Forensic investigators have now been called in to investigate exactly what Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in, particularly the extent of his knowledge of the raids on the Democratic National Committee’s offices in Washington.

Investigators appointed by the US National Archives are to analyse notes taken by the White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman at a meeting with the late president just three days after Nixon campaign members were arrested for breaking into the Watergate building.

Their mission is to find out what Nixon and Haldeman discussed during the 18-and-a-half minutes missing from tape recordings of the meeting and from the aide’s large yellow note book, the online edition of British newspaper ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.

Experts have given up trying to unlock the mystery from the erased tape. The search will instead scour Haldeman’s notes for incriminating clues.

Investigators will use electrostatic detection analysis, which is capable of detecting and highlighting indented images, such as those left on a sheet of paper when a pen has written on a sheet above it. This might show evidence that certain pages were destroyed and even point to words so far lost to history, the report said.

Techniques known as hyper-spectral imaging and video spectral comparison also will be used. And, the test results are expected early next year.

The prospect of confirming that a gap exists in the notes, corresponding with the gap in the recording, has Nixon historians on tenterhooks.

“My best scholarly guess is that Nixon asked Haldeman if anyone in the White House had advance knowledge of the Watergate break-in,” Luke Nichter of Texas A&M University was quoted as saying.

Source: Agencies

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk

Van Gogh, a distant relative of the famous painter, was shot and stabbed on an Amsterdam street Nov. 2, 2004, setting off a spate of mosque burnings in a country once renowned for its tolerance.

His killer Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-born man of Moroccan descent, said he did it because Van Gogh insulted Islam in his films. Bouyeri is serving a life sentence for the killing, which was ruled a terrorist act.

The effects of the murder were far-reaching, and Dutch debate about the integration of Muslims — who make up 5 percent of the 16 million population — continues into the present.

The murder aided the rise of Geert Wilders, an anti-immigrant politician whose party leads in recent polls.

Television stations were running documentaries and films Monday about the killing, and politicians, fans and members of Van Gogh’s family were to gather later at a monument in a park near the spot where he was killed.

“We learned from it,” Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen said of the murder on NOS radio Monday.

He compared its effect on the Netherlands to that of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States — noting that while the scale of destruction was different, the attackers’ ideology was the same.

A dozen members of Bouyeri’s circle were arrested later for terrorism-related crimes such as throwing explosives at police or plotting attacks on landmarks.

Cohen said his role has been to “just try to hold things together” in a diverse city where tensions between various groups continue to run high. “Every day it’s a new challenge all over again,” he said.

In the aftermath of the killing the government ordered citizenship tests for resident aliens and language tests for would-be immigrants. The latter was one of several measures intended to make it difficult for Muslim men to marry foreign brides.

The government made it a crime to not carry an ID card, and authorized police to stop people not suspected of any wrongdoing on the street and frisk them. Prosecutors and intelligence agencies were also given greater powers.

In some ways the anti-immigrant politician Wilders has tried to assume Van Gogh’s mantle, creating his own provocative film, “Fitna” which linked Islam and violence.

Van Gogh fans say Wilders lacks the filmmaker’s sense of irony.

There have been some positive developments in race relations in the Netherlands since 2004, not least because no new terrorist attacks have taken place.

Many Dutch are weary of debates over Islam, and other issues sometimes force immigration and terrorism off the front page — notably the financial crisis.

Still, public interest in any crime escalates if it involves ethnic Moroccans or Turks. And immigration issues dominate politics.

One leading story in papers Monday features allegations illegal immigrants are delaying their deportations by faking illness. Another is about a report by a government think-tank labeling Wilders a “right-wing extremist.”

Wilders rejected the term, and shot back that his political opponents are “accomplices” of Bouyeri.

Source: Agencies

The Colombo government held “very high-level” talks to prevent General Sarath Fonseka, currently visiting Oklahoma, from being quizzed over his conduct during the conflict against the Tamil Tigers, the official said.

