Sole surviving gunman from India's Mumbai terror attacks expected to receive death penalty as two other citizens are cleared

The sole surviving gunman from the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008 was today convicted of murder and waging war against India.

Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, a Pakistani citizen, is due to be sentenced in the next couple of days. He is expected to receive the death penalty, which in India means hanging.

The court accepted the prosecution contention that the plot was hatched in Pakistan. Speaking before the verdict was announced, prosecutor Ujwal Nikam said there was irrefutable evidence that members of the Pakistani military were involved, describing it as a "classic case of state sponsored terrorism".

Once Kasab has been sentenced the case - which has been heard by a special court sitting in Mumbai's Arthur Road jail - must go to the high court for ratification. Kasab can then appeal to India's supreme court and if that is unsuccessful, he can appeal to the president for mercy.

It would be "impossible" to reveal secret MI5 files about the 7/7 London terror attacks, a court has been told.

The claim has been made at a hearing to decide the format of inquests into the deaths of those killed in 2005.

Lawyers for the families of those who died argue the hearing should also look at whether the intelligence services could have prevented the attacks.

Counsel for the home secretary and MI5 argued examining MI5's involvement was outside the scope of the inquests.

Four suicide bombers detonated their devices on three Tube trains and one bus killing 52 innocent people.

It emerged after the attacks that security agencies came across two of the bombers in 2004 while investigating other terrorist plots.

While the SEC is busy investigating Goldman Sachs, it might want to look into another Goldman-dominated fraud: computerized front running using high-frequency trading programs.

Market commentators are fond of talking about "free market capitalism," but according to Wall Street commentator Max Keiser, it is no more. It has morphed into what his TV co-host Stacy Herbert calls "rigged market capitalism": all markets today are subject to manipulation for private gain.

Keiser isn't just speculating about this. He claims to have invented one of the most widely used programs for doing the rigging. Not that that's what he meant to invent. His patented program was designed to take the manipulation out of markets. It would do this by matching buyers with sellers automatically, eliminating "front running" - brokers buying or selling ahead of large orders coming in from their clients. The computer program was intended to remove the conflict of interest that exists when brokers who match buyers with sellers are also selling from their own accounts. But the program fell into the wrong hands and became the prototype for automated trading programs that actually facilitate front running.

The paedophile priest scandal currently enveloping the Vatican has spread to one of the most Catholic areas of the world following a string of new abuse revelations throughout Latin America.

Reports of priests raping or abusing minors have now emerged in Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Mexico and Chile causing growing anger in a continent that is home to nearly half the world's Catholics.

In Brazil an 83-year-old priest has been arrested after he was secretly filmed in bed with a 19-year-old altar boy. The footage was broadcast on national television networks prompting a police investigation which led to the arrest of Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa and two other priests in the north eastern state of Alagoas. They have since been accused of abusing boys as young as 12 and have been suspended by their diocesan bishop.

The Catholic Church in Chile confirmed this week that there have been 20 alleged or confirmed cases of child abuse by priests. At a press conference yesterday, Monsignor Alejandro Goic, the head of Chile's bishops' conference, apologised and vowed to crack down on any priests who had abused children.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have today announced that two "Al-Qaeda in Iraq" leaders have been killed in an air strike carried out by American troops. A major flaw in the story that seems to have been overlooked, is that both of the men have already been reported captured and killed on several occasions, with U.S. officials also having previously declared one of them a "fictional character" that was invented by the other!

The Washington Post reports:

The deaths of Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the head of an umbrella group that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, should disrupt insurgent attacks inside the country, officials said. Their slayings could also provide Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (pictured above) with a decisive political boost at a critical time.

"The death of these terrorists is potentially the most significant blow to al-Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning of the insurgency," Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander of U.S. troops in Iraq said in a statement. "There is still work to do but this is a significant step forward in ridding Iraq [of] terrorists."

Jever, Germany - A large fleet of warships, submarines, frigates and aircraft from 10 NATO countries and one non-NATO member has congregated here to take part in the 'Brilliant Mariner' maritime exercise in the Baltic Sea.

The 10-day long multi-nation naval drill began here on April 12, 2010. It will engage the NATO forces to respond to a number of challenges, including asymmetric or terrorist threats, maritime security operations and embargo operations "in a realistic scenario," a NATO statement said.

The exercise will see participation of 6,500 defence personnel, 31 warships, 28 aircraft and four submarines that will operate in the Northern European waters and airspace.

The French Navy, which is commanding the maritime exercise, has sent 10 of its warships and 30 aircraft.

When Pat Bond told her lover Henry Willenborg, a Franciscan priest, that she was pregnant, he urged her to have an abortion.

Bond, who was 28, had a miscarriage and then became pregnant again. This time Willenborg's superiors urged her to give up the child for adoption.

Bond, from Missouri, kept the child but agreed to a vow of silence. In a signed contract with the Catholic Church, she undertook to keep the priest's identity secret in exchange for financial support for her son, Nathan.

In America, Britain, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy and Austria, women made pregnant by priests have signed such pledges in exchange for hush money from the church.

Railway porter-turned-billionaire financier George Soros delivered a stark warning last night that the financial world is on the wrong track and that we may be hurtling towards an even bigger boom and bust than in the credit crisis.

The man who 'broke' the Bank of England (and who is still able to earn a cool $3.3 bln in a year) said the same strategy of borrowing and spending that had got us out of the Asian crisis could shunt us towards another crisis unless tough lessons are learned.

Soros, who worked as a porter to pay for his studies at the London School of Economics after emigrating from Hungary, warned us to heed the lesson that modern economics had got it wrong and that markets are not inherently stable.

"The success in bailing out the system on the previous occasion led to a superbubble, except that in 2008 we used the same methods," he told a meeting hosted by The Economist at the City of London's modern and impressive Haberdashers' Hall.

Evidently, American presidents wish to continue to guard Israel's nuclear "secret". If the motivation is thought to be a simple case of double standard, surely one must be deplored by the submissiveness of the general community. On the other hand, the more inquisitive mind would prod deeper and question the drive behind the guarding of this "secret"?

Perhaps motivations have changed over time. In 1969, Kissinger, aware that Israel had deceived the United States about its nuclear bomb program, which it was suspected to have stolen from the U.S., wrote to Nixon that pressuring Israel to reveal its nuclear arsenal would result in a Soviet nuclear guarantee for the [oil rich] Arabs and increase conflict in the region [i]. Ironically, it was Nixon who soon after had considered sending airborne troops to seize oilfields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi pursuing the 1973 war.

Today, the secrecy continues, as does the aid to Israel -- perhaps towards a messianic return - the building of the Third Temple.

In 2006, the Israeli government began work on an exact replica of the Hurva synagogue on its original site. The story of the Hurva has received little attention other than coinciding with Joe Biden's visit to Israel and that government's insistence on building more illegal settlements. But Hurva is the beginning of the end.

As the United States, acting as Israel's proxy, imposes its will on the world and pushes for sanctions and war on Iran, thereby distracting the international community, rabbis are being tailored for the special kind of garments they will be wearing in a "rebuilt temple". 'The Third Temple of the Third Jewish Commonwealth.' They believe that the return of Jews to Jerusalem are the obvious signs - "Less obvious are the more subtle realities that add up - the rebuilding of the Jewish Quarter, Jews steadily moving into the Old City, even the Temple Mount tunnel excavations. But alas, those big mosques are still situated on the Temple Mount. For now." [ii]