Al-Qaeda fighter Bekkay Harrach 'killed in Afghanistan'

20 January 2011 Last updated at 13:58 GMT

Harrach appeared in al-Qaeda videos

A German al-Qaeda militant who once threatened to attack the country has been killed in Afghanistan, fellow militants say.

Bekkay Harrach, who was born in Morocco and lived in the German city of Bonn, is said to have died leading an attack on the US air base at Bagram.

No date was given but the statement may refer to an attack last May.

Harrach appeared in al-Qaeda videos in 2009 threatening attacks during the German general election.

He was reported to be on a list of about 100 German nationals thought to be a security threat, and the authorities took his warnings seriously.

The laser technology student, who was 32 at the time, was believed to have travelled abroad to wage violent jihad in the West Bank, Iraq and the Pakistani region of Waziristan.

Fierce battle

Reporting the militants' statement, Germany's Spiegel magazine said Harrach's death had already been rumoured.

A group called the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) said in an online statement that Harrach, whose nom-de-guerre was Abu Talha al-Almani (Abu Talha the German), was killed leading an attack on Bagram.

Harrach led a group of 20 suicide attackers composed of al-Qaeda, IMU and Tahreek-e-Taliban members, the group's statement said.

"We had the honour many times to meet with him here in the mountains of Waziristan," the IMU added.

Bagram, one of the largest and most heavily fortified US bases in Afghanistan, was attacked before dawn on 19 May by militants using machine-guns and grenades.

The battle raged several hours and a US spokesman said 10 attackers had been killed and seven US soldiers injured.

According to Spiegel, some 60 German jihadists are currently based in the Afghan-Pakistani border area.

Anger as Georgia evicts refugee families from capital

20 January 2011 Last updated at 13:01 GMT

Twenty builings are being evacuated

Georgian police have resumed evicting refugee families living illegally in the capital Tbilisi as a result of conflicts in the ex-Soviet republic.

Scuffles broke out as police moved out the first of 550 families, destined for resettlement in the provinces.

Refugees could be seen streaming out with belongings in plastic bin bags.

Human rights activists have condemned the evictions, saying the families are being moved to rural areas with no employment or facilities.

Their protests halted evictions during the summer, when 5,000 people were resettled.

Police aim to clear about 20 buildings where the remaining families live.

The country has been torn apart by wars since the collapse of the USSR, notably the conflicts in its breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Compensation 'appropriate'

Valery Kopaleishvili, a spokesman for the ministry responsible for refugees, defended the evictions.

"An absolute majority of these IDPs [internally displaced people] have already received appropriate compensation from the government - either houses in the regions or financial compensation to build houses," he told AFP news agency.

There are thought to be about a quarter of a million IDPs in the country, with nearly 100,000 of them in Tbilisi.

According to AFP, tens of thousands of refugees still live in buildings such as kindergartens and student dormitories where they were rehoused temporarily.

Malkhaz Kordzaia, who was forced to flee Abkhazia, told Reuters news agency the government was set on "destroying and humiliating Georgian people".

Lasha Chkhartishvili, a leader of the opposition Conservative Party who has been organising protests for refugees' rights, said the refugees were "doomed to starvation" in the countryside.

Hong Kong in huge cocaine seizure

20 January 2011 Last updated at 11:42 GMT

Wrapped slabs of cocaine were concealed inside hollowed-out planks

Customs officials in Hong Kong have seized a huge haul of cocaine worth $33.4m (£20.8m) bound for China.

The 290kg (639 pounds) of cocaine were found in 88 hollowed-out planks imported from Bolivia.

Officials said it was the second-largest drugs haul ever in the territory.

The discovery highlights the concerns of the authorities about growing recreational drug use in mainland China.

The drugs were hidden in a "sophisticated" and "well thought out" way, Hong Kong customs officials said.

"They hollowed out some of the wood planks and put it inside some of the genuine ones. And then inside those wood planks, hollowed out ones, they put the three pieces or three slabs of cocaine," said John Lee, head of the Customs Drug Investigation Bureau.

Plastic wrap and glue had been used to try to confuse sniffer dogs, and carbon paper was used to try to dull the perception of X-ray machines.

The shipment left Bolivia on 29 December 2010, was trucked to Chile and then shipped in containers to Taiwan, from where it was flown to Hong Kong.

