Israel's top police officer on today pledged a new task force to combat Jerusalem unrest, after Palestinians hurled Molotov cocktails at an apartment taken over by Jewish settlers.
	"We are moving ahead with a comprehensive programme incorporating the latest technology, intelligence gathering and the establishment of a new police unit for dealing with incidents," Commissioner Yohanan Danino told officers.
	"Jerusalem residents are entitled to a high level of personal security...And the issue is at the top of Israel Police's priorities," he said in remarks carried on the force's official Twitter feed.
	No one was injured in the incident late yesterday in the flashpoint east Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan, where a group of Palestinians fired flares and threw petrol bombs at the building, a police statement said.
	No serious damage was caused and no arrests were made.
	The building was one of two structures housing 10 apartments that were taken over by Jewish settlers before dawn ...

Israel police plan new unit to fight Jerusalem unrest

PTI Automatic

Apple said today its iCloud server has been the target of "intermittent" attacks, hours after a security blog said Chinese authorities had been trying to hack into the system.
	Apple did not specifically mention China, but posted a security bulletin citing the hack attempts, and indicating its cloud computing platform had not been breached.
	"We're aware of intermittent organized network attacks using insecure certificates to obtain user information, and we take this very seriously," the statement said.
	"These attacks don't compromise iCloud servers, and they don't impact iCloud sign in on iOS devices or Macs running OS X Yosemite using the Safari browser."
	Yosemite is the newest operating system for Mac computers and iOS is the platform for mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads.
	Late yesterday, the security website GreatFire.Org which monitors online censorship in China claimed that "Chinese authorities" had launched the attacks on Apple's iCloud.
	"This is clearly a malicious .

Apple sees iCloud attacks; China hack reported

The International Criminal Court today ordered the interim release of four suspects in former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba's case to avoid their pre-trial detention becoming "disproportionate".
	The four men are accused with Bemba of presenting false information and witness tampering in Bemba's war crimes and crimes against humanity trial.
	Bemba, 51, faces three war crimes counts and two of crimes against humanity for murder, rape and pillage committed by some 1,500 members of his private army in the neighbouring Central African Republic between October 2002 and March 2003.
	"Today Judge Cuno Tarfusser ordered the release of Aime Musamba Kilolo, Jean-Jacques Mangenda Kabongo, Fidele Babala Wandu and Narcisse Arido," the Hague-based ICC said in a statement.
	"The Chamber found that... The release was necessary to avoid that the duration of (their) pre-trial detention become disproportionate," the court said.
	Kilolu is Bemba's defence lawyer and Mangenda his case manager 

ICC releases four DR Congo war crimes suspect aides

Hackers are increasingly targeting mobile phones to get into bank accounts of victims and steal money, security researchers said today.
	A report by Kaspersky Labs with Interpol found that 60 percent of the malicious programs targeting Android devices between August 2013 and July 2014 were designed to steal money or banking credentials.
	The report focused on Android, which accounts for roughly 85 percent of the mobile device market and 98 percent of mobile malware.
	Just like other online operations, hackers are moving into mobile because more users access the Internet from these devices.
	The survey of users registered with Kaspersky found more than 588,000 Android users worldwide faced financial malware attacks, six times higher than the prior 12 months.
	"It is easy to understand why cybercriminals create so many malicious programs targeting Android devices: these days, smartphones are increasingly often used as a tool to pay online for merchandise and services," the report ...

More hackers targeting mobile phones to get bank info: survey

Oil prices rose today as caution returned after a weak rally spurred by upbeat industrial production data from China, the world's top energy consuming nation, analysts said.
	US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for November delivery advanced 45 cents to USD 83.16 a barrel compared with yesterday's close.
	Brent North Sea crude for December won 51 cents to stand at USD 85.91 a barrel in London midday deals.
	Daniel Ang, investment analyst with Phillip Futures in Singapore, said investors were cheered after China said industrial production rose 8.0 per cent year-on-year in September. That was a rebound from a more than five year low of 6.9 per cent in August.
	He added that the figure overshadowed data showing China's economy grew in the third quarter at its slowest pace since the depths of the global financial crisis.
	"Industrial production is a good indication of crude oil demand from China," he told AFP, although he added that it remained to be seen whether this would be sustained .

