A UN panel has begun grilling American officials about the country's compliance with an anti-torture treaty.
	At the start of a two-day hearing, Alessio Bruni of Italy, one of the panel's chief investigators, raised a list of alleged violations ranging from CIA rendition at so-called black sites to police brutality and Guantanamo Bay conditions.
	He asked what measures were taken to implement President Barack Obama's "clear" directives against torture.
	Mary McLeod, the State Department's acting legal adviser, said today the US record since the 9/11 attacks "did not always live up to our own values," including those it is obliged to uphold in the UN Convention Against Torture.
	She acknowledged "we crossed the line" but said there are "ongoing efforts to determine why lapses occurred.

UN anti-torture panel grills US officials

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US-led coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State group and other extremists in Syria have killed more than 860 people, including civilians, since they began in mid-September, an activist group said today.
	The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the vast majority those killed, 746 people, were Islamic State militants, while another 68 were members of al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate known as the Nusra Front. At least 50 civilians, including eight children and five women, also have been killed in the airstrikes, the group said.
	The US-led coalition's aerial campaign in Syria began before dawn on September 23 in what President Barack Obama has called an effort to roll back and ultimately destroy the Islamic State group. The militant extremist group has been the primary target of the coalition's strikes, although on at least two occasions the United States has targeted what it says is a specific cell within the Nusra Front allegedly plotting attacks against American ..

Activists: US-led Syria strikes kill at least 860

An avowed white supremacist from Missouri who is accused in the fatal shooting of three people at two Kansas Jewish sites is expected in court today for a preliminary hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to take his case to trial.
	Frazier Glenn Miller, 74, of Aurora, Missouri, is charged with capital murder in the April 13 attacks outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and a Jewish retirement home in nearby Overland Park, Kansas.
	None of the victims was Jewish.
	William Lewis Corporon, 69, and his grandson Reat Griffin Underwood, 14, were at the community center for a singing contest audition, while 53-year-old Terri LaManno was visiting her mother at the retirement complex.
	Miller shouted "heil Hitler" at television cameras as he was arrested after the killings that shocked the city on the eve of Passover.
	Prosecutors initially charged him with one count of capital murder in the deaths of Corporon and Underwood, and one count of first-degree murder 

Preliminary hearing set in Jewish site shootings

The Indian boxer who refused to accept her Asian Games bronze medal in a protest over the judging can expect a heavy punishment, the head of the sport's governing body AIBA said today.
     L. Sarita Devi lost in the semifinals of the women's lightweight competition at Incheon, South Korea, in September, and tried to give her medal to her opponent at the presentation ceremony as a protest.
     Devi and three coaches received indefinite bans taking in the current women's world championships in South Korea pending a final ruling of a disciplinary commission.
     AIBA president CK Wu told The Associated Press that the commission will make its ruling "very soon" and forecast a strong penalty.
     "She will be heavily punished, there will be zero tolerance," Wu said in a telephone interview from Jeju, South Korea, ahead of the AIBA congress. "If you accept being the winner, you have to accept being the loser. If everyone behaved like that, what type of competition will we have?"
     ...

Protesting Indian boxer facing long ban, says AIBA

Former President George W Bush said that he believes his brother Jeb Bush should run for president but ultimately the former Florida governor must make a decision regardless of any pressure from the family.
	Bush yesterday said his father, former President George H W Bush, also thinks the ex-Florida governor should run in the 2016 White House race.
	"I can tell you I can speak for 41," Bush said, referring to his father, the 41st president of the United States between 1989 and 1993. "He ought to run for president. He would make a great president."
	Jeb Bush has said he would wait until the end of the year before consulting with his family about whether to make a run for president. His potential candidacy has raised the prospect of another showdown between the country's two most prominent political families. Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is the leading potential Democratic contender for 2016.
	George H W Bush lost his re-election bid to Bill Clinton in 1992.
	"We can 

