South Korea's National Assembly today approved plans to disband the coast guard in the wake of criticism over its failure to rescue hundreds of passengers during the sinking of a ferry in April.
	Authorities say swifter, more aggressive action could have saved more lives. The sinking, one of the country's deadliest disasters in decades, killed more than 300 people, mostly teenagers travelling to a resort island for a school trip.
	The lawmakers voted 146-71 in favour of transferring the coast guard's responsibilities to the National Police Agency and establishing a broader safety agency. Thirty-two lawmakers abstained from the floor vote broadcast by a legislature-run website.
	The safety agency will also take over the National Emergency Management Agency and some responsibilities held by the Ministry of Security and Public Administration, according to officials at the National Assembly and the public administration ministry. The safety agency's creation is aimed at establishing a ...

S Korea parliament OKs disbanding of coast guard

PTI Automatic

Military activities carried out by Myanmar's powerful minister of home affairs when the country was under dictatorship could constitute war crimes, a new study charges, saying there is evidence that he and two other generals were responsible for the executions, torture and enslavement of civilians by troops during a large-scale offensive against ethnic rebels.
	Human rights researchers at Harvard Law School said in the report released today they spent three years collecting information about the government's 2005-2006 counterinsurgency efforts in Myanmar's Karen state along the country's eastern border.
	They said there was enough to justify the issuance of an International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Home Affairs Minister Ko Ko, who was head of the army's Southern Command during that offensive, and his two high-ranking colleagues.
	The government responded by saying much of what happens during times of conflict is unavoidable and this is a time to look forward, not back.
	"We .

Report accuses Myanmar commanders of war crimes

The US military has shot down three missiles nearly simultaneously during a test off Hawaii.
	The Missile Defence Agency said yesterday that a short-range ballistic missile target and two cruise missile targets were fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai.
	The agency says the Pearl Harbor-based destroyer USS John Paul Jones intercepted the ballistic missile by firing an SM-3 guided missile. The destroyer fired two SM-2 missiles to shoot down the low-flying cruise missiles.
	Defence contractor Raytheon Co says the SM-3 is designed to destroy ballistic missile threats by colliding with them in space. The SM-2 missiles help naval ships defend the airspace around them.
	The test marks the 29th successful intercept in 35 attempts for the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defence program since flight testing began in 2002.

US shoots down 3 missile targets in Hawaii test

Air Force officials say they believe an F-16 fighter jet has crashed in the Gulf of Mexico.
	A news release from Tyndall Air Force Base says the jet was on a routine training mission over the Gulf yesterday morning when the Florida Panhandle base lost contact with the pilot.
	Aircraft and rescue forces were immediately sent to the missing jet's last known location.
	No wreckage has been found, but officials are working under the assumption that the plane went down in the water. The US Coast Guard is leading the search.
	325 Fighter Wing Vice Commander Col Mark O'Laughlin says in the news release that finding the pilot is their top priority.

US Air Force believes fighter jet crashed in Gulf

A Catholic school teacher in Kentucky was told to take a leave of absence for 21 days when she returned from a mission trip to Kenya, even though the country is thousands of miles from the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak.
	Louisville Archbishop Joseph Kurtz today said the decision by St Margaret Mary school in Louisville was "not the right judgment." The religion teacher, Susan Sherman, resigned last week.
	Kenya is on Africa's east coast; the Ebola outbreak has been concentrated in West Africa in countries including Liberia.
	Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, is about 5,310 kilometers from Kenya's capital, Nairobi.

US teacher told to stay away after trip to Kenya

Months after documents showed it had concealed the sexual abuse of children by priests for decades, the Archdiocese of Chicago today released files on three dozen more abusive clergy members to fulfill Cardinal Francis George's pledge to do so before he retires.
	"We cannot change the past but we hope we can rebuild trust through honest and open dialogue," George said in a statement released overnight. "Child abuse is a crime and a sin."
	The archdiocese released the files on 30 abusive priests in January as part of a legal settlement, and it posted on its website today the internal records related to 36 others.
	Altogether, the 15,000 pages of records show how the archdiocese treated abuse allegations from the early 1950s until recently.
	They only cover cases in which the archdiocese substantiated the abuse accusations, and don't include those in which a priest died before his accuser came forward.
	"Cardinal George wanted it finished on his watch," said John O'Malley, special ...

