Friend of 9/11 hijackers agrees to remain in jail

BERLIN, Nov 20: A Moroccan found guilty in a German court of abetting mass murder in the September 11 attacks has dropped an appeal against his arrest and will remain in jail while awaiting a new sentence, his lawyer said yesterday.

Mounir el Motassadeq, 32, no longer plans to appeal against his re-arrest on Friday which came after a legal tug-of-war over his right to remain free until sentencing. However, his lawyer said this was not an indication of his guilt.

''My client is fed up of this constant to-ing and fro-ing,'' Motassadeq's lawyer Ladislav Anisic told Reuters.

The Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe, Germany's top appeals court, found Motassadeq guilty on Thursday of abetting the murder of 246 people, a crime which can carry a maximum jail sentence of 15 years.

The ruling overturned a 7-year sentence handed to Motassadeq in 2005 for being a member of a terrorist organisation.

After being found guilty on the new charges, Motassadeq was granted bail, pending sentencing, by a judge in Hamburg, who rejected an appeal by federal prosecutors against his release.

However, he was re-arrested on Friday after the Federal Court of Justice upheld the prosecutors' appeal.

Last year a court convicted Motassadeq, a member of a group of radical Arab students in Hamburg which organised the 2001 attacks in which nearly 3,000 people died, of belonging to a terrorist organisation and gave him the 7-year sentence.

But it cleared him then of abetting mass murder, saying he was a low-tier member of the group led by Mohamed Atta, who flew the first plane into New York's World Trade Center. (AGENCIES)

Singer George Michael tops British album charts

LONDON, Nov 20: Pop singer George Michael's first album in two years shot straight to number one, the Official UK Charts Company has said.

Michael's new album ''Twenty Five'' -- a reference to his 25-year pop career -- is a compilation of hit songs from his days in Wham during the 1980s to the present as a solo singer. He opened his first British tour for 15 years in Manchester on Friday.

''Twenty Five'' pushed Jamiroquai's album collection ''High Times: Singles 1992-2006'' down to two, with the Sugababes' ''Overloaded -- the Singles Collection'' -- a new entry at three.

The eponymous debut album from All Angels, dubbed the world's first female classical supergroup, came straight in at nine, just ahead of Tenacious D's ''The Pick of Destiny'', the fourth new entry in the album charts' top 10.

In the singles chart, rapper Akon's collaboration with Eminem ''Smack That'' rose 11 places to take the number one spot, as last week's chart topper -- Irish pop group Westlife's version of the Bette Midler ballad ''The Rose'' -- fell to three.

Justin Timberlake's ''My Love'' was another strong climber, rising 13 places to number two, with British boy band Take That's ''Patience'' a new entry at four.

American singer Beyonce's ''Irreplaceable'' was a non-mover at five, while Dutch dance DJ Fedde Le Grand's ''Put Your Hands Up For Detroit'' slipped two to six.

''Rock Steady'', the comeback single from girl band All Saints, who are back together after splitting up five years ago, dropped from three to seven as singer Robbie Williams's single ''Lovelight'' made a strong showing, climbing from 28 to eight.

Rockers U2's recording with American band Green Day ''The Saints Are Coming'' fell from two to nine, while dance duo Bodyrox's ''Yeah Yeah'' dropped four to round out the chart. (AGENCIES)

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UK kids tsar wants new system to tackle bullying

LONDON, Nov 20: England's Children Commissioner called today for the introduction of an independent complaints panel to deal with bullying in schools.

Professor Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, head of the Children's Commission, said the current system for handling bullying complaints was unsatisfactory as it lacked independence and failed to offer adequate mediation services.

''Many children and parents have told us the complaints system in schools does not address bullying incidents in a fair, just or effective way,'' Aynsley-Green said in a statement.

''It would be in everybody's interest to improve how head teachers, governors and local authorities deal with parents' concerns about an incident involving their child.''

