Searches are being carried out at a mansion flat in central London after a man with suspected links to al-Qaida allegedly tried to blow up a transatlantic plane, Scotland Yard said today.

The man, a student from Nigeria, tried to ignite a device as the Northwest Airlines flight prepared to land in Detroit. Police identified the suspect as Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, 23. It is understood he is an engineering student at University College London.

He was overpowered by passengers and crew members, who smelled smoke and heard what sounded like firecrackers, federal officials said.

Security has been stepped up at UK airports for passengers flying to the US, the Department for Transport said.

Gordon Brown said the UK would take "whatever action was necessary" to protect passengers.

UK airport operator BAA said searches on flights to the US would increase.

Iranian security forces and opposition activists have clashed in the centre of the capital Tehran, according to reformist websites and witnesses.

Some reports say shots have been fired in the air to disperse demonstrators.

The opposition had been planning to use Shia religious festivals this weekend to show their continued defiance of President Ahmadinejad's government.

Tensions have risen since influential dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri died a week ago aged 87.

Clashes were reported after his funeral in Qom, and in other cities since then.

Israeli troops have killed six Palestinians - three in the Gaza Strip and three in the West Bank.

The Israeli military said three Palestinians suspected of trying to infiltrate from Gaza were killed in an air strike near the Erez crossing.

It is the largest number of deaths in a day since the Gaza conflict a year ago.

Separately, Israeli forces said they had killed three men - who were suspected of killing a Jewish settler - in the West Bank city of Nablus

Palestinian sources in Nablus say two of those killed were militants from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the militant faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party.

The faction was one of two groups which said they had killed the settler, a father of seven, two days ago - the first fatal shooting of an Israeli by militants in the occupied West Bank for eight months.

At least four people have been killed and several more injured in a suspected US drone attack on a house in Pakistan's northwest.

Pakistani intelligence officials said the missile strike targeted a hideout of anti-government fighters in the Babar Raghazi area of North Waziristan on Saturday.

But local security officials told Al Jazeera that those killed in the attack were all civilians.

Unmanned drones are often the weapon of choice for the United States as it targets the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in remote, rugged areas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. But the US military has rarely confirmed the attacks.

The use of so-called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which allow the military to operate in highly dangerous areas, is expected to grow in the coming years with the US defence department expected to buy 700 drones next year alone.

An aid convoy that has travelled over 3500km to deliver vital medical and food supplies to the Gaza Strip is currently stranded because of Egypt's refusal to grant it easy passage.

The Viva Palestina convoy, made up of almost 250 lorries, remained in the Jordanian port of Aqaba on Saturday, having waited over 48 hours to board ferries for the Egyptian Red Sea port of Nuweiba.

But Egypt has so far insisted that the aid be delivered through its Mediterranean port of El-Arish, a much longer journey that would require the convoy to go around the Sinai peninsula and through the Suez Canal.

George Galloway, a British politician leading the convoy, on Saturday appealed to Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, to allow the lorries through before medical and food supplies were ruined by the heat.

Dozens of villagers in the Kenyan district of Kisii are falling prey to superstitious groups accusing them of witchcraft.

The poverty-stricken western district, known as Kenya's sorcery belt, has seen an increase in mob attacks on individuals and even killings.

The poor and elderly in particular are being targeted.

Three months ago, a group of youths tortured five suspected witches before setting them on fire.

Joseph Ondiek's 65-year-old mother was one of those killed. He says says he and his family are living in constant fear and cannot even think about getting justice for their mother's killing.

Saffron-robed monks have chanted and prayed in Phuket and adjoining Nam Khem in Thailand, among other places in Asia, for victims of the 2004 tsunami.

Saturday's gatherings in these provinces on the country's Andaman Sea coast that lost thousands of people, were part of the hundreds of solemn events across Asia in memory of the tsunami victims.

A wall of water as high as 30 metres triggered by an undersea earthquake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra, crashed ashore with little warning on December 26, 2004, killing 200,000 people in 13 countries.

In Patong, a seaside district in Phuket popular with Western tourists, local artists performed traditional Thai songs in a pavilion where tourists gathered to look at photographs of the tsunami's damage.

A candlelight vigil was planned for Saturday evening.

A Turkish court has charged 23 Kurdish officials, including eight mayors, for maintaining links with Kurdish separatists.

According to a judicial source in Diyarbakir, the main city in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast, the suspects were charged on Saturday following a police campaign spread over 11 provinces.

Those charged are among 31 people detained as part of an offensive against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its off-shoots in urban centres.

It was the third such operation this year.

The collapse of a bridge being built in western India is feared to have left some 40 people dead, local police say.

Dozens of labourers working on the bridge are thought to have fallen into the river Chambal when it collapsed late on Thursday.

Rescuers have recovered 12 bodies but there is little hope of finding anyone else alive, a senior officer said.

The accident happened near the town of Kota, some 170 miles (270 km) west of Jaipur in Rajasthan.