Officials had delayed revealing the discovery in the hope that someone would come to collect the cargo. No arrests have yet been made.

Experts have said that China's growing wealth is spurring recreational use of drugs.

The scale of the latest haul highlights the growth of party culture in Beijing and in China's large coastal cities.

Hong Kong's largest ever cocaine haul was made in April last year, when 372kg (820 pounds) of the drug were found in a village.

Chimpanzee and gorilla heads seized in Gabon

20 January 2011 Last updated at 11:26 GMT

Those arrested for the possession of illegal animal body parts are expected to appear in court this week

One of the biggest hauls of illegal ape parts in Central Africa has been seized by officials in Gabon, the global campaign group WWF says.

Five people were arrested for the cache which included the head and hands of an endangered gorilla, 12 chimpanzee heads and 30 chimpanzee hands.

WWF called for a tough judicial approach to act as a deterrent.

Africa's wildlife is often poached for the profitable bushmeat trade or for use in traditional good luck charms.

Gabon's rainforests teem with wildlife, including lowland gorillas and forest elephants - and national parks make up around one tenth of the country.

'Highly disturbing'

The raids were conducted by Gabon's water and forestry and defence ministries with the help of various environmental aid groups.

Conservation Justice, one of the environmental groups involved, said the crackdown is significant.

"The problem of illegal wildlife poaching and trade is not specific to Gabon; such specialised dealers exist throughout Western and Central Africa. But these arrests demonstrate that stopping them is possible with effective law enforcement," Luc Mathot, from Conservation Justice, said in a statement.

Other confiscated items include 12 leopard skins, a portion of lion skin, snake skins and five elephant tails.

"The massive collection of protected species confiscated in this operation is highly disturbing," WWF's Africa great ape manager David Greer said.

"To my knowledge, there has not been a seizure of great ape body parts of this magnitude in Central Africa in the last 10 years."

According to WWF, the suspects are expected to appear in court this week.

Experts say in rural areas of Central Africa, bushmeat provides up to 80% of protein in peoples' diets.

There are also markets in Central and West Africa where animal parts are sold for use in juju (black magic) and traditional remedies.

Web images to get expiration date

20 January 2011 Last updated at 12:19 GMT

Many people come to regret the images they post to Facebook

• When can't you take photos of a nativity play?

Help is at hand for anyone who has ever forgotten about embarrassing images they posted to a social network or website.

German researchers have created software called X-Pire that gives images an expiration date by tagging them with an encrypted key.

Once this date has passed the key stops the images being viewed and copied.

Creators plan to levy a small charge to use the tagging system and put a digital lock on digital pictures.

Naked online

"More and more people are publishing private data to the internet and it's clear that some things can go wrong if it stays there too long," said Professor Michael Backes of the Information Security and Cryptography department at Saarland University, who led development of X-Pire.

Dr Backes said development work began about 18 months ago as potentially risky patterns of activity on social networks, such as Facebook, showed a pressing need for such a system.

"Many people join social networks because of social pressure," said Prof Backes. "They tend to post everything on the first day and make themselves naked on the internet."

"Only a small fraction of people are active every day," he said. "The majority are passive users, they do not contribute apart from their initial phase and afterwards they do not seem to care or perhaps they just forget."

However, he said, social networks never forget and images posted to sites, be they embarrassing or not, were visible forever.

Date stamp

To help solve this problem, the X-Pire software creates encrypted copies of images and asks those uploading them to give each one an expiration date.

The software lets people give a fixed life to the pics they post online

Viewing these images requires the free X-Pire browser add-on. Currently only a version that works with Firefox is available. Those without the viewer will be unable to see any protected image.

When the viewer encounters an encrypted image it sends off a request for a key to unlock it. This key will only be sent, and the image become viewable, if the expiration date has not been passed.

Images given an expiration date with X-Pire have been successfully uploaded to Flickr, Facebook and many other websites, said Prof Backes.

This testing was essential because the different ways that sites treat uploaded images added lots of complications.

"Facebook, for instance, does a huge amount of post-processing and whatever protection you deploy has to cope with that treatment," he said.

The X-Pire program should be available in late January and will cost 2 euros (£1.68) a month. Those who stop paying will not see their images suddenly become viewable, he said, instead they will just not be able to put expiration dates on new images.