The Children's Commissioner plans to present his bullying proposals, which he wants to apply to independent as well as state schools, to Education Secretary Alan Johnson in the new year.

November 20 marks the start of Anti-Bullying Week, with Aynsley-Green due to launch his Bullying Complaints Review and publish a major research report on bullying. (AGENCIES)

Snowbirds bring boom to Arizona desert town

QUARTZSITE, ARIZONA, Nov 20: When the first icy blasts of winter lash the northern United States, the desert floor around this small Arizona town starts to fill from horizon to horizon.

Towing trailers, a second car or even a golf cart, huge crowds of blue-collar retirees from as far afield as Idaho and New York state transform Quartzsite, close to the California border, into a quirky winter boomtown.

From November through March, authorities say the population mushrooms from 3,500 people to peak at around one million, as the seasonal migrants, or snowbirds, arrive in rumbling convoys of recreational vehicles, or RVs.

More than 70 mobile home and trailer parks and three tracts of government land in the Mojave Desert town fill to bursting, as the visitors park up, plug in and chill out, turning it into the Arizona sunbelt's largest instant community.

Most are retirees seeking to escape the ice, sleet and snow that locks up roads, not to mention their joints, in the northern states, enjoying the warm winter days, bone dry air and low rents of the town's cactus-studded RV parks.

''You get people flocking here from across the country and even from abroad, who would never otherwise meet up,'' said Quartzsite's mayor, Verlyn Michel, a US Air Force veteran from northeast California.

''It makes for a unique community that invents its own rules, makes its own fun,'' he added.

GEM SWAPS AND SNAKE HUNTS

Snowbirds spend an estimated 500 million dollars a year in Arizona. Some over-winter in high-end resorts in Phoenix and Scottsdale, paying hundreds of dollars a night, while most stay in RV parks scattered across the desert.

Their arrival transforms a handful of towns like Quartzsite into nomadic havens, where new residents park up their RVs and spread out their lives in the sun among neighbor relaxing in shorts and T-shirts.

''I took the snow shovel and I buried it in the desert,'' quipped Sal Cantelmi, 76, a retired printer from Brooklyn, as he did a crossword puzzle outside his trailer at the Holiday Palms RV Park. ''I'm through with winters.''

A volunteer force known as the Citizens On Patrol helps local police keep order in the sprawling communities, while visitors set about amusing themselves with activities ranging from the formal to the frankly bizarre.

Many head over to the Quartzsite Improvement Center, dubbed by some ''snowbird town hall,'' where volunteers organize a round of activities including pancake suppers, square dancing evenings and monthly craft fairs.

Others pick over stalls at the nine gem fairs held in the town over winter, where they can buy and swap semi-precious stones and browse other booths selling everything from antiques to firearms.

The more offbeat head out to two improvised golf courses on the outskirts of town, chopping balls down parched fairways to greens that look more like bunkers. Others, some in their 70s and 80s, hunt rattlesnakes out in the desert.

''I've caught some real big ones,'' says Cecil Loyet, a 76-year-old retiree from Illinois. ''If you par-boil them, they make for some good eating.''

LOOKING TO GROW

The number of winter visitors flocking to Quartzsite is growing every year as word spreads about the mild climate, cheap hook ups and whimsical, improvised social life on offer.

Local boosters are delighted at the growth -- which has filled the streets with new businesses including satellite dish installers and RV service and repair shops -- and they are lobbying to get the town upgraded to city status.

''Right now people come in for our swap meets and for the winter time. We want them to stay year round,'' says Tiny Loyet, a director of the Quartzsite Chamber of Commerce.

''We have the same climate and conditions as Phoenix, and we don't see why we can't grow like they did,'' she said of the state's flourishing capital which has attracted residents from all over the United States.

While most residents seem keen to parlay Quartzsite's seasonal boom into something more permanent, a few, however, remember the town as a quiet desert bolt-hole and are not so keen for change.

