EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Israel's decision to push ahead with settlement expansion in East Jerusalem in defiance of international community opinion generated a rebuke from the EU on Wednesday (18 November).

"The Presidency of the European Union is dismayed by the recent decision on the expansion of the settlement of Gilo," said the Swedish EU presidency in a statement.

Jerusalem's Temple Mount and Wailing Wall - a holy city for two peoples

"The presidency recalls that settlement activities, house demolitions and evictions in East Jerusalem are illegal under international law."

On Tuesday, after the Palestinian Authority announced it was preparing to unilaterally declare independence, the Jerusalem municipal planning committee approved a construction scheme that would see some 900 housing units in Gilo, claimed by Israel as a Jerusalem neighbourhood but described by the United Nations as an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem.

Hamid Karzai called for Afghan forces to assume responsibility for unstable areas in three years and to take complete control of security within five, in an inauguration speech closely monitored by the international community this morning.

After being sworn in for a second five-year term as president, Karzai promised to tackle corruption by prosecuting government officials and ending a culture of impunity.

Dignitaries from more than 40 countries, including the Pakistani president, Asif Ali Zardari, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the British foreign secretary, David Miliband, attended the ceremony in Kabul.

"Afghanistan wants to lead operations in non-secure areas in the next three years," Karzai said, adding that Afghan forces should be able to take control of security within five years.

But even as Karzai pledged to make the country safe from the Taliban, two US soldiers and 10 Afghan civilians were killed in separate suicide bomb attacks.

WASHINGTON -- The international security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide is facing large government fines for unlicensed arms shipments to Iraq, as a key Congressional committee is asking for a separate investigation into whether the company bribed Iraqi officials. Skip to next paragraph Related Times Topics: Blackwater Worldwide

In talks likely to result in millions of dollars in penalties, executives from the company, now known as Xe Services, are negotiating with government regulators over years of violations of export laws. According to government officials and former company employees, many of the violations involve arms shipments to Iraq, to outfit company security guards operating inside the country.

In addition, former company officials say that other penalties could result from violations of licensing requirements for the transfer of other forms of military technology and training expertise to foreign countries.

Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in a letter on Wednesday that his committee was told by a top State Department official that the company had engaged in "broad violations" of export laws and that the unlicensed shipments "went beyond weapons for personal use."

In the letter, Senator Kerry asked the State Department's acting inspector general to begin an investigation into the "continued fitness" of Xe Services to carry out contract work for the State Department. The letter cited a report in The New York Times last week that Blackwater executives had approved of a plan to make secret payments to Iraqi officials after Blackwater employees killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007.

BAGHDAD -- A leader of a Sunni Awakening Council was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murder on Thursday, setting off charges that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government was trying to weaken the Sunni movement, which is credited for much of the reduction of sectarian violence here since 2006.

Adil al-Mashhadani, who led the Awakening militia in the impoverished Fadhil neighborhood of Baghdad, was arrested in March on charges of terrorism. A spokesman for the Justice Ministry, Abdul-Sattar Bayrkdar, provided no further details about the crime. His arrest set off 24 hours of bloody fighting between Awakening members and American and Iraqi security forces, after which the government dissolved the Fadhil council.

The Awakening Councils, also known as the Sons of Iraq, are local groups, including former insurgents and Baathists, who turned against the insurgency and received pay, first from the Americans and now from the Iraqis. Under their agreement with the government, they have tacit amnesty for past acts of sectarian violence but not for crimes like murder.

Other Awakening leaders had mixed reactions to Mr. Mashhadani's sentencing. "Nobody is above the law," said Nabil Ahmed, an Awakening leader in the Adhamiya neighborhood.

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Mr. Mashhadani has long been a controversial figure, described by some in Fadhil as a protector, others as a brutal extortionist who buried victims alive.

The officer had been called to the girl's home in Ozark, Arkansas, by her mother because she was behaving in an unruly manner and refusing to take a shower.

In a report on the incident the officer, Dustin Bradshaw, said the mother gave him permission to use the Taser.

The High Court of Justice put an end to years of controversy Thursday by ruling that privately run prisons are unconstitutional.

Following the decision, the state is expected to have to pay hundreds of millions of shekels in compensation to a company that had already completed construction of the first private prison, near Be'er Sheva.

The panel of nine justices, presided over by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, ruled that for the state to transfer authority for managing the prison to a private contractor whose aim is monetary profit would severely violate the prisoners' basic human rights to dignity and freedom.