Anne Seith | Frankfurt | Nov 22

Spiegel Online - Some say Deutsche Bank misled investors in a fund which hoped to profit from deaths in the US.

Two Deutsche Bank funds were designed to profit from premature deaths in the US by buying up life insurance policies. But investors have seen precious little return on their investment. Angry customers are accusing the bank of fraud.

Gerhard Strate, a well-respected lawyer based in Hamburg, has seen a lot of things over the years. But he still has a hard time believing the story of the Deutsche Bank funds db Kompass Life 1 and 2, calling it "unbelievable" and "absurd." The closed-end funds buy life insurance policies from Americans and assume responsibility for paying their future premiums. When the original policy-holder dies, the entire payout goes to the fund. It is like short-selling US life expectancy.

Deutsche Bank collected some €500,000 ($750,000) from customers for its macabre money-making scheme. But the fund quickly turned into a mega-flop. So far, not one investor has received even a single dividend payment and some may lose their entire principal.

Now, Strate has filed a criminal complaint with public prosecutors in Frankfurt on behalf of one of those who invested in the fund. A lawyer from Munich has also announced his intention of filing a complaint of his own, believed to be on behalf of dozens of clients. He is also preparing claims for damages.

There is cause to suspect "that from the very beginning, the promised dividends were not achievable using any realistic suppositions," Strate wrote in his complaint. In addition, he says, investors in the two funds were not adequately informed about one aspect of the scheme's structure: that both funds invest to a large degree in the same policies, thus "making risk management practically impossible." Thus, he argues, the funds may have crossed the line into fraud or at least breach of trust. "Finding out exactly which is a job for the public prosecutors," Strate said.

Nov 22

Duetsche Welle - A legal team is going to New York to prevent the use of evidence provided by Germany in seeking a death penalty. Berlin wants to ensure that promises made by the US are kept if the suspects are found guilty.

A team of observers from the German government is going to New York to oversee the trial of five suspects accused of orchestrating the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday.

The federal trial of the suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four co-defendants was announced on November 13 by the US Justice Department. The government also asserted that it intends to seek the death penalty if the accused are found guilty.

Germany, which does not have a death penalty, provided evidence for the trial on the condition that it could not be used to support a death sentence. Several members of the al Qaeda cell that planned and executed the attacks of September 11 were previously based in the northern German city of Hamburg.

"In this case we will observe very closely that the given assurances are kept," Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said.

However it was unclear exactly how evidence from Germany would be distinguished from evidence procured from elsewhere.

The defense lawyer for one of the accused, Ramzi Binalshibh, said that a conviction of his client would "scarcely be possible without evidence from Germany."

Paul Harris | Dayton, Ohio | Nov 22

The Observer -
In the Midwestern heartland, police are encountering a new social evil: trafficking, often involving women and children who are forced to work as prostitutes or unpaid labour; and the outcomes can be brutal.

Human trafficking has become a major issue in the Midwest heartland of America, causing some campaigners to dub it a modern form of slavery.

Figures from the State Department reveal that 17,500 people are trafficked into the US every year against their will or under false pretences, mainly to be used for sex or forced labour. Experts believe that, when cases of internal trafficking are added, the total number of victims could be up to five times larger. And increasing numbers of trafficked individuals are being transported thousands of miles from America's coasts and into heartland states such as Ohio and Michigan.

"It is not only a crime. It is an abomination," said Professor Mark Ensalaco, a political scientist at the University of Dayton, Ohio, who organised a recent conference on the issue. In Ohio a human trafficking commission has just been set up to study the problem, while in the northern Ohio city of Toledo a special FBI task force is tackling the issue. For many local law enforcement officials, it is a bewildering new world.

Nov 22

BBC -

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev has warned he is ready to use force to wrest control of a disputed enclave from Armenia if last-ditch peace talks fail.

He said talks starting on Sunday in Munich were the final hope of settling the Nagorno Karabakh issue peacefully.

A fragile ceasefire has been in place in the region since it was the scene of a brutal war between the two countries in the 1990s.

Both nations lay claim to the enclave, currently under Armenian control.

In comments broadcast on Azeri TV on Saturday, President Aliyev said that if the Munich talks failed to reach agreement he would be "left with no other option".

"We have the full right to liberate our land by military means," he said.

Nov 22

BBC -

A ferry carrying more than 200 people has sunk off the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia, officials say.

One person is reported to have died, but dozens more are said to have been rescued by nearby boats.

A search operation is underway for the missing. Officials blamed the incident, which happened early on Sunday, on bad weather and high waves.

They said the ferry was travelling from Batam island to Dumai in Riau, Sumatra, when it sank.

The Dumai Express 10 ferry rolled over before capsizing about 90 minutes into its voyage. According to its manifest, 15 children were among about 240 people on board.