Oil prices rise on Chinese data

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei today told Iraq's visiting premier that the Baghdad government is capable of defeating Islamic State jihadists without foreign troops being deployed.
	"We stand beside you and will seriously defend your government like the previous government," Khamenei said in a meeting in Tehran with Iraq's Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi.
	"Iran recognises the security of Iraq, (our) neighbour and brother country, as its own security," Khamenei said, quoted by state television.
	The all-powerful Iranian leader said he believed that Iraqis had "the capacity to overcome the terrorists and establish security" alone without the "need for foreign presence".
	To counter an offensive launched by the Islamic State group (IS) on June 9, Iran has supplied Iraqi Kurds with weapons and sent military advisers to Baghdad, while denying it has deployed ground troops.
	But in early October, Iranian television published a rare picture of its elite Quds Force chief, Major .

Khamenei says Iraq can battle IS without foreigners

We have a US election winner -- in the money stakes, anyway.
	The Senate race in North Carolina is on track to be the most expensive congressional contest in US history, likely surpassing a staggering USD 100 million while featuring two candidates few Americans know much about.
	Such is the intensity of the 2014 mid-term elections, in which Republicans hope to snatch six Senate seats from Democrats and thus gain control of the chamber, that outside groups are pouring unprecedented and often untraceable millions into political messaging, wall-to-wall advertisements and on-the-ground electioneering aimed at swaying an election.
	With two weeks to go before the November 4 vote, North Carolina -- a state President Barack Obama barely won in 2008 and lost in 2012 -- is the spending spree's ground zero, where polls show Senate Democrat Kay Hagan clinging to a razor thin lead against Republican challenger Thom Tillis.
	Election funding monitor the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) said ...

North Carolina, America's USD 100-million Senate race?

Kurdish defenders of the strategic Syrian border town of Kobane awaited reinforcements today after weathering another onslaught by Islamic State jihadists.
	Fighting appeared to have diminished after a fierce attack late yesterday by IS fighters, including suicide bombers, witnesses and monitors said.
	IS forces in the east of the town were exchanging fire with Kurdish militia in the west and there were reports of an explosion, probably a car bomb, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
	Kobane has become a crucial symbolic battleground in the war against IS, which is fighting to extend areas under its control in Iraq and Syria where it has declared an Islamic "caliphate".
	Ankara announced yesterday that it would help Kurdish forces from Iraq to relieve Kobane's beleaguered defenders, in a major shift of policy that was swiftly welcomed by Washington.
	Iraqi Kurdish officials have said they will provide the training, although any forces sent will be Syrian ...

Syria Kurds weather IS assault as they await reinforcements

Canada was faced with the specter of Islamist violence on Tuesday after an attack by a suspected jihadist killed a soldier, a day before Ottawa deployed warplanes to bomb Islamic State militants.
	The assailant was fatally shot by police on Monday after he ran over two soldiers with his car in a Quebec parking lot -- a scenario which had been depicted only last month in IS propaganda.
	The suspect was described by Canadian authorities as someone they believed had become "radicalized."
	At a press conference, Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said the attack was "clearly linked to terrorist ideology."
	"I am horrified by what took place here," he said. "This is a terrible act of violence against our country, against our military, against our values."
	The driver smashed his car into the two soldiers in a supermarket parking lot before fleeing with police in pursuit.
	Police said the 25-year-old suspect crashed his Nissan Altima into a roadside ditch and rolled it over. When he ...

Canada fears new Islamist threat after soldier killed

The internationally recognised Libyan government called today for a civil disobedience campaign in Tripoli until its forces retake the capital from militias who seized it.
	Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thani's cabinet said on its Facebook page that it has ordered Libya's armed forces "to advance on Tripoli to liberate it and state institutions from the grip of armed groups".
	But the government urged residents to launch "a civil disobedience campaign until the arrival of the army".
	In an interview with AFP Saturday, Thani said military forces in the strife-torn country had united to try to recapture Tripoli and second city Benghazi from Islamist militias.
	Since a 2011 revolution that toppled longtime leader Moamer Gaddafi, interim authorities have failed to rebuild the regular army and had to rely on state-backed militias.
	Former rebels who fought against Gaddafi have formed powerful militias and seized control of large parts of turmoil-gripped Libya in the past three years.
	Thani's 

Libya government calls for civil disobedience in Tripoli

EU anti-trust regulators said today that US firms Honeywell and DuPont may have hindered competition when they produced the only environmentally acceptable auto coolant for the European market.
	The European Commission told the two firms that the cooperation they launched in 2010 to make the air-conditioning coolant may "have limited its availability and technical development in breach of EU anti-trust rules."
	The Commission, the 28-member EU's executive branch, said it sent a "statement of objections" to the companies, which amounts to a formal warning over suspected violations of the bloc's competition rules.
	Since last year, EU norms demand that car makers use the refrigerant called R1234yf, which is made by Honeywell and DuPont, on the grounds that it produces far less greenhouse gases than older coolants.
	The Commission said it found that the US firms' cooperation "resulted in restrictive effects on competition.
	"These effects include a limitation of the available quantities .