Chicago archdiocese releases more abuse records

A man has been arrested for starting a spinoff version of the shuttered Silk Road website, enabling more than 100,000 people to buy and sell illegal drugs in the last year, authorities announced today.
	Blake Benthall, 26, faces a conspiracy to commit narcotics trafficking count that carries a potential penalty of life in prison and a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison.
	He also faces related charges after his arrest in San Francisco yesterday.
	US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement that Benthall created "Silk Road 2.0," a "nearly identical criminal enterprise" website, about five weeks after the government shut down the original version last year.
	Authorities said the original site generated more than USD 1 billion in illicit business since 2011.
	"Let's be clear this Silk Road, in whatever form, is the road to prison," he said. "Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cybercriminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut ...

US: Silk Road sequel leads to California arrest

A federal appeals court panel has reaffirmed its ruling that BP is liable for federal Clean Water Act damages stemming from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the latest loss for the oil giant as it fights court decisions that could ultimately bring USD 18 billion in penalties.
	The three-judge panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments that there were errors in its June 4 ruling on BP's Clean Water Act liability.
	The ruling released last night is not the final say from the court. BP and its minority partner in the Macondo well, Anadarko Petroleum Corp, have a request pending for the full 15-member court to reconsider the issue.
	The June order and yesterday's follow-up were issued by Judges Fortunato Benavides, Carolyn Dineen King and James Dennis. They upheld US District Judge Carl Barbier's ruling holding the well owners are liable.
	BP and Anadarko had argued they were not liable because equipment failure on the leased rig Deepwater Horizon caused the April ..

US court reaffirms BP is liable in Gulf oil spill

NASA's biggest test flight in years remains on track for next month, despite last week's space-related accidents.
	Officials today said everything looks good for the December 4 launch of NASA's new Orion capsule. This one will not carry a crew. Future Orions are meant to carry astronauts on missions of deep-space exploration.
	The spacecraft will blast off atop a Delta IV rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The brief flight will send it 5,800 kilometers into space before parachuting into the Pacific.
	William Hill, who helps run exploration systems development for NASA, says the test flight systems have nothing in common with either the Orbital Sciences rocket that blew up at liftoff on October 28 or the Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two destroyed in flight last Friday.

NASA test flight still on track despite accidents

The UN's Ebola chief said Thursday the fight to contain Ebola is not even a quarter done, but the extraordinary global response in the last four weeks has made him hopeful the outbreak could end in 2015.
	"Until the last case of Ebola is under treatment, we have to stay on full alert," Dr. David Nabarro said in an interview with The Associated Press. "It's still bad."
	A month ago, Nabarro said the number of Ebola cases was probably doubling every three-to-four weeks and warned that without a mass global mobilization, "the world will have to live with the Ebola virus forever." He said then that the response needed to be 20 times greater.
	But in the past four weeks, the rate of Ebola infections seems to be slowing in some parts of West Africa, Nabarro said in the interview. In other hotspots, he said, it appears to be expanding the way it was a month ago.
	Ebola has killed nearly 5,000 people in West Africa.
	Nabarro said there are five times the number of beds for treatment in ...

UN Ebola chief optimistic of future drop in cases

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu moved to ease tensions at Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site today, calling Jordan's king to reassert his commitment to protecting the sacred shrines in hopes of quieting weeks of unrest.
	His outreach came a day after Jordan, a key ally of Israel, recalled its ambassador to protest what it called an "unacceptable" Israeli police assault on the hilltop compound in Jerusalem's Old City.
	Tensions were further heightened after a Palestinian slammed his van into a crowd waiting at a train stop, killing an Israeli policeman, in what his family and the militant group Hamas said was a revenge attack.
	The holy site in Jerusalem's Old City is known to Jews as the Temple Mount and is the most sacred spot in Judaism.
	Muslims also revere it as the Noble Sanctuary, Islam's third-holiest site and home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the gold-topped Dome of the Rock.
	Since Israel captured east Jerusalem and the Old City in 1967, Jewish worshippers have been .

