UK far-right leader jailed over passport

THE leader of the far-right English Defence League (EDL) has been jailed for 10 months by a British court for using a friend's passport to travel to the United States.

Stephen Lennon, 30, whose group opposes what it calls the "Islamisation" of Britain, pleaded guilty to possession of a false identity document with improper intention.

Lennon had previously been refused entry to the United States and so used a passport in the name of his friend Andrew McMaster to travel to the country, Southwark Crown Court in London heard.

He used a self check-in kiosk to board a Virgin Atlantic flight from London's Heathrow airport to New York in September 2011.

But when Lennon arrived at New York's John F Kennedy airport US customs officials took his fingerprints and realised that he was not the person on the passport, the court heard.

He was asked to attend a second interview but left the airport, entering the US illegally, before leaving the country the following day using his own passport.

British police arrested Lennon in October.

In a further twist it emerged Lennon's own legitimate passport bears the name Paul Harris.

"You knew perfectly well that you were not welcome in the United States," Judge Alistair McCreath told Lennon as he sentenced him on Monday.

"I am going to sentence you under the name of Stephen Lennon although I suspect that is not actually your true name, in the sense that it is not the name that appears on your passport."

The court heard Lennon was previously jailed for assault in 2005 and has previous convictions for drugs offences and public order offences.

The EDL was formed in 2009 after Muslim hardliners jeered a homecoming parade for British troops who had served in Afghanistan. It has held a series of sometimes violent rallies in Britain.

23.23 | 0 komentar | Read More

Army 'bombs' left in hire car

SYDNEY'S domestic airport was partially shut down after fake bombs hidden in a returned hire car's glove box went undiscovered during an elite military exercise.

According to an investigation report obtained by Fairfax, the mistake sparked a major bomb scare resulting in the partial shutdown of the domestic airport car park on July 4 last year.

The fake bombs were found by cleaners at Hertz rental cars about a fortnight after the car was returned to the airport.

Australian Federal Police bomb disposal experts were called in to examine the fake bombs, with a check of Hertz records revealing the car was one of several vehicles hired for six-and-a-half weeks by the Defence Police Training Centre at Holsworthy Barracks.

An officer from the training centre confirmed the devices were used in exercises for students training to become "close personal protection operatives" or CPPOs, elite military bodyguards.

The Defence Command Support Training Centre and the Army Administrative Inquiry Centre are carrying out independent inquiries into the incident.

23.23 | 0 komentar | Read More

Suspected US drone found off Philippines

PHILIPPINE navy officials say a suspected American drone has been found floating in the ocean, prompting them to deploy a ship with ordnance experts after fishermen reported the object may have been a bomb.

The three-metre orange BQM-74e drone marked "Navy" was found by a Filipino diver and fishermen off Masbate Island on Sunday and has been turned over to local navy authorities, Philippine navy officer Captain Jason Rommel Galang said, adding it was not clear why the unmanned aerial vehicle ended up off Masbate.

US Embassy spokeswoman Bettina Malone said efforts were under way to determine if the drone was one of those used in American military air target training exercises and why it was in the waters off Masbate, about 380 kilometres southeast of Manila. The type of drone found was not armed and not used for surveillance, she said.

Masbate is in a region where communist guerrillas have a presence. US counter-terrorism troops, who are barred from local combat, have used surveillance drones to help Filipino soldiers track down al-Qaeda-linked extremists in the country's south.

At least two US drones have been reported to have crashed and were recovered by villagers in the past on southern Mindanao island.

23.23 | 0 komentar | Read More

US stocks open lower as earnings loom

US stocks have opened lower as profit taking and caution ahead of the looming earnings season took hold in the wake of the bullish week that opened the new year on the markets.

Five minutes into trade on Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by 61.93 points, or 0.46 per cent, at 13,373.28.

The broad-based S&P 500 fell 6.69 points, or 0.46 per cent, to 1,459.78.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite lost 14.00 points, or 0.45 per cent, to 3,087.66.

Bank of America shares added 0.2 per cent to $US12.13 after it announced an $US11.6 billion ($A11.1 billion) deal to settle long-standing mortgage claims from Fannie Mae, and the sale of servicing rights on $US306 billion worth of mortgages.

Nationstar Mortgage, one of the buyers of the servicing rights, gained 13.8 per cent.

23.23 | 0 komentar | Read More

Mum kills son who 'failed to learn Koran'

A MOTHER convicted of beating her seven-year-old son to death for failing to learn the Koran by heart has been jailed in Britain for a minimum of 17 years.

Sara Ege, a 33-year-old mathematics graduate from India, battered her son Yaseen with a stick in July 2010 when he failed to memorise Islamic texts and burned his body to hide the evidence, Cardiff Crown Court in Wales heard during the trial.

Ege collapsed as she was sentenced on Monday and was led sobbing from the dock.

"Yaseen was subjected to prolonged cruelty," Judge Wyn Williams told her as he passed sentence.

"I am satisfied that, over three months, you beat him on a number of occasions."

