Allegation follows Libyan leader’s speech railing against Nato’s air strikes and insisting he will win conflict Nato has accused Muammar Gaddafi of using mosques and children’s parks as shields after the Libyan leader taunted the alliance in an address broadcast to protesters in Tripoli. In a speech piped through loudspeakers to a few thousand people demonstrating in Green Square, Gaddafi railed against Nato’s intensified air strikes in the capital. “Nato will be defeated,” Gaddafi yelled in a hoarse, agitated voice to the crowd. “They will pull out in defeat.” Nato spokeswoman Oana Lungescu dismissed Gaddafi’s speech as propaganda, and countered claims from Libya’s prime minister on Friday that the alliance was deliberately targeting civilian buildings. “We are saving countless lives every day across the country,” she said. “We are conducting operations with utmost care and precision to avoid civilian casualties. Civilian casualties figures mentioned by the Libyan regime are pure propaganda.” She also accused Gaddafi and his regime of “systematically and brutally attacking the Libyan people”, saying government forces “have been shelling cities, mining ports and using mosques and children’s parks as shields”. Nato has been ramping up the pressure on Gaddafi’s entrenched regime. Though most air strikes happen at night, daytime raids have grown more frequent. Officials on Saturday took journalists to visit a university building that the government claims was hit by a Nato air strike. Students and staff told reporters that an explosion that tore a hole in a three-story building housing classrooms and offices happened sometime on Friday, though accounts differed on the timing. No one was reported injured or killed. One English-speaking student interviewed by the Associated Press was told what to say in Arabic by a plainclothes government official standing nearby. The campus sits a few hundred meters from what appears to be a military installation. The building that was damaged was an aging concrete structure next to what students said were new university buildings under construction. Libya’s health ministry released new casualty figures that put the number of civilians killed in Nato air strikes up until 7 June at 856. There was no way to independently verify the figure and previous government-announced tolls from individual strikes have proven to be exaggerated. Nato Muammar Gaddafi Libya Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East Africa guardian.co.uk
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Games giant Sega sends email to users to say email addresses, dates of birth and passwords have been accessed Sega has become the latest computer games giant to fall prey to hackers after warning users of its Sega Pass system that some of their personal information may have been stolen. The company sent an email on Friday to say that email addresses, dates of birth and encrypted passwords had been accessed by hackers, but that no financial information was at risk. The Sega Pass system was taken offline on Thursday and all users’ passwords have been reset. Customers have been advised to be on the alert for suspicious emails asking for further personal information. The hacking group Lulz Security appeared to deny involvement, despite leading a wave of recent cyber-attacks such as that on Sony. A tweet using the account @LulzSec said: “@Sega – contact us. We want to help you destroy the hackers that attacked you.” In April, Sony had data stolen from the 77 million users of the PlayStation network , one of the worst security breaches of its kind. There was then a second attack when another 24.6 million computer game users might have had their personal details stolen. Personal information and passwords were taken in another hack on Codemasters earlier this month, but not financial details. The email from Sega to customers said: “We have identified that unauthorised entry was gained to our Sega Pass database. “We immediately took the appropriate action to protect our consumers’ data and isolate the location of the breach. We have launched an investigation into the extent of the breach of our public systems. “We have identified that a subset of Sega Pass members emails addresses, dates of birth and encrypted passwords were obtained. To stress, none of the passwords obtained were stored in plain text. “Please note that no personal payment information was stored by Sega as we use external payment providers, meaning your payment details were not at risk from this intrusion.” Hacking Games Data and computer security Internet Computing guardian.co.uk
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The prime minister, George Papandreou, reshuffles cabinet but vows to push on with deeply unpopular austerity measures Thousands of Greeks have marched on parliament in a show of renewed public anger after the prime minister, George Papandreou, reshuffled his cabinet and vowed to push on with deeply unpopular austerity measures. In a move aimed at stifling dissent in his Socialist party, Papandreou on Friday dismissed his finance minister, George Papaconstantinou, who masterminded the five-year austerity programme that has sparked weeks of protests. The reshuffle coincided with a pledge by France and Germany to continue funding Athens, a move that may have bought Greece and its fellow euro zone members time to prevent a messy default, even if doubts over its longer-term solvency persist. The European Union and International Monetary Fund have made the reforms a condition for a new bailout package worth an estimated €120bn ($170bn) that Greece, shut out of capital markets, will need to fund itself through 2014. Around 5,000 protesters from the Communist group Pame marched into Athens’ central Syntagma square, where demonstrations turned violent earlier this week, chanting “the measures are killing us!”