Israel, Jordan try to ease tensions in Jerusalem

A series of attacks, mainly against Iraqi troops, killed 13 people in Baghdad and in the country's west today as the government pressed ahead with a draft law meant to establish a community-based national guard force in efforts to mobilise Iraq's Sunni minority in the battle against the Islamic State group.
	In one of today's attacks, a suicide bomber drove his explosives-laden car into an army checkpoint near the town of al-Baghdadi, about 180 kilometers northwest of Baghdad, killing five soldiers and wounding 12, police officials said.
	In Baghdad, a bomb blast in a commercial street in the western district of Ghazaliyah killed four people and wounded eight, while a bomb near a line of shops killed two people in the city's northwest, the officials said.
	Earlier, gunmen in a speeding car opened fire on an army checkpoint in Baghdad's western suburb of Abu Ghraib, killing two soldiers.
	Hospital officials confirmed the causalities. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity ...

Attacks in Iraq, mainly targeting troops, kill 13

A New York prosecutor says the federal government has brought its first bitcoin securities fraud case, accusing a 32-year-old Texas man of engineering a bitcoin Ponzi scheme.
	US Attorney Preet Bharara announced the arrest today of Trendon Shavers.
	He is awaiting a court appearance in Texas on charges of securities fraud and wire fraud.
	Authorities say Shavers has already been ordered by a federal court in Texas to give up more than USD 40 million and pay a USD 150,000 penalty in a related civil case.
	Bharara says Shavers caused about half of 100 investors to lose all or part of their bitcoin investment in 2011 and 2012.
	It isn't clear who will represent Shavers in court. Shavers did not immediately respond to a message for comment.

US announces 1st bitcoin securities fraud case

New York City jail officials plan tighter screening of guards and other employees after a city investigation found that vodka, heroin, marijuana and razor blades could be smuggled into Rikers Island in exchange for hundreds of dollars in "courier" fees from inmates.
	A report today from the city's Department of Investigation revealed guards were routinely allowed to put lunches on top of X-ray machines, rather than through them, and were regularly waved through security after setting off metal detectors.
	The report found one undercover investigator posing as a guard was able to smuggle in more than USD 22,000 worth of contraband including booze, drugs and a razor blade in six separate attempts at six different Rikers jails.
	"Clearly our investigation indicates that this is a real problem," said DOI Commissioner Mark Peters.
	The report comes after a series of investigations by the anti-corruption agency which this year alone resulted in charges against 10 jail guards, 30 inmate ...

Probe finds porous security at NYC's main jail

A man surrendered in Oregon after police say he killed his girlfriend, posted gruesome photos of her body and the crime scene online, and wrote that he wanted authorities to kill him.
	David Kalac's arrest last night nearly 320 kilometers from the crime scene in Washington state came after a daylong manhunt.
	He is accused of killing Amber Lynn Coplin, whose teenage son heard the couple loudly arguing and then found his mother dead in their apartment.
	Kalac, 33, sent a text message to a friend Tuesday morning to say he would read about Kalac in the news, then evaded police in the woman's stolen car until he emerged from a wooded area and turned himself in to a passing police officer, authorities said.
	Authorities confirmed the grisly online photos were of Coplin, 30, and the crime scene, said Scott Wilson, a sheriff's deputy.
	The images appeared on 4chan, an online bulletin board whose free-wheeling and anonymous nature has led to some of the Web's darker moments.
	Earlier this ...

