, Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka, as a "front" for the Tigers after it circulated a video which it said showed army soldiers killing unarmed Tamils.

The authorities said the video was fabricated. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8230067.stm>

A top US general in Afghanistan has called for a revised military strategy, suggesting the current one is failing.

In a strategic assessment, Gen Stanley McChrystal said that, while the Afghan situation was serious, success was still achievable.

The report has not yet been published, but sources say Gen McChrystal sees protecting the Afghan people against the Taliban as the top priority.

The report does not carry a direct call for increasing troop numbers.

"The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," Gen McChrystal said in the assessment.

Copies of the document have been sent to Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE More from BBC World Service

The report came as further results from last week's presidential election were released, with ballots now counted from almost 48% of polling stations.

President Hamid Karzai is leading so far, with 45.8% of the votes counted.

The independent Electoral Complaints Commission says that of more than 2,100 allegations of wrongdoing during voting and vote-counting, 618 have been deemed serious enough to affect the election's outcome, if proven.

Crisis of confidence

Gen McChrystal's blunt assessment will say that the Afghan people are undergoing a crisis of confidence because the war against the Taliban has not made their lives better, says BBC North America editor Mark Mardell.

The general says the aim should be for Afghan forces to take the lead - but their army will not be ready to do that for three years and it will take much longer for the police.

And he will warn that villages have to be taken from the Taliban and held, not merely taken.

What what we need to do is to correct some of the ways we operated in the past General Stanley McChrystal (In recent BBC interview) Afghan president leading in vote Nato's new approach

Responding to Gen McChrystal's review, Afghanistan's deputy minister of rural rehabilitation, Wais Barmak, said Afghans should have been consulted about military strategy from the start.

"We would have had better achievements, better results, if the Afghans were consulted right from the beginning," he told the BBC's Newshour programme.

He said the government and development agencies should provide services for the people in the aftermath of the military operation.

"That is one way to engage with the people on the ground and re-establish the trust and confidence of the people in their government."

Gen McChrystal also wants more engagement with the Taliban fighters and believes that 60% of the problem would go away if they could be found jobs.

More than 30,000 extra US troops have been sent to Afghanistan since President Barack Obama ordered reinforcements in May - almost doubling his country's contingent and increasing the Western total to about 100,000.

This report does not mention increasing troop numbers - that is for another report later in the year - but the hints are all there, our correspondent says.

But when Gen McChrystal's report lands on Mr Obama's desk he will have to ponder the implications of increasing a commitment to a conflict which opinion polls suggest is losing support among the American people.

The latest Washington Post-ABC news poll suggests that only 49% of Americans now think the fight in Afghanistan is worth it.

In a recent BBC interview, Gen McChrystal said that he was changing the whole approach to the conflict in Afghanistan - from what he described as a focus on "body count", to enabling the Afghans to get rid of the Taliban themselves.

Nato partners

On Saturday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised more support for UK troops in Afghanistan, during a surprise visit to the country.

During the visit he met Gen McChrystal. Correspondents say the pair discussed the need to speed up the pace of training of Afghan troops.

The British Ministry of Defence said it would look closely at any recommendations from Gen McChrystal.

"The UK conducted a review of policy earlier this year and the prime minister set out a new strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan on 29 April.

"General McChrystal's work will be an important input to further planning, and we will work closely with him and our Nato partners moving forward," an MoD spokesman added. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8230017.stm>

By Adam Easton BBC News, Warsaw

There are only a handful of people left who can say they saw World War II start.

Few survive to tell the tale of the German cruiser, Schleswig-Holstein, unleashing a barrage of 280mm and 170mm shells at a Polish fort and shattering the dawn breaking over the Westerplatte peninsula in the free city of Danzig on 1 September 1939.

"I took the telescope and looked out at the channel, first right, then left and then at the cruiser which was moored in the bay," Ignacy Skowron remembered. "At that moment I saw a flash of red and the first shell hit the gate,"

The attack began at 0445. Simultaneously, the German Wehrmacht poured across the frontier of Poland from the west, north and south.

Two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany.

The then 24-year-old Cpl Skowron was one of just 182 Polish soldiers defending the military transit depot on the Westerplatte peninsula.

"I grabbed a machine gun," said Mr Skowron. "We got the order and we started to fight back. The cruiser then sailed into the channel and started to fire shell after shell at us. I saw huge trees being snapped in two."

"On the second day there were three attacks before midday. We fought back and then later we heard some noise and there were planes overhead.

"They started to dive-bomb us and guardhouse number five was completely destroyed. Five soldiers were killed." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8225093.stm>

By Michael Buchanan BBC News

Distinguished American actor and producer Sam Wanamaker was watched by MI5 for several years for his alleged communist sympathies, it has emerged.

Files released by the National Archives show Mr Wanamaker, father of actress Zoe, would have been interned had the UK been attacked in the mid-1950s.

Mr Wanamaker moved to Britain in 1951 when he had been blacklisted in the US.

He went on to become the key architect in the rebuilding of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London.

His US blacklisting took place during the anti-Communist purges led by Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Earlier this year Zoe Wanamaker travelled to the US for an episode of the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are and discovered that the FBI had a file on her father.

It can now be revealed that for several years in the 1950s, MI5 also kept an eye on the American actor.

You must understand that being an American in Britain one must tread with careful precision on matters involving peace, which have now become a highly political and controversial subject Sam Wanamaker

They initially became aware of him as they were bugging the conversations of British communists who began talking excitedly about his arrival in Britain.

But the US authorities also asked to be kept informed of his activities, as he had been a member of the American Communist Party in the mid-1940s.

MI5 were willing to oblige, and even got permission to intercept his mail.

The MI5 files include a letter Mr Wanamaker sent in May 1952 to a friend, who had asked him to help organise a party supporting peace.

Mr Wanamaker wrote: "You must understand that being an American in Britain one must tread with careful precision on matters involving peace which have now become a highly political and controversial subject.

"Therefore you see I must be extremely careful about… not doing anything which will give them cause, just or not, for any action."

'Marked man'

The cautious tone of the letter appears throughout the files, according to Howard Davies from the National Archives.

"We see in the files that he's taking the utmost pains while he's living in the United Kingdom not to do anything that would worsen his position with the American authorities and indeed the British authorities.

"He's aware that he's a marked man and everything he does is going to be watched closely."

Despite Mr Wanamaker's care, and the lack of any obvious communist-related activities relayed by MI5, another file includes a note on what to do with him if Britain is attacked.

"Miss Coates (Home Office) rang on 10 November to ask whether we were going to make a recommendation for internment or restrictions for Sam Wanamaker. I rang on 11 November and said it would be for internment."