The police chief of the Riau islands told the BBC that a search and rescue operation in the area had pulled at least 178 survivors from the waters.

Hugh O'Shaughnessy | Nov 22

The Independent - The United States is massively building up its potential for nuclear and non-nuclear strikes in Latin America and the Caribbean by acquiring unprecedented freedom of action in seven new military, naval and air bases in Colombia. The development – and the reaction of Latin American leaders to it – is further exacerbating America's already fractured relationship with much of the continent.

The new US push is part of an effort to counter the loss of influence it has suffered recently at the hands of a new generation of Latin American leaders no longer willing to accept Washington's political and economic tutelage. President Rafael Correa, for instance, has refused to prolong the US armed presence in Ecuador, and US forces have to quit their base at the port of Manta by the end of next month.

So Washington turned to Colombia, which has not gone down well in the region. The country has received military aid worth $4.6bn (£2.8bn) from the US since 2000, despite its poor human rights record. Colombian forces regularly kill the country's indigenous people and other civilians, and last year raided the territory of its southern neighbour, Ecuador, causing at least 17 deaths.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has not forgotten that US officers were present in government offices in Caracas in 2002 when he was briefly overthrown in a military putsch, warned this month that the bases agreement could mean the possibility of war with Colombia.

In August, President Evo Morales of Bolivia called for the outlawing of foreign military bases in the region. President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, overthrown in a military coup d'état in June and initially exiled, has complained that US forces stationed at the Honduran base of Palmerola collaborated with Roberto Micheletti, the leader of the plotters and the man who claims to be president.

Juliet Eilperin | November 21

Washington Post -
Scientists' e-mails deriding skeptics of warming become public

Hackers broke into the electronic files of one of the world's foremost climate research centers this week and posted an array of e-mails in which prominent scientists engaged in a blunt discussion of global warming research and disparaged climate-change skeptics.

The skeptics have seized upon e-mails stolen from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in Britain as evidence that scientific data have been rigged to make it appear as if humans are causing global warming. The researchers, however, say the e-mails have been taken out of context and merely reflect an honest exchange of ideas.

André Picard and Avis Favaro | November 21

Globe & Mail - New way of thinking about debilitating disease has yielded stunning new treatments – but MS societies urge sufferers to be cautious before experimenting

Elena Ravalli was a seemingly healthy 37-year-old when she began to experience strange attacks of vertigo, numbness, temporary vision loss and crushing fatigue. They were classic signs of multiple sclerosis, a potentially debilitating neurological disease.

It was 1995 and her husband, Paolo Zamboni, a professor of medicine at the University of Ferrara in Italy, set out to help. He was determined to solve the mystery of MS – an illness that strikes people in the prime of their lives but whose causes are unknown and whose effective treatments are few.

What he learned in his medical detective work, scouring dusty old books and using ultra-modern imaging techniques, could well turn what we know about MS on its head: Dr. Zamboni's research suggests that MS is not, as widely believed, an autoimmune condition, but a vascular disease. More at the link.

Ozark, Ark | November 20

Examiner - A police officer In Ozark, Arkansas could face criminal charges after he Tasered a combative ten-year-old girl last week.

According to a police report, Officer Dustin Bradshaw was responding to the girl’s home on November 11 because the girl refused to go to bed. Bradshaw reported the girl was acting violently, even hitting and kicking officers as they tried to move her.

Associated Press | November 21

Al Jazeera -
The US justice department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, according to court documents.

A one-paragraph notice filed on Friday says only that prosecutors have asked that the case against Nicholas Slatten be dropped.

The government's detailed request to the court was filed with the judge and with the defendant, but was not made public.

The shooting in Nisoor Square left 17 Iraqis dead and inflamed anti-American sentiment abroad.

Ron Scherer | Fort Collins, CO | Nov 20

CSM - From Seattle to Huntsville, Ala., five cities are poised to prosper in the New Economy because of exports, innovation, clean technology, and healthcare.

In Houston, the Texas Medical Center is expanding so quickly that it will soon become the seventh largest downtown in the US. By itself. The hospital complex brims with restaurants, shops, and hotels, and employs 100,000 people – the population of Billings, Mont.

In Seattle, the erector-set cranes along the waterfront and big forklifts at the airport are loading exports into containers with the constancy of a piston: plywood to Beijing, halibut and crab to Tokyo, Granny Smith apples to Moscow. Last year, Washington was the only state to ship more goods to China than it receives.

In Fort Collins, Colo., town fathers are aggressively transforming the heart of the city into a zone that generates as much electricity as it consumes – making it a showcase for the city’s quest to become the Silicon Valley of clean energy.