The privately-run Sunday Times newspaper here said Fonseka had been asked to present himself for an interview with the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday.

The move “prompted fears in Colombo that Washington is asserting its legal authority over the ‘war crimes’ report” released last month, the paper said referring to a State Department dossier on alleged war crimes.

The report outlined excesses by security forces and Tiger rebels during the final stages of fighting earlier this year. The report, submitted to the US Congress, refers to Fonseka’s having overstepped his brief.

The Sunday Times said the Sri Lankan diplomatic mission there was already providing legal assistance to Fonseka.

Fonseka is a US Green Card holder and travelled to the US last week to visit his two daughters. He also addressed a group of Sri Lankans in Washington last week and took credit for leading the battle to crush the Tigers.

The US embassy in Colombo declined comment.

The State Department report cited allegations that Tamil rebels recruited children and that government forces broke a ceasefire as well as killed rebels who surrendered.

It also cited reports in which it was claimed government troops or government-backed paramilitaries “abducted and in some instances then killed Tamil civilians, particularly children and young men.”

The report covered the period from January — when fighting intensified — until the end of May, when Sri Lankan troops defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) at the end of a decades-old separatist conflict.

Sri Lanka last week announced it was appointing a panel to investigate the allegations after initially dismissing the report as “unsubstantiated.”

The island’s government managed to stave off a UN human rights council debate on alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity thanks to the backing of veto-holders China and Russia.

The UN has said that up to 7,000 civilians perished during the last four months of fighting and accused both the military and the Tigers of not doing enough to protect civilians.

Source: Agencies

Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president whose genocide trial began in 2002, refused to enter a plea and insisted on representing himself as he strung out proceedings for more than four years through frequent medical absences and courtroom histrionics.

He died of a heart attack in March 2006 before a verdict could be reached.

Unlike Karadzic, Milosevic suffered from high blood pressure, which restricted his court appearances. Two doctors were appointed to look after him but he often refused to take their advice and instead took his own medication, claiming frequent bouts of exhaustion or flu as reasons for an adjournment.
Although he was limited to 150 days to defend himself from September 2004, he continually delayed the case by haranguing witnesses and making grandiose speeches from the dock.

When he opened his defence, he overran by 90 minutes, causing Judge Patrick Robinson to plead: “It is questionable whether a lot of what you are saying is relevant to the case. A broad historical sweep is to an extent permissible in an opening statement, but you must discipline yourself, particularly if you want more time.”

It was a sign of things to come. Milosevic ignored the judge and carried on with a long speech blaming Germany and the Vatican for the break-up of Yugoslavia, adding: “The fratricidal war in Yugoslavia was instigated and supported precisely by those who established this court.”

After Milosevic’s death, the judges and the prosection were blamed for having an over-scrupulous desire to appear fair, allowing him too much leeway to toy with the court.

The chief judge for the Karadzic trial, O-Gon Kwon, was on the Milosevic panel and appears to have learnt from the experience, intervening quickly during pre-trial hearings to try to keep Karadzic to the point.

The prosecution has also tried to learn lessons from Milosevic, who faced an unwieldy 66 charges, including genocide. The indictment against Karadzic has been kept to just 11 counts.

But Karadzic has already shown signs of following Milosevic’s lead and that of Vojislav Seselj, a former paramilitary leader turned politician, who delayed his trial by a year by going on hunger strike in protest at the court’s decision to appoint a lawyer.

Seselj, whose hearing began in 2003 and is still trundling on, often plays to the gallery and insults witnesses, knowing that his supporters are watching on the internet in Serbia. “I am frustrated by judges wearing funny clothes. They remind me of the Inquisition,” he said on the first day of his trial. “I’m not at all in a hurry in these proceedings.”

