The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Australia seeks to stop Guantanamo Bay book profits
- Dow Jones panel says found no U.S. wrongdoing
- Ohio leads list of top 20 U.S. states with toxic air
| Australia seeks to stop Guantanamo Bay book profits Posted: 20 Jul 2011 10:10 PM PDT SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian prosecutors said on Thursday they had begun legal action to seize book profits from David Hicks, the only inmate at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay military prison inmate convicted of terrorism offences. Hicks's book, "Guantanamo, My Journey", was published last year by Random House, and is based on his time at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba from 2001 until 2007.
Under Australian law, a person cannot gain commercial benefit from a crime, which can prevent criminals receiving payment for writing books about their offences. A spokeswoman for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions said Hicks had been served orders on Wednesday and that the case was set for August 3 in the New South Wales state Supreme Court. Hicks's book has reportedly sold 30,000 copies, regarded as "solid" sales for a hardcover book in Australia. As a rule of thumb, an author can expect around 10 percent of sales, with Hick's book having a recommended price of A$49.95 ($47). Hicks was captured in Afghanistan in late 2001 and spent five years in Guantanamo before pleading guilty to supporting terrorism and becoming the first person convicted by the war crimes tribunals created by the United States to try non-American captives. Law professor Clive Williams said Australia's "Proceeds of Crime" law favours the prosecution, but Hicks may use the court case to publicly raise issues over his conviction. "He may well raise issues going to the nature of his plea, whether duress was involved, whether it was a plea that should be recognised under the Australian legal system," Williams, from the University of New South Wales, told local radio. "For David Hicks to defeat the claim, the attempt to seize those assets, he will have to raise questions that go to the heart of his conviction." Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner, admitted training with al Qaeda and meeting its then-leader Osama bin Laden, whom he described as "lovely," according to police evidence given to the U.S. military court. Hicks returned to Australia in 2007 as part of his guilty plea, which also included a one-year gag order. Another Australian, Mamdouh Habib, was released from Guantanamo without charge in 2005. Australia, a close U.S. ally, was an original member of the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 and Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001 airliner attacks in the United States. (Reporting by Michael Perry; Editing by Ron Popeski) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. | ||
| Dow Jones panel says found no U.S. wrongdoing Posted: 20 Jul 2011 10:10 PM PDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Dow Jones Special Committee, responding to a letter from two U.S. senators, said it had found at News Corp's Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires no sign of journalistic wrongdoing like the phone-hacking scandal at its British newspapers. "Our focus from the outset has been on insuring that the highest standards of journalistic ethics are being met at the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires," Tom Bray, chair of the special committee, wrote in a statement responding late on Wednesday to a letter earlier in the day from Senators Barbara Boxer and Jay Rockefeller.
"In conversations with countless present and former Dow Jones employees we have found absolutely no sign of journalistic misconduct such as is at the heart of the scandal in London," Bray wrote. Boxer and Rockefeller, both Democrats who a week ago urged U.S. officials to investigate whether News Corp broke a law banning bribes to foreign officials, were particularly interested, in their latest letter, in information on Les Hinton -- the former Dow Jones chief executive and publisher of the Wall Street Journal. Hinton stepped down from his position in response to the scandal, ending a 52-year career with News Corp. He had previously been chairman of News International, whose now defunct weekly tabloid News of the World is at the center of the phone hacking uproar. But the special committee statement said: "We did not investigate former Dow Jones Chairman Les Hinton's activities in London, which were investigated there in the past and are the subject of renewed focus now." The Dow Jones special committee was created in 2007 to help ease concerns of the Bancroft family, who owned Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, before it was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The five-member watchdog group was set up to police the editorial independence and integrity of the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones under News Corp's ownership. News Corp has so far been able to keep the impact of the phone hacking scandal mainly to the UK, and away from the United States, where News Corp is headquartered. In their letter, the senators asked whether the Dow Jones Special Committee plans to conduct a broader investigation that includes an examination of whether former senior Journal or Dow Jones executives had knowledge or a role in alleged criminal activity at News Corp publications. Bray said The Dow Jones Special Committee will respond further to the senators' letter in "due course." Reuters is a competitor of Dow Jones Newswires, the financial news agency that News Corp acquired along with the Wall Street Journal in 2007. (Reporting by Yinka Adegoke and Jennifer Saba; additional reporting by Himank Sharma in Bangalore; Editing by Tim Dobbyn, Gary Hill) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. | ||
| Ohio leads list of top 20 U.S. states with toxic air Posted: 20 Jul 2011 07:06 PM PDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People living in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida are most at risk in the United States from toxic emissions spewing from coal and oil-fired power plants, two leading American environmental groups said in a report on Wednesday. Electricity generation and chemical processing were the top culprits for dangerous emissions, which can lead to or worsen ailments such as asthma and cancer, according to the report by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Physicians for Social Responsibility. While Ohio topped the list of 20 states most affected by toxic air pollution, Kentucky and Maryland were ranked fourth and fifth. Next were Indiana, Michigan, West Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina. "Power plants are the biggest industrial toxic air polluters in our country, putting children and families at risk by dumping deadly and dangerous poisons into the air we breathe," said Dan Lashof, director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The study, an analysis of toxic emissions data from 2009 released last month by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, found that coal and oil-fired plants were responsible for nearly half of all toxic air pollution in America. The report was prepared by comparing data from the electric utilities sector to those from other industry sectors and ranked on the basis of total emissions by sector. In 2009, electricity generation in America was responsible for 49 percent of all industrial toxic air pollution and accounted for about 75 percent of all mercury air pollution, the study said. The findings underline the need for strong action by the Environmental Protection Agency to spur industry to clean up the emissions, Lashof said. Amendments designed to block the U.S. environmental regulator's air pollution standards are expected to be brought before the U.S. House of Representatives this week, the groups said. In February, the Republican-led House, in a bid to cut government spending and avoid a U.S. default on financial commitments, voted to thwart the EPA from making rules to limit mercury and other toxic emissions from cement plants. (Editing by Bill Trott) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
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