MP facing committee coaching claim
By Anonymous on Jun 09, 2013 03:23 am 8 June 2013 Last updated at 19:17 ET 
Conservative MP Tim Yeo is a former environment minister
Conservative MP Tim Yeo, who chairs the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee, is alleged to have used his position to help a private company influence Parliament.
Sunday Times investigators secretly filmed the former environment minister.
The paper alleges he coached the boss of a firm, owned by a company that was paying Mr Yeo, before the businessman gave evidence to his committee.
Mr Yeo denies this, and says he intends to contest all the allegations.
The BBC understands Mr Yeo has referred himself to the Parliamentary standards commissioner.
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Second night for Mandela in hospital
By Anonymous on Jun 09, 2013 02:19 am 8 June 2013 Last updated at 23:25 ET 
Nelson Mandela has suffered repeated bouts of pneumonia
Former South African President Nelson Mandela is spending a second night in hospital where he is being treated for a lung infection.
Doctors say there has been little change and his condition continues to be described as serious but stable.
Mr Mandela, 94, had been ill for some days before being transferred in the early hours of Saturday to a hospital in Pretoria.
It is the third time this year he has been admitted to hospital.
The BBC's Karen Allen in Pretoria says there is a sense of calm across South Africa, and also a quiet hope that the man who led the fight against apartheid may regain his strength once again.
Mr Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, cancelled a scheduled appearance in London to remain at her husband's bedside.
Continue reading the main story Nelson Mandela: Key dates
- 1918 Born in the Eastern Cape
- 1943 Joins African National Congress
- 1956 Charged with high treason, but charges dropped
- 1962 Arrested, convicted of sabotage, sentenced to five years in prison
- 1964 Charged again, sentenced to life
- 1990 Freed from prison
- 1993 Wins Nobel Peace Prize
- 1994 Elected first black president
- 1999 Steps down as leader
- 2004 Retires from public life
On Saturday, presidency spokesman Mac Maharaj said that although Mr Mandela was again suffering from pneumonia, he was breathing on his own - "a positive sign".
The former president's close friend Archbishop Desmond Tutu has led calls for South Africans to pray for him and wish him a speedy recovery.
Meanwhile, South African President Jacob Zuma has continued to hold engagements away from the capital.
He has indicated that he will visit Mr Mandela if doctors advise him to do so.
Nelson Mandela served as president from 1994 to 1999.
He was previously imprisoned for 27 years, and is believed to have suffered damaged lungs while working in a prison quarry.
He contracted tuberculosis in the 1980s while being held in jail on the windswept Robben Island.
He retired from public life in 2004 and has been rarely seen in public since.
Read in browser » Obama-Xi summit 'constructive'
By Anonymous on Jun 08, 2013 07:41 pm 8 June 2013 Last updated at 13:27 ET 
The two men seemed relaxed when they met on Friday
Economic issues are expected to dominate the second day of a summit between US President Barack Obama and Chinese leader Xi Xinping, but cyber-security is also on the agenda.
The US wants China to move towards a more consumer-led economy, narrowing the trade gap.
Mr Obama said on Friday the US wanted nations to play by the same rules while Mr Xi spoke of a new blueprint.
But Mr Obama added that cyber-security was an area of growing importance.
The US president has in the past criticised what he called Chinese state-sponsored cyber attacks on the US.
However, last week he defended US phone and web surveillance programmes.
Speaking after his first session of talks with Mr Xi on Friday, Mr Obama described cyber-security as "uncharted waters".
Continue reading the main story Sunnylands
- Built in the 1960s in Rancho Mirage, California, as a home for Walter and Leonore Annenberg
- 25,000-sq ft house was designed by renowned American architect Quincy Jones
- 200-acre estate includes 11 lakes, a tennis court, and a nine-hole golf course
- In 2001, the Annenbergs directed that the estate be available to serve as a sanctuary for high-level national and world leaders seeking privacy and peace for resolving international issues
- Has hosted seven US presidents, British royalty and other world leaders
"We don't have the kind of protocols that have governed military issues and arms issues, where nations have a lot of experience in trying to negotiate what's acceptable and what's not," he said.