Karadzic has filed more than 200 motions and appeals to the court during his 15 months in custody and is also determined to represent himself. The court may be in for some lenghty philosophical speeches when the trial gets under way.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

Staver argued that the displays should go back up — eight years after a district court judge issued a temporary injunction against the displays and four years after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed on the grounds that county officials clearly and unconstitutionally wanted to promote religion. The issue is back on appeal because the district court has made the injunction permanent.

County officials “have done everything possible to wipe away the past,” Staver said. “They have indicated their purpose is completely and wholly secular.”

More than 100 residents from McCreary and Pulaski counties attended the hearing in support of the counties’ case, many of them riding church buses on the roughly three-hour trip to Cincinnati from southeastern Kentucky. They watched as the opposing attorneys made telephone arguments to a three-judge panel.

An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky said the counties are trying to pull a fast one.

Stating a secular motive does not change 10 years of history that clearly show a religious purpose behind that display and two previous ones, according to ACLU lawyer David Friedman.

“We have to look at the rest of the history, and the history shows a blatantly sectarian purpose,” he said. Even though the counties last year passed resolutions repudiating any religious motives and declaring only educational ones, Friedman said those votes were driven by a lawyer telling a client, “You’ve got a better chance of winning if you do this.”
At issue is a decade’s worth of efforts by county officials to display the commandments in some form — first as a standalone exhibit and then alongside other religious documents, with county officials paying tribute to God as the foundation of American strength and Jesus Christ as the “Prince of Ethics.”
After lower courts forbid those displays, the counties installed exhibits called the Foundations of American Law and Government, which includes the Ten Commandments alongside other documents, including the U.S. Constitution, the Mayflower Compact and the Magna Carta.

A lower court issued a temporary injunction on that display, and a divided Supreme Court agreed in 2005, saying that county officials’ public statements clearly showed their effort was an unconstitutional government promotion of religion.

The 6th Circuit and other lower courts have since allowed identical displays in other counties in Kentucky and Indiana if there was no track record of religious motives.

However, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Coffman of the Eastern District of Kentucky made the injunctions against the McCreary and Pulaski displays permanent in 2008 — citing no evidence of a change in religious motives.

Staver disagreed. He said officials in McCreary and Pulaski counties have “repudiated” their previous displays and now endorse the one that includes the other historic documents.

“I don’t know what else these county officials can do,” Staver said. “The county abandoned the first two displays. … They have wiped the past away.”

Sixth Circuit judges James Ryan, Julia Smith Gibbons and Eric Clay questioned lawyers on both sides.

Clay told Staver the Ten Commandments cases that have been upheld involved a “history of a secular purpose,” rather than the emphasis on religion found in the Kentucky cases.

But Ryan asked Friedman how the counties could ever be in compliance with the constitution if their motives always will be in question. “Your position is that they’re just lying, they’re fakers,” he said.

The judges are expected to rule in the next few months.

Source: http://www.courier-journal.com

The bankruptcy filing late Sunday delays a lawsuit that had been set to start Monday in Kent County Superior Court, the first of eight consecutive abuse trials scheduled in Delaware.

“This is a painful decision, one that I had hoped and prayed I would never have to make,” the Rev. W. Francis Malooly, the bishop of the diocese, said in a statement on the diocese’s Web site.

Wilmington is the seventh U.S. Catholic diocese to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since the church abuse scandal erupted seven years ago in the Archdiocese of Boston.

The Wilmington diocese covers Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland and serves about 230,000 Catholics.

Thomas Neuberger, an attorney representing 88 alleged victims, described the bankruptcy filing as a “desperate effort to hide the truth from the public and conceal the thousands of pages of scandalous documents” from being made public in court.

“This filing is the latest, sad chapter in the diocese’s decades long ‘cover-up’ of these despicable crimes, to maintain the secrecy surrounding its responsibility and complicity in the sexual abuse of hundreds of Catholic children,” Neuberger said in a statement.