EU regulators target Honeywell, DuPont over coolant

A batch of experimental Ebola vaccine was today set to arrive in Switzerland from Canada, as researchers scramble to beat the deadly disease which has west Africa in its grip.
	Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director general of the World Health Organization, said the 800 vials would arrive by plane today and be transferred tomorrow to the Geneva University Hospital.
	"It's better to keep them in a central pool than to start to spread them around and then to try to keep track of whether of all the mini-stocks we have have been kept at the right temperature," Kieny told reporters.
	The vaccine must be stored at minus 80 degrees Celsius (-112 degrees Fahrenheit).
	Canada has offered the Geneva-based WHO 800 vials -- each believed to contain about two doses -- of the rVSV vaccine developed at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.
	Licenced by the Canadian government to US firm NewLink Genetics, rVSV is one of two experimental Ebola vaccines identified by the WHO as having shown .

WHO pools experimental Ebola vaccines as experts scramble to

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu unveiled sweeping new security laws branded as repressive by critics, saying those in possession of banned objects at protests would face up to four years in jail.
	The changes were first announced last week by the Islamic-rooted government following deadly protests in Istanbul and the Kurdish-majority southeast over Turkey's Syria policy.
	Davutoglu said the legislation is aimed at ending the ambiguity over the use in demonstrations of "weapons of violence", including Molotov cocktails, stones and other sharp objects.
	Those protestors possessing such objects -- not currently regarded as a crime -- will be detected and banned from entering rallies.
	Police will be able to arrest those suspected of possessing such objects at a protest, and those convicted could face up to four years in jail, he added.
	"Molotov cocktails are weapons of violence. If someone sets fire to ambulances, libraries, mosques or koranic institutions by throwing Molotov ...

Turkey unveils stringent new anti-protest laws

Russian investigators today accused senior airport officials of criminal negligence over a plane crash at a Moscow airport that killed the head of French oil giant Total, Christophe de Margerie, whose private jet hit a snowplough on takeoff.
	Several executives would be suspended, the investigators said of the accident which also killed three crew members. They added that the driver of the snow-clearing machine was drunk on the job -- a claim disputed by his lawyer.
	At Total, one of the world's biggest oil companies, staff at its Paris headquarters observed a minute's silence for their charismatic 63-year-old boss, who had been known by the affectionate nickname "Big Moustache".
	"The group is set up to ensure the proper continuity of its governance and its activities, to deal with this tragic event," Total's secretary general Jean-Jacques Guilbaud said, as top executives were due to hold an emergency meeting.
	One of France's best-known business leaders, De Margerie was an outspoken 

Russia blames 'negligent' airport bosses for Total CEO's crash

UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged Israel and the Palestinians today to move away from unilateral actions stoking tensions and make the "tough compromises" needed to end their decades-old conflict.
	Ban spoke to the UN Security Council after returning from a visit to the Middle East where he saw first-hand the destruction in Gaza wrought by the 50-day war between Israel and Hamas militants.
	"Leaders on both sides must overcome their differences and dispense with the unilateral initiatives that serve only to fuel mistrust and polarization," the secretary general said.
	The appeal came after Palestinian youths attacked an apartment building taken over by Jewish settlers in east Jerusalem and as the Palestinians pushed for a divisive UN resolution on ending the Israeli occupation in 2016.
	UN diplomats say the draft resolution stands no chance of being adopted, but they appear at a loss to point a way forward to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
	Describing the two-state solution as the ..

UN tells Israel, Palestinians to stop unilateral actions

Iranian security services have arrested several "spies" in Bushehr province, where the country's sole nuclear plant is based, Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi announced today.
	"Thanks to the vigilance of the ministry, which monitors the movements of foreign intelligence services, agents who wanted to carry out surveillance and collect information... In Bushehr province have been identified and brought to justice," said Alavi.
	He did not elaborate on the number of people arrested or their nationality.
	"This province is a hub for the country's economy, industry, military, and commercial and nuclear sectors and has a special position at the national level," Fars news agency quoted him as saying on a visit to the region.
	The nuclear power plant in Bushehr, which produces 1,000 megawatts of electricity, was constructed by Russia after being delayed for years and handed over to Iran in September 2013.
	Iran plans to build 20 more plants in the future, including four in Bushehr ...

