Judge tells killer with a fetish for cutting hair from women that he will never be released Danilo Restivo will spend the rest of his life in prison for the ritualistic killing of mother-of-two Heather Barnett after a judge ruled that his crime was of such “inhuman depravity” he should never be freed. Restivo, who had a fetish for cutting locks of hair from girls and women, killed seamstress Barnett at her flat in Bournemouth before mutilating her body and placing a hank of someone else’s hair in her right hand and a clump of her own beneath her left. Restivo, an Italian national, now faces extradition over the killing of 16-year-old Elisa Claps in the loft of a church in Potenza, southern Italy, in 1993. He left strands of her hair in her hands and next to her body. Restivo was found guilty in just five hours by a jury at Winchester crown court of the murder of Barnett, 48, in 2002. All 12 members of the jury chose to return to court to hear Restivo’s sentence. Some wept as they heard a victim impact statement read on behalf of Barnett’s daughter, Caitlin, aged 11 at the time of the murder, who found the body when she came home from school. Passing sentence, Mr Justice Burnett told Restivo the murder was so serious that no minimum term would be appropriate. “The seriousness of this offence is exceptionally high… the depravity of the killing, the careful planning and preparation, its sexual content and the previous killing of Elisa Claps drive me to the conclusion that the alternative starting point (for a minimum prison term) of 30 years would not be appropriate. “I can find no mitigation in this case, none have been advanced on your behalf. There is, in my judgment, no minimum period which could be properly set – you will never be released from prison.” The judge said the crime was of “inhuman depravity”, made worse by the fact that Restivo would have known his victim’s children would find her body. He said: “You knew an 11-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy would find their mother butchered on the bathroom floor. This feature of the case will haunt those who sat through it. “Why you picked Heather Barnett as your victim I do not know but it’s clear that you did so to satisfy a sadistic, sexual appetite. The evidence in this case shows you are a cold, depraved, calculated killer.” Restivo is now subject to a European arrest warrant and is expected to be extradited to Italy – where the case has attracted huge interest – to stand trial for the murder of Claps. Outside court Heather Barnett’s brother, IT teacher Ben Barnett, spoke of his relief at seeing Restivo jailed for lifeand revealed the killer attended his sister’s funeral. Undercover police observed mourners at the funeral and wake, where Restivo may even have consoled Heather’s children Terry, then 14, and Caitlin. Detectives had told the grieving family they were sure Restivo would show up at the service in February 2003 because he would get a thrill from it. Mr Barnett said: “Restivo and his wife, Fiamma, came to Heather’s funeral and the wake. They were neighbours and at that stage he was one suspect of about 10 or so. “The police approached us before the funeral and asked if they could attend to see who else turned up. They thought the murderer might come and get some gratification from it. “He would have spoken to the children, because they knew him as a neighbour. He is a callous and calculating person. “He left Heather for her children to find and made sure he was the person who tried to comfort them. I will never understand that.” Mr Barnett added: “I feel relieved; relieved that we don’t have to go through this anymore and that the police suspicions were right all along. “Our biggest fear was always that this might happen to somebody else and the evidence shows that it quite realistically could have done. I think he would have killed again. “Restivo has already had eight years of freedom that my sister never had. I’ve thought about the death penalty, but I think it’s too good for him. It seems like the easy way out. I think he’s going to have a miserable rest of his life in prison. Mr Barnett also criticised the Italian police investigation and said that, if Claps’s body had been found earlier, Heather would still be alive. He said: “The thing I find most confusing is that they should have found Elisa’s body in the place where she was suspected to have been murdered. All the evidence points to the fact she had been there from that day and I don’t know how the police could have missed it. Somebody has a lot of questions to answer. “If the investigation had been carried out properly and they proved Restivo murdered Elisa, then my sister would still be alive today.” Crime Italy Steven Morris guardian.co.uk
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Coalition says leader of insurgents who attacked Intercontinental Hotel among victims of air strike on Haqqani network fighters Nato aircraft killed an insurgent leader linked to a deadly hotel attack in the Afghan capital this week, the coalition has said, a raid that raised questions about whether Afghan forces are ready for the looming security transition. