The surviving wife of conman killer Malcolm Webster yesterday relived the terrifying moments when he tried to burn her alive in a deserted forest.

Felicity Drumm told how she escaped with only minutes to spare after the murderer - nicknamed the Black Widower - drugged her in a murderous plot to collect her £1million life insurance.

Four years earlier, he had killed his first wife Claire Morris in an identical attack after sedating her, crashing their car then setting it alight in Aberdeenshire.

Cancer nurse Felicity, 51, said: "That moment in the forest I know for sure was meant to be my last. I was going the same way as Claire."

Felicity bravely travelled around the world to give evidence against Webster, now 54 - and her testimony was crucial in securing his conviction at the High Court in Glasgow on Thursday after one of Scotland's longest criminal trials.

With his easy charm and caring manner, predator Malcolm Webster created the perfect mask to hide his murderous intent.

He made every woman he met feel relaxed in his company, showering them with compliments and gaining their trust with tales of heartbreak.

They were thousands of miles apart - but each was carefully targeted to satisfy Webster's insatiable appetite for money.

All were wealthy, attractive and single and shared a vulnerability which meant they were instantly trusting of men.

Not one saw Webster's dark side - because the mask never slipped.

Turkey pledges to take 'necessary' action against Israel if Tel Aviv repeats its 2010 bloodshed of Gaza-bound activists against an aid convoy, which is to head to the impoverished enclave.

On Saturday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, "It should be known that Turkey will give the necessary response to any repeated act of provocation by Israel on the high seas," Reuters reported.

International activists plan to deliver large quantities of humanitarian assistance to the Israel-blockaded Gaza Strip in the third week of June.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says the United States should take a "more principled attitude" on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The US should support the Palestinian reconciliation process and pave the way for recognition of a Palestinian state if it wants peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Davutoglu said on Friday in response to US President Barack Obama's speech on Thursday.

"There is a reference to the 1967 borders in Obama's speech. This is an important window of opportunity. They should not refrain from giving support to Palestinian reconciliation due to Israel's unnecessary reservations," the Turkish daily Hurriyet quoted him as saying on Friday.

"A Palestinian state should be founded without delay," he said.

The Israeli military attache expelled by Moscow for spying tried to obtain information about Russian military cooperation with Arab and CIS states, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Friday.

Israeli Embassy official Vadim Leiderman was detained while meeting with a Russian army officer at a cafe in Moscow last week. He was interrogated by FSB agents and ordered to leave the country in 48 hours. Israeli security officials said they cleared Leiderman of espionage after a thorough interrogation and claimed Russia's accusations were "baseless and false."

"The existing documents fully expose his hostile activities against Russia," FSB press service said in a statement.

Where there is shocking news, there must be a conspiracy theory. So it is that the arrest of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest for sexual assault has spawned its own spate of wild speculation. "The hypothesis of a piege, or trap, set by his political enemies is taken surprisingly seriously by some intelligent people, to whom the idea that a man in his position would assault an unknown woman in the middle of the day seems improbable enough to feed a certain paranoia," writes Adam Gopnik in his New Yorker blog.

Or as an acquaintance exclaimed over lunch yesterday, "It's crazy! Why would a guy in his position do something like this." Surely a powerful, wealthy man who can afford a $3000-a-night hotel room can easily buy his pleasures - if not get them for free. This is after all a man who was known in France as "the great seducer." A reputation supported by none other than his own wife, Anne Sinclair, who told L'Express magazine, "It's important for a politician to be able to seduce."

Even those who don't subscribe to conspiracy theories are wont to view the incident as a bizarre, temporary loss of self-control. A passing moment of madness, perhaps. Yet a closer look at Strauss-Kahn's long sexual history reveals several other such "moments" - and indeed a conspiracy, not of his rivals, but his supporters to keep his true identity out of the spotlight.

The arrest of IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn has all the appearances of a frame-up ordered by powerful members of the financial establishment, in liaison with France's Nicolas Sarkozy, whose presidency has served the interests of the US at the expense of those of France and the European Union. While there is for the moment no proof of a plot, the unusual circumstances of his arrest and imprisonment require careful examination.

Immediately following Strauss Kahn's arrest, pressures were exerted by Washington to speed up his replacement as Managing Director of the IMF preferably by a non-European, an American or a handpicked candidate from an "emerging market economy" or a developing country.

Since the founding of the Bretton Woods institutions in 1945, the World Bank has been headed by an American whereas the IMF has been under the helm of a (Western) European.

Strauss-Kahn is a member of elite groups who meet behind closed doors. He belongs to the Bildeberger. Categorized as one of the world's most influential persons, he is an academic and politician rather than a banker. In contrast to his predecessors at the IMF, he has no direct affiliation to a banking or financial institution.

But at the same time he is the fall guy. His "gaffe" was to confront the Washington-Wall Street Consensus and push for reforms within the IMF, which challenged America's overriding role within the organization.

The demise of Strauss-Kahn potentially serves to strengthen the hegemony of the US and its control over the IMF at the expense of what former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called "Old Europe".

On the February 4, 2005 Signs page, we published the following article:

First Artificial Neon Sky Show Created

By Robert Roy Britt
Live Science Senior Writer

02 February 2005

By shooting intense radio beams into the night sky, researchers created a modest neon light show visible from the ground. The process is not well understood, but scientists speculate it could one day be employed to light a city or generate celestial advertisements.

