UK media attack Obama for comments about BP

(CNN) -- British media have leapt to the defense of beleaguered BP following attacks by the White House over its handling of the Gulf Coast disaster.

President Barack Obama has taken a tough stance against the company and its response to the April 20 explosion, which killed 11 workers and has spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf, threatening livelihoods and wildlife.

But now UK opinion formers have weighed in, attacking Obama's approach, warning of the threat to pension funds and questioning relations with the United States.

Four killed in Algeria explosion: security source

AMMAL Algeria (Reuters) - An explosion partially destroyed an Algerian paramilitary police barracks and killed at least four people, including two police officers, a security source said on Friday.

Algeria is waging a campaign to stamp out Islamist insurgents affiliated to al Qaeda. They mount periodic ambushes and bomb attacks against government targets, although the violence has been declining.

"We have at least four people killed and among them two gendarmes (paramilitary police)," said the security source, who did not want to be identified.

Two local people said they heard an explosion at about 3 a.m. (0200 GMT) on Friday at the barracks, which is next to a major highway in the village of Ammal, about 60 km (40 miles) east of the capital Algiers.

There was no official confirmation that there had been an attack and an officer at the barracks refused to comment on what happened.

A Reuters reporter at the scene said the front perimeter wall of the barracks had been completely destroyed and that some of the buildings inside the perimeter had also been wrecked.

The base housed a unit of the gendarmerie, or paramilitary police, who have responsibility for law and order in rural areas of Algeria.

The village of Ammal is in the Boumerdes region, a mountainous area which has in the past been a hotbed for the Islamist insurgency.

The conflict reached a peak in the 1990s and in total about 200,000 people were killed, according to estimates from international non-governmental organisations. There has been a marked reduction in violence since then.

Aftab Sultan to head BoP probe

ISLAMABAD: The team investigating the Rs9-billion Bank of Punjab scam finally has a chief: additional IG Finance Punjab Aftab Sultan. National Accountability Bureau spokesman Ghazni Khan has confirmed the appointment and says NAB chairman Naveed Ahsan has formally asked the Establishment Division to issue the appropriate notification.

The move comes in the wake  of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s orders on Friday during a hearing of the Haris Steel Mills case in the Supreme Court. Chaudhry asked a four-member team comprising NAB chairman, its deputy prosecutor general, Attorney General of Pakistan Maulvi Anwarul Haq and acting secretary narcotics Tariq Khosa to choose an officer to lead the investigation team.

Earlier, the Supreme Court had wanted Khosa to investigate the scam and had asked the National Accountability Bureau to secure the Establishment Division’s permission. However, in Friday’s hearing, NAB deputy prosecutor general Raja Amir presented in court the Establishment Division’s letter saying that the prime minister, in exercise of his constitutionally mandated executive authority, had turned down NAB’s request.

According to the letter, the sensitivity of Khosa’s current assignment precluded the possibility of him being reassigned. So the government suggested three others as potential chiefs of the investigation team: additional I.G (Finance & Welfare) Aftab Sultan, C.P.O. Lahore Fiaz Ahmed Khan, additional chief secretary (home) Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Karachi CCPO Waseem Ahmed.

Ogaden group alleges massacre

Rebels in Ethiopia's eastern Ogaden region have accused the government of killing 71 civilians in a military operation last month.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which says it is fighting for autonomy for ethnic Somalis in the region on the border with Somalia, said the operation against them started on May 18.

It said in a statement on Friday that the offensive was launched in retaliation for a raid during which ONLF claimed to have captured a town previously controlled by the government.

"The Ethiopian army combed the countryside, summarily executing men in front of their families while beating, raping or killing the women," the ONFL statement said.

"The ruthless troops have so far massacred 71 innocent civilians with impunity while wounding and torturing hundreds".

The Ethiopian government denied the accusations.

Modernist painter Sigmar Polke dead at 69

One of Germany's most important painters, the modernist Sigmar Polke, died overnight aged 69 after a long battle with cancer, his art dealer Erhard Klein said on Friday.

