Cleric arrested in Vatican fraud probe
A senior Catholic cleric accused of plotting to smuggle millions of euros into Italy on a private jet has been arrested as part of a sweeping probe of the scandal-plagued Vatican bank, prosecutors say.Nunzio Scarano, known as "monsignor" in recognition of his seniority at the Holy See, is accused of fraud and corruption for plotting to illegally carry about $26m in cash into Italy from Switzerland.
The 61-year-old priest was arrested on Friday along with a former member of the secret service and a financial broker after an investigation into the Institute for Works of Religion - as the Vatican bank is known raised suspicions he was involved in money laundering.
Rome prosecutor Nello Rossi said the money belonged to Salerno brothers, Paolo, Cesare, and Maurizio D'Amico, who own a Rome-based fleet of oil tankers and was the "fruit of tax evasion".
Broker Giovanni Carenzio, who is also under investigation in the Canary Islands for fraud according to Italian media reports, was safeguarding the money for the brothers and was looking for a way to smuggle it into Italy.
Former agent Giovanni Maria Zito was tasked with bringing the money in on a private jet, but the deal fell through when the three men argued, Rossi said.
While the jet made it to Locarno in northern Italy and waited at the airport for four days with €20m on board, the plan to collect the money and drive it to Scarano's house in Rome under armed guard was aborted.
The biggest scandal involving the Vatican was
in 1982 over the bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosia, in which the Vatican was the
main shareholder and which had been accused of laundering money for the
Sicilian mafia.
The bank was back in the headlines in 2012, when its head Ettore Gotti
Tedeschi was sacked by the board after a major falling out with the Holy See's
Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone.In a bid to tighten control of its activities, Pope Francis announced a sweeping study of the bank on Wednesday before a possible clear-out of top management at the Holy See.
In his first real step towards reform, the pontiff is to take a hands-on approach, ensuring that everything a special five-member commission uncovers will be reported directly to him.
India to double gas prices
India's government has approved a doubling of natural gas prices, the first hike in three years, in a politically sensitive decision set to take effect around election time next year.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs announced late on Thursday that the price of domestically produced natural gas should rise to $8 per unit from the current $4.2 in April next year.
"It will be applicable from April 1 2014 and will be valid for five years," Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily told the Press Trust of India news agency.
The new policy, which will raise the cost of electricity, transport fuel, fertiliser and cooking gas, will benefit domestic gas producers whose shares rose sharply on Friday morning.
India's largest state-run energy explorer ONGC jumped as much as 10.12% to 353.0 rupees, while private energy giant Reliance Industries rose 5.12% to 873.0 rupees.
The benchmark 30-share Sensex index was also up 1.50% at 19 158.9 points.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) said the "disastrous" decision had been rammed through despite objections by cabinet members and would lead to a damaging rise in inflation and higher costs for farmers.
CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta said the government had caved in to "pressure" from the corporate sector.
India is scheduled to go to the polls in the first half of 2014 with inflation which has often climbed to double figures during recent years one of the main issues affecting voters.
The government earlier partially deregulated petrol and hiked diesel prices in an effort to contain ballooning debt caused in part by fuel subsidies.
Kerry presses Mideast peace bid
US Secretary of State John Kerry launched a
second day of talks on Friday aimed at reviving moribund Middle East peace negotiations, sounding out
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas after talks in Jerusalem that went on into the
night.
Kerry, who is trying to break a protracted deadlock in the negotiations, huddled in a Jerusalem hotel until nearly 01:30 (2230 GMT) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hear his views on the way forward.
After the four-hour meeting, Kerry's motorcade made a nearly two-hour drive through the occupied West Bank to return to Jordanian capital, where he was to have lunch with Abbas.
Aides said that further shuttle diplomacy between the two sides was possible over the next two days.
Officials were tight-lipped about Kerry's meeting with Netanyahu, held over a dinner of red tuna and salmon ceviche at a hotel suite named after Israel's slain peacemaking prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Kerry "reiterated his strong and sustained commitment to working with all parties to achieve two states, living side-by-side with peace and security", a US official said on condition of anonymity, calling the talks "productive".
Hopes for breakthrough played down
Kerry has made Middle East peace a signature priority. Since the veteran senator and former presidential candidate became the top US diplomat in February, he has visited the region five times.
US officials have played down hopes of a breakthrough but Kerry has said he wants progress before the UN General Assembly in September, when Abbas could rally international opinion against Israel if he sees no movement.
The immediate task is not a settlement to one of the world's most intractable disputes but a much more modest goal - resuming direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians after a gap of nearly three years.
After the quick failure of the last round, the Palestinian Authority wants guarantees that Israel will freeze construction of settlements on occupied land and commit to the principle of a peace deal based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel has retorted that it is ready to negotiate but will not accept "pre-conditions". Just a day before Kerry's visit, an Israeli committee gave final approval of 69 new settler homes in annexed Arab east Jerusalem.
While the United States was low key in its reaction, Palestinian senior negotiator Hanan Ashrawi called the construction approval an Israeli repudiation of Kerry's peace initiative.