Malooly said the decision was made “after careful consideration and after consultation with my close advisers and counselors” and that he believed “we have no other choice.” He said “filing for Chapter 11 offers the best opportunity, given finite resources, to provide the fairest possible treatment of all victims of sexual abuse by priests of our diocese.”

“Our hope is that Chapter 11 proceedings will enable us to fairly compensate all victims through a single process established by the Bankruptcy Court,” Malooly said.

Pat Arndt, 61, a bookkeeper, read about the bankruptcy filing in a newspaper Monday morning before attending Mass at Holy Cross Church in Dover, Del.

“We put full trust in our priests and then we have this happening,” said Arndt, who believes the diocese was wrong to file for bankruptcy and that it was an attempt, in part, to avoid responsibility.

“They’re just prolonging something that’s not right,” she said.

David Balcerak, 70, a member of the Knights of Columbus and a Eucharistic minister who delivers Communion to the homebound, was not aware of the bankruptcy filing but said he could understand the reasons behind it.

“They may not be able to afford it,” he said of the damages that could be awarded in civil lawsuits. “They probably have insurance, but probably not enough to cover what it might be, because the courts award anything.”

The bankruptcy filing lists the diocese’s assets as being between $50 million and $100 million but said its estimated debt is between $100 million and $500 million. Lawsuit plaintiffs as well as banks and pensions were listed as creditors.

Monday’s case would have been the first to come to trial under a Delaware law that created a two-year “lookback” window that allowed claims of abuse to be brought regardless of whether the statute of limitations had expired. More than 100 lawsuits were filed before the period ended this summer, with four being settled.

Civil liability is the only recourse for victims of abuse that happened long ago because the U.S. Supreme Court has said states cannot change the statute of limitations for criminal cases.

Under federal bankruptcy rules, a bankruptcy filing results in an automatic stay or halt to all litigation in which the filer is a defendant. The trial would be delayed for the duration of the bankruptcy. However, the lawsuits could move forward if the plaintiffs ask and the request is approved by a judge.

Attorneys negotiated throughout Sunday trying to reach a settlement, but couldn’t.

Before Wilmington, bankruptcy protection was also sought in abuse scandals by dioceses in Davenport, Iowa; Fairbanks, Alaska; Portland, Ore.; San Diego; Spokane, Wash.; and Tucson, Ariz. The San Diego case was dismissed.

At least three bankruptcy cases ended with payments for victims. In May 2008, the Davenport diocese agreed to pay $37 million to more than 150 people. A $50 million settlement in 2007 involving about 175 lawsuits ended a bankruptcy filing by the Portland archdiocese, which set aside another $20 million for future claims. The Tucson diocese emerged from Chapter 11 in 2005 after creating a fund of more than $20 million for people molested by clergy.

More than 20 Delaware plaintiffs have filed lawsuits against former priest Francis DeLuca. DeLuca served for 35 years but was defrocked last summer after having been jailed in 2007 in New York for repeatedly molesting his grandnephew.

The diocese has paid more than $6.2 million since 2002 to settle sexual abuse lawsuits. Like others around the country, it also has paid settlements to alleged victims who did not file lawsuits.

Source: Agencies

Adolf Hitler’s security chief Heinrich Himmler set up the bordellos and established a bonus system that camp prisoners could use to buy privileges, such as cigarettes, or sex.

“Himmler had a great belief in men’s sexual power. He thought that by using bordellos you could force men to work harder,” said Robert Sommer, author of “Das KZ-Bordell” or the concentration camp bordellos, at the Frankfurt book fair.

The first such bordello was established at the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1942 and the programme was then expanded to 10 camps including major ones such as Buchenwald, Dachau, Ravensbrueck, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz.

The last was set up in 1945, just months before the war ended, to service the camp at Mittelbau-Dora, where V2 rockets were built.

“Himmler believed to the end that this system would work, which did not correspond to reality,” said Sommer, whose research for the book, in some 70 different archives lasted nearly a decade.

Sommer was able to interview some men who used the bordellos but no women sex workers.