Much attention was paid by the security services to his role in setting up the New Shakespeare Club in Liverpool in 1957, with investigations taking place into who was funding the project and who Mr Wanamaker was working with.

The files even contain programmes of early events at the club.

"There is little doubt that this Theatre and Club is intended to be used as a vehicle for disseminating extreme left-wing political propaganda under the guise of culture and progressive education, and if successful, will be a great asset to the Communist Party," concludes one report.

The files do, however, acknowledge his talent, describing him as "a genuinely successful actor and producer" and "unlike most US visitors of the theatrical world in that the majority of his projects do materialise".

Mr Wanamaker never was a threat to Britain's security and went on to become an honorary CBE for his contribution to Anglo-American relations, as well as for his work in rebuilding the Globe.

Historical context

Historian Professor Christopher Andrews said his MI5 file had to be seen in the context of Britain in the 1950s, where every communist or suspected communist had to be investigated.

"They (MI5) were discovering at the end of the 1940s and early 1950s that a tiny minority of communists had given away the biggest secrets in British history - Klaus Fuchs had given away the plans of the first atomic bomb - and they didn't know how bad it was going to get.

"It was therefore government policy to draw up a list of all members of the Communist Party."

In a separate file also released, it has been revealed that Sir Francis Meynell, an early editor of the Communist newspaper and of the Catholic weekly The Tablet, smuggled Soviet diamonds into England in a box of chocolates.

The report, dated 29 December 1920, says "he (Meynell) purchased a box of chocolates, extracted the cream contents, and filled them in with diamonds".

The smuggled jewels are believed to have been used to help fund the Communist Party of Great Britain. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8230325.stm>

The apparent illegal leaking of exit polls for German regional elections has raised concerns weeks before the country's general election.

Forecasts for Sunday's results in Saarland, Thuringia and Saxony appeared on Twitter 90 minutes before polling stations closed in the three states.

Proven leaks are punishable by a fine of 50,000 euros (£44,000; $71,000).

Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats fared badly on Sunday despite their lead in national opinion polls.

Nonetheless, Mrs Merkel says she remains confident of winning the federal election in a month's time.

Saxony's state election supervisor, Uwe Reimund Korzen-Krueger, said it was still unclear whether actual exit polls had been leaked.

"If it turns out that the outcomes published before 6pm [on Sunday] were not just based on hearsay but on exit polls," he was quoted as telling German news magazine Der Spiegel, "the legal situation will need to be assessed."

The head of Germany's federal electoral commission, Roderich Egeler, stressed that no exit poll data could be published before the close of polling stations, whether on Twitter or any other medium.

'Democracy damaged'

Wolfgang Bosbach, a senior CDU official in the federal parliament, said the reported leaks were "damaging to democracy".

The assumption is that the information in the Twitter postings was leaked from either within political parties or the media Spiegel magazine

"There is a danger that an election could be falsified," he told the Cologne newspaper Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger.

Joerg van Essen of the Free Democrats, Mrs Merkel's preferred coalition partner, told the same newspaper that such leaks were "unacceptable".

Der Spiegel notes that the results published on Twitter only varied by about a half or one percentage point from the results of the first exit polls shown on television at 1800 (1600 GMT).

"The assumption is that the information in the Twitter postings was leaked from either within political parties or the media, who receive exit poll information earlier in the day so they can prepare speeches or articles," the magazine writes.

One of the Twitter accounts involved belonged to Patrick Rudolph, CDU leader in the Saxon town of Radebeul.

He told Spiegel that he did not know who had written the message and that he had deactivated the account as a result.

The CDU is still enjoying a 15-point opinion poll lead over the Social Democrats for the national election on 27 September. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8230626.stm>

The Commonwealth has fully suspended Fiji after it refused to bow to demands to call elections by next year.

Secretary General Kamalesh Sharma cited the Pacific island country's lack of progress towards democracy.

Mr Sharma said he was taking the step - only the second full suspension in the organisation's history - "in sorrow".

Commodore Frank Bainimarama seized power in Fiji in a 2006 coup and has said elections can only be reinstated in 2014, as part of his "roadmap".

He says he needs time to institute reforms that will end the ethnic-based voting system tipped in favour of ethnic Fijians.

But his critics charge that under his rule, Fiji has suspended the constitution, detained opponents and suppressed freedom of speech. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8231717.stm>

Many people who fled fighting between the army and the Taliban in Pakistan's Swat valley returned to their homes over the summer after assurances of improved security.

The army says it is in control but violence has continued. Dozens of bodies of suspected militants have been found in recent weeks. Swat residents give the BBC their views. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8231875.stm>

An Arab organisation is to be put on trial in the Netherlands over its publication of a cartoon deemed offensive to Jews, prosecutors say.

The cartoon, published by the Arab European League (AEL) on its website, questions the Holocaust.

It said the decision to prosecute illustrated bias against Muslims.

It said the same standards were not applied to the Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who made a film including cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Last month prosecutors said they would not put the far-right MP on trial for distributing the controversial Danish cartoons, which caused a storm of protest after their publication in 2005.

Freedom of expression is only a pretext to make life bitter for Muslims Abdoulmouthalib Bouzerda AEL chairman

However, he is still being investigated separately for inciting hatred against Muslims by making statements comparing Islam to Nazism.

But Dutch prosecutors said the AEL cartoon was "discriminatory" and "offensive to Jews as a group... because it offends Jews on the basis of their race and/or religion".

The cartoon shows two men standing near a pile of bones at "Auswitch" (sic). One says "I don't think they're Jews".

The other replies: "We have to get to the six million somehow."

A spokeswoman for the prosecuting authority said the group could be fined up to 4,700 euros (£4,100), though in theory a prison sentence was also possible.

'Perverse'

AEL chairman Abdoulmouthalib Bouzerda said the charges proved "what Muslims have been saying for decades".

"Freedom of expression is only a pretext to make life bitter for Muslims... and if [they] try to bring this hypocrisy to light, that right is denied them."

The AEL says it does not deny the facts of the Holocaust but posted the cartoon as an "act of civil disobedience".

It said it had agreed to remove it from its site, but reversed that decision to protest over the failure to prosecute Geert Wilders.

"Double standards are being applied," it said in a statement.

But Jewish groups said it was not reasonable for the group to express its opposition to alleged bias against Muslims, by attacking Jews.

Ronny Naftaniel of the Center for Documentation on Israel, said: "Imagine if Dutch Jews insulted Muslims every time they heard an anti-Semitic remark. What kind of perverse world would we be living in?"

Tensions over the Netherlands' Muslim population have increased in recent years, notably since the killing of a controversial film-maker by a Muslim extremist in 2004. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8234359.stm>

South Africa's ruling African National Congress has condemned as "racist" a decision by Canada to grant a white South African man refugee status.