As the United States emerges from the worst recession in 80 years, a new economy is taking root that will help create the next tier of powerhouse cities in America. Just as the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800s and the Information Age of the past 40 years helped shift the urban and regional balance of power in the US, forces are now at work that will shape who prospers in the economy of tomorrow.

No one yet knows the exact contours of the New Economy. It is more Monet than Rembrandt. But experts say that certain characteristics are already visible on the canvas that will give cities advantages in attracting new jobs and industries.

Owen Bowcott | Nov 21

The Guardian - Doctors in Wales have discovered a Tamiflu-resistant strain of swine flu that has been spreading from patient to patient in a Cardiff hospital.

The emergence of an easily transmissible, resistant strain is a worrying development for health officials and appears to be the first documented case in Europe.

Five patients at University Hospital Wales, in Cardiff, were infected and isolated for treatment. All had severe underlying conditions that left them with weakened immune systems. At least three had acquired the infection in hospital.

Dr Roland Salmon, the director of the communicable disease surveillance centre in Wales, said: "The emergence of [H1N1] viruses that are resistant to Tamiflu is not unexpected in patients with serious underlying conditions and suppressed immune systems, who still test positive for the virus despite treatment.

"In this case, the resistant strain of swine flu does not appear to be any more severe than the swine flu virus that has been circulating since April."

Nov 21

Press Association - British troops could be withdrawn from Germany for good, nearly 70 years after the end of the Second World War, if the Conservatives win the general election.

Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox said it was "no longer necessary" to maintain the presence of more than 20,000 military personnel.

Ending the commitment would free up forces to carry out vital Nato operations outside of Europe, he insisted.

And in the US Lou Dobbs want you to sign his petiton to bring home all US troops from everywhere.

Nov 21

The Guardian - Usually it is the children, not the parents, who are loath to spend their evenings practising spelling and learning times tables. But a Canadian couple have just won a legal battle to exempt their offspring from homework after successfully arguing there is no clear evidence it improves academic performance.

Shelli and Tom Milley, two lawyers from Calgary, Alberta, launched their highly unusual case after years of struggling to make their three reluctant children do school work out of the classroom.

After waging a long war with their eldest son, Jay, now 18, over his homework, they decided to do things differently with their youngest two, Spencer, 11, and Brittany, 10. And being lawyers, they decided to make it official.

Nov 21

BBC - The Sri Lankan government says people living in camps since the conflict with Tamil Tiger rebels will have freedom of movement as of next month.

The camps were set up to house Tamils fleeing the final stages of the 25-year civil war which ended in May.

The special adviser to President Mahinda Rajapaksa also confirmed an earlier promise to close the camps, which still house 130,000 people.

He said all the residents would be resettled by the end of January.

Sandra Gonzales | Berkeley, CA | November 20

San Jose Mercury News - In a striking scene of civil disobedience, dozens of students barricaded themselves inside a UC Berkeley building for more than 11 hours Friday to protest a 32 percent increase in student fees.

The dramatic display ended Friday evening with dozens of arrests, climaxing a week of civil unrest mirrored at other campuses around the state, including Davis and Santa Cruz, where hundreds marched for the third day Friday to decry one of the biggest fee hikes in UC history.

John Litchfield & Kevin Rawlinson | Paris | Nov 21

The Independent - How did a self-styled master-spy persuade a French aristocrat family to give up their freedom and fortune and join his 'crusade against evil'?

Thierry Tilly looks like a geography teacher or a chartered accountant, or a French version of Bill Gates. He claims, variously, to be a Nato "master-spy", a confidant of presidents and prime ministers, a financial genius, a 21st-century representative of an ancient, secret order descended from the Knights Templar and a man with superhuman powers sworn to fight the forces of evil.

He is now in a French prison, refusing to answer questions on possible charges of kidnap, brutality and torture. Seven or eight of his followers, from three generations of a French aristocratic family, are living in Oxford, Tilly's base for the past nine years. One of them, formerly a gynaecologist, is working as a gardener. Others have jobs in fast-food restaurants. Until 2006, 11 members of the family had spent five years barricaded in their château at Monflanquin, 100 miles east of Bordeaux.

Their relatives say they remain under the spell of a lurid fantasy, which might have been torn from the pages of a Dan Brown thriller. They have been convinced by Tilly that their family – the De Védrines, part of the Protestant nobility of south-west France for 300 years – has been chosen to struggle against supreme evil by an ancient order called L'Equilibre du Monde (The Balance of the World). Lawyers and relatives say they refuse to accept that they have been duped and fleeced of the family fortune of up to €5m (£4.5m) by an unscrupulous, possibly deranged but mysteriously effective con-man.