. French activists also performed with a 3m puppet depicting a bloodied figure of Lady Justice to rhythmic drumming in a gesture of solidarity with Greek protesters who have camped in the square for three weeks. “What has changed with the reshuffle? Nothing,” said Costas, a 22-year-old student who has been camping on the square since the beginning of the month. “We are not planning to leave unless they take back the measures.” Papandreou appeared to curb a revolt in his party by including some of the austerity package’s harshest critics in the new administration, but that might also weaken the reforms. He named political heavyweight Evangelos Venizelos, his biggest party rival, as finance minister. Shortly after his nomination, Venizelos said he would travel to Brussels on Sunday to ask lenders to allow some “improvements … for social justice” in the reform package. On the same day, euro zone finance ministers are expected to agree to release a 12 billion euro tranche of an existing, year-old bailout loan that Greece needs to pay back debt maturing in July and August and avoid default. “They’ve bought themselves time until September,” said Howard Wheeldon, strategist at BCG Capital Partners in London. “Germany and France are the main countries involved here, and neither of them are going to let the euro fail, and they’re not going to let Greece fail.” Luxembourg’s Jean-Claude Juncker, the chairman of the euro zone finance ministers’ Eurogroup, criticised German pressure to involve bondholders, telling a German newspaper this has pushed up the cost of the bailout. Successful negotiations over a new aid package for Greece are vital to the economic health of the euro zone, Juncker said. “We are playing with fire,” he said, adding that in the worst case, ratings agencies could declare a default leading to dire consequences for the currency union. Papandreou’s new cabinet is expected to survive a parliamentary confidence vote on Tuesday night, and then approve a package which envisages €28bn in tax hikes and spending cuts by 2015. But Greek media were less certain about implementation, an issue that dogged Venizelos’s predecessor when he struggled to meet deficit targets agreed with Greece’s bailout lenders. “Greece needs a strong government. But does it need a strong government to finally implement what has been agreed with the EU or to break these deals?,” columnist Yiorgos Karipidis wrote in main Greek financial daily Imerisia. Greece Europe Euro European Union Economics European debt crisis European banks guardian.co.uk
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Italian child killer tells American student’s appeal hearing that fellow convict Rudy Guede gave him information in prison A convicted child murderer has told an Italian court that he has information clearing Amanda Knox of the killing of British student Meredith Kercher. Giving evidence at the American student’s appeal hearing in Perugia, Mario Alessi recounted a confession made to him in prison by Rudy Guede, who was also convicted of killing the 21-year-old. The Ivory Coast national confided in him that Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito were innocent, Alessi said. Knox, 23, from Seattle, is appealing against her conviction and 26-year prison sentence for the murder of her University of Leeds student housemate in November 2007. Sollecito, 26, who was sentenced to 25 years for the murder, is also trying to clear his name, and Alessi was called by his defence. Alessi told the court that Guede made his claim about the pair’s innocence in November 2009 during recreation time at the Viterbo prison. Guede, who was convicted in separate proceedings from Knox and Sollecito, denies the claim. Kercher, from Coulsdon in Surrey, was studying in Perugia when she was found with her throat slit in her bedroom at the house she shared with Knox and others. Prosecutors said the murder followed a sex game that went too far. Amanda Knox Italy guardian.co.uk
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Human rights council narrowly votes to protect rights of gay people, despite opposition from Islamic and African members The United Nations issued its first condemnation of discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people on Friday, in a cautiously-worded declaration hailed by supporters including the US as a historic moment. Members of the UN human rights council narrowly voted in favour of the resolution put forward by South Africa, against strong opposition from African and Islamic countries. “You just witnessed a historic moment at the human rights council and within the UN system with a landmark resolution protecting human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people,” the US representative to the UNHCR, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, told reporters after the vote. Couched in delicate diplomatic language, the resolution commissions a study of discrimination against gay men and lesbians around the world, the findings of which will be discussed by the Geneva-based council at a later meeting. The proposal went too far for many of the council’s 47-member states, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Pakistan. Speaking on behalf of the powerful Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva said the resolution had “nothing to do with fundamental human rights”. “We are seriously concerned at the attempt to introduce to the United Nations some notions that have no legal foundation,” Zamir Akram said. Nigeria claimed the proposal went against the wishes of most Africans. A diplomat from the north-west African state of Mauritania said it was “an attempt to replace the natural rights of a human being with an unnatural right”. The resolution passed with 23 votes in favour and 19 against, with three abstentions, including that of China. Backers included the US, the European Union, Brazil and other Latin American countries. “If you look at the history of human rights and the ever-expanding circle of who counts as human, every time that circle has expanded there have been those that have dissented and in every case they have been proven wrong over time,” Daniel Baer, a US deputy assistant secretary, said after the vote. Baer told reporters the administration of Barack Obama had chosen what he described as a “course of progress” on gay rights, both domestically and internationally. In March, the US issued a non-binding declaration in favour of gay rights that gained the support of more than 80 countries at the UN. This has coincided with domestic efforts to end the ban on gay people openly serving in the US military and discrimination against them in federal housing. Asked what good the resolution would do for gay and lesbian people in countries that opposed the resolution, Baer said it was a signal “that there are many people in the international community who stand with them, and who support then, and that change will come”. “It’s a historic method of tyranny to make you feel that you are alone,” he said. “One of the things that this resolution does for people everywhere, particularly LGBT people everywhere, is remind them that they are not alone.” Gay rights United Nations guardian.co.uk
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