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the Intercontinental, one of two major hotels used by foreigners and Afghan government officials, a rare night-time raid that began on Tuesday and ended five hours later with 12 killed. However, the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network had also been involved in the assault by nine suicide bombers and gunmen. ISAF identified the Haqqani network leader killed in an air strike as Ismail Jan, whom it described as a deputy to the senior Haqqani commander in Afghanistan, Haji Mali Khan. It said on Thursday he and “several Haqqani fighters” were killed in the air strike in the Gardez district of Paktia province south of Kabul on Wednesday. “The Haqqani network, in conjunction with Taliban operatives, was responsible for the Tuesday-night attack on the Kabul Intercontinental hotel which killed 12 people, including a provincial judge,” ISAF said in a statement. The raid came only a week after the US president, Barack Obama, announced a phased withdrawal of combat troops, with 10,000 to leave by the end of this year and 23,000 more by the end of September 2012. Obama’s announcement preceded the start of a gradual transition of responsibility to Afghan forces from next month that will end with all foreign combat troops leaving Afghanistan by the end of 2014. With that process to begin in seven areas next month, the hotel raid raised serious questions about whether Afghan forces, particularly the police, were ready to take over. “It shows one of the concerns is that the Afghan security forces are growing in quantity, not in quality,” said Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network. The attack ended when snipers on board a Nato helicopter killed the last three attackers fighting from the roof of the hotel. Earlier television footage showed Afghan forces firing wildly into the air. ISAF has been training members of the 126,000-strong Afghan national police since 2009. Afghan police, who will be at the frontline of the security transition in villages and towns across Afghanistan, have long been viewed as inept and lagging behind the training of the better-equipped army, which had been the focus of training efforts since the Taliban were toppled in late 2001. Violence has risen to record levels across Afghanistan over the past 18 months as Nato troops, especially US forces, hit back against a growing insurgency, especially in the Taliban heartland in the south. A quarterly report by the UN secretary-general to the security council about Afghanistan found that the number of security incidents since March had risen 51% on the same period in 2010, with suicide attacks rising sharply. Attacks in the Taliban heartland of Kandahar were especially worrying. “The city of Kandahar and its surroundings registered the majority of the incidents during the reporting period, with a quarter of the overall attacks and more than half of all assassinations recorded countrywide,” the report said. But Ruttig said the attack also highlighted other problems confronting Afghanistan before the start of the transition process, which also includes handing the running of civil institutions and projects over to Afghans. Not least is the political paralysis that has gripped the country for months. “The fact that neither Nato nor the Afghans were able to prevent it says something – that transition needs to be something more than just security,” Ruttig said of the hotel attack. “Security forces are only part of transition. There also needs to be a strengthening of political institutions and, at the moment, the parliamentary crisis has brought politics to a standstill,” he told Reuters. Last week a special poll court set up by a decree by the president, Hamid Karzai, overturned the results for a quarter of parliamentary seats from last year’s elections, effectively throwing out 62 MPs who had been declared winners. The move, and the court itself, have been branded unconstitutional and illegal by Afghan and western officials and observers. Critics have said the court was set up by Karzai to further his own political agenda and silence opposition. Afghanistan Hamid Karzai Nato Taliban guardian.co.uk
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First drone strike in Somalia reported to have wounded senior al-Shabab militants The US has conducted its first drone strike on Islamist militants in Somalia, marking the expansion of the pilotless war campaign to a sixth country. The missile strike on a vehicle in the southern town of Kismayo, reported last week as a helicopter assault, wounded two senior militants with al-Shabab and several foreign fighters according to the Washington Post . Armed Predator and Reaper drones already operate in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Libya, where they are controlled by the US military or the CIA. The CIA-run programmes are controversial. Although they provide the Obama administration with a low-risk weapon against Islamist militants, they stir intense anti-American hostility among the local population. Opposition is most vociferous in Pakistan, where the government said on Wednesday it was shutting down a big CIA drone base, and had ordered US personnel based there to leave. The closure of Shamsi airbase is unlikely to end the strikes. The CIA has moved its drones to bases across the border in Afghanistan, and some strikes have already taken place from there, according to a senior Pakistani military official. Racked by decades of civil war, Somalia has become an al-Qaida hub, after Yemen and Pakistan’s tribal belt. The US military previously targeted militants based there using helicopter gunships, special forces teams and cruise missiles fired from aircraft carriers. The US has also flown surveillance drones over Somalia – one was shot down in October 2009 – but now they are being used for assassination. The targets of the 23 June strike were reportedly close to Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula. In May, Awlaki escaped a drone strike in Yemen carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite military unit that orchestrated the Osama bin Laden raid. Now control of the Yemen strikes is reported to be passing to the CIA. The closure of Shamsi airbase is a blow to President Barack Obama efforts to flush al-Qaida from Pakistan. Shamsi, in western Balochistan province, was