Polke was best known for the Capitalist Realism movement he began in the 1960s, an ironic response to the Soviet Union's official art doctrine of Socialist Realism and the American Pop Art scene.

Klein said that with Polke's death, the German art scene had lost one of its "most colourful personalities".

Polke used the imagery of Pop Art including ordinary foods as a starting point but manipulated them to the point of abstraction, making the familiar foreign.

An avid experimentalist, Polke moved fluidly between styles and media all the while maintaining his signature bemused distance in his work, which also included photography, sketches, installations and collage.

He won many of the coveted prizes of the art world including the Golden Lion ofthe Venice Biennale in 1986.

Rajiv govt bailed out Anderson: CIA note

NEW DELHI: The suspicion that orders from the Rajiv Gandhi government at the Centre led to Union Carbide boss Warren Anderson being released from the custody of Madhya Pradesh police has been further strengthened by a declassified CIA report. 

The central government was "quick to release the Union Carbide chairman from house arrest yesterday", said the report going back to December 8, 1984. Giving an explanation for Centre's intervention, it says: "New Delhi believes state officials were overly eager to score political points against the company".

Interestingly, it refers to media reports to conclude that both Centre and state governments were looking to "deflect the blame on the subsidiary", the observation suggesting that the American intelligence agency did not hold the MNC primarily responsible for the worst-ever industrial disaster. 

Ex-head of MI5 among new witnesses at Iraq inquiry

Lady Manningham-Buller, who expressed concern about plans to invade Iraq, is to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, it was announced today

The head of MI5 at the time of the Iraq invasion, Lady Manningham-Buller, who expressed concern about plans to invade Iraq, is to give evidence to the Chilcot inquiry, it was announced today.

She is among new witnesses, including Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, and General Sir Mike Jackson, then head of the army, and John Prescott, the former deputy prime minister, who will give evidence when the inquiry resumes public hearings this summer.

Manningham-Buller told the Guardian last year that she had warned ministers and officials that an invasion of Iraq would increase the terrorist threat. Amid Anglo-US preparations to invade Iraq, she asked: "Why now?"

She added: "I said it as explicitly as I could. I said something like: 'The threat to us would increase because of Iraq'".

Blix is expected to tell the inquiry that he should have been given more time to see whether Iraq really did have weapons of mass destruction.

Honda might again halt production in China

GUANGZHOU - Workers at a south China factory supplying locks and key sets to Honda Motor Co vehicles continued to strike over pay on Friday, a move that might force Japan's No 2 carmaker to halt its assembly lines in China for a third time.

Workers at Honda Lock (Guangdong) Co, Ltd, located in Zhongshan city in China's manufacturing hub of Guangdong, told Xinhua that negotiations with the management are deadlocked as the company's offer does not meet workers' pay demands.

A spokesman with Honda Motor (China) Investment Co, Ltd, parent of the lock-manufacturing joint venture, said the current inventory of locks can last only until Saturday (June 12) and the company has yet to set production plans for any time after June 13.

The coming Saturday and Sunday are workdays in China and a three-day holiday for the Dragon Boat Festival begins next Monday.

Honda was forced to halt its assembly lines in Guangdong twice in less than a month due to a weeks-long strike at a parts supplier and another at a factory supplying mufflers and exhaust systems. Workers at both factories demanded, and finally received, a significant pay rise.

It did not halt the assembly lines, however, for the strike at the locks and key sets factory starting June 9 as company sources earlier said the inventory had not run out.

But that might change.

The lock factory on Thursday agreed to raise each of its 1,400 employees' monthly salary by 100 yuan ($14.6) and to raise the standard of over-time pay to 50 yuan ($7.3) per day. But workers refused to sign a company-prepared commitment to end the strike.

Behemoth aircraft touches down with world record

World’s largest plane touches down in Jutland on Thursday, setting a record for the longest load ever transported by air.

When the Antonov 225 bound for landed Thursday evening at Skrydstrup Air Base in central Jutland, it set a new world record for transporting the longest load ever by air.

