Alleged Russian spies on trial in Germany
7:25 AM Wednesday Jan 16, 2013
Dead letter drops. Fake papers with cover stories to match. Secret orders by radio from Moscow.
The accusations read like something out of the Cold War but the charges against a couple who went on trial today in the German city of Stuttgart stem primarily from the decades after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag – only the fake names on the fake Austrian passports they used to enter Germany are known – are charged with giving Russia’s foreign intelligence service information on German, EU and NATO security policies and more general details on Russian-German relations.
The pair, thought to be in their 40s or 50s, denied the espionage charges in Stuttgart state court but refused to make any other statements Tuesday (local time).
German officials won’t divulge details other than those in the indictment, but the Der Spiegel magazine reported that the same U.S. mole in the Russian intelligence service who tipped off the FBI about a ring of sleeper spies based in the U.S. also divulged the existence of the couple in Germany. The information from Col. Alexander Poteyev, who Moscow convicted in absentia last year of high treason and desertion, was then passed along to German intelligence officials, Spiegel reported.
The Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow and U.S. Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd in Washington both declined to comment on the case.
Like the U.S. cell, Andreas and Heidrun Anschlag were able to work comfortably in a Western culture and pass unnoticed.
According to the indictment, Andreas arrived in Germany in 1988, the year before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Heidrun arrived in 1990, the year Germany was reunified. Both claimed to be Austrian citizens of South American background, prosecutors said.
“With this backstory, underpinned by false Austrian passports, they built a normal existence within society to disguise their intelligence-gathering operations,” prosecutors said.
They were charged with spying over 20 years until their arrest in October 2011. Prosecutors said between October 2008 and August 2011 the two were in contact with a third agent, who provided them with documents about EU and NATO operations from the Netherlands.
A Dutch Foreign Ministry employee, whose name has not been released, was arrested last March on suspicion of being the contact person who stole the information. The employee is due to go on trial there later this month.
British Deputy PM warns Cameron against prolonged EU row
Clegg told his coalition partner that an ongoing period of doubt over Britain’s EU membership will have a negative effect on jobs and growth, adding that “an arcane debate” about UK’s relationship with the EU could go on for years and years.
The leader of the Liberal Democratic party of Britain also insisted that leaflets made by the Lib-Dems offering an in-out referendum produced before the election were superseded by his party’s manifesto promise to offer an in or out vote only if there was a transfer of power to Brussels.
Clegg referred to Cameron’s strategy for renegotiating Britain’s relationship with the EU. “I do not agree with the premise that on our own we can unilaterally rewrite the terms of our membership of this European club.
Full Article
British PM Cameron denies ‘blackmailing’ EU members
By Agence France-Presse
Monday, January 14, 2013 7:40 EST
British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday denied trying to “blackmail” his European partners by threatening to pull out of the EU if he did not get his way on repatriating powers.
Ahead of a long-awaited speech next week in which he is expected to propose a referendum after 2015 on the conditions of Britain’s membership, Cameron added that he was “confident” of getting the changes he wanted.
“I’m not blackmailing anybody,” Cameron said in an interview with BBC radio.
“Britain, just like every other European country, has a perfect right to say we are members of this club, we are prominent members, we pay a large bill for being a member of this club.
“We are perfectly entitled to argue that it needs to change.”
Cameron’s close ally and finance minister, George Osborne, told a German newspaper last week that “for us to stay in the European Union, the EU must change”, sparking a German lawmaker to accuse Britain of blackmail.
Cameron stressed that he still supported Britain’s membership of the 27-nation bloc.
“I don’t think it’s in our interests to leave the European Union,” he said.
“Would Britain collapse if we left the European Union? No, of course not. We could choose a different path. The question is, what is in our national interest.”
But he said he was “not happy” with the relationship and said the British public were also “increasingly fed up that they’ve been left out of this debate”.
He said he wanted a “fresh settlement, and then fresh consent for that settlement”.
Britain’s Cameron to make EU speech in Netherlands on Friday
By Danny Kemp (AFP) – 22 hours ago
LONDON — British Prime Minister David Cameron will give a long-awaited speech on his country’s future relationship with the European Union in the Netherlands on Friday, his Downing Street office said.