Brandon Huntley, 31, had told officials in Canada he could not return to South Africa after seven different attacks.

They included three stabbings, which he said he had suffered as a result of his skin colour.

His lawyer said he was granted asylum because the South African authorities were unable to protect their citizens.

But ANC spokesman Brian Sokutu told the BBC that the decision would "only serve to perpetuate racism" in South Africa.

SOUTH AFRICA'S RACIAL GROUPS Black: 80% White: 9% Coloured (Mixed race): 9% Asian: 2% Rainbow nation - dream or reality?

"We take this matter very seriously because it has something to do with tarnishing the image of the country," he said.

Race is a sensitive issue in the country, still scarred by decades of white-minority rule, which ended in 1994.

Hundreds of thousands of white South Africans have left the country since the end of apartheid, many citing rising crime and the difficulty of finding jobs.

'Alarming'

Mr Sokutu said President Jacob Zuma was committed to fighting crime in South Africa, which has an annual murder rate of 18,000, but not on the basis of colour.

South African views on the Brandon Huntley race row In pictures

"We're committed to creating a stable and safe environment for all South Africans, regardless of the colour of their skin and we think that dealing with crime along racial lines can only serve to divide the South African nation," he told the BBC's World Today programme.

Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board ruled last week that Mr Huntley could stay in Canada.

Canada's Ottawa Sun newspaper quoted the panel's chairman, William Davis, as saying he would stand out like a "sore thumb" due to his colour in any part of South Africa.

Mr Huntley's lawyer Russell Kaplan said the asylum was granted because of discrimination - not only over crime - but also because as a white man he would find it difficult to get a job.

"The big question throughout was - was this just an act of criminality or was there a racial motivation? And every single time there was evidence that they were not just victims of criminality, that there was a racial component in the incidents," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

Bridgette Lightfoot of Homecoming Revolution, which encourages white South Africans to return home, disputed the claims.

"I myself have lived overseas for six years and I've been back for eight months and we really don't feel there's this racial prejudice against white people," she told the BBC. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8233004.stm>

By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News

Startled pigeons might not appear to epitomise the wonder of evolution, but a study has discovered that the birds can communicate with their wings.

When a crested pigeon is startled into flight its wings produce a whistling sound which serves as an alarm call.

The pigeons have "modified wings" that produce the whistle as they fly, but only this sudden take-off creates the alarm that causes other birds to flee.

The team report their findings in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.  

Robert Magrath at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra led the study.

He and his colleague Mae Hingee took sound recordings from the birds.

"We audio recorded the sound of birds flying off from a feeder in routine flight and compared those sounds to those produced when we scared pigeons into take-off with a gliding model hawk," explained Dr Magrath.

The birds that took off in alarm produced louder whistles with a more rapid tempo of "notes", he told BBC News.

The researchers played back both alarmed and routine whistles to flocks of feeding pigeons.

"We found that they only fled to cover after hearing the alarmed whistles. [They] could tell the difference, and acted appropriately in response," said Dr Magrath. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8232570.stm>

By Rupert Wingfield-Hayes BBC News, Moscow

Some might call him brave, others naive, or even reckless, but the one thing Joachim Crima is not is ordinary. He is black, and he is Russian.

And now this watermelon seller, and former student from Guinea Bissau, is attempting to become the first black man ever to be elected to public office in Russia.

At first people thought I was a joking. They asked me if I was doing this to promote my business. But now I am a registered candidate they take me more seriously Joachim Crima

Mr Crima has become an overnight media sensation here. On the day I visited him in his home town Srednyaya Akhtuba in southern Russia, two other TV crews were with him. The next day two more were due in town.

The country's newspapers have dubbed him Russia's Barack Obama. The implication is that Russians could be ready to elect a black man, even if it is only for a local county council.

Mr Crima's optimism and exuberance are infectious. As I followed him around the local market you could see people warming to him.

Even the dour country folk found it hard to resist his warm smile and open hand as, in lilting Russian, he joked and bantered with the stall holders.

"Good for you," said one tall man leaning against his Lada car "we need new leaders in this place". <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8234271.stm>

By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Current climate targets are not enough to save the world's coral reefs - and policymakers urgently need to consider the economic benefits they bring.

Those are two of the conclusions from a UN-backed project aiming to quantify the financial costs of damaging nature.

Studies suggest that reefs are worth more than $100bn (£60bn) annually, but are already being damaged by rising temperatures and more acidic oceans.

The study puts the cost of forest loss at $2-5 trillion annually.

Looking ahead to December's UN climate conference in Copenhagen, study leader Pavan Sukhdev said it was vital that policymakers realised that safeguarding the natural world was a cost-effective way of protecting societies against the impacts of rising greenhouse gas levels. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8233632.stm>

Opposition activists have clashed with security forces in Gabon hours after the results from last weekend's presidential election were announced.

Crowds set a French consulate alight in the city of Port Gentil and shortly after Paris advised its 10,000 citizens in the country to stay in their homes.

Officials said Ali Ben Bongo, whose father Omar Bongo ruled four decades, won the election with 42% of the vote.

But his critics say the poll was fixed to ensure a dynastic succession. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8236607.stm>

Members of a local tribal militia in Pakistan's Swat valley have killed three suspected militants, police say.

The confrontation took place in the Galoch area of Kabal, near the region's main town Mingora, witnesses said. One volunteer was wounded in the clash.

Reports say fighting began when suspected militants attacked the tribal militia who then retaliated.

The army command in Kabal has been encouraging local people to raise their own militias against insurgents.

Worse?

Correspondents in Mingora say villagers have raised at least three militias in Kabal and Charbagh areas, and there are reports that residents of other villages may also raise their own forces to counter militants.

Tribal forces, or lashkars as they are called, have in the past been raised to fight against militants in the Bajaur and Dir areas of north-west Pakistan, but these militias are the first in Swat.

However there remains a strong possibility that the presence of tribal militias could make a difficult situation even worse, correspondents say.

In early August, Brigade Commander Salman Akbar awarded three rifles and 50,000 rupees in cash to a local militia for taking "timely action" against the militants.

The militia had killed four militants in two areas of the valley.

The military recently declared Mingora and other parts of Swat largely free from militants after a sustained offensive which began in April.

But on Sunday a suspected suicide bomber killed at least 14 police recruits at a training academy in Mingora. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8235302.stm>

By Steven Rosenberg BBC News, Berlin

At his living room table, 92-year-old Rochus Misch shows me some of his old photo albums. Private pictures he had taken more than 60 years ago. There are colour images of Mr Misch in an SS uniform at Adolf Hitler's home in the Alps, snapshots of Hitler staring at rabbits, and photos of Hitler's mistress and future wife Eva Braun.

