He told reporters that people "should not assume" the US was flying terror suspects in and out of Britain without asking permission.



In their annual human rights report, the Labour-dominated foreign affairs select committee said the government should tell the US administration the "rendition" flights were "completely unacceptable".

The committee wrote: "We conclude that the government has a duty to enquire into the allegations of extraordinary rendition and black sites under the convention against torture, and to make clear to the USA that any extraordinary rendition to states where suspects may be tortured is completely unacceptable."

The Guardian reported this morning that the committee plans to question Jack Straw about the flights, despite the foreign secretary's desire to only talk, in private, to the Commons intelligence committee.

National Air Traffic Services (Nats) confirmed yesterday that two aircraft believed to have been chartered by the CIA made "around 200 journeys" through British airspace within the past five years.

The flights of the two planes, one a Gulfstream, the other a Boeing 737, were identified by the Guardian last September. Britain and the US have not denied reports that the planes were chartered by the CIA. Flight plans do not record the purpose of the flights, a Nats spokesman said yesterday. "They might have been CIA flights taking officials rather than people in orange boiler suits," he added.

Former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind today accused Mr Straw of "behaving like a dodgy second-hand car salesman" and using "weasel words" in his answers to questions on the flights.

In an article in the Spectator magazine, he wrote: ""As the use of extraordinary rendition has increased enormously since 2001, the obvious explanation is that the Americans have used British airports and airspace but have stopped requesting permission, and the British authorities have acquiesced.

"If he wants to clear the matter up, all that Mr Straw needs to do is ask the United States for an assurance that from now on, no CIA flights landing or refuelling at British airports will carry kidnapped prisoners."

In Brussels a European parliamentary inquiry into CIA "rendition" flights and "secret prisons" in Europe were today told that the US had created "daunting obstacles" to block any investigations.

The New York based Human Rights Watch told a committee of MEPs there was circumstantial evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania, and identified the two countries as possible hosts of secret US-run detention facilities. This allegation was denied by both countries.

Swiss senator Dick Marty, who is leading a Council of Europe investigation, will update MEPs later on his findings so far.

The conviction comes after a Danish newspaper printed cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad -- sparking violent protests around the world from Muslims who saw the images as sacrilegious and an attack on their beliefs.

Manfred van H. printed out sheets of toilet paper bearing the word "Koran" shortly after a group of Muslims carried out a series of bomb attacks in London in July 2005. He sent the paper to German television stations, magazines and some 15 mosques.

Prosecutors said that in an accompanying letter Manfred van H. called Islam's holy book a "cookbook for terrorists."

He also offered his toilet paper for sale on the Internet at a price of 4 euros ($4.76) per roll, saying the proceeds would go toward a "memorial to all the victims of Islamic terrorism."

The maximum sentence for insulting religious beliefs under the German criminal code is three years in prison.

Christian youths rampaged through the streets attacking Muslims with cutlasses and setting fire to them with petrol to avenge the killing of at least 46 people, mostly Christians, by Muslim mobs in the north.

"Dead bodies were littered in various parts of Onitsha. We counted 60 on Tuesday and 25 on Wednesday," said Emeka Umeh, head of CLO in Anambra state, where Onitsha is located.

"The majority of victims were Hausas but some Ibos were killed too," Umeh said. He gave a detailed breakdown of numbers of bodies sighted in specific areas.

The Hausa are the main ethnic group in northern Nigeria and most of them are Muslims, while the Ibo are the dominant tribe in the southeast and they are almost all Christians.

The Anambra police commissioner declined to give a death toll, but he said about 11,000 people, mostly Hausas, had fled their homes and were camping in army barracks or police stations, too frightened to venture out.

Nigeria's 140 million people are split roughly equally between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south, though sizeable religious and ethnic minorities live in both regions.

Thousands of people have been killed in religious violence since the restoration of democracy in 1999, and killings in one part of the country often trigger reprisals elsewhere.

The killings in Onitsha started when news emerged of Ibo deaths in the north. On Wednesday the tit-for-tat violence spread to Enugu, another Ibo city in the southeast, where seven people were killed.

In Onitsha, Ibo mobs torched mosques and shanty towns where Hausas lived, while thousands of looters invaded Hausa markets.

The developments also reveal how modern humans crossed the continent from the Balkans to the Atlantic in 2500 years rather than 3500 years, as previously believed.

They would have met stiff resistance from the indigenous Neanderthal population as, generation by generation, they pushed westward as climatic conditions improved, said Paul Mellars, the author of the article.

"The two sides were competing for the same territories, the same animals and fuel supplies and occupying the same cave spaces," said the Cambridge University archaeologist.

