Binyamin Netanyahu humiliated after Barack Obama 'dumped him for dinner'

Giles Whittell, Washington, and James Hider, Jerusalem

For a head of state to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of.

Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama on Tuesday night, according to Israeli reports on a trip seen in Jerusalem tonight as a disastrous humiliation.

After failing to extract a written promise of concessions on Jewish settlements, Mr Obama walked out of his meeting with Mr Netanyahu but invited him to stay at the White House, consult with advisors and “let me know if there is anything new”, a US congressman who spoke to the Prime Minister said today.

“It was awful,” the congressman said. One Israeli newspaper called the meeting “a hazing in stages”, poisoned by such mistrust that the Israeli delegation eventually left rather than risk being eavesdropped on a White House phone line. Another said that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”.

Left to talk among themselves, Mr Netanyahu and his aides retreated to the Roosevelt Room. He later spent a further half-hour with Mr Obama and extended his stay for a day of emergency talks aimed at restarting peace negotiations, but left last night with no official statement from either side. He returns to Israel dangerously isolated after what Israeli media have called a White House ambush for which he is largely to blame.

Sources said that Mr Netanyahu failed to impress Mr Obama with a flow chart purporting to show that he was not be responsible for the timing of announcements of new settlement projects in east Jerusalem. Mr Obama was said to be livid when such an announcement derailed Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel this month, and his anger towards Israel does not appear to have cooled.

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, cast doubt on minor details in Israeli accounts of the meeting but did not deny claims that it amounted to a dressing down for the Prime Minister, whose refusal to freeze settlements is seen in Washington as the main barrier to resuming peace talks.

The Likud leader now has to try to square the demands of the Obama Administration with his nationalist, ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, who want him to stand up to Washington, even though Israel desperately needs US backing in confronting the looming threat of a nuclear Iran.

“The Prime Minister leaves America disgraced, isolated and altogether weaker than when he came,” the Israeli daily Haaretz said.

In their meeting Mr Obama set out a number of expectations that Israel was to satisfy if it wanted to end the crisis, Israeli sources said. These included an extension of the freeze on Jewish settlement growth beyond the 10-month deadline next September, an end to Israeli building projects in east Jerusalem, and even a withdrawal of Israeli forces to positions that they held before the Second Intifada in September 2000, after which they re-occupied most of the West Bank.

Newspaper reports recounted how Mr Netanyahu looked “excessively concerned and upset” as he pulled out a flow chart to show Mr Obama how Jerusalem planning permission worked and how he could not have known of the announcement that hundreds more homes were to be built just as Mr Biden arrived in Jerusalem.

Mr Obama then suggested that Mr Netanyahu and his staff stay on at the White House to consider his proposals, so that if he changed his mind he could inform the President right away. “I’m still around,” the Yediot Ahronot daily quoted Mr Obama saying. “Let me know if there is anything new.”

With the atmosphere so soured by the end of the evening, the Israelis decided that they could not trust the phone line they had been lent. Mr Netanyahu retired with his defence minister, Ehud Barak, to the Israeli Embassy to ensure the Americans were not listening in.

The meeting came barely a day after Mr Obama’s landmark health reform victory. Israel had calculated that he would be too tied up with domestic issues ahead of the mid-term elections to focus seriously on the Middle East.

Times Online

Pope accused of covering up US priest's abuse of 200 deaf boys

The Pope is facing accusations he was personally involved in covering up child sex abuse by failing to take act against an American priest who molested up to 200 boys at a deaf school

By Nick Squires in Rome

The allegations centre on the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy who has been accused of abusing children in Wisconsin, where he worked from 1950 to 1974.

The Pope was alerted to the claims in 1996, when as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he was the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's department for dealing with particularly grave sins.

Victims said the priest had assaulted them in his office, his car, at his mother's house and in their dormitory beds.

Ratzinger's deputy initiated disciplinary proceedings against Murphy, but it was halted after the priest wrote to the future pontiff directly, appealing for clemency.

"I simply want to live out the time that I have left in the dignity of my priesthood," Murphy wrote. "I ask your kind assistance in this matter".

The decision to suspend the trial was objected to by two American bishops handling the case.

One of them, Raphael Fliss, told the Vatican that he had "come to the conclusion that scandal cannot be sufficiently repaired, nor justice sufficiently restored, without a judicial trial against Fr. Murphy".

The Vatican scrambled to defend Pope Benedict XVI yesterday and, in an unusual move, released a detailed statement in response to the claims.

It said that reports about Murphy's paedophilia first emerged in the 1970s but were not reported to the Vatican until more than 20 years later.