For five years, SS Oberscharfuehrer Rochus Misch had been part of Adolf Hitler's inner circle, as a bodyguard, a courier and telephone operator to the Fuehrer.

"My first meeting with Hitler was rather strange," Mr Misch recalls. "I'd been in the job 12 days when Hitler's chief adjutant, a man called Bruckner, started asking me questions about my grandmother, about my childhood.

"Then he got up and walked towards the door. Being an obedient soldier, I flung myself forward to open it, and there was Hitler standing right behind the door. I felt cold. Then I felt hot. I felt every emotion standing there opposite Hitler.

"In the Fuehrer's entourage, strictly speaking, we were bodyguards," says Mr Misch. "When Hitler was travelling, between four and six of us would accompany him in a second car. But when we were at Hitler's apartment in the Chancellery we also had other duties. Two of us would always work as telephone operators. With a boss like Hitler, there were always plenty of phone calls." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8234018.stm>

Scores of people are reported killed after a Nato air strike blew up two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan.

The governor of Kunduz province told the BBC that Taliban leaders were among at least 90 killed. Witnesses said locals taking fuel also died.

Nato said its commanders believed only insurgents were present but that it had reports many civilians were injured.

Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said an investigation was under way.

A statement from Hamid Karzai's office said the Afghan president believed that "targeting civilians in any form is unacceptable and [he] emphasised that innocent civilians must not be killed or wounded during military operations".

'Beheaded'

The Taliban confirmed to the BBC that they had stolen the tankers, one of which became stuck at a river crossing.  

ANALYSIS Chris Morris, BBC News, Afghanistan If it emerges that a number of civilians have been killed then that will obviously be very disappointing to Nato. The issue of civilian casualties caused by international military action is extremely sensitive here. It has caused great anger. It is something military commanders have said they are determined to clamp down on, because they say if they win territory and not the people then they are not doing their job.

At this point, a Nato air strike hit the tankers causing a huge explosion, he said.

The Nato attack occurred about 7km (four miles) south-west of Kunduz city at about 0200 Friday (2130 Thursday GMT).

International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) spokeswoman Lt Cdr Christine Sidenstricker said Afghan forces had reported the fuel trucks hijacked and Nato aircraft had spotted them on a river bank.

"After observing that only insurgents were in the area, the local Isaf commander ordered air strikes which destroyed the fuel trucks and killed a large number of insurgents," she said.

"The strike was against insurgents. That is who we believe was killed."

Later another spokesman, Brig Gen Eric Tremblay, was quoted by Reuters as saying: "It would appear that many civilian casualties are being evacuated and treated in the local hospitals.

"There is perhaps a direct link with the incident that has occurred around the two fuel trucks."

The AFP news agency reported that there were many seriously burned people in a hospital in Kunduz.

One of the drivers of the tankers told the BBC that two of his colleagues had been beheaded when the Taliban carried out the hijacking.

Kunduz province Governor Mohammad Omar said most of the dead were Taliban fighters - some of whom were Chechens .

Witness Mohammad Daud, 32, told AFP the militants had been trying to transport the tankers across a river to villages in Angorbagh.

"They managed to take one of the tankers over the river. The second got stuck so they told villagers to come and take the diesel," he said.

RECENT MAJOR ATTACKS 2 Sep: Blast in Laghman province kills Afghan deputy chief of intelligence and 21 others 25 Aug: Car bomb in southern city of Kandahar kills at least 40 18 Aug: Nine Afghans and a Nato soldier die and more than 50 are injured in Kabul 15 Aug: Bomb outside Nato HQ in Kabul kills seven and injures 90 13 Aug: Twin blasts in Helmand and Kandahar kill 14, including several children 6 Aug: Five American and three UK soldiers, five civilians and five policemen killed by roadside bombs mainly in Helmand 3 Aug: Bomb in Herat city kills 12 In pictures: Afghan tanker strike Limited time for Afghan success Taliban infiltrate Afghan north

"Villagers rushed to the fuel tanker with any available container that they had.

"There were 10 to 15 Taliban on top of the tanker. This was when they were bombed. Everyone around the fuel tanker died."

Mr Rasmussen said the leader of international troops in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, had told President Karzai he was committed to investigating the incident.

"It is really a focal point for our Isaf troops to minimise the number of civilian casualties, and a new strategy to that end has already been introduced," Mr Rasmussen said.

"Civilian casualties caused by Isaf are down over 95% from last year's levels. But, as we all know, in conflicts like these, mistakes can happen. In this case, let us now see what the investigation concludes." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8237287.stm>

By Tinku Ray BBC News, Chandigarh

The story of a pregnant teenager has been making the headlines in India.

Lakshmi (not her real name) is 19 years old, but her mental age is said to be only around eight.

She became pregnant after allegedly being raped in a government-run care home, and the state authorities petitioned the local courts to allow them to carry out an abortion.

Their contention was that she wouldn't survive the trauma of childbirth, and that she wouldn't be able to take care of a baby.

That court ruled that an abortion should go ahead.

But then came the twist - her lawyers and several disability rights groups appealed to the Supreme Court. It overruled the original judgement - allowing her to have the baby she said she wanted to keep. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8222689.stm>

There have been further protests in the far western Chinese city of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang province.

A large crowd of Han Chinese confronted hundreds of riot police for a third day amid growing anger in the city over attacks with hypodermic needles.

Protesters have also been demanding quicker trials for people charged over deadly ethnic riots in July.

Almost 200 people, most of them Han Chinese, were killed in violence with ethnic Uighurs in Urumqi.

Chinese authorities blame Uighur separatists for July's violence, saying it was orchestrated by Uighur separatists in exile. Xinjiang's population is split between mainly-Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese - the country's majority ethnic group. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8237259.stm>

By Steve Rosenberg BBC News, Berlin

In her home in the Bavarian countryside, Brigitta Jacob-Engelken shows me her childhood photos.

She has one remarkable picture. It is of her as a baby tucked up in a pram.

Nothing special about that, you might think. Until you discover where the pram came from.

It was a gift to her parents from Adolf Hitler's mistress.

"My mother got it from Eva Braun," Brigitta tells me. "And clothes, too."

That is because Brigitta's father, Rochus Misch, was part of Adolf Hitler's inner circle. He worked in the Fuehrer's SS protection unit as a bodyguard, a courier and a telephone operator.

He was in Hitler's Berlin bunker when the Fuehrer committed suicide.

Brigitta only has one photograph of her father cradling her as a baby. Then, rather abruptly, his face disappears from the family album and from her childhood.

On escaping from Hitler's bunker he was captured by the Red Army. Along with hundreds of thousands of other German POWs, he was then transported east to the Soviet Gulag.