the launchpad for strikes against al-Qaida and Taliban militants in the tribal belt, particularly in Waziristan. Washington politicians have warmly embraced the drone strikes, which allow them to target elusive enemies in remote parts of the world with little risk to US personnel. In Pakistan, drone strikes have killed 2,500 people since 2004, according to higher estimates. Military analysts say they represent the future of airborne warfare. Ground personnel help the pilotless craft take off, but control quickly passes to remote-control pilots stationed thousands of miles away in the US. The CIA drones are controlled from a suburban facility near the spy agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, while military drones are controlled from airbases in Texas, Nevada and elsewhere. Shamsi was built by Arab sheikhs for falcon hunting trips, but has been occupied by the CIA since at least 2004, when Google Earth images showed Predator drones parked on the runway. Pakistani defence ministry officials said they were closing the base in retaliation to slowed payments from the coalition support fund – a multibillion-dollar US subsidy for Pakistani military operations. A senior US official in Islamabad said the government was engaging in “diplomacy by headlines” but Pakistan’s leaders are also responding to hostile public opinion. A recent Pew poll found that just 3% of Pakistanis favoured drone strikes. The CIA is likely to continue its Pakistan campaign from its Afghan bases. In unusually direct comments on Wednesday, Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan said the US would continue to “deliver precise and overwhelming force against al-Qaida” in the tribal areas. The widening drone campaign has elicited concerns from human rights activists about civilian casualties, and from legal experts about the consequences of an unaccountable form of warfare. Last year a senior UN official warned of the risks of a “PlayStation warfare” mentality. Somalia Pakistan US military CIA United States Declan Walsh guardian.co.uk
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Great Firewall of China website shows users are unable to access any location within google.com Google’s new social network service, Google+, has apparently been blocked in China within a day of being launched. The company also halted new signups after a torrid first 24 hours in which “insane” demand to join it forced the company to close it to new members briefly. According to the site Great Firewall of China, which uses a server based in China to try to access external web locations, Google users inside China are unable to access any location within google.com, which includes the URL for Google+, at plus.google.com. Another access-checking service, Just Ping, also reports that the plus.google.com URL is inaccessible within China . The blocking by the Chinese government, using its “great firewall” – a censorship system which blocks a huge number of websites outside the Chinese borders on the basis that they contain “destabilising” content such as pornography or unsuitable views – matches that applied to other western social networks, including Facebook and Twitter . By contrast, the Guardian’s site is accessible in many parts of China.) Google’s main URL, google.com, has been blocked inside China since the company decided to withdraw from the mainland in 2010 in protest at what it saw as government-inspired hacking . According to the Great Firewall site, its Chinese version, google.cn, is also blocked while that of China-sanctioned Baidu is not. Google+ is being seen as Google’s answer to Facebook, which boasts almost 700m users – although it is effectively banned inside China, where only people who use encrypted connections to the outside world are able to join it. Vic Gundotra, one of the company’s top engineers who watched the development closely, posted on Google+ early on Thursday morning (at roughly 8.45pm on Wednesday night in Google’s Pacific timezone) that “we’ve shut down the invite mechanism for the night. Insane demand. We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way. Thank you for all of your interest!” Invites were opened up again on Thursday afternoon, though only on a limited basis. There are no details yet on how many people have joined the service. China’s government on Friday celebrates an important anniversary, of 90 years since the founding of the Communist party of China, and it has instituted a number of crackdowns on internet use and heightened censorship. Earlier this week Google revealed that it receives a steady stream of requests for private data from developed countries — but that it had had no content removal requests from the Chinese government in the second half of 2010. However it received 90 requests from China-controlled Hong Kong for user data, an increase of 80% from the same period in 2009; it acquiesced to 53 of them, a 59% compliance rate. Google Digital media Social networking Blogging China Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A strange expanding halo of light captured by a webcam outside an observatory in Hawaii left puzzled astronomers turning to “Citizen Science” for help. Users of the S tarship Asterisk determined that a Minuteman III missile had been launched from California the same night and was almost certainly responsible for…
Continue reading …The hottest website of 2006 now belongs in part to one of that year’s hottest stars. Justin Timberlake has teamed up with digital advertising agency Specific Media to take MySpace off the hands of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, reports the Telegraph . Insiders say the fallen giant of social networks, which…