Iran arrests 'spies' in province with nuclear reactor

Iraq's new defence minister vowed today to investigate military failings that allowed the Islamic State group to overrun large areas of the country and to hold those responsible to account.
	"We will investigate with depth and sincerity" and hold accountable those who made mistakes or failed to perform their duties, Khaled al-Obaidi said in his first speech since being approved by parliament on Saturday.
	"I will not relent in striking corruption and the corrupt, and with God's help, we will work to build a professional military institution."
	Obaidi will face major challenges in doing so.
	IS-led militants launched a major offensive in June, overrunning Iraq's second city Mosul as security forces collapsed en masse, in some cases even abandoning their uniforms and weapons in their haste to flee.
	The militants then swept through much of the country's Sunni Arab heartland, where many residents were deeply mistrustful of Iraq's Shiite-led government.
	Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has 

Iraq minister vows to probe army debacle in IS assault

The Catholic Church in Sri Lanka today asked the government to clarify its plans for a snap presidential election, amid fears the polls will scupper a planned visit by the Pope.
	Sri Lanka has not yet announced an election date, but the information minister said yesterday that the polls would be held in January, when Pope Francis is due to visit.
	The Church had earlier said it would be "inappropriate" for the Pope to visit any country at the time of a national election.
	"We are yet to decide anything," church spokesman Cyril Gamini Fernando told AFP. "There will be a meeting of the bishops to discuss this."
	Official sources said Church authorities had asked the government to clarify Information Minister Keheliya Rambukwella's announcement on yesterday that President Mahinda Rajapakse would run for a third term at an election in January.
	An early election had been widely expected, but yesterday's announcement was the first confirmation that Rajapakse is seeking a fresh mandate ...

Sri Lankan snap polls cast doubt on Pope's visit

Monica Lewinsky said she was one of the first victims of cyber-bullying, becoming "Patient Zero" after falling in love with Bill Clinton, as the former White House intern gave her first speech in 13 years.
	In an emotional address at Forbes' inaugural Under 30 summit in Philadelphia that recalled the 1998 sex scandal with Clinton yesterday, the 41-year-old brunette announced a campaign to end online bullying.
	Lewinsky told a packed auditorium that she was "the first person to have their reputation completely destroyed worldwide via the Internet."
	"I was Patient Zero," she said.
	"There was no Facebook, Twitter or Instagram back then.
	"But there were gossip, news and entertainment websites replete with comment sections and emails which could be forwarded.
	"Of course, it was all done on the excruciatingly slow dial up. Yet around the world this story went. A viral phenomenon that, you could argue, was the first moment of truly 'social media'."
	She spoke of her shame and depression .

Monica Lewinsky says she was cyber-bullying Patient Zero

Hong Kong's government said it hopes to have more talks with democracy protest leaders following the first formal negotiations today between officials and student leaders.
	"Today's dialogue will hopefully be the first of several rounds of dialogue," Lam told a press conference after a two-hour meeting with student leaders who have spearheaded more than three weeks of rallies that have caused disruption in the city.
	But Lam, who called the talks "constructive", said the government's firm position is to follow China's insistence that candidates for the city's next leadership election must be vetted by a pro-Beijing committee.
	"If the students cannot accept this position, I am afraid we will continue to have different views," she said.

Hong Kong government says open to more talks with protesters

Afghanistan's new President Ashraf Ghani will head to China next week for a three-day visit, his office said in a statement today, his first trip abroad since being sworn in last month.
	Ghani will be accompanied by a high ranking Afghan government delegation for his first overseas trip since he took office in late September following a prolonged political stand-off over the results of the fraud-tainted presidential election.
	"On official invitation by the president of People's Republic of China Xi Jinping, president Ashraf Ghani along with a high ranking government delegation, will leave for Chinese capital Beijing next week," the statement said without specifying the date.
	During his visit, the Afghan president will hold meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and other Chinese leaders and sign agreements on bilateral relations and cooperation between the two countries, the statement added.
	China, which shares a 76 kilometre border with Afghanistan's far northeast, has a keen 

AFP

AFP

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