Most witnesses to World War Two era crimes have now died, though a trial of suspected concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk, who is facing charges of helping to kill 27,900 Jews during the war, is due to start late next month.

STRICT CONTROL

The SS guards at the camps were not allowed to use the bordellos under the Nazis’ strict race laws, nor were Jews or Russian prisoners of war, Sommer said.

“A German prisoner could only go to a German woman. A Polish prisoner could only go to a Slavic woman,” he told Reuters at the annual book fair.

“These camps were at the end of society and yet the control was total,” he said.

Sommer’s research showed that about 200 women were used as sex workers in the camps, the majority of them German, but also some Poles, Ukrainians and one Dutch woman.

They included political prisoners and women the Nazis termed “asocial,” such as beggars, the unemployed or alcoholics, he said.

The SS recruited the women from hard labour work details, where the women realised they would not live long if they continued.

“The SS told the women they would be released after half a year if they signed up to work in the bordellos. Of course, the SS didn’t keep that promise,” Sommer said.

“Once the female prisoners became aware of the lie, the SS began to forceably select them,” he added.

Like all other aspects of life at the concentration camps, the routine at the bordellos was strictly regulated.

Talking between the man and woman was forbidden, prisoners were required to use the missionary position and had to keep their shoes off the bed.

Liaisons were limited to 10 minutes and surveyed by SS guards through a peephole in the door, Sommer said.

The bordellos also proved ineffective as an incentive.

Most concentration camp prisoners suffered from permanent hunger and only about 1 percent at most made use of the bordellos, Sommer said.

These mainly included camp overseers or “kapos,” prisoners involved in the camp administration, cooks or those working in offices.

“I don’t think it was generally a desire for sex that drove men to use the bordellos. Some just hadn’t seen a woman in 10 years.”

Sommer said he had found only one case of a woman trying to claim compensation for the forced prostitution after the war.

That claim was turned down by a German court.

Source: Agencies

Detained Academy Award-winning director and convicted sex offender Roman Polanski may have the support of some famous faces in the film industry, but don’t count Jamie Foxx among them. According to the actor, he only needs to imagine the 1977 case against Polanski is a personal one to find his feelings.

“If it had been my daughter who was barely a teenager — my daughter is 15 — Roman Polanski would be missing … period,” Foxx stated in an interview with Parade magazine. “It wouldn’t even get to the court case. But, that’s me and I wouldn’t want anyone else to follow that because you should let the justice system work it out.”

Foxx went on to explain that while his perspective might have been different had he known the director personally, as do many of his Hollywood peers, ultimately he believes “this whole issue is bigger than Roman Polanski.” So big, it forces Foxx to confront his own complex sense of revenge.

“Revenge is a tough thing,” “The Soloist” star said. “When it comes to someone bringing harm to your family, it’s hard to think about turning the other cheek. When I hear about things that we allow to go on in our society where women are harmed, I just knee-jerk. I’ve said some things publicly that my publicist keeps telling me I should keep to myself. I don’t know if that’s my Texas upbringing, but there comes a point where you just say, ‘OK, that would be my tipping point. What would I do?’ Some of things I’ve said I’d do to sexual perpetrators were pretty graphic. But I also read some stories of people taking the law into their own hands, which is bad too. So it’s tough to know how far you’d go.”

Jolie and Aniston done with drama
The epic, headline-grabbing Hollywood feud pitting Jennifer Aniston against Angelina Jolie in a never-ending battle for Brad Pitt’s heart isn’t quite what the media makes of it, according to a report published on E! Online.

more photos
“Angelina really couldn’t care less,” an insider revealed when questioned about the prospect of Jolie’s main squeeze running into his ex-wife.

As for Aniston, she doesn’t spend her days pining for Pitt, as some seem to imagine. In fact, the source assured Aniston’s just as disinterested in it all as her former love rival.

“Jennifer really has moved on,” the insider said. “I promise you this.”

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com