Continue reading …Teenagers on gap year were on coach heading for Chiang Mai Three British gap year students travelling through Thailand have been killed in a bus crash. Bruno Melling-Firth, Conrad Quashie and Max Boomgaarden-Cook – all understood to be 19 and from London – were on a coach bound for the northern town of Chiang Mai when it collided head on with another bus in the early hours of Tuesday morning. The Foreign Office said two other Britons on board survived. One is now recovering from his injuries in a Bangkok hospital. “We can confirm the death of three British nationals,” a spokesman said. “A further two British nationals were on board the bus. We are in contact with both; one has some injuries and we have visited him in hospital in Bangkok and are providing assistance. “The families of the deceased have been informed and we are helping them through this extremely difficult time.” The accident happened in Khlong Khlung, in the Kamphaeng Phet province, shortly after midnight. Foreign Office representatives are now in contact with local police and the Thai authorities. On Twitter, one social networker wrote: “Im Really Upset … My Friend Just Died In A Bus Crash In Thailand!” Other postings read “RIP BRUNO! :””( I Cant Believe Your Gone,” and “I Cant Stop Crying I Saw Him The Other Day :’( Hes Actually Gone…Gone..:’(.” Thailand guardian.co.uk
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News International chief Rebekah Brooks hopes move will prevent repeat of News of the World hacking affair News International said on Thursday it has asked leading legal firm Olswang to draw up a new code of practice for the company in an effort to prevent a repeat of the phone-hacking affair at the News of the World. In an email to staff the News International chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, said Olswang had been hired “to examine in great detail what can be learnt from the past”. Brooks added that Olswang “will recommend a series of policies, practices and systems to create a more robust governance, compliance and legal structure for our papers that we hope over time can become a standard for the industry”. The move is an attempt by Brooks to show she is taking a proactive approach to the phone-hacking scandal, which has prompted legal action from around 30 public figures who claim their voicemail messages were illegally intercepted by a private investigator working for the News of the World. It also underlines the remarkable U-turn the company has performed since the Guardian first revealed nearly two years ago that it had made secret payments to several victims in exchange for their silence. Brooks reacted at the time, July 2009, by issuing a statement which claimed: “The Guardian coverage, we believe, has substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public.” At the start of this year, however, the company handed over information about Ian Edmondson, the paper’s former assistant editor (news) which led to his arrest by Scotland Yard. The Metropolitan police reopened its investigation into phone hacking at the paper and after a raft of civil actions were brought by victims, News International admitted liability in some cases and apologised. It announced in April it would set up a compensation scheme to make payments to victims who could prove their phones were hacked. Brooks said in her email to staff on Thursday afternoon that the phone-hacking scandal meant “testing times ahead”. She admitted the affair would “continue to challenge us as a company from a reputational and resource perspective”, but added that News International had made “significant progress” on the issue over the last year. “I am determined that NI is led in a way that deals with these matters properly. I want both external and internal acknowledgement that we have done the right thing – by facing up to our responsibilities where things have gone wrong and having done our utmost to correct them,” she said. News International has also formalised the roles of several key executives who have been managing the group’s response to the phone-hacking crisis by setting up a management and standards committee. It will be staffed by general manager Will Lewis, director of corporate affairs Simon Greenberg and Jeff Palker, who is general consul at the European and Asian arm of NI’s parent company News Corp. They will continue to report directly to Brooks. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly “for publication”. • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook . Phone hacking Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers News International Rebekah Brooks News of the World James Robinson guardian.co.uk
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Traces of caesium-134 and 137 isotopes found in urine tests on 10 children in city near stricken nuclear power pant Trace amounts of radioactive substances have been found in urine samples taken from children from Fukushima city, raising concerns that residents have been exposed internally to radiation from the stricken nuclear power plant 37 miles (60km) away. Tests were conducted in May on 10 children, aged between 6 and 16, by a Japanese civic group and Acro, a French body that measures radioactivity. All 10 tested positive for tiny amounts of caesium-134 and caesium-137. The chief cabinet secretary, Yukio Edano, said he was concerned by the findings and the government would thoroughly examine the results. The Fukushima network to save children from radiation said it was certain the readings were due to radiation leaks from the power plant, where workers are still struggling to stabilise reactors that suffered core meltdowns after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami . Acro’s president, David Boilley, said the results suggested a strong likelihood that children living in or