On Friday, the Guardian newspaper published what it described as a US presidential order to national security and intelligence officials to draw up a list of potential overseas targets for US cyber-attacks.
The White House has not commented on the report.
The summit, at the Sunnylands retreat in California, is the first meeting between the two men since Mr Xi became president in March.
It has been billed as a chance for the two to get to know each other.
The BBC's North America editor, Mark Mardell, says the the series of leaks about US national security may embarrass President Obama enough to make the summit a little less pious, and a bit more realistic.
Relaxed start The two men - looking relaxed and informal - met and shook hands under a shaded walkway at the Sunnylands estate just outside Palm Springs.
Mr Xi said he and Mr Obama were meeting "to chart the future of China-US relations and draw a blueprint for this relationship".
For his part, Mr Obama said the US welcomed the rise of a peaceful China and wanted "economic order where nations are playing by the same rules".
The US and China are the world's two largest economies. The US runs a huge trade deficit with China, which hit an all-time high of $315bn (£204bn) last year.
Last week, the Chinese firm Shuanghui agreed to buy US pork producer Smithfield for $4.7bn (£3.1bn) - the largest takeover of a US company by a Chinese rival.
The deal highlights the growing power of Chinese firms and their desire to secure global resources.
US producers want China to raise the value of its currency, the renminbi, which would make Chinese goods more expensive for foreign buyers and possibly hold back exports.
Beijing has responded with a gradual easing of restrictions on trading in the renminbi.
Intellectual property is also an area of concern for US firms.
A report last month by the independent Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property put losses to the US from IP theft at as much as $300bn (£192bn) a year. It said 50-80% of the thefts were thought to be by China.
Ahead of the summit, White House officials told reporters hacking would be raised, amid growing concern in the US over alleged intrusions from China in recent months.
Last month the Washington Post, citing a confidential Pentagon report, reported that Chinese hackers had accessed designs for more than two dozen US weapons systems.
The US also directly accused Beijing of targeting US government computers as part of a cyber-espionage campaign in a report in early May.
Read in browser » PM wants web 'action' on child porn
By Anonymous on Jun 08, 2013 11:20 pm 8 June 2013 Last updated at 23:20 ET 
Police investigating the murder of April Jones found images of child abuse and rape, plus pictures of child murder victims on the computer of Mark Bridger
David Cameron has called for "more action" from web companies to rid the internet of images of child sex abuse.
It "twists minds and is... a danger to children", the PM said in a statement.
Ahead of a government meeting with internet companies later this month, he said: "The time for excuses and blame is over - we must all work together."
In two recent murder trials, the killers of five-year-old April Jones and Tia Sharp, 12, were revealed to have viewed abusive images of children.
Research by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) has suggested more than half of those who view child abuse images go on to commit abuse themselves.
Mr Cameron's statement said he was "sickened by the proliferation of child pornography".
"Internet companies and search engines make their living by trawling and categorising the web. So I call on them to use their extraordinary technical abilities to do more to root out these disgusting images."
He said there were "encouraging signs that the industry is willing to step up, increasing funding and technical support for organisations combating child sexual abuse imagery online.
"But I want more action," he said. "The safety of our children is at stake - and nothing matters more than that."
Zero-tolerance Some campaigners want web search engines to default to the safest option - blocking access to legal as well as illegal sexual images.
This would force people to register to access such material, likely deterring many from doing so, it is argued.
But it has been suggested that some internet companies are reluctant to change their search settings, fearing a competitive disadvantage as users are driven to sites unwilling to change their policy.
One of the biggest internet companies, Google, says it has a zero-tolerance attitude on child sexual abuse images.
It says it always removes them when it is made aware, and reports the incident to the relevant authorities.