Bush father, son want Jeb Bush run for White House

Tomas Young, a wounded Iraq War veteran who was an outspoken critic of the conflict and the subject of the 2007 documentary "Body of War," has died. He was 34.
	Young died early Monday at his home in Seattle, his wife, Claudia Cuellar, told The Associated Press yesterday.
	"He just went to sleep and never came back," she said. Details about the cause of death were pending, the King County medical examiner's office said.
	Young joined the Army when he was 22, two days after the 9/11 attacks. He had been in Iraq less than a week when he and fellow soldiers came under sniper fire on April 4, 2004, while riding in an unarmored truck in a rescue convoy in Sadr City outside Baghdad, the Kansas City Star reported.
	Young was paralyzed from the chest down because of a bullet to his spine, and he used a wheelchair to get around. The documentary follows Young as a 25-year-old as he deals with his disability and finds his voice speaking out against the Iraq War.
	"Tomas was a voice for his ...

Wounded Iraq War veteran, anti-war activist dies

Four US students who travelled to Russia for a leadership conference had their trip cut short and were ordered home after Russian authorities said they had the wrong visas.
	The four students traveled from California to St Petersburg on Oct 31 under a grant from a nonprofit to attend a two-week leadership conference.
	Immigration authorities and police arrived at the conference unexpectedly Thursday and demanded to see their visas.
	"This was a political statement the Russian government was trying to make," said Scott Winter, who said his son and the others were interrogated and briefly detained while they were put on trial and fined the equivalent of USD 110 each.
	The Tass news agency reported Yulia Nikolayeva, Russia's Federal Migration Service representative in St Petersburg, said in a court hearing that the four had come to Russia on tourist visas but the activity they participated in was considered "social-political activity."
	June Thompson, the executive director of the ...

US students held in Russia headed home

Israeli media reports a Canadian-born woman who served in the Israeli military has joined a Kurdish militia fighting the Islamic State group.
	Channel 10 TV reported yesterday that Gill Rosenberg traveled to Iraq about 10 days ago.
	The 31 year-old has served in the Israeli military and had previously worked as a pilot in Canada, it said. The station said she spent time in a US prison for her part in a phone scam.
	Speaking in Hebrew to Israel Radio she said she contacted the fighters on Facebook. "I was with the guerrillas in the mountains for a few days and then I crossed the border," she said.
	Facebook photos show pictures of her in Israeli army uniform in Jerusalem and what media said were her selfies taken in Iraq.

Canadian-Israeli woman said to join peshmerga

Big Bank Hank, a member of the pioneering hip-hop group the Sugarhill Gang, has died, according to Aree Booker, a funeral director with Eternity Funeral Services in Englewood, New Jersey. He was 57.
	Booker didn't specify the cause of death, but said the rapper died yesterday and that his funeral home would handle the services.
	Big Bank Hank, whose real name was Henry Jackson, was a part of the Sugarhill Gang in 1979 when the band had hip-hop's first hit with "Rapper's Delight." It is one of the most recognised and popular rap songs of all time.
	"Rapper's Delight" was released as hip-hop music started to emerge as a genre, and it landed in the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. It also peaked at No 4 on the Hot Soul Singles chart (now called the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart).
	The Sugarhill Gang also included Master Gee and Wonder Mike. The group formed in Englewood, New Jersey.
	After "Rapper's Delight," the trio had minor successes with songs such as "Apache" and "8th ...

Big Bank Hank of Sugarhill Gang dies at age 57

Iran's semi-official Fars news agency is reporting the country has inaugurated a new long-range radar system capable of detecting small drones and ballistic missiles.
	The yesterday's report says the system, dubbed as Sepehr or Sky, has a range of more than 2,500 kilometers or 1,550 miles.
	Tehran regularly announces military advances that cannot be independently verified.
	Since 1992, Iran has launched a homegrown defense industry that produces light and heavy weapons ranging from mortars and torpedoes to tanks and submarines.
	It has surface-to-surface missiles with a range of about 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles), enough to reach Israel and U.S. Military bases in the region.

Iran announces new long-range radar system

Brazilian police killed more than 11,000 people between 2009 and 2013 for an average of six killings a day, a public safety NGO has said in a report.
	The study by the Sao Paulo-based Brazilian Forum on Public Safety said police nationwide killed 11,197 people over the past five years, while law enforcement agents in the United States killed 11,090 people over the past 30 years.
	"The empirical evidence shows that Brazilian police make abusive use of lethal force to respond to crime and violence," the report said yesterday.
	There were 416 people killed last year in Rio de Janeiro state, the highest number for 2013.
	The study also said that 50,806 people were killed in all homicides last year, about one person every 10 minutes.
	Nearly 70 per cent of the homicide victims were black and more than half of them were aged 15 to 29, the report said.
	In addition to using excessive force, Brazilian police frequently execute suspects, said Bruno Paes Manso, of the University of Sao Paulo's .

