Hindu priest awarded $2.3M in pay, damages

NEW YORK, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- A Hindu priest was awarded $2.8 million after a jury concluded he had been forced to work for years as a virtual indentured servant at a New York ashram.

But Devandra Shukla, 34, who grew up poor in India's rural Uttar Pradesh state, was also ordered to pay the ashram owners $500,000 for slander for alleging they treated him like a "slave," the federal court jury in New York said. So his net award is $2.3 million.

Shukla had alleged Satya Sharma and his wife, Geeta, hired him in 2000 to work at their New York City ashram as a priest with a promise of $500 a week, plus free room and board.

But when he got there they forced him to do janitorial and construction work in addition to his spiritual duties and paid him only $50 a week, or $2,100 over seven years, he alleged.

The Sharmas also confiscated his passport, forced him to live in a windowless room like a prison cell and made him minister from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m., Shukla attorney Sanjay Chaubey told jurors.

The Sharmas, in turn, accused Shukla of trying to get permanent U.S. residence and countersued for defamation and slander.

The jurors concluded the Sharmas had illegally forced Shukla to minister 18 hours a day and to work as a loader, pipe cutter, electrician and painter, the New York Daily News reported.

"From the temple of slavery to the temple of justice," the News quoted Chaubey as saying after the verdict was announced.

A tearful Shukla said he hoped he would soon see his wife and children in India, who he has not seen for nearly 10 years.

The Sharmas' lawyer, Krishnan Chittur, called the verdict "crazy" and said he would ask the judge to set it aside. UPI

Baghdad celebrates end of sanctions

BAGHDAD, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Residents of Baghdad said they were overwhelmed with joy after the U.N. Security Council lifted sanctions imposed on the former regime.

The U.N. Security Council passed resolutions Wednesday that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said advanced normalization of Iraq's ties to the international community.

The three approved resolutions will end the United Nations-supervised arrangements for the Development Fund for Iraq on June 30; end restrictions related to civilian nuclear cooperation imposed after the first Gulf War; and end residual activities of the Oil for Food program, the vice president's office said in a release.

The sanctions stemmed from Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

Baghdad residents told the Voices of Iraq news agency there were anxious to take their rightful place on the international stage.

Iraq, one resident said, "would take back its breath" after suffering under crippling sanctions and enduring a generation worth of wars.

Meanwhile, Shiite leaders in the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council expressed their "full support" for the emerging government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Maliki won enough support for a second term in November. His new administration is expected to be announced before the end of the year. UPI

Body in Philadelphia may be serial victim

PHILADELPHIA, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- Philadelphia police say they are investigating whether a body of a young woman found in the Kensington area might be another victim of a possible serial killer.

The partially clothed body of a Caucasian woman in her 20s with a plastic bag over her head was discovered in a vacant lot in the city's Kensington area Wednesday, the Philadelphia Daily News reported.

Three women have been strangled in the area in recent weeks, although police say one of the deaths is probably not related, and three more women have told police that they were attacked and sexually assaulted, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

"Any death of a suspicious nature in this area, we're going to take a real hard look to see whether or not it's part of the pattern that's going on out here," Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey said.

"At this point in time, we really don't know," he said. "She is nude from the waist down. Very, very suspicious circumstances".

Any more details about the woman's death would have to await an autopsy, Ramsey said. UPI

Blake Edwards: Hollywood film director dies aged 88

The American film-maker, Blake Edwards, has died in southern California at the age of 88, his publicist has said.

Edwards died of complications from pneumonia at 1030 (1830 GMT) at St John's Health Centre in Santa Monica, Gene Schwam told the Associated Press.

His wife, the actress Julie Andrews, and other members of his family were at his side, Mr Schwam added.

Among the films Edwards directed were The Pink Panther, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Victor/Victoria and 10.

He never won an Academy Award for any of his films, but was given honorary Oscar in 2004 for his "extraordinary body of work".

Comedy specialist

Edwards had been receiving treatment in hospital for two weeks prior to his death, Mr Schwam said.

Edwards had knee problems and had been "pretty much confined to a wheelchair for the last year-and-a-half or two", he added.

At the time of his death, Edwards was working on two Broadway musicals - one based on the Pink Panther movies, and the other a comedy set during Prohibition entitled Big Rosemary.

"His heart was as big as his talent. He was an Academy Award winner in all respects," Mr Schwam told AP.

One of Hollywood's most successful specialists in comedy, Edwards was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1922 and started out as an actor.

After appearing in about 30 films, he worked as a TV scriptwriter before becoming a director. His first significant success came with the 1959 film, Operation Petticoat, starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis.