German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg says democracy according to western ideals cannot be achieved in Afghanistan and that moderate Taliban members should be represented in the Afghan government. 

Guttenberg told the Sunday mass-circulation newspaper Bild am Sonntag that Afghanistan's history and character have long convinced him that Afghanistan will never be a model western democracy.

Lasting peace in the war-ravaged country could only be achieved, he added, if moderate Taliban members were allowed to participate in Afghanistan's democracy.

"Because we are in a country with such regional diversity," Guttenberg told the paper, "we can't just leave out an entire ethnic group like the Pashtuns if we want sustainable solutions for the future."

Certain conditions would need to be fulfilled, however, and it would be unacceptable for the Afghan government to ignore universal human rights.

The bailed out Wall Street failures are paying back just enough of their loans to the Treasury Department to allow a new round of huge bonuses. At the same time, they continue to get tons of cash through the Federal Reserve. Pay back a few billion, get seven trillion dollars in credit. Not a bad deal.

Congress failed to pass a bill to help with foreclosures. We're at eight million so far since 2008 with another four million predicted for 2010. The beat goes on.

The Justice Department and Congress failed to seriously investigate massive mortgage fraud from the very top on down to loan officers during the real estate bubble.

The White House and Congress forgot to include a cap on credit card rates in its credit card bill of rights. How unfortunate since the credit card companies jacked rates way up shortly after the bill passed.

The official unemployment rate of 10% is far below the true unemployment rate of about 17% or higher. Why? Because it might upset us to know that we're at Great Depression levels of unemployment.

Poverty is rising at a rapid rate with no end in sight but you'd never know it for all the attention it gets. Let the markets take care of it.

The people who made the financial mess on Wall Street are now running the U.S. Treasury. Key players, Secretary of the Treasury Geithner and insider extraordinaire Larry Summers, were appointed right after the inauguration.

The constitutional rights stolen by the previous administration are still missing in action with no real effort underway to restore them. The Patriot Act is alive and well. The feds can still tap your phone and email. They can get at any of your financial data they want and it's all done in secret. But we still haven't had a real investigation of 911.

Congress is about to consider an international treaty of copyright that will turn anyone with a public blog or web site into a cop required to enforce the new laws or face prosecution.

Throughout it all, not one member of Congress or the financial elite will miss a meal, worry about their health care, lose their house, or ever face prosecution for destroying the economy of the United States.

Their Ponzi scheme is literally too big to fail. If there were ever the least bit of concentrated scrutiny on the various wars and financial rip offs over just the past decade, it would be the end of all of them.

But The Money Party is a permanent fixture in our lives. It dominates politics, the media, and the economy. It's a self fulfilling prophecy that is always accurate. Rig the game so only those with money can run for office. Hold elections with invisible ballots on electronic voting machines that nobody really understands. Allow all sorts of legal bribes for legislators. And never allow the term election fraud to be mentioned anywhere but on a few internet web sites.

Marginalize the poor, ethnic groups, immigrants, and anyone who protests the system. Kill the unions. Then intimidate those who have the courage to show up and protest with SWAT Teams decked out for a serious beat down.

Take all you can from the middle class to support the big casino in banking and on Wall Street. Make husbands and wives work two jobs and be grateful for the opportunity. Provide children a lousy education that costs more every year while you talk about how much you love education.

Create false issues that pit one group against another --race against race, class against class -- so that the great horror is never realized -- a unified public movement to demand freedom, dignity, and respect in our personal and public lives and a chance to earn a decent living in return for our hard work.

The Money Party has no ideals or goals other than to take as much as they can, at every turn, all the time and never let up.

After Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa announced the default in December 2008, the financial press smoldered with condemnations and predictions of dire consequences for this small South American nation.
Most articles quoted only the harshest critics.  Ecuador had "lived up to its reputation as a banana republic" (Investor's Business Daily).  Ecuador was "one of the axis of evil in Latin America" (Financial Times).  A separate article in the Financial Times did quote two sympathetic analysts, but that effort at balanced reporting was an extreme exception.

We found no examples of mainstream press reporting on the long history of Ecuadorian activists calling for action to address illegitimate debts. Indeed, Ecuadorian civil society had long advocated for the creation of a commission to examine the nature of Ecuador's debt.  That commission was founded in 2007, and its results formed the basis for the Correa government's decision to default.

The mainstream media gave the overwhelming impression that this default was the result of the personal whim of a political extremist.  Virtually every story labeled Correa as a leftist and emphasized his ties to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.  The analysts quoted reinforced this message.  "I think this default is nonsense. The market sees it as politically motivated" (Euromoney).  A former International Monetary Fund official said the default reflected "a ridiculous ideology" (Bloomberg).

Meanwhile, activists associated with the global Jubilee network that has campaigned for the cancellation of illegitimate debts in countries around the world applauded Correa for fulfilling a campaign promise to respect the findings of the debt audit commission. And Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo announced less than a week after Ecuador's default that his government would also "exhaustively study" its debt.
In late April of this year, Correa was re-elected in a landslide, and as of this writing, his government appears on the brink of successfully negotiating with the holders of defaulted bonds.  Dow Jones is reporting that a very high percentage of bondholders are expected to accept Correa's offer of 35 cents on the dollar. 