Google and other internet companies, such as BT, have been summoned to a meeting with the Culture Secretary Maria Miller and the prime minister's adviser, Tory MP Claire Perry, on 17 June.
Read in browser » Officials from two Koreas hold talks
By Anonymous on Jun 09, 2013 01:00 am 8 June 2013 Last updated at 21:03 ET 
South Korea has sent three delegates to the meeting in Panmunjom
Officials from North and South Korea are due to hold their first government-level talks in more than two years.
The talks are to take place at Panmunjom, a military compound in the demilitarised zone between the two countries.
The meeting comes after months of rising tension and war-like gestures from both sides.
They culminated in the suspension in April of all activity in the Kaesong joint commercial zone.
The zone, which is seen as a symbol of North-South co-operation, had run successfully just inside North Korea for more than eight years.
With tensions between the two countries easing, South Korea invited the North to high level talks in Seoul, but Pyongyang said it wanted lower-level discussions first.
The BBC's Kevin Kim in Seoul says it is unclear how long the meeting will go on for and what issues will be discussed.
However, the South Korean delegation said it hoped to negotiate details and plans for ministerial-level talks later this week, he adds.
The South's three-person delegation - led by the director of the Unification Ministry - left Seoul just before 08:00 (2300 GMT Saturday) for Panmunjom.
Ties between the two Koreas deteriorated earlier this year in the wake of the North's nuclear test on 12 February.
Pyongyang withdrew its workers from Kaesong in April, apparently angered by tightened UN sanctions in the wake of the nuclear test and annual South Korea-US military drills.
Hotline Around 53,000 North Korean workers are employed at the Kaesong factory complex by more than 120 South Korean factories.
The zone is a key source of revenue for the North and the biggest contributor to inter-Korean trade.
Last Thursday the North offered talks with the South on the resumption of operations and said it would reconnect a Red Cross hotline if Seoul - which had been seeking such talks - agreed.
The talks closely follow a summit in California between US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Both leaders agreed that North Korea had to denuclearise and that neither country would accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said on Saturday.
China is seen as a key ally of Pyongyang.
Read in browser » Liu Xiaobo's brother-in-law jailed
By Anonymous on Jun 09, 2013 01:52 am 9 June 2013 Last updated at 00:45 ET 
Liu Xia, sister of Liu Hui, denounced the verdict outside the court
A court in China has sentenced the brother-in-law of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in jail on fraud charges.
The lawyer defending Liu Hui said the jail term was out of all proportion to the alleged offence.
He said it should have been treated as a civil dispute, not a criminal matter.
Liu Xiaobo was already in jail when he won the Nobel prize in 2010 for campaigning for peaceful democratic change in China.
Since then his wife, Liu Xia - sister of Liu Hui - has been held under strict house arrest in what she says is an official vendetta against his family.
The court in Huairou, north-east of Beijing, convicted Liu Hui, a manager in a property company, of defrauding a man of 3m yuan ($490,000; £315,000) along with a colleague.
"As Liu Hui's defence attorney I definitely do not approve of this verdict, because we see this fundamentally as a civil issue, and it fundamentally does not constitute criminal fraud," lawyer Mo Shaoping told reporters.
He said Liu Hui maintained his innocence.
A tearful Liu Xia accused the authorities of persecuting her family.
"I absolutely cannot accept this. This is simply persecution," she said before being driven away from the court.
"This is completely an illegal verdict."
She said she had "completely lost hope" in the government, adding: "I can't even leave my house."
Police pulled journalists away from the car as Liu Xia was driven off.
Liu Xiaobo, who won the prize despite fierce Chinese opposition, was jailed in 2009 for helping to draft a manifesto - Charter 08 - calling for political change.
He is currently serving 11 years in jail for inciting the subversion of state power.
Liu Xia, also a known activist, has been living in her Beijing apartment with no internet or phone access and limited weekly visits with family.
She had been allowed to leave her apartment to attend the court hearing.
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