Release of prisoners
"And then they blame the Palestinians for not coming to the negotiating table," she told AFP.
US officials say they want to build a solid foundation for the peace talks so that any renewed negotiations are not just symbolic but have a real chance of moving towards a lasting deal.
Some ideas floated include a release from Israel of Palestinian prisoners jailed since before the 1993 Oslo peace accords, a gesture that could give Abbas more political room to negotiate.
Another possibility would be an informal agreement for Israel not to announce new settlements without explicitly declaring a freeze a step that would go down badly in Netanyahu's right-leaning government.
Netanyahu already had tense relations with President Barack Obama in the US leader's first term over pressure to make peace. The Israeli premier emerged from January elections with coalition partners even more scornful of a peace deal.
Trade and Industry Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the far-right Jewish Home party, recently described the Palestinian issue as "shrapnel in the buttocks" - a problem that Israel simply had to keep suffering through.
An opinion poll published by the Israel Hayom newspaper on Friday found that, while most Israeli Jews supported a resumption of negotiations, there was scepticism about whether they would achieve anything.
The poll found that nearly 70% of respondents were against confidence-building "gestures" towards the Palestinians, such as releasing prisoners and easing movement for Palestinian residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Kerry, who is trying to break a protracted deadlock in the negotiations, huddled in a Jerusalem hotel until nearly 01:30 (2230 GMT) with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to hear his views on the way forward.
After the four-hour meeting, Kerry's motorcade made a nearly two-hour drive through the occupied West Bank to return to Jordanian capital, where he was to have lunch with Abbas.
Aides said that further shuttle diplomacy between the two sides was possible over the next two days.
Officials were tight-lipped about Kerry's meeting with Netanyahu, held over a dinner of red tuna and salmon ceviche at a hotel suite named after Israel's slain peacemaking prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Kerry "reiterated his strong and sustained commitment to working with all parties to achieve two states, living side-by-side with peace and security", a US official said on condition of anonymity, calling the talks "productive".
Hopes for breakthrough played down
Kerry has made Middle East peace a signature priority. Since the veteran senator and former presidential candidate became the top US diplomat in February, he has visited the region five times.
US officials have played down hopes of a breakthrough but Kerry has said he wants progress before the UN General Assembly in September, when Abbas could rally international opinion against Israel if he sees no movement.
The immediate task is not a settlement to one of the world's most intractable disputes but a much more modest goal - resuming direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians after a gap of nearly three years.
After the quick failure of the last round, the Palestinian Authority wants guarantees that Israel will freeze construction of settlements on occupied land and commit to the principle of a peace deal based on the borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel has retorted that it is ready to negotiate but will not accept "pre-conditions". Just a day before Kerry's visit, an Israeli committee gave final approval of 69 new settler homes in annexed Arab east Jerusalem.
While the United States was low key in its reaction, Palestinian senior negotiator Hanan Ashrawi called the construction approval an Israeli repudiation of Kerry's peace initiative.
Release of prisoners
"And then they blame the Palestinians for not coming to the negotiating table," she told AFP.
US officials say they want to build a solid foundation for the peace talks so that any renewed negotiations are not just symbolic but have a real chance of moving towards a lasting deal.
Some ideas floated include a release from Israel of Palestinian prisoners jailed since before the 1993 Oslo peace accords, a gesture that could give Abbas more political room to negotiate.
Another possibility would be an informal agreement for Israel not to announce new settlements without explicitly declaring a freeze a step that would go down badly in Netanyahu's right-leaning government.
Netanyahu already had tense relations with President Barack Obama in the US leader's first term over pressure to make peace. The Israeli premier emerged from January elections with coalition partners even more scornful of a peace deal.
Trade and Industry Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the far-right Jewish Home party, recently described the Palestinian issue as "shrapnel in the buttocks" - a problem that Israel simply had to keep suffering through.
An opinion poll published by the Israel Hayom newspaper on Friday found that, while most Israeli Jews supported a resumption of negotiations, there was scepticism about whether they would achieve anything.
The poll found that nearly 70% of respondents were against confidence-building "gestures" towards the Palestinians, such as releasing prisoners and easing movement for Palestinian residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Give peace a chance: Sceptical Israelis
A majority of Israelis support resuming peace
talks with the Palestinians, a poll published on Friday said, as US Secretary
of State John Kerry presses leaders from both sides to return to negotiations.
The poll in daily Israel Hayom said 56.95%
believed negotiations should resume, against 28.6% who thought they should not.But there was scepticism over whether talks would achieve anything, with 55.4% saying it was not "possible to reach a permanent status arrangement".
And nearly 70% were against "gestures" of peace to the Palestinians, such as releasing prisoners and easing movement for Palestinian residents of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Kerry, on his fifth visit to the region, met late into Thursday night with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his latest bid to revive talks, which broke down nearly three years ago.
He was to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Friday afternoon in Jordan before heading back to Jerusalem.
The day before Kerry's arrival, an Israeli planning committee granted final approval for the construction of 69 new settler homes in annexed east Jerusalem.
