White Extremist Jailed For Mandela Death Plot

The mastermind behind a white supremacist plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela and drive blacks out of South Africa has been jailed for 35 years after a decade-long trial.

Mike du Toit, a former lecturer at a segregated apartheid-era university, was convicted of high treason in July last year.

He recruited supporters from among hardline white Afrikaners for his far-right "Boeremag", or Boer Force.

It planned to violently overthrow the government and return the country to white-only rule.

The group also claimed responsibility for a series of bombs that killed a woman and caused damage throughout the South African township of Soweto in 2002.

The trial heard du Toit had written a "blueprint" for revolution - known as Document 12 - to evict black people from South Africa.

The document was found on his computer after police raided his home in October 2011.

The court also heard du Toit discussed carrying out bomb attacks during meetings with co-plotters at barbecues and fast food outlets.

Plans included destroying a major dam, shooting down an aircraft and assassinating Mr Mandela.

Du Toit was one of 20 plotters sentenced at the High Court in Pretoria.

State media reported that the jail terms handed out by Judge Eben Jordaan ranged from five to 35 years.

The trial is believed to have been the most expensive in South Africa's legal history, costing the taxpayer 36m rand (£2.2m), according to state broadcaster SABC.

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Tiananmen Square Car Blaze: Police Hunt Suspects

By Mark Stone, China Correspondent

Chinese police are investigating whether an incident in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in which a jeep burst into flames, killing five people, might have been an attack by Muslim separatists from the western Xinjiang province.

No official details have been released but a document, circulated online and purported to be from the Chinese police, names two suspects and claims that the authorities are searching for several vehicles, all with Xinjiang number plates.

The document is addressed to all Beijing hotels and is described as a "notice of arrangement of the immediate search of suspect vehicles".

In Chinese, it reads: "On 28 October, 2013, our city had a major case.

"The suspects are Yusupu Aiheputi (male, registered residence address 2-3-27-1 Pishan Farm, Pishan County, Xinjiang province) and Yusupu Wumaierniyazi (male, registered residence address Unit 1 Sangejiao Village, Lukeqin Town, Shanshan County, Xinjiang province).

The crash took place directly below an iconic portrait of Chairman Mao

"The suspected vehicles are light coloured Sports Utility Vehicles, number plates: XinA45559, XinA82Q53, XinC96063 and XinBM7831."

The document adds: "To prevent suspected personnel and vehicles from continuing their crime, we are now asking all accommodation providers to immediately search all guests, parking vehicles and cars driven by former guests from October 1.

"If any discovery is made of the suspects or vehicles, please report to the security team's action and management branch."

The incident in Tiananmen Square took place directly underneath the iconic portrait of Chairman Mao, which hangs on the Tiananmen Gate at the north end of the square and represents one of the most symbolic locations in China.

The 4x4 vehicle left the main highway which crosses the square and veered into a crowd of tourists queuing to visit the Forbidden City.

Tiananmen Square was open on Tuesday but was heavily policed

The three occupants of the car died inside. Two tourists - one Chinese and one Filipino - were also killed and 37 people were injured.

Initially, Chinese authorities said the incident was a car crash. The scene was cleared up quickly and the square reopened to traffic and tourists within a few hours.

Foreign journalists were asked not to film the aftermath. Sky News staff were detained for 20 minutes and forced to delete all their footage.

Government censors spent the day deleting the theories and photographs from China's increasingly vocal social media forums.

There was no mention of the incident on China's main national evening news on state television.

Chinese language newspapers have reported simply that there was an accident in Tiananmen Square, although the English language state-run newspapers have included the suggestion that there may be links to the Uighur people of Xinjiang Province.

Screens were erected to hide the scene of the crash

Almost half the population of Xinjiang province, in the China's far west, are Muslim Uighurs, who accuse the Chinese government of violently eroding their religion and their culture.

They consider themselves to be culturally and ethnically much closer to the central Asian nations than to China and claim their ethnic identity is being diluted by the co-ordinated mass migrations of Han Chinese, the country's majority ethnic group, into the province.

The Chinese central government in Beijing, more than 2,000 miles to the east, has long claimed the Uighurs are waging a campaign of violence in an effort to secure themselves an independent state.

Incidents of violent clashes between Chinese state security forces and Uighurs in Xinjiang are common.

However, the facts are extremely hard to verify independently because foreign journalists are restricted from reporting in the region.

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Drone Kills Al Shabaab Bombmaker Ali Abdi

By Tim Marshall, Foreign Affairs Editor

The man said to be the master bombmaker for the al Shabaab terrorist group has been killed by a drone strike in southern Somalia.