He then charmed audiences with his adaptation of Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, which gave Audrey Hepburn one of her most memorable roles.

In 1963, Edwards created one of film comedy's classic characters. After Peter Ustinov dropped out before production, Edwards persuaded Peter Sellers to play the accident-prone Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther.

His last major success came in 1982 with Victor/Victoria, a musical comedy that saw Julie Andrews play a starving singer who pretends to be a homosexual Polish count masquerading as a female impersonator.

Andrews, now 75, and Edwards married in 1969. He is survived by her and his four children - two from his first marriage to Patricia Walker, and two whom he adopted with Andrews. BBC News

US inmate John Duty to be executed with animal drug

A prisoner on death row in the US state of Oklahoma for killing his cellmate in 2001 is due to be executed using a drug cocktail that includes a sedative typically used to euthanize animals.

John David Duty, 58, is set to become the first US inmate to be executed using the sedative pentobarbital.

He is scheduled to die at 1800 local time (0000 GMT) at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in the town of McAlester.

A shortage of sodium thiopental in the US forced the state make the change.

A judge's ruling to allow Oklahoma to substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental was upheld by a federal appeals court this week.

Sodium thiopental, an anaesthetic, is usually used in the state's lethal injection formula, which also includes drugs that paralyse muscles and stop the heart.

Lawyers representing Duty and two other death-row inmates argued during a court hearing in November that use of the sedative could be inhumane and that inmates could be conscious but paralysed when the other drugs were administered.

"No-one who has been put to death has come back and testified about what it felt like," said lawyer Jim Rowan, a board member of the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

Several of the 35 US states that use lethal injections are hunting for alternatives to sodium thiopental after Hospira, the sole US manufacturer of the drug, said new batches would not be available until early 2011. BBC News

Mexico's drug war: Number of dead passes 30,000

More than 30,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico since President Felipe Calderon took office four years ago, the government says.

Almost 12,500 have been killed so far this year, a sharp increase on 2009.

Mexico's attorney-general said the number of deaths was "regrettable", but showed that the security forces were having success in their fight against the drugs gangs.

President Calderon has sent thousands of troops to battle the cartels.

The latest figures were announced by the attorney-general, Arturo Chavez.

He said 12,456 people had been registered killed in drug-related violence so far this year, compared to 9,600 in 2009, bringing the total to 30,196 since President Calderon took office in December 2006.

But he said the figures reflected the "desperation" of the cartels in the face of pressure from the security forces.

Mr Chavez said the government had seized record quantities of arms and drugs and captured or killed 10 of the 24 most wanted drug traffickers.

The Mexican government says many of the deaths are the result of fighting between rival gangs over territory and smuggling routes into the US.

Most of the killings are concentrated in certain regions, particularly the northern border states.

The border city of Ciudad Juarez alone has seen 3,000 killings so far this year, ten times more than in 2007.

Critics of Mr Calderon's policies say they have increased the level of violence without reducing the flow of cocaine and other drugs into the US.

Human rights groups have also raised concerns that using the military has exposed civilians to possible abuse. BBC News

China launches propaganda 'Twitter'

China has launched Red Microblog, a propaganda site visually similar to Twitter, Britain's Daily Telegraph reports.

Red Twitter encourages people to write "text messages praising the country or the city," instead of writing ordinary daily updates telling what is new.

"Work hard, be honest and treat others well," "There is no sky larger than the hand, no road longer than the feet, no mountain higher than the people, no sea wider than the heart," and "Those who go with the flow are forever going up and down in the waves; only those who go against the wind fearing no hardship, can reach the other side fast," are also messages on the website's home page, the Telegraph reports.

The site became a part of China's Propaganda chief Li Changchun's call for local government to support new media. Red Twitter fully operates around China, where the original Twitter site remains censored.

Internet censorship in China is one of the strictest in the world. Last year, China blocked Youtube on its territory. In March, Google decided to close its Internet search service based in inland China over censorship concerns and will direct Chinese users to a Hong Kong-based uncensored version of its search engine. RIA Novosti

India, Russia register JV to produce transport aircraft

India and Russia have registered a joint venture, MTA Limited, to develop and manufacture a new transport aircraft in line with previous agreements, the head of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) said.

An agreement for MTA Limited between HAL and Russia's United Aircraft Corporation and state arms exporter Rosoboronexport was signed in September.

"The joint venture was registered in the beginning of December in Bangalore," Ashok Nayak told RIA Novosti. "Work on the preliminary design will start in January 2011".