"I was a daughter without a father," Brigitta recalls. "I knew I had a father and that he was in prison. But you must know that there were lots of other children whose fathers were imprisoned. They came slowly back."

Homecoming

Brigitta remembers how German radio would broadcast lists of prisoners who had been released from Russia and were on their way home. Her mother would sit by the radio at night hoping to hear Rochus' name.

"But his name was never mentioned," says Brigitta, "and my mother cried."

Then on New Year's Eve 1953, a taxi drew up outside the family house. The doorbell rang.

"My grandmother went to the door and she cried, "Rochus ist da! [Rochus is here]"

We all jumped up and went to the door. I remember I was running along to jump in his arms. The first moment I was happy because I had the feeling our family was complete. It was a very emotional moment."

"I was very disappointed that he didn't come back wearing a Russian jacket. I'd seen them in films.

"He was wearing a normal suit and coat and hat like men wore in the 1950s.

"When he opened his suitcase I was searching for Russian coins. I wanted to find some pieces of Russia. I couldn't understand that he was so happy not to have one coin in his suitcase!"

Jewish roots

The initial joy of getting her father back soon passed.

I don't blame my father for the work he did because it was harmless work Brigitta Jacob-Engelken 'I was in Hitler's suicide bunker'

Father and daughter seemed to have little in common. They argued. Then Brigitta's maternal grandmother let her into an amazing secret: Brigitta's mother was Jewish.

"My grandmother said to me, 'I think it's good to keep in touch with your roots. But don't tell your mother. She doesn't want that."

Mr Misch refused to accept that his wife was Jewish.

"He is still saying, 'No, I won't believe that!'. But I know it from my Grandma."

Brigitta learnt Hebrew, she spent time on a kibbutz in Israel. Back in Germany, she made a career as an architect. Among the projects she worked on were the restoration of local synagogues.

Her father is now 92. He lives in Berlin, 500 miles (800km) away from his daughter. For many years he kept silent about his past.

Now he talks openly about the five years he spent in Hitler's entourage, working for "the boss".

"I don't blame my father for the work he did," Brigitta says, "because it was harmless work.

"What I don't understand is that he is not giving a sign of more distance. No reflection afterwards. This is what I miss. His critical reflection."

But Brigitta considers her father's stories from the bunker do serve one useful purpose.

"I think it is of some value that you can hear how it really was in Hitler's inner circle. And that you can be sure that Hitler is dead. My father is someone who can say 'I've seen him dead!'." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8237708.stm>

By Sudeep Chand Health reporter, BBC News

A UK survey has revealed that myths about contraception may be widespread.

One in five women said they had heard of kitchen items, including bread, cling film and even chicken skin, being used as alternative barrier methods.

Others had heard food items such as kebabs, Coca-cola or crisps could be used as oral contraceptives.

The survey questioned 1,000 women aged 18 to 50 and was carried out by market research company Opinion Health, sponsored by Bayer Schering Pharma.

MYTHS THAT STILL EXIST Chicken skin and cling film as barrier methods Kebabs, crisps and chocolate as oral contraceptives The pill as protection against HIV Source: Bayer Schering Pharma

Contraceptive myths have been around for thousands of years.

Ancient methods have varied from crocodile dung and honey before sex, to sea sponges and beeswax after.

Perhaps the most intoxicating was alcohol made from stewed beaver's testicles.

However, it seems that a variety of unsafe and unproven methods might still exist in modern Britain.

Dr Annie Evans, Women's Health Specialist at the Bristol Sexual Health Centre, said: "It is not surprising, given that Britain continues to have the highest unintended pregnancy rate in Europe." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8238789.stm>

Sulforapane is found in broccoli and brussel sprouts Researchers have discovered a possible reason why green vegetables such as broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower are good for the heart. Their work suggests a chemical found in the vegetables can boost a natural defence mechanism to protect arteries from disease. The Imperial College London team hope their work could lead to new dietary treatments to prevent heart problems. Details appear in Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. BRASSICAS Broccoli Cabbage Kale Brussels sprouts Cauliflower Bok choy Rocket Much heart disease is caused by the build up of fatty plaques in the arteries known as atherosclerosis. However, arteries do not get clogged up with these plaques in a uniform way. Bends and branches of blood vessels - where blood flow is disrupted and can be sluggish - are much more prone to the build-up. The latest study has shown that a protein that usually protects against plaque build up called Nrf2 is inactive in areas of arteries that are prone to disease. However, it also found that treatment with a chemical found in green "brassica" vegetables such as broccoli can activate Nrf2 in these disease-prone regions. Lead researcher Dr Paul Evans said: "We found that the innermost layer of cells at branches and bends of arteries lack the active form of Nrf2, which may explain why they are prone to inflammation and disease. "Treatment with the natural compound sulforaphane reduced inflammation at the high-risk areas by 'switching on' Nrf2. "Sulforaphane is found naturally in broccoli, so our next steps include testing whether simply eating broccoli, or other vegetables in their 'family', has the same protective effect. "We also need to see if the compound can reduce the progression of disease in affected arteries." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8237530.stm>

By Leslie Woodhead Director, Storyville

While the Beatles were at the height of their success in the West, back in the USSR they were a forbidden influence. But that did not stop them from being heard.

Presiding over his "John Lennon Temple of Peace and Love" in St Petersburg, Kolya Vasin is Russia's ultimate Beatles fan.

An affable bear of a man with a wild beard, Mr Vasin sits amid his fantastic collection of Beatles memorabilia - ceramic statues of the "Fab Four", an All You Need is Love teapot, an Abbey Road street sign - and says: "I fell in love with the Beatles 40 years ago. They became my friends, my spiritual brothers."

FIND OUT MORE... Storyville: How The Beatles Rocked the Kremlin in on BBC Four at 2000 BST on Sunday 6 September Or hear it later on the iPlayer

Generations of Soviet children have shared his passion for the Beatles.

As Russian cultural commentator Artemy Troitsky says: "The Beatles turned tens of millions of Soviet youngsters to another religion."

Mr Troitsky also insists the Fab Four and their music had a more profound impact.

"They alienated a whole generation from their Communist motherland," he says. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8232235.stm>

A former US attorney general can be sued by an American citizen held as a witness suspected of having information in a terrorism case, a court has ruled.

Abdullah al-Kidd accuses John Ashcroft, attorney general from 2001 to 2005, of violating his constitutional rights in 2003, when he was held for 16 days.

The court said detention of witnesses without charge after the 9/11 attacks was "repugnant to the constitution".

The US Department of Justice said it was reviewing the court's order.

A three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals also said the government's policy was "a painful reminder of some of the most ignominious chapters of our national history."