The Vatican at that point batted the issue back to the archbishop of Milwaukee, suggesting only that he "restrict Father Murphy's public ministry and require that he accept full responsibility for the gravity of his acts".

Cardinal Ratzinger, who led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 until 2005, when he was elected pope, had taken into account the fact that Murphy was "elderly and in very poor health ... and (that) no allegations of abuse had been reported in over 20 years," the Vatican statement said. Murphy died in 1998, still a priest.

As Cardinal Ratzinger, he issued an edict in 2001 instructing Catholic bishops around the world to report all child abuse cases to the Vatican under strict secrecy, rather than refer them to the police.

A group of American clerical abuse victims staged a protest in St Peter's Square, demanding the Vatican open up its files on "predator priests" worldwide.

Peter Isely, the Milwaukee-based director of the Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests, said: "This is the most incontrovertible case of paedophilia you could get.

"We need to know why [the Pope] did not let us know about [Murphy], and why he didn't let the police know about him, and why he did not condemn him, and why he did not take his collar away from him".

Two lawyers have filed lawsuits on behalf of five men alleging the Archdiocese of Milwaukee did not take sufficient action against the priest.

"The pope has said he is sorry," said John Pilmaier, who was abused as a child more than 30 years ago. "But what the pope will not admit is what he knew and what the people inside the Vatican knew".

The Vatican has faced months of allegations that the Church covered up child abuse by Catholic priests in the US and Europe, including Ireland, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, as well as the pope's native Germany.

Last week the Pope sent a letter to Ireland to apologise over the 16 years of clerical cover-up scandals.

Daily Telegraph

Angela Merkel agrees on Greece rescue package

But Germany's chancellor pushes for a tougher regime against delinquent eurozone nations

Ian Traynor

Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel agreed for the first time on a "last resort" rescue package for debt-stricken Greece, while pushing for a tough new regime of sanctions and penalties against European single currency countries whose fiscal misconduct endanger the euro.

Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy stitched together a formula promising a mixture of bilateral European loans and International Monetary Fund help for Greece if the country finds itself facing default and unable to refinance its ballooning debt.

Faced with widespread hostility at home to bailing out Greece, Merkel has painted herself into a corner over the past fortnight in resisting strong pressure from elsewhere in the EU to concoct a rescue package for Athens that might calm the markets and reduce the high rates Greece faces for borrowing money.

The Franco-German pact emerged in Brussels just before a summit of 27 EU leaders . The deal was put to a mini-summit of the 16 Eurogroup countries who use the single currency and also to the 27 leaders where some of the wording looked likely to run into trouble.

The hope is that the summit deal on Greece, going much further than the leaders' first attempt to promise action last month, will suffice to halt the markets betting on a Greek sovereign default. But the Merkel-Sarkozy document goes further than the immediate Greek crisis, representing a German attempt to rewrite the rulebook for the euro and forestall the possibility of a bigger single currency emergency.

"The Franco-German agreement describes the conditions under which the EU and the IMF will intervene and beyond," said a French official.

Merkel insisted on IMF involvement, strongly opposed by Sarkozy and the European Central Bank. The agreement specified that the single currency countries would make available the "majority" of the loans, on a "coordinated bilateral" basis and at market rates, not including any "subvention" or subsidy.

These terms were dictated by Merkel who fears that not involving the IMF or making loans available cheaply could expose her to a challenge in Germany's constitutional court on the grounds that Berlin was violating the no bailout clause underpinning the euro regime.

Merkel also retained veto rights over coming to Greece's rescue as Berlin and Paris tussled over how to determine what constituted a "last resort" in helping Athens.

It was decided that the ECB and Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, the head of the eurogroup, would decide whether Greece had exhausted all its options, could not raise money on the markets, and needed to be rescued.

But at that point, a meeting of Eurogroup governments would need to resolve unanimously to intervene with loans, meaning that Germany could still say no.

In return for the German concession, Herman Van Rompuy, the new president of the European Council, was instructed to come up with proposals by the end of the year strengthening the stability pact which sets debt and deficit ceilings for the eurozone and introducing new sanctions for fiscal miscreants. The Sarkozy entourage said that Van Rompuy would explore the potential for further "sanctions, with all possible juridical options open".

This meant that, in line with Merkel's position, that EU treaties might be reopened and amended to inscribe a tough new regime including the possibility of expelling countries from the single currency, "to settle once and for all the question of euro countries in difficulties".

"The Germans are really on their own there," said a European diplomat.

"We need a robust framework for crisis resolution," said the Franco-German document.