They complain of traffic snarl-ups on the main street, and a tendency to knock the rough edges off the town.

''We've got so many snowbirds now and they all want to make it like is back home in Idaho or Illinois,'' said Lyle Race, 83, a retired concrete worker from Michigan who first came here in the 1950s.

''Now if you want to raise hell, you have to go into the desert and howl with the coyotes.''

(AGENCIES)

Nepal comm finds king responsible for anti-demcracy crackdown

KATHMANDU, Nov 20: A Government commission has found Nepal's King Gyanendra responsible for a bloody crackdown in April on pro-democracy demonstrators that left at least 19 people dead and hundreds injured, officials said today.

The commission handed the report to Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, who said those found guilty in the report would be punished.

Commission member Harihar Birahi said as chairman of the Cabinet at the time of the crackdown, the king was responsible for the crackdown on pro-democracy protests, which eventually forced the king to cede power and reinstate Parliament after 14-months of direct rule by the monarch.

Parliament then quickly stripped Gyanendra of his powers, his command over the army and his immunity from prosecution.

Several people who worked under the king during the period of direct rule that ended in April 2006 were interrogated by the commission. It also questioned several other ministers and top government and security officials.

The commission also sent written questions to the Gyanendra, but the king did not respond, giving no reason.

Birahi said the investigation focussed on official misuse of power, state funds and human rights abuses during the king's authoritarian rule.

Hundreds of pro-democracy activists were also detained during the April crackdown, and some said they were tortured. (AGENCIES)

Gender-bending boy fruit flies fight like girls

WASHINGTON, Nov 20: In a study that sheds light on the biology of aggression, scientists swapped genes in gender-bending fruit flies to make boys fight like girls and girls fight like boys.

Researchers from Harvard Medical School and the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna focused on a gene in fruit flies dubbed ''fruitless,'' an important player in behavioral differences between the sexes of these insects.

The gene is known for its role in male courtship, but also controls another sex-specific behavior -- how flies fight, according to the research appearing yesterday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

When they fight, female fruit flies rely on maneuvers like shoving and head butts to an opponent's body. Males use tactics that include lunging, boxing and rearing up on their back legs and snapping down their forelegs to flatten an adversary.

The researchers swapped the male and female versions of the gene in fruit flies and observed the consequences. Males with the feminine gene used female fighting tactics, while the females with the masculine gene fought like the boys.

People have a lot to learn about the biological basis of aggression, said Harvard neurobiologist Edward Kravitz, one of the study's authors.

''It goes without saying aggression, as well as violence, in society is a serious problem. It has to have biological roots. And the biological roots will have genetic components and experiential components,'' Kravitz said in an interview.

It is important to learn about such complex behaviors in a simple organism, and then apply this knowledge to higher and higher forms while ultimately trying to gain insight into human behavior, Kravitz said.

People do not have an exact equivalent to the ''fruitless'' gene, Kravitz added, but probably have other human genes serving similar functions.

STEEL-CAGE MATCH

Kravitz said his team, pondering how to instigate fruit fly fights, settled on food and mating -- or, in this case, necrophilia.

They set up the insect world's equivalent to a steel-cage match -- a chamber with glass walls and a lid with air holes, a dish of fly food and a mate -- and sent in the combatants. But when they used a live female fly as a lure for the males, she often would just fly off.

''My student discovered when he transferred the female to the dish and accidentally crushed her head that the males didn't care whether she had a head or not. That's a true story of what led us to cutting the heads of the females off in subsequent studies,'' Kravitz said.

''They'll court the dead, headless female fly, and try to copulate with her sometimes.''

In a related study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last week, Kravitz and colleagues wrote that flies developed ''winner'' or ''loser'' mentalities in these fights, which amounted to a series of nonlethal skirmishes.

Kravitz acknowledged some of the nutty aspects of the experiments.