Mr al-Kidd was detained in 2003 because the government thought he had information in a computer terrorism case against fellow University of Idaho student Sami Omar al-Hussayen.

Our hope is that we can now begin the process of uncovering the full contours of this illegal national policy Lee Gelernt American Civil Liberties Union

He was never charged with a crime, and Mr al-Hussayen was acquitted after a trial.

Mr al-Kidd filed the lawsuit against Mr Ashcroft and other officials in 2005.

He said his detention was part of an illegal government policy to arrest and detain people - particularly Muslim men and those of Arab descent - as material witnesses if the government suspected them of a crime but had no evidence to charge them.

Mr Ashcroft had asked the judge to dismiss the matter, saying that he had absolute immunity in his position.

However, the judges said even qualified immunity does not allow the attorney general to carry out national security functions completely free from any personal liability concerns.

Mr al-Kidd's attorney, Lee Gelernt, of the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "Our hope is that we can now begin the process of uncovering the full contours of this illegal national policy."

The judges' ruling said that Mr Ashcroft had said the use of the material witness statute and other tactics "form one part of the department's concentrated strategy to prevent terrorist attacks by taking suspected terrorists off the street".

But the judges also noted that Mr al-Kidd will have a significant burden to show that Mr Ashcroft was personally involved in an illegal policy. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8239409.stm>

European ministers are expected to use a summit to discuss ways to promote stability in Afghanistan by focussing on civilian reconstruction.

The meeting, in Sweden, comes one day after Nato said civilians were likely to be among up to 90 people killed in an air strike in Afghanistan's north.

A number of ministers have called for a quick inquiry, and the US has expressed "great concern" at the incident.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said targeting civilians was "unacceptable".

Both Nato and the Afghan president have pledged to hold investigations into the air strike.

German troops called in the raid after Taliban rebels hijacked two fuel tankers in the northern province of Kunduz.

Nato said many Taliban insurgents who had taken the tankers were killed but it admitted it had reports of many civilian casualties.

The Nato-led forces in Afghanistan said they regretted "any unnecessary loss of human life".

A statement from Mr Karzai's office said the president expressed "deep sorrow for the loss of our compatriots" and "emphasised that innocent civilians must not be killed or wounded during military operations". <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8239423.stm>

Election officials in Afghanistan are still counting votes, but say President Hamid Karzai is moving closer to the 50% threshold which would represent victory. But they also have more than 2,000 claims of fraud to investigate. The BBC's Chris Morris in Kabul says the outcome will be critical for Afghanistan.

On a hill overlooking Kabul, where the mountains of the Hindu Kush loom in the distance, there is a terraced rose garden.

It is a place of peace in a country still struggling with conflict.

In the late afternoon sun, people come up here to get out of the dusty city centre, to sit and watch the rooftops below, or perhaps to fly a kite.

It is a good place to get a sense of perspective, a commodity which can be hard to come by here.

In some quarters, there is mounting panic about last month's presidential election for which the votes are still being counted.

Allegations of massive state-sponsored fraud have led to talk of a crisis of legitimacy.

Dark rumours swirl about what could happen next, and Afghans are watching nervously, along with many people in the corridors of power in Washington, London and beyond. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8238967.stm>

Rival protesters clash on streets

A "significant number" of people have been arrested during clashes between right-wing protesters and anti-fascist campaigners in Birmingham.

A group calling itself the English Defence League, which said it was protesting against Islamic extremism, was met with a counter demonstration.

Gangs of men and youths hurled bottles at each other and pelted riot police with bricks in the city centre.

Police said it was not possible to say how many arrests had been made.

Colonel Gaddafi's son has said Libya will resist demands from the families of IRA victims for compensation.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said any claims for compensation based on Libya's supply of explosives to the IRA would be a matter for the courts.

He told Sky News: "They have their lawyers, we have our lawyers."

It has emerged that Gordon Brown had declined to put formal pressure on Libya for compensation. He has said the UK will support families making claims.

Speaking about the looming British attempts to claim compensation, the Libyan leader's son said: "Anyone can knock on our door. You go to the court." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8241006.stm>

The Taliban have called for a UN and human rights investigation into an air strike in Afghanistan on Friday that killed dozens of people.

The independent Afghanistan Rights Monitor group says up to 70 civilians died in the Kunduz province raid.

The Nato air strike targeted fuel tankers hijacked by the insurgents.

The BBC's David Loyn in Kabul says the Taliban call is a change to its usual policy of opposing all foreign involvement in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, US forces are facing new criticism from a Swedish organisation which claims US soldiers forced their way into a hospital, searching for insurgents. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8241499.stm>

By Matt Walker Editor, Earth News

A new species of giant rat has been discovered deep in the jungle of Papua New Guinea.

The rat, which has no fear of humans, measures 82cm long, placing it among the largest species of rat known anywhere in the world.

The creature, which has not yet been formally described, was discovered by an expedition team filming the BBC programme Lost Land of the Volcano.

It is one of a number of exotic animals found by the expedition team.

Like the other exotic species, the rat is believed to live within the Mount Bosavi crater, and nowhere else.

"This is one of the world's largest rats. It is a true rat, the same kind you find in the city sewers," says Dr Kristofer Helgen, a mammalogist based at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History who accompanied the BBC expedition team.

Very few people - even the Kasua tribe - venture inside the crater Enter a 'lost land of the weird'

Initially, the giant rat was first captured on film by an infrared camera trap, which BBC wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan set up in the forest on the slopes of the volcano.

The expedition team from the BBC Natural History Unit recorded the rat rummaging around on the forest floor, and were awed by its size. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8210000/8210394.stm>

France has repeated its accusation that the UN nuclear watchdog is hiding facts about Iran's atomic activity, just as the body's head issued a strong denial.

International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei said he had been dismayed by the "politically motivated and totally baseless accusations".

A foreign ministry spokeswoman insisted Paris had proof that key information was left out of the latest IAEA report.

The missing details had been included in a technical briefing, she said.

In a rare public dispute at the normally discrete IAEA's discussions, Mr ElBaradei lashed out at certain members which he did not name.

"I am dismayed by the allegations of some member states, which have been fed to the media, that information has been withheld from the Board.

"These allegations are politically motivated and totally baseless," he said at the opening of the regular IAEA governors' meeting in Vienna.

"Such attempts to influence the work of the (IAEA's non-proliferation inspectorate) and undermine its independence and objectivity are in violation of... the IAEA Statute and should therefore cease forthwith." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8242093.stm>

The UN has called for a crackdown on Afghan poll fraud, amid mounting concerns about irregularities from last month's presidential election.

UN envoy Kai Eide says results from all ballot boxes in areas where there is any evidence of fraud must be annulled.