Israeli settlement construction was the issue that scuppered direct peace talks in September 2010 just weeks after they began when Israel failed to renew a freeze on all new West Bank construction.
A cartoon in Arabic-language daily Al-Quds had Kerry arrival in Israel looking dejected as Netanyahu and Israeli pro-settlement Economics Minister Naftali Bennett stood in front of the new settlement, saying "69 new settlement homes welcome you".
The poll of 500 Israeli Jews had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Leaked US cables 'had classified info'
US Army Private first class Bradley Manning
disclosed potentially damaging classified information in at least 117 of the
more than 250 000 US State Department
cables he has acknowledged sending to WikiLeaks, according to evidence
prosecutors presented at his court-martial on Thursday.
The cables published on the website of the anti-secrecy organisation in late 2010 contained protected information about foreign governments; foreign relations; US military activities; scientific, technological or economic matters; and vulnerabilities in America's infrastructure, a State Department classification expert said.
Manning said in a courtroom statement in February that since the cables were labelled for wide distribution within the government, he believed that "the vast majority" of them were not classified, even though they were on a computer network reserved for classified material. He contends the cables revealed secret pacts and duplicity that, while possibly embarrassing, should be publicly exposed.
In written testimony read aloud by a prosecutor, classification expert Nicholas Murphy listed 96 cables that he said had been properly classified as "confidential" and 21 properly classified as "secret". His testimony revealed for the first time the specific cables that are the basis for a federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charge that is among 21 counts the former intelligence analyst faces.
The globe-spanning reports include at least six sent from the US embassy in Baghdad from 2006 to 2009. One from 5 January 2007, reported that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "is increasingly willing to allow targeted military action against elements of Moqtada al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi militia and other Sadr organisations".
A confidential 14 December 2007, cable from the US embassy in Moscow reported on a consensus among Russian political observers on "a need for the Kremlin to reform itself and reverse a pendulum that has swung too far in favour of state authority".
Contradictory evidence
Prosecutors began presenting testimony about the cables on Wednesday when a former State Department official testified on cross-examination that the agency's computer network would have anyone with Manning's top-secret security clearance unrestricted access to the cables. The government alleges he stole them.
Earlier on Thursday, the military judge ruled that Manning's lawyers can offer evidence contradicting the government's assertion that he revealed classified information in a leaked battlefield video from Iraq.
The judge, Army Colonel Denise Lind, took judicial notice of the document, a preliminary step toward admitting evidence.
The document is an assessment by a former US Central Command official of video showing a 2007 US helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed at least eight people, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. His assessment was that the video should be unclassified.
That contradicted evidence offered by prosecutors. They have presented an assessment from a Pentagon official that the video revealed military tactics, techniques and procedures and should be classified.
Manning has acknowledged giving the video to WikiLeaks but denies that it revealed national defence information.
The most serious charge Manning faces is aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.
The cables published on the website of the anti-secrecy organisation in late 2010 contained protected information about foreign governments; foreign relations; US military activities; scientific, technological or economic matters; and vulnerabilities in America's infrastructure, a State Department classification expert said.
Manning said in a courtroom statement in February that since the cables were labelled for wide distribution within the government, he believed that "the vast majority" of them were not classified, even though they were on a computer network reserved for classified material. He contends the cables revealed secret pacts and duplicity that, while possibly embarrassing, should be publicly exposed.
In written testimony read aloud by a prosecutor, classification expert Nicholas Murphy listed 96 cables that he said had been properly classified as "confidential" and 21 properly classified as "secret". His testimony revealed for the first time the specific cables that are the basis for a federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act charge that is among 21 counts the former intelligence analyst faces.
The globe-spanning reports include at least six sent from the US embassy in Baghdad from 2006 to 2009. One from 5 January 2007, reported that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "is increasingly willing to allow targeted military action against elements of Moqtada al-Sadr's Jaish al-Mahdi militia and other Sadr organisations".
A confidential 14 December 2007, cable from the US embassy in Moscow reported on a consensus among Russian political observers on "a need for the Kremlin to reform itself and reverse a pendulum that has swung too far in favour of state authority".
Contradictory evidence
Prosecutors began presenting testimony about the cables on Wednesday when a former State Department official testified on cross-examination that the agency's computer network would have anyone with Manning's top-secret security clearance unrestricted access to the cables. The government alleges he stole them.
Earlier on Thursday, the military judge ruled that Manning's lawyers can offer evidence contradicting the government's assertion that he revealed classified information in a leaked battlefield video from Iraq.
The judge, Army Colonel Denise Lind, took judicial notice of the document, a preliminary step toward admitting evidence.
The document is an assessment by a former US Central Command official of video showing a 2007 US helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed at least eight people, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. His assessment was that the video should be unclassified.
That contradicted evidence offered by prosecutors. They have presented an assessment from a Pentagon official that the video revealed military tactics, techniques and procedures and should be classified.
Manning has acknowledged giving the video to WikiLeaks but denies that it revealed national defence information.
The most serious charge Manning faces is aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.
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