With a payload capacity of 20 tons and speed of 810 km per hour, the multirole transport aircraft (MTA) is set to be another milestone in decades-old India-Russia defense relationship that is evolving from a buyer-seller to co-developers of cutting-edge military equipment.

The total development cost is around $600 million to be equally shared by both sides.

Manufacturing facilities will be set up in both Russia and India. At least 205 planes are to be made, 30 percent of which may be exported to third countries.

The MTA is expected to make its maiden flight in 2016-18. RIA Novosti

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be freed on bail

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was granted bail at the London's High Court on Thursday, world media said.

Assange, whose WikiLeaks website has provoked U.S. rage by releasing diplomatic documents, was to be freed on $320,000 bail on Tuesday but remained in jail pending an appeal against the London City of Westminster Magistrates' Court ruling. The appeal was rejected by a senior judge on Thursday.

Lawyers for the WikiLeaks founder said he would be released Thursday evening or Friday morning once the formalities are completed.

NBC News quoted the Swedish Prosecutors Office as saying it was the British authorities that appealed the Westminster court decision.

"We don't have the right to appeal within the U.K.," the prosecutors office's spokeswoman Karin Rosander said.

"The decision to appeal against the granting of bail to Assange was entirely a British decision," Sky News TV Channel cited the spokeswoman as saying. "The Swedish authorities had nothing to do with it. It is standard practice on all extradition cases that decisions regarding bail are taken by the domestic prosecuting authority".

The exact conditions of Assange's bail are not yet known, however they are expected to be stringent. On Tuesday, the bail was granted demanding Assange, who is an Australian national, to surrender his passport, submit to monitoring by electronic tag and to stay at a temporary address submitted to officials by his lawyers.

The United States could soon press espionage charges against Assange for authorizing the disclosure of secret U.S. diplomatic and military reports, his lawyer said last week.

World leaders and diplomats have downplayed the impact of the leak of more than 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables by the WikiLeaks site, but many have questioned the benefit of the project, alleging that some of the leaks could "threaten lives".

Assange was arrested in London on December 7. His extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted on sex assault charges, is pending. Assange denies the allegations and is fighting the extradition, while his lawyers express fears that he could be then extradited to the United States, where Assange could face the death penalty for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.

An unidentified Kremlin official told RIA Novosti that Assange should be nominated for the Nobel Prize.

He topped an online poll for Time's Person of the Year, but the magazine on Wednesday named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for its annual award, which was won by Vladimir Putin in 2007. RIA Novosti

Russian women struggling to survive domestic violence

She had just married her husband –“a tough man” - when he started to beat her.

 “I was under his control,” Yekaterina Vingorovna, 39, says as she sits shaking in a café in the outskirts of Moscow. “He wanted to know everything; I didn’t have my own life”.

When she complained, he beat her until she could no longer move.

“He hit me really hard here,” says Vingorovna, pointing to her eye and showing a picture of herself bruised and battered. “This happened five years ago, and it just got worse after that”.

Vingorovna says her husband abused her throughout their marriage. She says the first time he hit her was after the two had an argument. Vingorovna says she never called the police, and considered the initial abuse an accident rather than a crime. 

In Russia, domestic violence results in the death of 14,000 women each year, or one every 40 minutes, according to a report issued by the Anna Center for Domestic Violence, a non-governmental organization.

The actual figures are even higher, according to the center, because police do not count women who were hospitalized and subsequently died from injuries sustained in domestic abuse.

 “True statistics on domestic violence are not even available in Russia,” the organization’s president Marina Pisklakova told RIA Novosti. “We can’t provide figures for the overall scale of the problem”.

Nina Ostanina, a member of the State Duma’s Committee for Women, Family and Youth Affairs, as well said it was unclear why the Interior Ministry had not reported the latest data for domestic violence.

A study published in 2005 by Amnesty International showed that nearly 75% of married women across the country had been subjected to physical, psychological or sexual violence.

Domestic violence is rooted in Russia’s history, dating back to tsarist Russia when wife-beating was seen as necessary. Men were expected to beat their wives on a regular basis to be considered a good husband. Some researchers, on the other hand, attribute the increased domestic violence to the high level of alcoholism in Russia.

Despite the scale of the problem, Pisklakova says authorities often don’t act until it’s too late.

 “Of course a woman can call the police,” she says. “But until they arrive, and the woman is able to provide evidence in court that something actually happened to her, it will be too late”.

Another problem is that Russian law requires women to compile case materials for the court personally, and as a result 80 percent of such lawsuits are rejected on legal technicalities.