A car carrying Ibrahim Ali Abdi, also known as Anta Anta, was hit by three missiles as it travelled along a road near the town of Jilib on Monday.

Somali intelligence sources, quoted by news agencies, said Ali Abdi was the group's explosives expert and specialised in making suicide vests and car bombs.

A witness to the attack, Hassan Nur, told Reuters he saw a drone above the Suzuki vehicle in which at least two men were travelling.

"I saw a big crash and then saw a drone disappearing far into the sky ... many al Shabaab men came to the scene," he said.

Al Shabaab was behind the September massacre on a Kenyan shopping centre

"Many cars were driving ahead of me, but the drone targeted this Suzuki."

An unnamed American official told the LA Times the strike was carried out by the US Army, but this has not been officially confirmed.

The US is known to operate drones from bases in Djibouti and southern Ethiopia.

The air strike follows a pattern of pressure bearing down on al Shabaab, which has been driven from Somalia's main towns by a combination of African Union forces and clandestine American operations. 

Al Shabaab hit back with the recent attack on a Nairobi shopping mall, but appears unable to regain any ground inside Somalia. 

The loss of its chief bombmaker is a blow to the group as it will take time to train other men up to the deadly standard of Ali Abdi.

It comes less than a fortnight since the group claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack near a military base in the city of Beledweyne, around 210 miles north of Somalian capital Mogadishu, which killed at least 13 people.

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Maria: Bulgaria Seeks Greece Roma Girl's Return

Bulgaria is to ask the Greek authorities to hand over a young girl who was found in a Roma camp in Greece.

Four-year-old Maria made global headlines when she was found living with a Roma couple - who were not her real parents - in the Greek town of Farsala this month.

DNA tests last week confirmed a Bulgarian couple, Sashka and Atanas Ruseva, were the blonde youngster's biological parents.

The pair, who have nine other children, five of whom are also blonde, live in a ghetto in the central town of Nikolaevo.

Sashka Ruseva, Maria's biological mother, who denies selling her in Greece

Mrs Ruseva, who is under investigation for allegedly selling Maria in 2009, has said she gave birth to a baby girl four years ago in Greece while working as an olive picker.

She has admitted giving the child away because she was too poor to care for her, but has denied she took any money for her, and has said she wanted to take the girl back.

The Greek Roma couple, who have been charged with abducting Maria and procuring false documents relating to the girl's birth certificate, have also said they want to keep her.

The pair, named locally as Hristos Salis, 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, deny the charges.

Bulgaria's child protection agency said on Tuesday that it would "undertake the necessary actions for the return of Maria ... who was indisputably proven to be the child of Sashka and Atanas Ruseva".

Maria was found living with Hristos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou

However, she is unlikely to rejoin her poverty-stricken family if she is sent back to Bulgaria and will instead be placed in a crisis centre or in foster care.

"Maria will remain there until a solution is found for her upbringing - a return to the biological family, or placement with relatives, in foster care or in a social institution," the agency said.

The agency also ordered a review of the conditions under which Maria's seven younger siblings were raised, with a view to taking protective measures if necessary.

Maria is currently in the care of Athens-based charity Smile of the Child.

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Syria Polio: Call For 'Vaccination Ceasefire'

The first cases of polio in 14 years have been confirmed in Syria, prompting calls for fighting to be halted to allow children at risk to be vaccinated.

Ten cases of the disease - which has been reduced by 99% since 1988 due to a global eradication programme - have been discovered in the northeast and 12 more people are thought to be displaying polio symptoms.

The confirmed cases are among babies and toddlers who were "under-immunised", said World Health Organisation spokesman Oliver Rosenbauer.

He said the risk was high of it spreading across the region.

Save the Children said truces were needed to allow immunisation teams to reach children and prevent an epidemic of the disease, which can cause paralysis and death.

"Vaccination ceasefires would mean pauses in fighting to allow vaccination campaigns to take place across both sides of the conflict," it said.

"These ceasefires, also known as days of tranquillity, have previously been carried out successfully in Afghanistan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo."

Syria launched a vaccination campaign around the country days after the Geneva-based WHO said it had received reports of the cluster of acute flaccid paralysis cases in Syria's Deir el-Zour province.

The humanitarian crisis has brought an end to vaccination programmes

Nearly all Syrian children were vaccinated against the disease - which begins with fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck and pain in the limbs - before the civil war began more than two years ago.

Polio was last reported in Syria in 1999.

In 1998, polio was endemic in 125 countries and there were an estimated 350,000 cases but that had fallen to just 223 cases in 2012 and it was endemic in just Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

However, WHO warns that if just one child remains infected the risk of the disease spreading again remains and eradication efforts in Nigeria and Pakistan have all been harmed by attacks by Islamist militants.