Angry landlords in Oxford, owed tens of thousands of pounds by Tilly and his followers, say the De Védrines, aged from 96 to 24, are not necessarily all victims. Some members of the clan, they say, have become Tilly's willing accomplices.

Paul Rincon | Large Hadron Collider | November 20

BBC - Engineers have sent proton particles all the way round the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine for the first time in more than a year.

But they still do not have a stable circulating beam; this step is expected to happen after 0600 GMT on Saturday.

The LHC is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel some 100m beneath the French-Swiss border.

Gina Keating & Carol Bishopric | Los Angeles | November 20

Reuters - A Florida jury on Thursday ordered cigarette maker Philip Morris USA to pay $300 million in damages to a 61-year-old ex-smoker named Cindy Naugle who is wheelchair-bound by emphysema.

The Broward Circuit Court jury assessed $56.6 million in past and future medical expenses against the company, part of Altria Group Inc, as well as $244 million in punitive damages.

The verdict is the largest of the so-called Engle progeny cases that have been tried so far, both sides said.

Michael Smallberg | Nov 20

POGO - The House Financial Services Committee voted 43-26 yesterday afternoon in favor of an amendment introduced by Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Alan Grayson (D-FL) that would remove restrictions preventing the GAO from auditing the Federal Reserve. The amendment was modeled after Rep. Paul’s long-standing bill to audit the Fed, which was co-sponsored by over 300 Members in the House and supported by POGO and many other groups.

The vote on the final passage of the financial regulatory package to which the Paul-Grayson amendment is attached has been delayed until after Thanksgiving. Nonetheless, yesterday’s vote signals a defeat for Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), who had introduced an alternative amendment that would have limited the scope of the GAO’s audits.

Kudos to FDL: FDL Statement on the Committee Passage of H.R. 1207, the Paul-Grayson Bill to Audit the Fed

Julian Borger | Halifax | Nov 20

The Guardian - The Canadian government was fending off calls for a public inquiry on torture today after allegations from one of its senior diplomats that Canada was complicit in the torture of Afghan detainees.

Richard Colvin, who was second in command at Canada's Kabul embassy in 2006 and 2007, said that Afghans swept up in security sweeps by Canadian troops during that time were routinely handed over to the Afghan intelligence services.

"According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured," Colvin told Canada's parliament. "For interrogators in Kandahar, it was standard operating procedure.

"In other words, we detained, and handed over for severe torture, a lot of innocent people."

Colvin said his frequent memos about the abuse were ignored and that senior officials attempted to cover up Canada's complicity until prisoner transfer procedures were changed in 2007, partly as a result of his complaints.

Hugh Bronstein | Bogota | Nov 20

Reuters - Colombia will not be provoked into armed conflict with Venezuela despite the neighboring country's aggressive rhetoric and its dynamiting of two cross-border pedestrian bridges, Colombia's defense minister said on Friday.

"We will not be provoked. The insults bounce off us," Gabriel Silva told local radio a day after Venezuelan troops dynamited the two suspended wooden plank pathways connecting the countries.

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez this month ordered his army to prepare for war after Colombia signed a military cooperation pact with Washington allowing U.S. troops increased access to its territory to run anti-narcotics surveillance flights.

Chavez says the agreement could set the stage for a U.S. invasion of oil-rich Venezuela, a claim that Washington and Bogota dismiss. He calls Colombian President Alvaro Uribe "a traitor" to the region for signing the deal.

Venezuela says the narrow bridges were illegally built and used by smugglers. But Colombia's Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling the destruction of the bridges "an aggression against the civilian population and the frontier communities."

Warren Richey | Washington | November 19

CSM - Judge David Hamilton is elevated to the US appeals court, after GOP effort to stall a vote failed. Republican resistance signals more political fights are likely over Obama's nominees to the federal bench.

The US Senate voted 59 to 39 on Thursday to elevate Judge David Hamilton from his current job as chief judge at the federal courthouse in Indianapolis to a seat on the Seventh US Circuit Court of Appeals.

The vote comes eight months after Judge Hamilton was nominated to the Chicago-based appeals court.

Singapore | November 12

World Bank - World Bank President Robert Zoellick has said in 15 years the Chinese yuan can become an alternative to US dollar as a global reserve currency, with China's fast economic growth and efforts to internationalise the currency.

Scott Lanman | Washington | November 19

Bloomberg - A U.S. House committee advanced a proposal to remove a three-decade ban on congressional audits of Federal Reserve interest-rate decisions, a measure backed by a lawmaker who has called for the abolition of the central bank.

The House Financial Services Committee today, in a 43-26 vote and a second voice vote, attached the amendment for a broad audit of the Fed to legislation creating a council of regulators to monitor systemic risk. The proposal was offered by Representative Ron Paul, a Republican from Texas, and based on a bill with more than 300 co-sponsors.