The Russian-made cargo plane is the world’s largest and longest fixed-wing aircraft and was the obvious choice for the task: carrying 42-metre-long wind turbine blades from China.

US Lawmakers Disturbed Over Google's Wi-Fi Snooping

Three U.S. congressmen who asked Google to explain why and how it collected data being transmitted over Wi-Fi networks from its Street View cameras were not placated by the search giant's response.

Representative Henry Waxman of California, Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Representative Joe Barton of Texas on Friday posted Google's response to their queries online and said they continue to be concerned about the activity.

"Google now confesses it has been collecting people's information for years, yet claims they still do not know exactly what they collected and who was vulnerable. This is deeply troubling for a company that bases its business model on gathering consumer data," Barton said. "That failure is even more disturbing and ironic in view of the fact that Google is lobbying the government to regulate Internet service providers, but not Google".

Google recently disclosed that it had been collecting information sent over unsecured Wi-Fi networks while collecting images with its Street View cars. Google uses such cars to take the photos that make up Street View, a service that overlays images on maps.

Google hasn't analyzed the information it collected from the Wi-Fi networks so it doesn't know what data it has, the company said in response to the questions from the congressmen. "It is possible that the payload data may have included personal data if a user at the moment of collection broadcast such information," Google wrote.

Apple's Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed

Apple has suffered another embarrassment. A security breach has exposed iPad owners including dozens of CEOs, military officials, and top politicians. They—and every other buyer of the cellular-enabled tablet—could be vulnerable to spam marketing and malicious hacking.

The breach, which comes just weeks after an Apple employee lost an iPhone prototype in a bar, exposed the most exclusive email list on the planet, a collection of early-adopter iPad 3G subscribers that includes thousands of A-listers in finance, politics and media, from New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson to Diane Sawyer of ABC News to film mogul Harvey Weinstein to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It even appears that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's information was compromised.

It doesn't stop there. According to the data we were given by the web security group that exploited vulnerabilities on the AT&T network, we believe 114,000 user accounts have been compromised, although it's possible that confidential information about every iPad 3G owner in the U.S. has been exposed. We contacted Apple for comment but have yet to hear back. We also reached out to AT&T for comment. [Update: AT&T has confirmed the breach and the FBI has opened an investigation. Updates below.] A call to Rahm Emanuel's office at the White House has not been returned.

Gawker Contacted by FBI in iPad Security Breach Probe

Gawker Media said Friday on its Valleywag blog that it has been contacted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was told to hold on to relevant documents related to a possible security breach of AT&T Inc.'s website that exposed the email addresses of some owners of Apple Inc. iPad devices.

"We can confirm that Gawker Media was contacted by the FBI earlier today and issued a formal preservation notice," Valleywag said in its post.

Gawker Media publicized the incident Wednesday after being contacted by a small group of computer experts calling itself Goatse Security. The group said it discovered the flaw, explaining that it was able to find the email addresses by guessing numbers that identify iPads connected to AT&T's mobile network. The group said it uncovered 114,000 email addresses, including those of prominent officials in companies, politics and the military.

Escher Auernheimer, a member of the group, said the group hasn't heard from law enforcement and that it didn't do anything illegal.

Thursday, FBI spokeswoman Katherine Schweit confirmed an investigation into the incident had been opened. But she wouldn't comment on what the bureau is looking at. "It's very early in the investigation," she added.

The incident this week was embarrassing to both AT&T and Apple. AT&T declined to comment on the investigation.

Exoplanet spotted in motion around its 'sun'

Astronomers say they have followed, for the first time, an extra-solar planet in orbit around a young white star.

The team used the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile to track the motion of a gas giant Beta Pictoris b.

The planet's "sun" is also believed to be the youngest star to host a planet.

The find shows that Jupiter-like giants can form near stars in much shorter time-spans than previously thought, the scientists report in Science journal.

Astronomers have so far spotted some 450 extra-solar planets (exoplanets).