More than 100 alleged mobsters arrested in northeast US

20 January 2011 Last updated at 14:46 GMT

US federal agents have arrested more than 100 suspected mobsters in multiple investigations into New York's organised crime families.

The majority of the arrests were made on Thursday morning throughout New York City, New Jersey and other areas in the north-eastern US, FBI officials said.

The arrests are tied to charges of murder, extortion and narcotics.

Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to discuss details of the case at a news conference later on Thursday.

"Early this morning, FBI agents along with our law enforcement partners began arresting over 100 organised crime members for various criminal charges," FBI investigator Diego Rodriguez told a local NBC News affiliate in New York City.

Officials said alleged leaders of the Gambino, Genovese, Lucchese, Bonanno, Colombo and DeCavalcante families were among those who had been arrested.

"It was very broad scope," New York FBI spokesman Robert Nardoza told the AFP news agency.

Early morning arrests

Some of the arrests were made as the result of information obtained through federal probes and informants, local media reported.

The sweep began before dawn on Thursday with federal agents arresting a range of individuals being investigated, from suspected small-time bookers to senior leaders, the New York Times newspaper said.

The arrests are reportedly part of one of the largest mafia crackdowns conducted by federal authorities in the US.

Mafia families in the US have seen a sharp decline in fortunes in the the past 10 years as the result of court testimony from informants, who have begun breaking their code of silence in recent years.

South Korea agrees military talks with North

20 January 2011 Last updated at 15:15 GMT

Relations between North and South Korea nosedived during 2010

South Korea has agreed to high-level military talks with the North, after months of tension on the peninsula.

The South said it would join the talks only if the agenda included the two events that have soured relations - the sinking of a southern warship in March, and the shelling of a southern island.

Pyongyang denies torpedoing the Cheonan warship, and says it was provoked into shelling Yeonpyeong island in November.

On Wednesday, the US and China urged the two sides to reopen talks.

The North had made several offers of talks earlier this month, but they were all dismissed by Seoul.

Officials at the South's defence ministry said the North made its latest offer of talks in a telegram sent to southern Defence Minister Kim Kwan-jin, signed by the North's Armed Forces Minister Kim Young-chun.

The South's Unification Ministry said the offer included a commitment to "exchange views" about the shelling of Yeonpyeong and the sinking of the Cheonan.

The ministry said the offer had been accepted, but that the North must give assurances that it would "take responsible measures" over the two incidents.

'Fence-mending'

On Wednesday, China's President Hu Jintao and US President Barack Obama released a joint statement urging Korean dialogue after a meeting in Washington.

Analysis

Nick Ravenscroft BBC News, Seoul

---

South Korea has rejected previous calls from the North for talks. So what has changed?

It is suggested that the North has finally agreed to "exchange views" with the South on the sunken warship and the island which was bombarded. That falls short of the apology demanded by Seoul, though it is movement.

In the coming weeks, preparatory talks are expected about discussions between more senior figures, whether military or ministerial. Seoul may walk away if it feels that Pyongyang is still "insincere".

There is likely to be significance in the timing of this latest move, with the American and Chinese presidents recently calling for measures that would allow the early resumption of multilateral talks on North Korea's denuclearisation.

"The United States and China emphasised the importance of an improvement in North-South relations, and agreed that sincere and constructive inter-Korean dialogue is an essential step," the two leaders said.

And the North's state-run news agency KCNA called for the US to reopen talks with Pyongyang.

"The US would be well advised to re-examine its hostile policy towards the DPRK [North Korea] and make a U-turn towards dialogue and fence-mending," its report said.

The US is among the countries involved in talks over the North's nuclear programme.

Pyongyang pulled out of the talks in April 2009, shortly before conducting a nuclear test.

Southern defence officials said on Thursday that they would propose to Pyongyang reopening dialogue on denuclearisation.

Relations between the two Koreas plunged to new lows after the South's Cheonan warship was sunk in March, with the loss of 46 lives.

An international report later blamed the North for the sinking - allegations denied by Pyongyang.

On 23 November, the North killed four people when it shelled Yeonpyeong island - its first attack on a civilian area since the 1950-53 war ended.

The South responded with a series of military exercises close to the border.