The Afghan electoral complaints' commission has ordered a number of audits and recounts.

According to the latest results, Mr Karzai is close to the 50% threshold needed to avoid a run-off ballot.

The 20 August poll has been overshadowed by claims of mass fraud and ballot-box stuffing against all the main candidates. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8243276.stm>

Security staff and police were racing against time when they foiled a plot to blow up airliners, experts have said.

Scotland Yard's counter terrorism chief said the arrest of the three would-be bombers was "a relatively close thing".

The operation also had to be speeded up after alleged US pressure led to the arrest of a man linked to the trio.

On Monday, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, were convicted of conspiring to activate bombs disguised as drinks.

'Unimaginable scale'

John McDowall, head of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command, said of their arrest: "It was a relatively close thing. It wasn't something that we never felt that we had control of. But our interests are always the interests of public safety."

UK intelligence officers believed the plot was directed by al-Qaeda figures in Pakistan, including a British man - Rashid Rauf - from Birmingham, now thought to be dead.

Rauf was arrested in Pakistan in 2006, amid claims of White House pressure.

Michael Clarke, director of defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said Rauf was picked up after the US secretly dispatched an envoy called Jose Rodriguez to Pakistan.

We couldn't gamble with the prospect that if the cell we were watching was alerted... then all the things we'd built up... would have been lost potentially Andy Hayman Former head of Met police specialist operations

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "The British were hopping mad about that because it meant... they had no alternative but to move in on this plot before all the evidence was as mature as possible.

"There is a general belief in British security circles that the dispatch of Rodriguez to Pakistan came straight from the White House."

Officers from Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command had what they say was "good coverage" of the suspects and were waiting for more definite evidence before acting.

Scotland Yard's former head of specialist operations, Andy Hayman, said securing the arrests from a "standing start" after Rauf's arrest was a "very difficult challenge".

He told the BBC: "We couldn't gamble with the prospect that if the cell we were watching was alerted by that arrest, then all the things we'd built up along with other colleagues from the security services would have been lost potentially."

Mr Hayman also said he believed they foiled "our UK 9/11".

Security officials on both sides of the Atlantic believe the men wanted to kill thousands in the air and possibly more on the ground in a wave of attacks causing more devastation than the 11 September 2001 attacks in New York.

The convictions followed two trials and an operation which cost more than £35m.

The arrests of the plotters in August 2006 caused chaos to international aviation and prompted the current restrictions on liquids. It was the UK's biggest terror investigation.

The economic consequences would have been very, very severe. Sir Ken Macdonald Former head of CPS

At the time of his arrest, ringleader Ahmed Ali had identified seven US and Canada-bound flights to blow up over the Atlantic within a two-and-a-half-hour period.

Sir Ken Macdonald, former head of the Crown Prosecution Service and Director of Public Prosecutions, said the plot would have caused "mass murder on an unimaginable scale". <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8243176.stm>

By Cindy Sui Taoyuan County, Taiwan

Most people in China and Taiwan might think they know what happened after the long and bloody civil war between the Chinese Nationalist Party and the Communist Party ended in 1949.

But recently declassified government archives have revealed a previously unknown secretive plan by Taiwan's late President Chiang Kai-shek to take back mainland China.

Chiang and his troops had fled to Taiwan after losing the war to the Communists but, despite great obstacles, he was obsessed with the idea of taking back the land he had lost.

According to these newly-revealed government documents, by the 1960s Chiang thought the time was right to launch a counter-attack, given the devastating famine Mao Zedong's leadership had unleashed and the possibility China would soon have a nuclear weapon.

The US was fighting the Vietnam War then, and Chiang knew he needed US military assistance if he were to succeed so he offered to help the Americans fight the war in Vietnam in exchange for US support.

Washington objected to Chiang's suggestions, but Chiang went ahead with his preparations anyway.  <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8183412.stm>

By Claire Marshall BBC News

On Thursday it will be 25 years since British scientist Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys invented the DNA fingerprint in his laboratory at the University of Leicester.

The professor's 'eureka' moment came at 0905 on the morning of Monday 10 September 1984, when he went into his darkroom to develop an X-ray film from an experiment looking at highly variable bits of DNA.

The film threw up an unexpected result - every individual in the sample had a different bar code and could be identified with precision.

Today, more than 30m people worldwide have had a DNA profile. It is a major tool in solving crime, and the standard method of resolving paternity and immigration disputes.

Kirk Bloodsworth has more reason than most to appreciate the impact of the technique.

He was the first man to be freed from death row in the United States on the basis of DNA evidence.

Speaking to Newsnight at his home in Cambridge, Maryland, Mr Bloodsworth described what Prof Jeffreys' work had meant for him:

"He may not have known it at the time, but he was saving my life - and the lives of many others." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8243991.stm>

A new film tells the remarkable story of a female Jewish high jumper banned by the Nazis from the 1936 Olympics in Berlin - and whose team mate, it later turned out, was a man in disguise.

Berlin 36, due out this week, recounts how Gretel Bergmann was tipped for Olympic glory but was bumped off the German team at the last minute for fear that a gold-medal winning Jewish athlete would embarrass Hitler.

Instead, her "weird" room-mate Dora Ratjen competed. Dora gained only fourth place, but caused controversy two years later when a doctor discovered "she" was actually a he.

Gretel Bergmann emigrated to the US in 1937 and married a doctor, Bruno Lambert. Now aged 95, she still lives in New York, as Margaret Bergmann Lambert.

She described to the BBC's World Today the events of the 1930s, her reaction to finding out the truth about "Dora" and her anger at being unable to compete.

"I would have liked to compete, definitely," she said," just to show what a Jewish girl can do.

"It wasn't for my own glory. It was just something that I needed to do because things were so horrible over there. We were shown as the worst people in the whole world and I just wanted to show that was a lie." <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8241631.stm>

By Moheb Mudessir BBC Uzbek

In Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan's second city with its modern buildings and famous Blue Mosque, people are getting restless over the results of the Afghan elections.

In this usually peaceful part of the country, with its mixed population of Tajiks and Uzbeks, the main challenger to the incumbent Hamid Karzai, Abdullah Abdullah, has won most of the votes.

So the announcement that Mr Karzai has taken more than 50% of the ballots counted so far across the country has put Mr Abdullah and his supporters in very difficult position.

As soon as the polls closed on election day, the Abdullah camp began to complain about alleged fraud, promising to take legal action to resolve its complaints.

And Mr Abdullah has made it clear all along that he is not going to accept a government that in his view has come to power on the basis of fraud and illegitimacy.

People have become disappointed and it is not unrealistic to imagine... protest and even bloodshed Zalmai Yunusi, regional campaign head for Abdullah Abdullah

Zalmai Yunusi, the head of Mr Abdullah's campaign team in the northern province of Balkh, where he got a majority of votes, calls the election and the vote count a scandal.