"With that kind of competition, the Neanderthals were always going to come out as the losers."

Although other scientists have been pondering the implications of the revised radiocarbon dating, Professor Mellars' work is the first comprehensive review of the subject in a major journal.

For years it was thought that modern humans began arriving in western Europe at least 40,000 years ago and could have competed and mingled with the local population for at least 12,000 years. The revised dating of fossils and artefacts indicates the two species were in close contact for a shorter period.

Humans and Neanderthals, thought to have coexisted for 10,000 years across Europe, are more likely to have lived together for only 6000 years.

The new understanding of when, and how quickly, anatomically modern humans colonised Europe has been made possible by two recent pieces of research that have allowed scientists to push back the limits of chronologically accurate radiocarbon dating to 50,000 years ago, rather than 24,000 years.

Radiocarbon dating is a process of assessing age by counting radioactive decay of carbon in materials.

The studies of stratified radiocarbon in the Cariaco Basin, off Venezuela, and of radiocarbon on fossilised coral formations in the tropical Atlantic and Pacific have given scientists a better idea of the amount of carbon in the atmosphere over the past 50,000 years.

The work allows researchers to more accurately convert carbon years into calendar years.

The developments have also enabled archaeologists to push back the dates for the world's earliest cave paintings, in south-eastern France, from 29,000BC to 34,000BC.

Chris Stringer, human origins researcher at London's Museum of Natural History, said the Nature paper was an important step in the quest to map the spread of human populations.

"This study suggests that the period of potential interaction (between modern humans and Neanderthals) was short, and also favours the idea that the impact of the newcomers was indeed a significant factor in the demise of the Neanderthals, something which has been disputed recently," Mr Stringer said.

Authorities have arrested nine people so far, including several Pendleton-based Marines, the Department of Homeland Security said in a press release. Additional arrests were expected.

The nine include Erika Jardine, who was sentenced Wednesday to six months in prison by Judge Michael Baylson in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania. The Vista resident and civilian pleaded guilty in November to one count of exporting arms without a license and one count of selling stolen U.S. government property.

The others worked at Pendleton, though it was unclear exactly how many were on military duty and how many were civilian employees at the base north of San Diego, said Dean Boyd, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of Homeland Security.

The Marines were arrested last year and were charged in military court with theft of government property, Boyd said.

According to prosecutors, Jardine sold light ceramic plates designed for use inside vests at a time when there were shortages of that part in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Jardine has cooperated extensively with the government and "made great strides in attempting to right her wrongs," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

"(The) government does not believe that (the) defendant engaged in this activity out of any sinister intent to harm the United States; rather, her actions are more likely explained by the same motivation that fuels many - greed," prosecutors wrote.

An ongoing investigation at Camp Pendleton by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service has identified 12 Marines and several civilians as suspects, Homeland Security said. That number includes Marines who were already arrested.

ICE agents in Philadelphia launched an investigation of Jardine in June 2004 and discovered that she was selling illegal gear in Internet auctions on eBay, authorities said. Agents who posed as arms merchants based in Europe allegedly bought 18 ballistic vests from her.

Jardine, who had no previous connection to Pendleton, offered to buy surplus equipment in an ad she placed in a base newspaper, Boyd said. "Someone told her this was a way to potentially make some money," he said.

In one instance, Jardine agreed to send body armor plates to an undercover agent in eastern Pennsylvania with an understanding that the buyer would forward them to Europe, according to court records.

In addition to the vests that undercover agents bought, the investigation has resulted in the recovery of items worth more than $63,100, including 17 vests, 104 lightweight ceramic plates, seven Kevlar helmets, 74 M-16 magazines, two gas masks and 100,766 Iraqi dinars, authorities said.

"All I'm saying is while the jury's out on this one, I'm not going to put in place what is potential chronic exposure for our students. Admittedly that's highest around the locations of the antenna sites and the wireless hot spots, but those are the places people tend to gravitate to because they get the best reception," Gilbert said, Canadian technology website IT Business reports.

The Ontario University makes limited use of WiFi only in areas where fibre-optics links can't reach. Gilbert says he want to see conclusive evidence that the technology is safe before he'll be prepared to approve its wider use.

Robert Bradley, director of consumer and clinical radiation protection at Health Canada, said documents due to be published this year should establish that WiFi networks operating at below current regulatory limits poses no risk to humans. But if the controversy about the possible health risks of mobile phones are anything to go by that's unlikely to reassure everyone.

Jorg-Rudiger Sack, a computer science professor at Carleton University, said that while wireless is useful in environments where people are not likely to be working in fixed locations (such as airport departure lounges) its benefits in campus environments are far more tenuous.