The formula also stated: "We consider that the European Council [summit of 27 leaders] should become the economic government of the European Union".

Such language extended the Greek crisis beyond the 16 single currency countries to suggest a degree of economic policy-making in the entire EU, including Britain. Officials and diplomats did not expect this to be agreed last night.

"That language will be up for debate," said one.

EU governments expect that the Greek crisis could come to a crunch in April/May when Athens has to refinance €23bn (£20bn) of debt. While they hope they will not need to provide the loans, it remained unclear last night who would need to put up the last resort funds since several of the eurozone countries, such as Portugal, Ireland, and Spain are in acute financial difficulties themselves.

The agreement said all eurogroup countries would be "expected" to contribute.

Merkel, who has been insisting for weeks that Germany would not bail Greece out and who did not even want the Greek crisis to be discussed, may struggle to sell the pact at home.

The Guardian

2 die in smuggling attempt

By Linus Lin

THE police are investigating the deaths of two men during an attempt to smuggle contraband cigarettes.

A spokesman from the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) said a towing barge, the Lingco 203, was prepared to depart Singapore on Sunday when it was discovered that a crew member was missing.

Searching the barge, remaining crew members discovered his body, together with another identified body in the vessel's engine room.

The dead crew member was identified as a 36-year-old Indonesian national but the identify of the other body is unknown.

Contraband cigarettes, totalling 1,300 cartons and with a value of about $128,000, were recovered from the same engine room.

It is believed that the pair could have suffocated from carbon monoxide and sulphuric acid fumes commonly produced in similar engine rooms.

The Straits Times

Zimbabwe police action stops human rights exhibit

HARARE, Zimbabwe — A Zimbabwean rights group says they're abandoning a photo exhibit that documented human rights violations after fresh attempts by police to shut it down.

ZimRights official Cynthia Manjoro says police returned to the downtown gallery Wednesday evening after the show's opening to demand the photos. She says police also visited the group's office Thursday when they discovered the photos were no longer at the gallery. Police first seized the 65 photos on Tuesday but returned them just minutes before the show was scheduled to open.

The photos depicted political violence and torture blamed mainly on state agents and police since 2007.

Manjoro says organizers have taken the photos to an undisclosed location. The exhibit was slated to run for 10 days.

Associated Press

US supports Pakistan economic zones

WASHINGTON — The United States on Thursday pledged to work to improve market access for Pakistani goods including through special economic zones as the two nations sought to turn the page on years of distrust.

Pakistan and the United States said they would seek a "wide-ranging, long-term and substantive strategic partnership" after two days of talks led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

In the joint statement, the United States said it was "committed to work towards enhanced market access for Pakistani products as well as towards the early finalization of Reconstruction Opportunity Zones legislation".

The proposal would give duty-free access to products from designated parts of the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan in a bid to create new industries in the longtime Taliban stronghold as they rebuild from fighting.

Two Democratic lawmakers, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington and Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, proposed the Reconstruction Opportunity Zones last year but the bill has languished in Congress.

The United States has launched a five-year, 7.5 billion-dollar aid package for Pakistan as part of a major initiative by Washington to chip away at anti-Americanism and support for Islamic extremists in the nuclear power.

But some Pakistanis say that the United States has done too little to create a demand for its products, with key exports such as textiles facing prohibitive tariffs.

The joint statement said that the two nations will also discuss drafting an investment treaty to encourage US funds in Pakistan.

Clinton and Qureshi took part in the talks on Wednesday, while on Thursday the two nations held working groups on issues including improving water access to parched Pakistan.

The talks come as the United States cautiously welcome what it sees as a shift in Pakistan to a more robust campaign against Islamic extremism.

AFP

Suspected Twitter infiltrator: 'I'm a nice hacker'

By Angela Doland

PARIS — He's unemployed and isn't much of a computer expert. The Frenchman accused of infiltrating Twitter and peeping at the accounts of President Barack Obama and singers Britney Spears and Lily Allen says he wanted to reveal just how vulnerable online data systems are to break-ins — and he says he didn't mean any harm.

"I'm a nice hacker," suspect Francois Cousteix told France 3 television Thursday, a day after he was released from police questioning, adding that his goal was to warn Internet users about data security.

"Hacker Croll," as he was known online, is accused of breaking into Twitter administrators' accounts and copying confidential data — as well as peeping at Obama's and the singers' accounts, though he didn't have access to sensitive information about them, a French prosecutor said.

FBI agents sat in on the sessions while French police questioned the young man for two days, said Jean-Yves Coquillat, prosecutor in Clermont-Ferrand, where the suspect will be tried in June for hacking.