The Syrian conflict, which began as a largely peaceful uprising against President Bashar al Assad in March 2011, has triggered a humanitarian crisis on a massive scale.

More than 100,000 people have lost their lives and up to seven million more have been driven from their homes.

Save the Children's chief executive Justin Forsyth said: "The fact that an outbreak of polio has now been confirmed in Syria is another sign of the desperate and spiralling humanitarian situation there.

"The UN Security Council recently agreed on access for humanitarian relief across Syria. This polio crisis is a clear test of whether all sides of the conflict will respect the Security Council's presidential statement and allow unhindered humanitarian aid."

UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, in Syria trying to organise peace talks, has warned of the of the war-ravaged country becoming like Somalia.

"What history teaches us is that after a crisis like this there is no going back," the Algerian diplomat told the Jeune Afrique website ahead of his first visit to Syria since December, when he angered the regime by saying all powers should be handed over to a transitional government.

"The real danger is a sort of 'Somalisation', but even more deep and lasting than what we have seen in Somalia."

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Merkel's Phone 'Bugged For Decade By US'

The United States may have bugged Angela Merkel's phone for more than 10 years, it has been claimed.

Der Spiegel magazine said the German chancellor's mobile telephone had been listed by the National Security Agency's (NSA) Special Collection Service (SCS) since 2002 and was still on the list weeks before Barack Obama visited Berlin in June.

Germany's outrage over reports of bugging of Ms Merkel's phone by the NSA prompted it to summon the US ambassador for the first time in living memory.

In an SCS document cited by Der Spiegel, the agency said it had a "not legally registered spying branch" in the US embassy in Berlin, the exposure of which would lead to "grave damage for the relations of the United States to another government".

Mr Obama met with Ms Merkel in Berlin earlier this year

From there, NSA and CIA staff were tapping communication in Berlin's government district with high-tech surveillance.

The military-led NSA is America's biggest and most secret spy agency, which specialises in hi-tech eavesdropping of satellite, cell and fibre-optic communications globally.

It has huge 'data warehouses' in the US where it stores voice, fax, data, emails and internet traffic indefinitely.

Communications of all non-Americans are considered to be legitimate targets of the NSA, however it tries to stress its important role in thwarting terror attacks.

Quoting a secret document from 2010, Der Spiegel said such branches existed in about 80 locations around the world, including Paris, Madrid, Rome, Prague, Geneva and Frankfurt.

The magazine said it was not clear whether the SCS had recorded conversations or just connection data.

Mr Obama apologised to Merkel when she called him on Wednesday to seek clarification on the issue, Der Spiegel wrote, citing a source in Ms Merkel's office.

The NSA is commissioning a new 1 million square foot Utah 'data warehouse'

Ms Merkel's spokesman and the White House declined comment.

The rift over US surveillance activities first emerged earlier this year after reports that Washington had bugged European Union offices and had tapped half a billion phone calls, emails and text messages in Germany in a typical month.

But it appeared close to resolution after Ms Merkel's government said in August - just weeks before a parliamentary election - the United States had given sufficient assurances they were upholding German law.

Mr Obama ordered a review of US surveillance programmes after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents that raised alarm in America and abroad.

:: On Sunday, Swiss President Ueli Maurer confirmed his government would role out new technology designed to better shield state communications from eavesdroppers.

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Brooklyn Stabbings: Five Dead Including A Baby

Police have named a woman and four young children who were stabbed to death in New York City.

Officers arrived at an apartment on 57th Street, near Ninth Avenue, in Brooklyn, at 11pm on Saturday and found all five victims unconscious and unresponsive.

They were named as Qiao Zhen Li, 37, Linda Zhuo, nine, Amy Zhuo, seven, Kevin Zhuo, five, and one-year-old William Zhuo.

William and the two girls were pronounced dead at the scene by emergency crews.

The woman and five-year-old boy were taken to separate Brooklyn hospitals where they were later pronounced dead.

A police officer seals off the street near the attack

Police did not give the relationships of the victims but said they all lived in the home.

Sources said a 25-year-old suspect, believed to be a relative, was arrested at the scene.

Police handcuffed the man inside the apartment. He was wearing jeans and had blood on his bare feet.

The children's distraught father reportedly arrived home from work to find the area sealed off by police.

One report said a machete and scissors were taken from the building as evidence.

Fire Department spokesman Jim Long said emergency workers received a 911 call from a person stabbed at the residence in the Sunset Park neighbourhood.