Study: Brazilian police kill about 6 people a day

John Doar, who as a top US Justice Department civil rights lawyer in the 1960s fought to protect the rights of black voters and integrate universities in the South, died today at age 92.
	The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son, Burke Doar.
	Doar was a Justice Department civil rights lawyer from 1960 to 1967, serving under the administrations of President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and rising to the position of assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Division.
	Working for the federal government at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Doar challenged discriminatory policies in Southern states that curtailed minority access to the voting booth and state universities.
	In 1962, he escorted James Meredith, the first black student to enroll in the University of Mississippi, onto the campus while then-Gov. Ross Barnett and angry crowds sought to keep the school segregated.
	Doar later was the lead prosecutor in the federal trial arising from the 

John Doar, ex-civil rights lawyer, dies at 92

Libya should immediately hand over the son of the country's former dictator so a case of alleged crimes against humanity can proceed, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court demanded today.
	ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda told the UN Security Council that pursuing accountability in the years since a 2011 rebellion toppled Moammar Gadhafi's regime has been increasingly difficult.
	The North African country has split into two governments, one elected and the other backed by Islamists, and security has fallen apart amid militia violence.
	The international court in June 2011 charged Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, with murder and persecution linked to the violent suppression of the 2011 rebellion.
	But Libya has begun its own trial against him, and he is being held by a militia in the western town of Zintan that refuses to surrender him.
	Libya has argued that its courts should be given precedence, because the ICC is a court of last resort that takes cases only when ...

ICC prosecutor to Libya: Hand over Gadhafi's son

Iraqi police and hospital officials say a suicide bomber has rammed his explosives-laden car into a military outpost north of the capital, Baghdad, killing seven soldiers and wounding 13 others.
	The officials say those killed in the today afternoon attack in the northern Baghdad district of Tarmiyah included the post's commander, a major, and two other officers, a captain and lieutenant.
	The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
	There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but it bore the hallmarks of militant Sunnis from the Islamic State group, an al-Qaida breakaway that has seized control of about a third of the country.

Iraq: Suicide bomber hits army post, kills 7

Representatives from over 60 US companies wrapped up today a two-day visit to Egypt described as the largest such delegation in history that aimed to explore potential businesses to boost the country's ailing economy.
	But critics say the visit strikes the wrong tone amid a government crackdown on freedoms.
	Delegates to the conference, organized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, stayed clear of politics. During a two-hour meeting with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, they listened to his vision for improving the economy and the pressures he faces from a disgruntled and demanding population.
	The delegation includes a personal envoy from US Secretary of State John Kerry, Ambassador David Thorne. Ahead of the visit, Kerry said a critical component of Egypt's success is economic growth driven by policy reform, a message the delegation will deliver to Egyptian authorities.
	The visit coincided with an ultimatum by authorities given to civil groups to register under a restrictive law that .

Largest US business delegation ever visits Egypt

Qatar's ruling emir said today that US-led coalition airstrikes are not enough to defeat "terrorism and extremism" in Iraq and Syria as he urged the world to take action against factors fueling radicalism there a suggestion that also took aim at the Syrian regime.
	Speaking to the Gulf nation's legislative advisory council, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani said the policies of Syrian President Bashar Assad's government and "some militias in Iraq" a reference to Iranian-backed Shiite militias are the most important factors contributing to extremism in the two countries.
	"Any counterterrorism policies in Syria and Iraq that do not take this into account are just crisis management," he told the Shura Council in Doha.
	Qatar plays a supporting role in the US-led military coalition conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria by allowing coalition forces to use its vast al-Udeid air base.
	The country has provided substantial arms and other aid to Syrian rebels, .