The judge said that until the final three months of Yaseen's life Ege had been "a very good mother" in many respects. He also acknowledged that she had suffered prolonged periods of depression.

Yaseen was initially believed to have been killed in a fire at the family home in Pontcanna, Cardiff, but tests later revealed he was dead before the blaze began.

A jury found Ege guilty last month of murder and perverting the course of justice.

She had confessed to the murder but later retracted the confession, saying her husband and his family had forced her into it.

Her husband, Yousef Ege, 38, was cleared in December of failing to prevent the death.

The judge said Yaseen had suffered "serious abdominal injuries" on the day he was killed, when Ege had kept the seven-year-old at home to study the Koran.

"On that day Yaseen must have failed in some way because I am satisfied that it was that failure which was the trigger for the beating," he said.

"That is what you told the police in the course of your confession in July 2010 and I see no reason to doubt what you then said was true."

He added: "There can be no doubt that you set fire to his body in an attempt to evade the consequences of what you had done."

Ege had told police she could not stop herself beating her son and had repeatedly pledged to God before Yaseen's death that she would not do it again, but her good intentions only lasted a few days.

The court heard she was sent to a psychiatric unit for several months after her son's death. She claimed several times to have been motivated by voices from the devil.

23.23 | 0 komentar | Read More

Maldives girl faces flogging for sex

A 15-YEAR-OLD in the Maldives whose father is accused of repeatedly raping her and killing the resulting baby risks being flogged for "fornication" with another man under the nation's strict Islamic law, a police source says.

In the course of inquiries into the rape case, investigators say they unearthed evidence of the girl having had consensual sex with another man, which is an offence in the Indian Ocean holiday destination, the source told AFP.

Women, including minors, having consensual sex outside marriage can be charged in the Maldives, where convicts can be publicly flogged. Minors receive the punishment when they reach 18, the age of majority.

The child's stepfather is accused by police of repeatedly raping the girl and fathering a child by her which he subsequently murdered. The girl's mother has been charged with helping dispose of the infant's body, police said.

"We completed the investigation (into the murder of the infant) and gave a report to the prosecutor-general's office," Maldivian police spokesman Hassan Haneef told AFP by telephone.

He declined to give details saying that Maldivian common law did not allow the discussion of any case involving a minor.

The local Haveeru newspaper quoted an unnamed official from the prosecutor's office saying the fornication charge was unrelated to the rape, which had been separately dealt with.

The legal system of the Maldives, a nation of 330,000 Sunni Muslims known for its coral-fringed islands and sandy beaches, has elements of Islamic Sharia law as well as English common law.

The country carries out the flogging of women despite calls from the UN Human Rights Council to drop the practice.

In September, a Maldivian court ordered a public flogging for a 16-year-old girl who confessed to having pre-marital sex. Her 29-year-old lover was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The gang-rape last month in the Indian capital of a 23-year-old student who subsequently died has also sparked protests over crime against women in neighbouring South Asian nations including Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

23.23 | 1 komentar | Read More

'Catastrophic' fire risk ahead: NSW

SEVERE bushfire conditions are predicted to hit NSW on Tuesday, with temperatures set to soar to 43C in Sydney.

The hot and dry conditions have been labelled as "catastrophic" by authorities, with a total fire ban established statewide.

On Monday, teams from the NSW Rural Fire Service fought large blazes at Oura and Shoalhaven, continuing to monitor and contain the fires through the night.

An emergency alert telephone warning message was also launched by the NSW Rural Fire Service, sent to residents in the Illawarra, Shoalhaven and Southern Ranges regions, which are deemed high risk.

Across the state, all national parks and reserves will close on Tuesday due to the fire risk.

On Monday, rangers began visiting popular campsites, encouraging people to leave.

They will continue visiting sites on Tuesday morning, with a National Parks and Wildlife spokesman stating there would be no forced evacuations unless there was a fire emergency.

23.23 | 0 komentar | Read More

Fire threat worsens in Victoria

VICTORIA'S fire services will be stretched on two fronts on Tuesday - in the southwest, where it's feared the Kentbruck blaze could double in size because of strong winds, and in the north where temperatures will be in the 40s.

Fire services commissioner Craig Lapsley said the immediate concern was the bushfire in the southwest, where almost 500 firefighters are concentrated and which has burnt out 4000 hectares of pine plantation but was threatening the rural community of Drik Drik on Monday.

"It will be a fire that will be pushed with winds and we believe that it's got the potential to move a significant distance tomorrow, potentially block the Princes Highway and have further impacts on the rural community around Drik Drik and Dartmoor," Mr Lapsley said.

Plumes of smoke from the fire drifted over nearby Dartmoor and rural community of Mumbannar and was visible for kilometres.

Searing conditions in the north of the state has meant a severe fire danger rating along the South Australian border, along the Murray River and the border with NSW.

"It's going to be a severe day and, coupled with the weather that's in NSW, we will see the potential for fires to start early in the day and, without much time at all, they become uncontrolled fires, which is the major concern," Mr Lapsley said.

23.23 | 0 komentar | Read More