The speech had previously been expected on January 22, but reports suggested it was brought forward because it would have clashed with the 50th anniversary of France and Germany’s post-war reconciliation on that day.
“The prime minister is to make his speech on the future of the EU and the UK’s relationship with it, in the Netherlands, on Friday 18 January,” a Downing Street spokesman told AFP on Monday.
Cameron would meet Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte for talks during his visit but Rutte is not expected to attend the speech, Downing Street said. The audience would instead consist of business people and diplomats, his office added.
In the speech, Cameron is widely expected to demand the repatriation of certain powers from the European Union and to propose a referendum on his plans for a new relationship with Brussels, due to be held in 2018 according to a report in Tuesday’s Times.
Cameron’s spokesman later told reporters: “The prime minister wants to set out his views on the future of the European Union, how it needs to develop and how Britain’s relationship with it needs to develop.
“I think giving the speech in a founding member of the European Union, a country that has — not dissimilar to the UK — a strong global-trading, outward-looking history, is entirely appropriate.
“He sees it as important to set out his view about it being in the British national interest to remain in the EU but with a changed relationship.”
Cameron spoke by telephone at the weekend to Rutte and to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, having tried to win their support in recent months for his pro-austerity, anti-federalist position on Europe.
When it comes to Europe, David Cameron represents the silent majority
Remember “Business for Sterling”?
7:26PM GMT 14 Jan 2013
This was the business lobby group set up in 1998 to oppose British membership of the euro, and though it was ridiculed at the time for being little more than a glorified dining club for some of the “has beens” of British finance and industry, it proved highly effective in countering the pro-European bandwagon. It can certainly claim some of the credit for torpedoing the single currency ambitions of one Tony Blair.
Whenever matters European come to a head, you tend to get a great outpouring of angst from those claiming to speak for business on the supposed economic dangers for Britain if we kick too vigorously against further EU integration. We had another example of it last week in a letter to the Financial Times.
There were not quite as many knights and lords of the realm as you could once count on to sign such a letter, and it even had to adopt a faintly eurosceptic tone to get the 10 signatories it did. Even so, the message was plain enough; in his determination to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with Europe, David Cameron, the prime minister, risked taking us out of the European Union altogether.
Perhaps the letter is right, but here’s the revealing fact. Those who signed all belong to basically the same group who also warned that it would have been a disaster if Britain left the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, and then later that the UK would be left in the economic slow lane if it didn’t join the single currency. On both counts they were proved utterly wrong.
What Business for Sterling did was demonstrate that these establishment assumptions were not representative of the great hinterland of British business at all, but were actually just the vested interest of a powerful elite. Business for Sterling shattered the assumed, business consensus in favour of more Europe.
Global shares dip from recent highs, euro gains
By Ryan Vlastelica
NEW YORK | Mon Jan 14, 2013 4:48pm EST
(Reuters) – The euro hit an 11-month high against the dollar on Monday on fading prospects of an interest rate cut in Europe, while world equity markets ticked lower following gains that took them to more than one-year highs.
U.S. investors took profits in a thinly traded day as they awaited an onslaught of corporate earnings reports, which many analysts worry will be weak following the uncertainty from the recent fiscal impasse in Washington.
While U.S. and European equity markets were mostly lower, shares in China .SSEC soared 3.2 percent, advancing to a 52-week high on strength in financial and property companies, which rose on a report that the roll-out of a pilot property tax scheme could be delayed.
Apple Inc (AAPL.O), the most valuable U.S. company, added to the earnings concerns after a report it had cut orders for LCD screens and other parts for the iPhone 5 this quarter due to weak demand. The stock fell 3.6 percent to $501.75, weighing on the broader market as one of the S&P 500′s biggest decliners.
“I think there’s going to be more misses than hits in terms of revenue and margins. It’s going to be a little bit light this earnings season compared to the last one,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.
Britain preparing for new Falklands War?
Published: 13 January, 2013, 22:01
A series of military options are being considered by UK defense chiefs as tension mounts between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, a report by the Sunday Telegraph claims.
Extra troops, warships and Typhoon combat aircraft could be dispatched to the islands if needed, ahead of the March 11 referendum on the island’s future, the newspaper claims, citing sources in Britain’s military.
The Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, north-west London is also reportedly considering a ‘show of force’, including conducting naval exercises in the South Atlantic. These could include the deployment of the Royal Navy’s Response Task Force Group, a flotilla of destroyers, a frigate, a submarine and Royal Marine commandos.
A more costly alternative would be to deploy the British Army’s 16 Air Assault Brigade, an airborne task force with more than 8,000 soldiers from five infantry battalions, including the 2nd and 3rd battalions of the parachute regiment.
The Paras, as they are known, have just completed training exercises in Spain, which covered rapid engagement with conventional armies, not an area of training that most army units have undergone in the past decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The report alleged that some members of Three Para have recently returned from the Falklands as part of a routine deployment and would be well-placed to brief troops deploying there at short notice.
Despite the increasingly hostile rhetoric between London and Buenos Aires, the British government does not believe that Argentina currently has the political will or the military capability to recapture the islands, the newspaper said.
But the prime minister has told his defense chiefs, according to the Sunday Telegraph, that the UK must be prepared for every eventuality.
Last week the PM announced on a BBC TV show that the UK is ready to defend the Falklands if necessary.
“Of course we would [defend the territory], and we have strong defenses in place on the Falkland Islands, that is absolutely key, that we have fast jets stationed there, we have troops stationed on the Falklands,” he said.
The March referendum is expected to receive a 100 per cent ‘yes’ vote to the question: ‘Do you wish the Falkland Islands to retain their current political status as an overseas Territory of the United Kingdom?’ All of the 3,000 islanders are British.
The Sunday Telegraph reported claims that intelligence chiefs have warned the prime minster that the Argentinians may carry out an aggressive ‘stunt’ at the same time as the islanders hold their referendum. For example, a small raiding party might plant the country’s flag on the islands or the Argentine navy might conduct a harassment campaign against the Falklands’ fishing fleet, or disrupt British oil and gas exploration.
Larry Pratt: British Gun Crime Stats are a “Sham”
theendrun.com
January 10, 2012
Last night, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America appeared on Piers Morgan Tonight for a debate with the host. Morgan is a British “citizen” (“subject“?) who has recently been using his platform on CNN to promote the idea that the U.S. Constitution is “inherently flawed” and to advocate stricter, more British-style gun control policies in the U.S. This was Pratt’s second appearance on the show in the past month, having previously appeared in the wake of the Sandy Hook event.
At one point in the exchange (around 11:18 in this video), Morgan says that he “actually dug out the official figures… the homicide figures from guns in England and Wales by comparison to the United States of America going back to 2003,” and proceeds to read off numbers showing that the U.S. has a much higher gun murder rate. Morgan then claims that the lower numbers in England and Wales are “the result” of the “responsible action” taken in “respon[se]” to the 1996 school shooting in Dunblane, Scottland — namely a “handgun and assault weapon ban.”
To begin with, More Guns, Less Crime author John Lott has recently explained that this is a misleading representation of the statistics: Yes, the gun murder rate is relatively low in England and Wales, but it was already low before the ban, and the stats do not show a decrease in murders committed with guns (nor overall murders) since the ban was instituted, as Morgan implies. “There is a difference between levels and changes,” he notes. Meanwhile, The Telegraph reported in 2009 that gun crime had “almost doubled in the last decade”.
Exotic dancer set to testify at former Italian PM’s prostitution trial
By Agence France-Presse
Monday, January 14, 2013 7:00 EST
The exotic dancer at the centre of a sex trial against Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi is expected to testify for the first time in court on Monday as the media tycoon bids for a fourth term as prime minister.
Moroccan-born Karima El-Mahroug — better known by her nickname as “Ruby the Heart Stealer” — failed to appear the first time she was called to testify and when she was called a second time her lawyer said she was in Mexico.
“The young woman will be there,” her lawyer, Paola Boccardi, told AFP.
Prosecutors have accused the defence of deliberately trying to draw out the trial to avoid a verdict before the general election in February.
Berlusconi stands accused of having sex for money with El-Mahroug on several occasions in 2010 when he was still prime minister and she was just 17.