If convicted on the charge of breaking into a data system, he risks up to two years in prison and a euro30,000 ($40,068) fine. The suspect lives near Clermont-Ferrand in central France.

"He says it's the challenge, the game, that made him do it," Coquillat said. Officials say preliminary investigations suggest Hacker Croll did not tweet in other peoples' names or try to make money out of his information.

"He had access to elements that were so confidential that he could very well have profited from them" through blackmail, for example, said Adeline Champagnat of the French police office on information technology crimes.

She compared the hacker's actions to "a burglar breaking into the headquarters of a big company, able to look at the files of the all employees and clients, with their passwords and confidential information".

"In a way, he succeeded in taking control of Twitter," Champagnat said.

At one point, she said, the hacker attempted to find a password for Obama's account but didn't follow through with it. With administrator access, "he didn't even need" Obama's password, she said — but hacking into the president's account wasn't his goal.

Cousteix, who was identified as being 23 or 24, said he just wanted to prove a point about Internet security.

"It's a message I wanted to get out to Internet users, to show them that no system is invulnerable," he told France 3 television.

Hacker Croll confessed to the hacking under questioning, and analysis of his computer backs up his statements, police and the prosecutor said.

The suspect, who lives with his parents and has no college degree, didn't have any special computer training, the prosecutor said.

His technique was to get administrators' e-mail passwords' reset by correctly answering their security questions using information about his prey that he gathered from blogs and other public sites, officials said.

Twitter said in July that it was the victim of a security breach. Co-founder Biz Stone wrote at the time that the personal e-mail of an unnamed Twitter administrative employee was hacked, and through that the attacker got access to the employee's Google Apps account.

The French prosecutor said the suspect infiltrated the accounts of "several" Twitter administrative employees. He was able to access information such as contracts with partners and resumes from job applicants, Coquillat said.

Hacker Croll e-mailed some of the documents to TechCrunch, a widely read technology blog, and it subsequently published some of them, including financial projections. The material was also published on several French sites.

Some of the material was more embarrassing than damaging, like floor plans for new office space and a pitch for a Twitter TV show.

Using the administrator logins, Hacker Croll looked at Twitter details of Obama, Allen, Spears and other well-known personalities and was able to see information such as IP addresses, when they were last connected and when they signed up, French officials said.

APTN producer Jeffrey Schaeffer in Paris contributed to this report

Associated Press

Google denies YouTube outage speculation

By Doug Gross, CNN

(CNN) -- Google Inc., owner of YouTube, said an outage of the popular video-sharing site Thursday was technical and not caused by outside tampering.

"YouTube is up again following a technical issue which has now been resolved," a spokeswoman for Google said in a written statement. "We know how important YouTube is for people and apologize for any inconvenience the downtime may have caused".

The outage apparently lasted for just over an hour, from roughly 7 to 8 a.m. ET.

A YouTube source said the outage was not the result of any kind of attack or related in any way to Google's recent move to stop censoring results in China.

The timing of the outage, just days after Google's announcement, had spurred speculation online.

During the time YouTube was down, Internet users were still able to access individual videos, but YouTube's main page returned a "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" message.

The source said it's Google's default policy to not discuss the details on the cause of outages.

The search-engine giant has been embroiled in a public feud with the communist nation since January, when Google said it was the target of a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack" originating in China.

"I think many people are, understandably, looking for China to take some unique and extraordinary technical measures to 'punish' Google," said Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre for International Studies.

But he said that nothing along those lines has been made public.

"So far, what I have seen is business as usual, and this includes the filtering that is happening at the backbone/gateway levels that have been more or less consistent for a long period of time.

"As for the source of the YouTube problems, I am sure they are investigating, and it could be a billion problems, just as it was for Wikipedia, which turned out to be a server cooling problem, according to reports".

Google began operating in China in 2006, agreeing to limited censorship of what the government there considers controversial sites.

A dashboard page posted by Google after it made its announcement shows that YouTube, one of the Internet's most popular sites, has been blocked in mainland China for the past four days.

Google Sites and Blogger also have been blocked, while other Google properties like photo site Picasa and Google Docs have been partially blocked, according to the page.

Web search and Google Images, which like other services now originate from Google servers in Hong Kong, were reporting no blockage on the page.

The YouTube downtime created much online buzz early Thursday. The term "Service Unavailable" became a trending topic, and many blogs were speculating on a possible China connection.

The outage came a day after Wikipedia, the user-created online encyclopedia, was down for several hours.

CNN