Qatar emir: Airstrikes against IS group not enough

The Palestinian president today accused Israel of provoking a "religious war" as new violence between the sides broke out in the West Bank, leaving a Palestinian man dead, amid mounting concerns that the long-running conflict is entering a new and dangerous phase.
	Mahmoud Abbas blamed the latest tensions on a series of visits by Jewish worshippers to Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site.
	The visits to the contested site have helped fan strife in a region already on edge following last summer's bloody war in the Gaza Strip and the earlier failure of US Secretary of State John Kerry's Mideast peace efforts.
	Abbas' remarks -- at a ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat -- came as Israeli troops shot and killed a Palestinian demonstrator in clashes in the West Bank today.
	The shooting happened a day after a Palestinian from the West Bank city of Nablus stabbed and killed a 20-year-old Israeli soldier at a crowded Tel Aviv train station ..

Palestinian leader accuses Israel of religious war

Fast bowler Rahat Ali's rich haul of 4-22 helped to give Pakistan firm control of the first Test against New Zealand today despite opening batsman Tom Latham hitting a fighting maiden Test century.
     New Zealand failed to cope with Ali's reverse swing in a miserly bowled 17 overs of left-arm swing, and was all out for 262 late on the third day.
     Left-arm spinner Zulfiqar Babar chipped in with 3-79 as New Zealand's top order found it tough in its first ever Test in the United Arab Emirates.
     Pakistan, which declared at 566-3, didn't enforce the follow-on and stretched its lead to 319 by reaching 15 without loss at stumps.
     New Zealand resumed from 15-0 overnight, and Latham escaped two tough catch chances early before hitting 103 off 222 balls with 13 fours.
     Corey Anderson made a rapid 48 off 70 balls with eight fours, but he and Latham fell to Ali after putting on 83 runs for the fourth wicket, New Zealand's best partnership, during a brief aggressive batting spell 

Pakistan leads NZ by 319 after 3 days of 1st Test

Two senior officials of an Afghan bank that collapsed beneath almost USD 1 billion in debt were sentenced in a Kabul court today to 15 years prison each for embezzlement and fraud.
	The scandal in 2010 shook confidence in Afghanistan's tiny banking sector, and the loss accounted for around 5 percent of the country's economy, making it the biggest banking collapse in history.
	The government bailed out the bank and brought in receivers who, officials say, have traced most of the missing funds.
	The scandal struck at the heart of the Kabul political establishment, involving relatives of the former president Hamid Karzai and one of his deputies, Marshall Mohammad Qasim Fahim.
	President Ashraf Ghani has put the case at the center of his anti-corruption campaign, and within days of taking office in September ordered it resolved within 45 days.
	The Kabul Bank's former chairman Sherkhan Farnood and former chief executive officer Khalillulah Ferozi were sentenced live on television, after a 

Senior officials of collapsed Afghan bank jailed

Police say a crash involving a truck, a postal bus and a car in northern Switzerland has killed two people and injured five others.
	They identified the victim as an 18-year-old woman and a 24-year-old man, both Swiss nationals and both passengers in the bus. Three other bus passengers and the two occupants of the car that was traveling behind the bus were injured and were taken to hospitals in Aarau and Baden.
	The drivers of the truck and bus and two other bus passengers were uninjured.
	The crash occurred on the road between the towns of Endingen and Lengnau in Aargau canton (state). Swiss postal buses combine delivering mail and carrying passengers in remote areas.

Crash involving Swiss postal bus kills 2

Iraqi soldiers battling the Islamic State group recaptured the heart of the town of Beiji, home to the country's largest oil refinery, state television and a military official said today.
	Retaking Beiji, 250 kilometres (155 miles) north of Baghdad, could allow Iraqi forces a base to attack neighbouring Tikrit, taken by the extremists after their lightning advance this summer.
	It also represents a morale boost for Iraq's beleaguered security forces, which saw many of its troops flee the militant offencive.
	State television quoted the top army commander in Beiji, Gen Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, as saying troops recaptured the city's local government and police headquarters at the centre of the town.
	It aired what appeared to be archival footage of the town showing Iraqi army troops firing their weapons from behind sand barriers.
	Al-Saadi later spoke to state television by telephone but the line appeared to be cut off after he said his forces were meeting stiff resistance.
	A senior ...

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