The age of consent in Italy is only 14 but sex with a prostitute who is under 18 years of age is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.
Berlusconi is also accused of abusing his official powers by putting pressure on police to release El-Mahroug from custody when she was arrested for petty theft — a charge that carries a maximum prison sentence of 12 years.
His defence says Berlusconi was convinced El-Mahroug was a niece of then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and wanted to avoid a diplomatic incident.
The 76-year-old, who is also appealing a one-year prison sentence for tax fraud handed out last year, is unlikely ever to see the inside of a prison cell however since sentencing guidelines in Italy are very lenient for over-70s.
Berlusconi has launched his sixth election bid in two decades in politics.
He denies having sex with El-Mahroug, saying that he gave her money so that she could set up a beauty parlour and avoid having to prostitute herself.
“I never had an intimate relationship of any kind with her,” he said in October in his second appearance at the trial which began in April 2011.
“I was sure she was 24, as she herself said,” Berlusconi said.
The billionaire said there were never “scenes of a sexual nature” at the parties he hosted at his mansion near Milan, adding: “Everything happened in front of the staff and at times my children too came in to say hello.”
He said the soirees were “burlesque contests” and “elegant dinner parties.”
According to transcripts of her questioning by investigators leaked in the Italian press, El-Mahroug said Berlusconi enjoyed lap dances from naked girls at parties that he called “Bunga Bunga” — a term that has since become internationally famous.
El-Mahroug has also denied a liaison with Berlusconi but was recorded in a leaked telephone wiretap telling a friend that he had said to her: “Ruby I’ll give you anything you want, I’ll turn you into gold, just hide everything.”
Silvio Berlusconi: Ruby sex trial plea rejected
14 January 2013 Last updated at 12:44 ET
An Italian court has denied the request of former PM Silvio Berlusconi to halt a trial where he is accused of having sex with an under-age prostitute.
The court in Milan also decided it did not need to hear testimony from the woman – dancer Karima El Mahroug.
Mr Berlusconi’s lawyers requested the trial be halted while he runs in the current election campaign.
Both he and Ms Mahroug – better known by her stage name “Ruby Heartstealer” – have denied ever having sex.
Mr Berlusconi stepped down from a third term as prime minister in November 2011, when he was replaced by the technocrat Mario Monti.
His People of Freedom (PDL) party is hoping to form a centre-right coalition government with another party but have not named a candidate for prime minister.
On 7 January, an ally of Mr Berlusconi’s said that he would not return as prime minister even if his party won the elections next month.
Mr Berlusconi however has not explicitly ruled himself out of running the premiership, saying the candidate for the post “will be decided if we win”.
Rejection
Lawyer Niccolo Ghedini said Mr Berlusconi would be too busy campaigning to follow the case or attend court – and also feared the trial could influence the election.
But judges rejected the application.
Prosecutors have accused the defence of trying to prolong, and now delay, the trial to avoid a verdict before the election, at the end of February.
Ms Mahroug had arrived at the trial to give testimony for the defence.
She has been called twice before, but failed to show up, apparently because she was on holiday in Mexico.
Mr Berlusconi, now 76, is accused of paying to have sex with Ms Mahroug in 2010 when she was 17. Sex with a prostitute who is under 18 is a crime in Italy.
The billionaire media mogul has admitted sending Ms Mahroug money – but insists he was just making gifts to a friend in need.
Abuse of power
Prosecutors say they had sex on 13 occasions. He denies having had sex with her, and testified that, in any case, she had told him she was 24.
Ms Mahroug also denies having sex with him – or being a prostitute.
Mr Berlusconi is also accused of abuse of power, for intervening after Ms Mahroug was briefly held by police over theft claims. He allegedly urged police officers to release her, telling them, falsely, that she was a granddaughter of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
He admits making the phone call, but denies putting police under pressure – and testified that Ms Mahroug had told him she was related to Mubarak.
Mr Berlusconi faces up to 15 years in jail if found guilty.
This is one of many cases that have dogged the former prime minister. In the most recent, he was convicted of tax fraud in connection with the purchase of broadcasting rights by his Mediaset TV company.
He was sentenced to a year in prison and barred from holding office for five years – though this will not be enforced until his appeal is complete.