US suspect in slaying, posting death photos caught

British spies are allowed to intercept communications between lawyers and their clients, which are generally protected by strict rules of confidentiality, according to previously secret documents published today.
	As part of an ongoing legal action, the MI5, MI6 and GCHQ intelligence services have disclosed their guidelines for snooping on lawyers.
	All three allow lawyers' communications to be intercepted in some circumstances. Rules for GCHQ staff say "you may, in principle, target the communications of lawyers," but adds "you must give careful consideration to necessity and proportionality."
	The information was disclosed in court documents after a request from lawyers for two Libyan men who accuse British spies of complicity in their detention and rendition to their homeland a decade ago.
	Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi have brought a case to Britain's Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which deals with complaints against the intelligence services.
	The men say British spies ...

UK spies can target lawyer-client communications

Top Interpol officials said that would-be jihadi fighters are booking tickets on cruise ships to join extremists in battle zones in Syria and Iraq, hoping to bypass efforts to thwart them in Turkey.
	Pierre St Hilaire, Interpol's counterterror director, and outgoing Interpol chief Ronald Noble suggested the Turkish crackdown and increased monitoring of airports are forcing some would-be jihadis into alternative travel plans.
	Noble said, "There are more and more reports that people are using cruise ships in order to get to launch pads, if you will sort of closer to the conflict zones of Syria and Iraq."
	The international police body is hoping to expand a pilot program that lets airlines bounce passenger information off its databases to include cruise lines, banks and hotels.

Jihadis on cruise ships to Syria

Coming to Afghan television this week will be the story of Kabir, a 12-year-old boy who returns home only to fall in with the Taliban and see his life unravel as he learns violence doesn't pay and democracy is the way forward.
	"Innocent Heart," a six-part drama featuring strong female characters and an election as a backdrop, comes as Afghanistan tries to move from war to democracy and foreign troops withdraw after more than a decade of fighting.
	While the Taliban banned television during their rule, foreign-funded TV soap operas like "Innocent Heart" now entertain viewers with stories that reflect their own lives while promoting change in this conservative, religious and poverty-stricken country.
	"This type of messaging is very successful within a drama, as opposed to a documentary or a public service announcement, as people become attached to the characters because it is long-form television," said Trudi-Ann Tierney, the Australian writer of "Innocent Heart."
	Independent ...

In Afghanistan, TV soaps send messages of hope

The Dallas nurse who flew on a commercial jet before being diagnosed with Ebola says she wasn't careless or reckless.
	In an interview today on NBC's "Today" show, Amber Vinson also said she didn't get enough training to feel comfortable treating Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
	"The first time that I put on the protective equipment, I was heading in to take care of the patient," she said.
	Vinson also said she checked with health officials before flying October 10 from Dallas to Cleveland and returning three days later. She said reports that she felt sick while travelling were false.
	She also said she became fearful after learning that her fellow nurse Nina Pham, who had also been treating Duncan, was suspected of having Ebola.
	"I was floored," she said in the interview. "I was afraid for myself and my family because I did everything that I was instructed to do every time and I felt like if Nina can get it, any one of us could have .

US nurse who caught Ebola says she wasn't careless

Faculty and students are criticising Harvard University for secretly photographing about 2,000 students in 10 lecture halls last spring as part of a study on classroom attendance.
	The experiment was disclosed at a faculty meeting on Tuesday. Harvard computer science professor Harry Lewis says he learned about the study from two colleagues and asked administrators about it during the meeting.
	He tells The Boston Globe such studies should only be done with the consent of those being studied.
	Harvard administrators say students and teachers were not notified because researchers did not want to introduce potential bias into the study. Vice Provost Peter Bol says he ordered the images destroyed.
	President Drew Faust said she takes the matter seriously and will have it reviewed.

Harvard under fire for secret classroom photos

Authorities in southern Switzerland say a woman and her 3-year-old daughter were killed when a landslide swept over their house.
	Zurich daily 20 Minuten reported on its website that crews found the body of the 31-year-old woman and her child buried in the rubble of their home in a remote area near Lugano early today.
	Police, firefighters and other rescue crews using search dogs had searched overnight in the hope of finding the two alive after the landslide yesterday evening.

AP

AP

Page 2415 - Ap/pti Reuters