Mr Yunusi said the Independent Election Commission had reacted to the Abdullah camp's complaints like the Roman emperor Nero.

"When Rome was burning, he was on the roof singing to himself," he said.

Mr Yunusi said Afghans had been happy that their country was moving towards democracy.

"But unfortunately all the people have become disappointed and it is not unrealistic to imagine that people might react angrily and that there can be protest and even bloodshed."

It is an opinion that is widely shared among Mr Abdullah's supporters. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8244875.stm>

By Steve Kingstone BBC News, Madrid

Spain's most famous judge will himself appear in court on Wednesday, accused of overreaching his judicial powers.

In October 2008, Baltasar Garzon launched a controversial inquiry into atrocities committed during the four-decade rule of Gen Francisco Franco.

The Supreme Court will hear a complaint by a right-wing group that the judge knowingly exceeded his official remit.

Judge Garzon's headline-grabbing indictments have targeted the likes of Augusto Pinochet and Osama Bin Laden.

But did the celebrity judge overstep the mark last October, in launching an unprecedented inquiry into what he called "crimes against humanity" committed during the Franco era?

Shelved

In a blaze of publicity, Mr Garzon had pledged to investigate the disappearance of more than 100,000 people during and after the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War.

To some he is a crusading hero... to others a left-wing busybody Profile: Judge Baltasar Garzon

But the inquiry was shelved following opposition from state prosecutors and his fellow judges.

On Wednesday, Mr Garzon will have to explain himself before Spain's Supreme Court, following a complaint by a right-wing organisation called Manos Limpias, or Clean Hands.

It alleges that the judge knowingly exceeded his legal remit by asking government departments to hand over papers from the Franco period.

Mr Garzon strongly denies breaking the law, and has the backing of the International Commission of Jurists - which says his short-lived inquiry did not justify disciplinary action, let alone criminal prosecution.

It would be a major surprise were this crusading judge to be charged with a crime.

But his very appearance in court offers yet more evidence of how a dark past, seven decades old, continues to divide the Spain of today. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8245664.stm>

By Gary Duffy BBC News, Sao Paulo

Brazil has launched a campaign aimed at changing its image as a promising destination for fugitives escaping justice in other parts of the world.

The "End of the Line" project will involve increased vigilance at border entry points and an enhanced partnership with Interpol.

Police at Brazil's airports, ports and border crossings will have access to an international database about suspects.

The project will also be targeting sex tourism and people trafficking. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8245472.stm>

An Israeli human rights group says many more Palestinian civilians were killed in the Israeli military's campaign in Gaza than the army admits.

B'Tselem said detailed research with careful cross-checking showed 1,387 Palestinians died, over half of them civilians and 252 of them children.

This contradicts an Israeli army report stating fewer than 300 civilians died in fighting in December and January.

Israel launched the assault to halt rocket attacks from Hamas-run Gaza.

The overall B'Tselem total broadly tallies with the official Palestinian death toll and the findings of other non-governmental organisations, although the proportion of civilians it identifies is lower.

DIFFERENT DEATH TOLLS Palestinians killed during Israeli military offensive in Gaza, 27 Dec to 18 Jan Total dead: 1,387 (1,166) Fighters: 330 (710-870) Uniformed police: 248 (not counted by IDIRD) Non-combatants: 773 (295-460) Women: 109 (49) Children under 16: 252 (89) Sources: B'Tselem (and Israeli Defence Intelligence Research Dept)

The group says the extent of civilian deaths does not prove, in itself, that Israel violated the laws of war.

However, it says it raises grave concerns about the military's behaviour when taken in the context of "numerous testimonies" from troops and Palestinians.

Amnesty International has already accused Israel of committing war crimes during its offensive.

The Israeli army has admitted "rare mishaps" during the campaign but denies troops violated international humanitarian law. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8245433.stm>

By Tristana Moore BBC News, Berlin

For almost 20 years, Ludwig Baumann has been fighting for justice, determined to clear the names of all victims of Nazi military justice.

After a long struggle, on Tuesday, the German parliament revoked the convictions of the last group of victims, those condemned as "war traitors," more than 60 years after the end of World War II.

Ludwig Baumann joined Hitler's Wehrmacht when he was 19, but he became a pacifist and in June 1942, he deserted, along with his friend Kurt Oldenburg, while they were deployed in France.

"I didn't want to take part in Hitler's war," Ludwig Baumann told the BBC.

"I realised it was a criminal and genocidal war," he said.

Despite his fearlessness, Mr Baumann was caught by the Nazis and sentenced to death for desertion. He was tortured, taken to concentration camps, and was lucky to avoid being executed.

"We were sentenced to death in Bordeaux. We were tortured while they kept us because we refused to tell the Nazis the names of our friends who helped us - the French resistance fighters," said Mr Baumann.

"After 10 months we were taken to a concentration camp and then to Torgau, a huge Wehrmacht prison. Around 1,300 of our people were shot dead or died there - and then we were taken to the Eastern Front.

"Most of our men died, including my friend Kurt Oldenburg. I managed to survive," he added. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8244186.stm>

By M Ilyas Khan BBC News, Islamabad

A year after he moved into the most powerful political office in Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari appears to be making a mixed impression.

Some say he has not filled the leadership gap in Pakistan.

The military still seems to be out of civilian control, militants are far from annihilated and the economy is yet to get back on track.

Others acknowledge that so far he has averted the worst fears of his friends and foes.

That is to say, he has not sold off state property for a song, there have been no major financial scams bearing presidential fingerprints and he has not traded state secrets to unfriendly powers.

Mr Zardari ended up in the presidential office by default, due to the death of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, who had vowed to keep him out of politics and had not allowed him to contest the 2008 elections.

This was due to his reputation as an unscrupulous wheeler-dealer who would not desist from harming the country to fill his own pocket. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8245464.stm>

What we are trying to assess is... different types of allegations, including massive attacks, collateral damage exceeding what is considered proper, and torture Luis Moreno-Ocampo

The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) says he is gathering information about possible war crimes in Afghanistan.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo says that he will be examining claims relating to both Nato soldiers and Taliban insurgents.

He said the court had received allegations from many sources, relating to attacks and collateral damage.

But the court will only become involved if Kabul or the UN Security Council ask it to look into allegations.

Afghanistan signed the treaty that established the Hague-based court.

Any war crime committed on its territory by either Afghan nationals or foreign forces can be investigated by the court.

The ICC began operating in 2002 and is the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.

Under the treaty, the court can step in only when countries are unwilling or unable to dispense justice themselves for genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8247793.stm>