near Fukushima city had been exposed to radiation internally. According to the survey, 1.13 becquerels of caesium-134 per litre of urine were found in an eight-year-old girl – the highest reading for that isotope. The highest reading for caesium-137 – 1.30 becquerels – came from a seven-year-old boy, Kyodo news agency said. Richard Wakeford, an expert in radiation exposure at the Dalton Institute in Manchester, said he was not surprised that caesium had been found in Fukushima city residents, given the distance and direction the radiation plume had travelled. “What we’re seeing here is residual caesium that will be around for quite a while,” he said. “But, given the circumstances, the levels quoted in the survey are not particularly alarming.” Wakeford said ingestion could be prevented by avoiding contaminated food and milk, but added that produce contaminated at levels acceptable to the government would inevitably go on sale. The discovery came days after health authorities in Fukushima began checking internal radiation doses among all 2 million of the prefecture’s residents, a 30-year project that will cost an estimated 100bn yen (£777m). In separate tests, radioactive caesium and iodine were found in the urine of 15 residents from two towns located 19 to 25 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. While none had exceeded the maximum allowable dose of 20 millisieverts a year, experts voiced concern over the presence of caesium-137, a byproduct of nuclear fission with a half-life of 30 years. “This won’t be a problem if they don’t eat vegetables or other contaminated products,” Nanao Kamada, professor emeritus of radiation biology at Hiroshima University, told reporters. “But it will be difficult for people to continue living in these areas.” From September tens of thousands of children living in Fukushima city are to be given dosimeters to measure their exposure to atmospheric radiation. Environmental groups have called for pregnant women and children to be evacuated from the city. Children are thought to be at greatest risk because they have more time to develop thyroid and other cancers. “At least parts of the population that are sensitive need to be evacuated, and the remaining people who decide to stay for various reasons need to be given proper support and information,” said Jan Beranek, head of Greenpeace’s energy campaign. Wakeford said: “I wouldn’t say immediate evacuation is required because this is not a sudden burst of radiation. It’s long-term, protracted exposure. The Japanese government’s biggest problem is deciding on what kind of external levels of exposure are acceptable once the crisis has moved out of the emergency phase.” Japan disaster Japan Nuclear power Energy Justin McCurry guardian.co.uk
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Narrow vote grants government authority to make cuts and tax rises approved in principle on Wednesday Greece’s chances of avoiding a catastrophic disorderly default appeared to improve on Thursday as the Greek parliament approved the second stage of its €28bn (£25bn) austerity plan , and Germany announced that its banks will support a new bailout package. After heated debate, MPs narrowly voted in favour of an enabling bill that gives Greece’s government the authority to implement the package of deep spending cuts and hefty tax rises that was approved in principle on Wednesday. The legislation was carried by 155 votes to 136. Greece is now expected to receive €12bn in immediate aid from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the European Central Bank. Herman van Rompuy, president of the European Council, swiftly welcomed the result, which also eases the way towards a second bailout package, likely to be worth around €110bn. “This was the second, decisive step Greece needed to take in order to return to a sustainable path. In very difficult circumstances, it was another act of national responsibility,” he said in a joint statement with European Commission president José Manuel Barroso. The measures contained within the €28bn package include a new solidarity tax on income, cuts to public sector wages, reduced benefit payments and cuts to government spending on health and defence. In a further development, Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said that German banks will roll over €3.2bn of Greek debt due to mature in the next three years. This would spare Greece from the burden of repaying the debt, although the precise details of the plan were not available. Schäuble said it built on the plan recently proposed by France, under which banks would roll over 50% of their maturing debt into new long-term bonds. France and Germany together hold a large proportion of total Greek debt. Shares rallied again in London and New York, adding to Wednesday’s gains. The FTSE 100 was up 64 points in afternoon trading, at 5920, and the Dow Jones gained 104 points to 12365. A growing number of economists believe that Greece will have to restructure its debts. The fear is that the process cannot be managed in a way that would avoid a new financial crisis. Ratings agency Fitch has predicted widespread panic if Greece were to lurch into default. “A disorderly Greek default would likely result in severe market volatility, pressures on sovereign and bank funding and a broader re-pricing of eurozone sovereign credit,” Fitch said. “The risk of contagion to other distressed and vulnerable eurozone sovereigns and their banking systems is material. Resolution of the current Greek crisis is therefore essential – though not sufficient – to prevent a systemic threat to the eurozone.” European debt crisis Greece European banks Europe European Union Graeme Wearden guardian.co.uk
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