And in 1988, when the George Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns drafted the first secret debate contract--a "Memorandum of Understanding" that dictated who got to participate, who would ask the questions, even the heights of the podiums--the League declined to implement it. Instead, the League issued a blistering press release claiming, "the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter."

The major parties, however, did not want a sponsor that limited their candidates' control. Consequently, the CPD was created to step in.
Since the CPD took control of the presidential debates in 1988, the debates have been primarily funded by corporate contributions. Multinational corporations with regulatory interests before Congress have donated millions of dollars in contributions to the CPD, and debate sites have become corporate carnivals, where sponsoring companies market their products, services, and political agendas. Tobacco giant Phillip Morris was a major sponsor in 1992 and 1996. The major contributor, Anheuser-Busch, has sponsored presidential debates in its hometown of St. Louis in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008.

That the CPD has been able to raise millions of dollars in corporate contributions is not surprising.  Frank Fahrenkopf and Paul Kirk, who co-chair and control the CPD, are registered lobbyists for multinational corporations. Kirk has collected $120,000 for lobbying on behalf of Hoechst Marion Roussel, a German pharmaceutical company.  Fahrenkopf earns approximately $900,000 a year as the chief lobbyist for the nation's $54 billion gambling industry.  As president of the American Gaming Association, Fahrenkopf directs enormous financial contributions to major party candidates and saturates the media with "expert" testimony extolling gambling's "many benefits." "We're not going to apologize for trying to influence political elections," said Fahrenkopf.

"These are the guys," author George Farah points out, "deciding who gets to participate in the most important political forums in the United States of America."

An American missionary carrying a letter for the North Korean dictator crossed illegally into the reclusive country to try bring international attention to the North Korean suffering, South Korean activists said Saturday.

"I am an American citizen," Robert Park, 28, said as he crossed the frozen river separating China from North Korea on Friday, according to Jo Sung-rae, head of Pax Koreana, a conservative civic group based in Seoul. "I am coming here to deliver God's love. God loves you."

By early Sunday, there was no word of his fate from North Korea.

Before heading to China last week to make the journey, Mr. Park said he was determined to become a "martyr" for the tens of thousands of people said to be incarcerated in North Korea's infamous concentration camps, Mr. Jo said.

In a videotaped message he made before the trip, Mr. Park said he wanted to be arrested and had no intention of leaving North Korea voluntarily until it shuts down its camps. He also said he did not want President Obama to "buy his freedom."

BEIJING (AFP) - Police in southwest China have arrested a man suspected of hacking a father and his four children to death, the latest in a string of grisly killings to occur in the nation, state press said Sunday.

Deng Xueyun was captured by police in Guizhou province on Saturday, about 17 hours after allegedly murdering his neighbour Deng Zhaoxiang, 40, and his four young children, the Beijing News reported.

The elder Deng was hacked to death outside the door of his home in Lushan village late Friday, while the two boys and two girls were killed while asleep in bed, it said.

The children were aged between six and 11 years of age, it added.

The report identified the suspect as a neighbour of the victim. It was not immediately clear if they were related.

A few days ago, Dan Harris of the China Law Blog confirmed a trend that we at CLB and others have noticed recently, namely that the non-payment of overtime is becoming the biggest single cause of labour-related lawsuits and arbitration cases in China.

The problem has become particularly severe as the economy picks up again and enterprises, many of whom sacked vast numbers of workers last year, pressure their remaining employees to work long hours in order to fulfill new contracts.

But as Dan Harris notes, there are very clear legal provisions in China on the remuneration of overtime, and there is "no excuse for not paying overtime... or for not having a written contract with your employees."

"My firm has handled around a half a dozen cases where foreign companies came to us after having been sued for having failed to pay overtime. In every single instance, our advice and eventual action was to settle the claims because they were all valid."

This may not work for everyone, but it worked for Jeff. He tells Consumerist that after he filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy, Sallie Mae representatives continued to call him, which is sort of illegal. So his bankruptcy attorney sued them. And won a $4,000 settlement.

   I have recently gone through Chapter 13 bankruptcy and had an experience that might enlighten others. After the filing, during the mandatory stay period, Sallie Mae continued to contact me about my student loan payment. I documented each call -- time, number of origin, and person I talked to if I could get the information. I mentioned this to my bankruptcy attorney, who made effort to stop the calls. He finally filed an order that stopped the calls. He then asked me if I wanted to file a suit against Sallie Mae. I assented.

    He filed suit for $14,000 - a grand per call. Within DAYS, the Sallie Mae attorney offered a $4,000 settlement. I had my money in hand several weeks after that. The whole process took about a month.

    I don't know if my case was unique, or if Sallie Mae illegally harasses everyone who files Chapter 13. Just wanted to let you know.