''When you're trying to explain this to your children -- 'Dad, what did you do today?' 'Well, I had these two fruit flies, son, and I was trying to figure out how to get them to fight.' Just think of that.''

(AGENCIES)

Muslim feminists in NY want to start Koran council

NEW YORK, Nov 20: Muslim feminists from around the world vowed to create the first women's council to interpret the Koran and overcome two stereotypes about their religion: Muslims are terrorists and Islam oppresses women.

The women's council was among the most groundbreaking ideas introduced at a weekend meeting of more than 100 leaders in the fledgling Islamic feminist movement.

Many in the newly formed group, the Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality, or WISE, said strict sharia law was not divine because it was created by men and should be changed to incorporate women's rights.

''In our societies men hold power and they decide what Islam should mean and how we can obey that particular understanding of Islam,'' said Zainab Anwar, executive director of Sisters in Islam, a Malaysian organization working on women's rights within the Islamic framework.

''I can't live with a God that is unjust,'' she said. ''The law is progressive, but those men controlling the law aren't.''

Daisy Khan, director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, or Asma, said she hoped to create a fund to provide scholarships for Muslim women to study Islamic law so they could form a Shura Council of Women, the first with women interpreting the Koran.

The women also want to break down myths that exist, particularly in the West, said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Asma Society founder.

'MISCONCEPTIONS'

''Two misconceptions about Islam are that it is associated with terrorism and that Islam is an oppressor of women. These are two myths that we seek to demolish. We need to change the perception of Islam in the West and this cannot be achieved without the participation of women,'' said Abdul Rauf.

The religious leaders, human rights activists, scholars, politicians agreed that education was essential to breaking down barriers between genders and generations.

''Education is the solution and the answer to finding ways to break the barriers,'' said Wendy Chamberlain, deputy UN High Commissioner for Refugees based in Geneva and former US ambassador to Pakistan.

''We must make laws work for us. We must make democratic institutions work for us,'' Chamberlain said.

Baroness Uddin, the first Muslim woman to enter the House of Lords in Britain, agreed that women needed to take control of their own destiny, come together and empower other women.

''If Tony Blair and George W Bush can get together and go to war, just imagine the power of peace that women can bring,'' Uddin said.

Marie Wilson, president of The White House Project, which tracks and promotes women in leadership positions, said women must have critical mass to make change.

''Never apologize for being 'for women.' Women in any country are the government in exile, and we should be the government in power,'' Wilson said.

(AGENCIES)

UK parliament urges more tax breaks for biofuels

LONDON, Nov 20: Britain has fallen far behind its own target for increasing biofuel usage, and the government should consider extra tax incentives to encourage uptake of the renewable energy source, a parliamentary report said today.

The report by the House of Lords, the British parliament's upper chamber, supported promoting biofuel for vehicles as an alternative to petroleum in the fight against global warming.

''Increasing Europe's use of biofuels has a significant role to play in dealing with this problem,'' said Lord Renton of Mount Harry, chairman of the Lords' European Union Committee, which published the report.

Britain's goal is to have 5 per cent of road fuels come from renewable sources by 2010. That policy, known as the Road Transport Fuel Obligation, called for a 2 per cent usage rate by now but the actual current figure stands at only 0.3 per cent.

The Lords committee also said there was a pressing need to assess the full environmental impact of using biofuels and called for mandatory EU-wide biofuel certification to that end.

It pointed to the paradoxical practice of destroying the Brazilian rainforest to clear ground for planting biofuel crops, a process which on balance may produce more of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions believed to cause global warming.

Brazilian bioethanol makes up 80 per cent of all the biofuel used in Britain, according to Blooming Futures, a biofuel advocacy group.

''If CO2 saving is the primary goal, it is clearly illogical to use biofuels which have caused the emission of more greenhouse gases by their production than are saved by their consumption'', the Lords report said.