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Al Qaeda-Linked Syrian Rebel Leader 'Killed'

The leader of the powerful Syrian rebel group the al Nusra Front has been killed, according to Syrian state-run TV.

According to the one-line report, Abu Mohammad al Golani was killed in the coastal province of Latakia.

It did not say when or give further details.

However the rebel group said in a statement on Saturday that its leader was in good health.

"What was claimed by one channel alone, regarding what it claimed was the killing of the emir of al Nusra Front, was a lie," said the group.

The extremist front has become one of the most effective among the rebel groups fighting President Bashar Assad's forces.

The al Nusra Front played a key part in the Battle of Aleppo

However, it has links to al Qaeda and is classed by the US, the UK and the UN as a terrorist organisation.

If al Golani's death is confirmed it will be a significant blow to rebels, who consider the group to be the "special forces" of the battle against the regime.

The group, whose goal is to overthrow Mr Assad and establish an Islamist state under Sharia law, announced its creation in January 2012 and were key players in the Battle of Aleppo.

But they have an uneasy alliance with the National Coalition for Opposition Forces and many rebel groups consider them to be too extreme.

Al Nusra is opposed to western intervention in the nearly three-year-long Syrian civil war and many members consider the US to be an enemy of Islam.

The news of al Golani's death came as a car bomb outside a mosque in Damascus killed at least 40, including seven children.

Dozens of people were wounded in the car bombing in the rebel-controlled town of Suq Wadi Barada, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Anti-regime activists blamed the attack on government forces, while state news agency SANA said "the car exploded while the terrorists were packing it with explosives".

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Ten Cars Explode In Baghdad, Killing Dozens

Ten cars rigged with explosives have blown up in Baghdad killing more than 38 people.

The bombs were hidden in parked cars and detonated over a 30-minute period in busy streets, mainly in Shia areas.

In a separate incident, at least 12 soldiers were killed in the northern city of Mosul, when a man driving a car blew himself up outside a government bank.

The soldiers were waiting to collect their salaries, police said. 

One of the wrecked cars is lifted away

At least 100 people were injured in the Baghdad attacks, many hurt as they attended markets.

Hundreds have been killed in Iraq this month, with the often sectarian-fuelled violence reaching its highest level since 2008.

Around 1,000 people were killed and more than 2,000 hurt in September alone, according to the UN.

And unofficial counts for October suggest more than 600 have been killed.

Sunni militants, including the local offshoot of al-Qaeda, are believed to be responsible for the attacks, which usually target Shia areas.

The Shia-led government has been accused of failing to address grievances among the Sunni Arab minority, including allegations of abuses by security forces.

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Syria Submits Chemical Weapon Stockpile Plan

Syria has filed details of its poison gas and nerve agent programme and an initial plan to destroy it to the world's chemical weapons watchdog, it has been confirmed.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said in a statement that Syria completed its declaration on October 24, as part of a strict and ambitious timeline that aims to destroy the lethal stockpile by mid-2014.

The Hague-based group said such declarations by member states "provide the basis on which plans are devised for a systematic, total and verified destruction of declared chemical weapons and production facilities".

Some of Syria's gas stockpile is designed for loading into artillery shells

The OPCW has been working in conjunction with the United Nations after a resolution was passed for the stockpile destruction.

Such declarations made to the organisation remain confidential and no details of Syria's programme were released.

Syria already had given preliminary details to the OPCW when it said it was joining the organisation in September in a move that warded off possible United States-led military strikes.

It came after widespread condemnation of an August 21 chemical weapon attack on a Damascus suburb. Syria denies responsibility for the deadly attack.

Dutch OPCW special coordinator Sigrid Kaag in Damascus

OPCW inspectors were hastily dispatched to Syria this month and have visited most of the 23 sites Damascus declared and begun overseeing destruction work to ensure that machines used to mix chemicals and fill munitions with poison gas are no longer functioning.

Syria is believed to possess around 1,000 tons of chemical weapons, including mustard gas and nerve agent sarin.

It has not yet been decided how or where destruction of Syria's chemical weapons will happen.

Syria's declaration includes a general plan for destruction that will be considered by the OPCW's 41-nation executive council on November 15.

Norway's foreign minister announced Friday that the country had turned down a US request to receive the bulk of Syria's chemical weapons for destruction because it does not have the capabilities to complete the task by the deadlines given.

The US army has chemical destruction units which could be utilised in Syria

The US and Russia have extensive experience in destruction of chemical stockpiles, after they significantly reduced their own stockpiles following the end of the Cold War.

The Pentagon has released details of mobile chemical weapon destruction units it says could be deployed to the region.

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