But Beta Pictoris b, a gas giant about nine times the mass of Jupiter, is one of only a few to be detected by direct imaging.

It is also the youngest of them, a co-author of the study, Dr Markus Kasper from the European Southern Observatory, told BBC News.

Its host star, which has a similar name, Beta Pictoris, is very young as well, he said.

It is believed to be around 12 million years old, less than three-thousandths of the age of our Sun.

European debt crisis is dampening Dutch economic growth

The Dutch economy will grow by just 1.2% this year as the European debt crisis dampens the recovery, the central bank said on Friday.

And the sustainability of the European and Dutch recovery depends on the 'decisiveness of European governments', the central bank said in a statement.

Cutbacks implemented by trade partners will depress foreign demand for Dutch products and in the Netherlands, lower public expenditure and higher taxes will hold back growth in private spending, the bank said.

Kingfisher Airlines official arrested

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested an Assistant Vice President of Kingfisher Airlines for allegedly providing undue benefits to Manoj Malviya, additional commissioner (Security), Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS).

Major Leslie Missal, Assistant Vice-President (Security) posted at the New Delhi office of the airlines was arrested when he flew down to Mumbai for some official work on Friday evening.

The anti-corruption branch (ACB) of the CBI had on May 18 registered a case under Prevention of Corruption Act against Malviya who is also posted in New Delhi for taking undue advantage from the owners of the Mumbai airport and some airlines. Malviya was charged with abuse of his official position and entering into conspiracy with private persons who had official dealings with him.

Deputy Inspector General of Police, ACB CBI, Praveen Salunke said Missal, a retired Army official was arrested, as he was not cooperating in the investigation.

The CBI case against Malviya had said that he had made Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL), GVK Industries, Airport Authority of India (AAI) and some airlines company to pay for his 5 star hotel stays during his visits to Mumbai between May 2009 and February 2010.

Nityananda granted bail

BANGALORE: The Karnataka High Court on Friday granted conditional bail to controversial godman Nityananda, accused of rape, criminal intimidation and cheating.

Nityananda, who has been lodged in the Ramanagaram jail, is likely to walk a free man once the bail order is produced before the jail authorities and the Ramanagaram magistrate.

Nityananda, one of his close disciples, Bhaktananda, and two others, were arrested by the officials of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Karnataka, from a house at Mamlig village near Solan in Himachal Pradesh.

Senior counsel and former Advocate-General B.V. Acharya, who appeared on behalf of Nityananda, trashed the CID probe against his client. He said the CID had so far not been able to place any credible and irrefutable evidence against Nityananda.

He said his client had been kept in jail on flimsy charges.

He said Nityananda was wrongly booked under several charges under the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

What is the offence he has committed and where is the proof? he asked. He urged the court to grant bail to Nityananda. On its part, the CID maintained that it was Nityananda's former driver Lenin who had given a complaint.

It said it had not been able to interrogate the Tamil actor who was seen in the video footage with Nityananda.

Justice Subash B. Adi, in his order, allowed the bail petition of Nityananda with stringent conditions.

Google helps build trade case over Web censorship

(Reuters) - Google Inc is working with U.S. and European officials to build a case that would argue Internet censorship acts as a trade barrier, a top company executive said on Friday

Google shut down its mainland Chinese-language portal earlier this year over censorship concerns and a cyber attack it said it traced to China.

China has the world's largest number of Internet users and while the market has boomed, Beijing has kept a tight grip over sensitive content on subjects like politics and ethnic unrest.

Robert Boorstin, Google's director of corporate and policy communications, said the company is working with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, the State Department, Commerce Department and European officials to build a case to take to the World Trade Organization.

Such a case could help U.S. tech companies seeking greater access to Chinese consumers while furthering the U.S. government's human rights agenda.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her technology advisers have promoted Internet freedom as a basic human right.

"Google believes very strongly, as do other companies, that censorship is a trade barrier," Boorstin said during a panel discussion on Internet censorship hosted by the Media Access Project, a Washington-based public interest group.