Matt Bulba of Blooming Futures said the voluntary certification scheme in force in Britain does not require oil firms to specify the source of their biofuels.

The Department of Transport welcomed the report and said it was trying to promote biofuel usage.

''That's why we've introduced the first Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation, predicted to save 1 million tonnes of carbon a year by 2010,'' it said in a statement.

''The UK is developing a robust carbon assurance scheme to ensure that the Obligation promotes the use of environmentally sustainable biofuels,'' it added.

(AGENCIES)

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Mosque row exposes Germany's integration challenges

BERLIN, Nov 20: Abdul Basit Tariq serves tea and biscuits, removes his black cap and chats in English and German about how residents in the German capital oppose his plans to build a new mosque on the site of an old sauerkraut factory.

The imam of Berlin's Ahmadiyya Muslim community says people in the Pankow-Heinersdorf suburb in former communist east of the city are good but they have the wrong idea about Islam.

''(They) don't like the idea of foreigners coming,'' he said, sitting beneath a blue placard which read: ''Islam means peace. Love for all. Hate for nobody.''

Residents, who have launched a ''No Mosque In Pankow!'' campaign, say the Ahmadiyya movement -- which defines itself as Muslim but is not recognised by some mainstream Muslim groups because of its divergent beliefs -- is a fundamentalist Islamic sect that wants to abolish democracy.

The row over the new mosque goes to the heart of an increasingly noisy Europe-wide debate about the integration of Muslim societies.

In Britain, that debate played out most recently in a public and passionate discussion over whether face veils hinder Muslim women's integration. Across Europe, several countries have taken tough stances on integration, with rules about language and culture tests and blunt advice on what must be accepted.

In Pankow-Heinersdorf, the wider debate's abstractions have come to life, exposing fear and suspicion and laying bare the challenges of overcoming such barriers in a country with 3.2 million Muslims, most of Turkish origin.

The Ahmadiyya movement, which already has 15 mosques in Germany, has received preliminary approval to construct the two-storey mosque with a 12-metre (39-foot) minaret.

''I've tried to understand them but when I read their views, it sets off alarm bells,'' said Joachim Swietlik, head of the IPAHB citizens community group.

FEAR

Swietlik says 90 per cent of the Heinersdorf district's 6,500 registered citizens have signed up to the campaign against the mosque, to be built on 5,000 sq metres of wasteland where a sauerkraut factory operated until 1987.

''No Ahmadiyya members live here,'' Swietlik told Reuters.

''A place of worship, be it a mosque, church or synagogue, should be at the centre of a community. We fear many Ahmadiyya members will move here if the mosque is built,'' he said. Few Muslims have so far settled in Germany's former communist east.

The Ahmadiyya movement, founded in India in the 19th century, has 30,000 members in Germany and is aiming to have 100 mosques in the long run.

(AGENCIES)

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Saddam trial flawed: HRW

NEW YORK, Nov 20: Terming the trial of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as "flawed", a US-based human rights group has accused the Iraqi government of influencing the judges.

Hussein was sentenced to death on November five after being convicted for crimes against humanity.

The trial by Iraqi High Tribunal was marred by so many "procedural and substantive flaws" that imposition of death penalty is "indefensible", the Human Rights Watch said adding that the verdict was "unsound".

"The proceedings in the Dujail trial were fundamentally unfair," Nehal Bhuta of the International Justice programme at Human Rights Watch and author of the 97-page report released today said.

"The tribunal squandered an important opportunity to deliver credible justice to the people of Iraq."

"The Iraqi High Tribunal was undermined from the outset by Iraqi government actions that threatened the independence and perceived impartiality of the court. Members of Parliament and even ministers regularly denounced the tribunal as weak, leading to the resignation of the first presiding trial judge," it noted.

The shortcomings of the trial, for the killings of more than 100 people from the Iraqi town of Dujail, also call into question subsequent proceedings at the tribunal, the report said. (PTI)

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