Researchers with the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) project in Alaska tickled the upper atmosphere to the extent that it glowed with green speckles. The speckles were sprinkled amid a natural display known as the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights. [...]

The HAARP experiment involves acres of antennas and a 1 megawatt generator. The scientists sent radio pulses skyward every 7.5 seconds, explained team leader Todd Pederson of the Air Force Research Laboratory. "The radio waves travel up to the ionosphere, where they excite the electrons in the plasma," Pederson told LiveScience. "These electrons then collide with atmospheric gasses, which then give off light, as in a neon tube."

Pederson and his colleagues missed the show, but they snapped images. "We unfortunately were indoors watching the data on monitors during the experiment and were busy scrambling trying to make sure the effects were real and not some glitch with the equipment," he said. "We knew right away it was something extraordinary to show up in real time on the monitor against the natural aurora, but did not confirm that it would have been visible to the naked eye until a day or two later when we had a chance to calibrate the raw data."

The experiment is detailed in the Feb. 2 issue of the journal Nature. The research could improve understanding of the aurora and also help explain how the ionosphere adversely affects radio communications. It is not yet clear if the aurora must already be active before an artificial sky show can be induced, says Karl Ziemelis, chief physics editor at the journal. If no pre-existing aurora is required, Ziemelis said, "we are left with the tantalizing (some would say disconcerting) possibility that such radio- fuelled emissions could form the basis of a technology for urban lighting, celestial advertising, and more."

I have to say that I am quite skeptical about the stated "commercial" intentions of said experiment, considering that it is being carried out by the Air Force. When have they ever spent multiplied millions of dollars to research ways and means to promote Coca Cola? Get real! Frankly, if producing images in the sky is on their agenda, my guess would be that such images might be used for "military" purposes as in "how to scare the bejeebies out of everybody so we can control 'em!"

• Release delayed as he finds place in security company accommodation


• Art dealer heiress put up $1m in cash and $5m insurance bond


• Possible move to Bristol Plaza, where apartments start at $8,800 a month


• 'Golden parachute' from IMF worth $318,000 a year in pension alone


• Bailed to Manhattan apartment and has to pay £200k-a-month for his own security company


• Surrenders passport and lawyers promise he won't flee to France


• Wife and New York-based uni student daughter in court

Disgraced banker Dominique Strauss-Kahn was today thwarted in his bid to swap his tiny cell in New York's notorious Rikers Island jail for a lavish Manhattan apartment.

The former IMF boss, who faces trial on charges of raping a hotel maid, was due to be released after his wife posted $6million bail.

But his return to the lap of luxury suffered a setback this afternoon after a deal to rent an Upper East Side condo appeared to have fallen through.

The housing farce may dash Strauss-Kahn's hopes to leave Rikers Island jail and raises the prospect he could spend the rest of the weekend behind bars.

With a 24-hour concierge, swimming pool and daily maid service, The Bristol Plaza in Manhattan was thought to be where the former IMF chief would hunker down as he prepared for an upcoming sexual assault trial.

The former IMF chief's lawyers admitted that 'complications' had arisen with the luxurious Bristol Plaza but it was widely reported that the building's owners had decided he could not stay there.

Sources claimed the owners of the apartment block pulled out of the deal once they found out the identity of the new tenant - and that a 'high-profile' tenant had complained about Strauss-Kahn's arrival.

His delayed move away from Rikers Island prison comes after it was revealed today that the ex-IMF chief will receive a generous yearly pension as well as a one off $318,000 'golden parachute' from his former employer.

The disgraced banker was dramatically granted bail last night under draconian conditions as it emerged he will face a trial for his alleged sex attack on a hotel maid.

He will be released today from Rikers Island prison in New York to an apartment in Manhattan.

His new accommodation is being bankrolled by his third wife, French journalist and millionaire heiress, Anne Sinclair, who raised the necessary $6m to satisfy the State Supreme Court.

The daughter of an art dealer, she managed to raise $1m in cash and $5m insurance bond.

The arrangements to which Strauss-Kahn must abide are still very restrictive, however. He will be subjected to 24-hour monitoring by a security firm paid for by himself and an electronic tag will be fitted on his ankle.

Cables show U.S. collected details of plots, terrorists

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's ongoing release of the Guantanamo Bay prison files, and large numbers of classified State Department cables, attempts to expose what he calls American corruption.

But supporters of the George W. Bush administration's global war on terrorism say the nearly 800 Guantanamo files show that "enhanced" interrogations of hundreds of captured operatives at secret overseas prisons and at the Cuban prison amounted to one of the most successful intelligence operations in history.

Before the interrogations, the U.S. knew little about al Qaeda in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Years later, the CIA and military had accumulated a large database of ongoing plots and the identities of terrorists, the WikiLeaks files show.

"The WikiLeaks documents provide still additional evidence that intelligence gained from CIA detainees not only helped lead us to Osama bin Laden, it helped us disrupt a number of follow-on attacks that had been set in motion after 9/11," said Marc Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter.

"Without this program, we would not have gone nearly 10 years without another catastrophic attack on the homeland. This is quite possibly the most important, and most successful, intelligence program in modern times. But instead of medals, the people behind this program have been given subpoenas."