Despite the difficulties, things are slowly changing.

“There is a new trend happening in Russia: more women are speaking out about domestic violence,” says Alexei Parshin, a lawyer who specializes in domestic abuse cases. “The problem now is that most of them don’t know what action to take or what rights they have”.

Parshin currently represents Vingorovna. He took on her case while she was a client at the Anna Center for Domestic Violence in Moscow. All clients who enter the clinic are assigned a lawyer for the course of their stay at the center. Parshin describes Vingorovna’s former husband as a “seriously ill” and “a dangerous man”.

“Several suspicious incidents have happened since the two separated,” says Parshin. “Her summer home was burned, her car tires slashed, and a lot of her documents stolen. We are linking these incidents to him, who else?”

Vingorovna, who has three children, now lives with her parents. Although, she is in the process of getting a divorce, she claims her estranged husband continues to harass her.

“I know he is sitting somewhere in his car right now, and watching me,” she says in a surprisingly calm manner. “There are plenty of women like me in Russia. It is scary, sure; but what can we do?”

By Diana Markosian RIA Novosti

EU agrees on permanent eurozone rescue fund

EU leaders have agreed to set up a permanent mechanism to bail out any member state whose debt problems threaten the 16-nation eurozone.

The eurozone stability mechanism will require a change to the EU's Lisbon Treaty - but the wording has now been agreed, diplomats say.

As the UK uses the pound it will not have to contribute to the fund, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

This year Greece and the Irish Republic have received emergency EU bail-outs. BBC News

Fugitive Guatemalan minister arrested

Madrid, Spain (CNN) -- Carlos Vielmann, a former Guatemalan interior minister wanted on charges of extrajudicial killings, turned himself in to authorities in Spain Thursday morning, his attorney told CNN.

An arrest warrant for Vielmann was issued by Spanish authorities Wednesday night, attorney Francisco Palomo said.

Vielmann is facing charges in both Spain and Guatemala stemming from the same incident, a 2006 uprising at the El Pavon prison in Guatemala where seven inmates were killed.

The Interior Ministry and police said at the time that the prisoners were killed during a violent confrontation with prison authorities. However, a report by the Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsman's Office concluded the prisoners had been executed. CNN

Palestinians seek recognition of state from European countries

Jerusalem (CNN) -- Following the breakdown of direct talks with Israel, Palestinians have begun seeking international recognition of an independent state from European nations.

Officials from the Palestinian Authority told CNN Thursday that the governments of France, Britain, Sweden, and Denmark had formally been asked to recognize a Palestinian state based on borders that existed prior to the 1967 war between Israel and it Arab neighbors.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Sha'ath told CNN that the requests were part of an ongoing strategy to achieve statehood outside the framework of talks with Israel.

"These were the last ones, but I have been asking all European countries to do the same," Sha'ath said.

He said that while most countries in Africa and Asia had already recognized Palestine as an independent state many countries, including the United States and a number of European nations, did not. CNN

Kosovo must probe organ harvesting accusation, official says

Paris (CNN) -- Authorities in Kosovo must conduct a "tough, independent investigation" into allegations of organ harvesting from prisoners of war, a leading European human rights activist demanded Thursday.

"These things were known by intelligence agencies in various countries, by police, by many people," said Dick Marty, whose report into the allegations was approved by a Council of Europe committee Thursday.

But people in Kosovo are afraid to come forward and give evidence, he said.

"In private they said, 'Yes, we know,' but because of political opportunism they decided to keep quiet," he said.

The report links Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaci to allegations that organs were stolen from prisoners of war and political rivals when the Kosovo Liberation Army was fighting Serbian forces for control of the territory.

"Numerous indications seem to confirm that ... organs were removed from some prisoners ... to be taken abroad for transplantation," the Marty report says.

Investigators have "made progress" toward "proving the existence of secret KLA places of detention in northern Albania where inhuman treatment and even murders are said to have been committed," it says.

Illegal organ trafficking continued after the war ended, the report suggests. CNN

Object shot out of sky above Israeli nuclear plant, military says

Jerusalem (CNN) -- The Israeli Air Force shot down an unidentified flying object over the Dimona nuclear plant in the Negev Desert Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The object appeared in a designated no-fly zone, the air force was scrambled and the object was shot down, the IDF said.

The object could have been a party balloon, the IDF said, but forces have not yet found the debris to determine what it was.

There have been unconfirmed media reports that it was a motor-driven object. The air force reacted according to procedure when the object was spotted, the IDF said.

The Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz reported that last October "IDF warplanes intercepted an Israeli ultralight aircraft that accidentally flew into the area and forced it to land at an airstrip in southern Israel".

It also reported that "an Israeli surface-to-air missile downed a crippled Israeli fighter-bomber that strayed into the restricted zone" during the Six Day War in 1967. The craft's pilot was killed. CNN

U.S. diplomatic cables say Castro rejected colostomy

Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro initially rejected a colostomy procedure when he fell ill in 2006, putting his own life at risk, according to an unnamed medical source quoted by U.S. diplomats in cables released by WikiLeaks.

The cables were made available by the Spanish newspaper El Pais Thursday.

In one cable dated March 16, 2007, almost eight months after Castro was forced to cede power to his younger brother, the head of the American diplomatic mission quotes unnamed sources as saying the elder Castro fell ill on a short domestic flight after a long day of giving speeches.

"They had to land urgently once they knew of his bleeding," the cable says. "He was diagnosed with diverticulitis of the colon".

Four of the five diplomatic missives were sent from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. The United States does not have formal diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Castro's health has long been considered a state secret, and for months there was wild speculation about his illness. But by the time the March cable was written, it was widely believed that he was suffering from diverticulitis.

The same cable quotes an unnamed medical source as saying that Castro "won't die immediately, but will progressively lose his faculties and become ever more debilitated until he dies".

The author of the cable, U.S. diplomat Michael Parmly, adds, "We are missing too many variables to be able to predict accurately how many more months Fidel Castro will live".

More than three years later, Castro is alive and well. He has not resumed power, but he began to appear fairly regularly in public in July to deliver speeches on global affairs, particularly about his fear of a looming nuclear war.

The cable also says that it was Castro himself who initially rejected a colostomy, a procedure in which one end of the large intestine is surgically cut and brought outside the body through the abdomen. A bag attached to the opening collects waste.

The decision was backed by Castro's main doctor, the cable said, but opposed by the rest of the medical team. CNN

Wikileaks: Grace Mugabe sues over diamond claims

Grace Mugabe is suing a Zimbabwean newspaper over its reporting of claims released by Wikileaks she had made "tremendous profits" from the country's diamond mines.

The president's wife is demanding $15m (£9.6m) from the Standard newspaper.

The Marange fields in eastern Zimbabwe are said to be among the world's richest.

Army commanders and allies of President Robert Mugabe have been accused of profiting from diamond sales.

The Standard, a weekly paper, on Sunday reported the claims quoting a US diplomatic cable released by the whistle-blowing website, Wikileaks.

It quoted former US ambassador James McGee as reporting Andrew Cranswick, head of a British mining firm as saying: "There is a small group of high-ranking Zimbabwean officials who have been extracting tremendous diamond profits from Chiadzwa [mine]".

The cable names them as Grace Mugabe and Central Bank governor Gideon Gono, among other officials from the military and President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.

Mrs Mugabe's lawyer called the reports "false, scandalous and malicious".

"The imputation of such conduct on a person of such high standing, the mother of the nation, is to lower the respect with which is held by all right-thinking persons, to a point of disappearance," said the court summons, according to the state-owned Herald newspaper. BBC News

Court backs tourist ban for Dutch cannabis coffee shops

The European Court of Justice has ruled that Dutch authorities can bar foreigners from cannabis-selling coffee shops.

The court said the city of Maastricht was within its rights when it passed a 2005 law stopping foreigners entering cafes that sell marijuana.

The law was aimed at curbing so-called drug tourists driving from Belgium and Germany to buy marijuana.

Correspondents say the government wants to extend the restrictions nationwide.

There are some 700 coffee shops in the Netherlands. The cultivation and sale of soft drugs through them is decriminalised but not legal.

The owner of a Maastricht coffee shop had challenged the 2005 law, arguing that the policy breached EU laws on free movement of goods and services.

However, Thursday's ruling said the restrictions still complied with EU law.

"That restriction is justified by the objective of combating drug tourism and the accompanying public nuisance," the court said.

It added that the governments of Belgium, Germany and France had linked drug tourism to public order problems in their own countries.

Cannabis use in the Netherlands is tolerated in small amounts, with possession and purchases limited to 5g (0.2oz) per adult, regardless of the consumer's nationality.

However, the Netherlands' centre-right coalition government plans to turn coffee shops into private members' clubs amid concerns about the threat drug tourism poses to the Dutch way of life.

The BBC's Geraldine Coughlan in The Hague says the ruling could spell the end of the country's 30-year-old soft drugs tourism trade. BBC News