Stories from my four-year old daughter about naked men, her being undressed, her being licked and requests to "lick big sysalai" (as my little girl calls men's genital organs), dripping out cream, her being covered with that "natural" cream, the "sysalas" becoming very little (after the "cream" came out), putting "sysalas" into her mouth, its pulling forward and backwards, shouting strange sounds, putting and pulling "sysalas" in the living room, bathroom, lavatory... everywhere, always, hundreds of times when she visited her "Mummy" at weekends (even on my daughter's Christening day) do not move any of the officers involved to launch a judicial inquiry. "Nothing happened here," they say, "the girl is alive." Her mother received compensation from those with the "big sysalai".

Three interrogations of my daughter about circumstances of sexual abuse (even if, according to law regulations, a child may be interrogated only once), complex forensic psychiatry done with my daughter, forensic psychology expertise with the categorical conclusion that my daughter can properly understand particularly essential circumstances of the case and can testify. Increased predisposition to fantasise was not identified. Ten psychologists that participated in interrogations were not able to determine "lies" of the child. However, all this does not mean anything in our state. Categorical request of prosecutors to constantly interrogate the child (after she was interrogated and examined already) allows them to take the decision - the child was not sexually abused.

I do not know. Maybe, as her father, I look with another eye upon this situation and understand words of the girl repeated during interrogations and expertise. But maybe there are people in Lithuania who cannot understand words of the child in a different way - it is disgusting violence, orgies of degenerates, perverts, paedophiles... I do not know, maybe "qualified" prosecutors think differently...

A Paris court on Friday sentenced a French-Algerian particle physicist to five years in prison, one of them suspended, on the charge of "criminal association with the intent to prepare terrorist acts," ruling that the man's online correspondence in 2009 with a presumed member of Al Qaeda constituted a criminal act.

The scientist, Adlène Hicheur, 35, did not deny the exchange of messages, in which he suggested targets for terrorist strikes in France, but maintains that he never intended to act on his words. The trial has raised difficult questions about the possible excesses of French antiterrorism law, which in effect treats intent as a criminal act.

A researcher at the Large Hadron Collider project at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland, Dr. Hicheur met his interlocutor on an Internet forum dedicated to radical Islam while on sick leave, nursing a herniated disk at his parents' home in southeastern France.

Dr. Hicheur has been in prison since his arrest 2 1/2 years ago; that period will be counted as time served, his lawyer said Friday, adding that they would decide in coming days whether to appeal the verdict.

France repealed a sexual harassment law on Friday on the grounds that the definition of the crime was too vague, sparking renewed debate of an issue put into the spotlight by the arrest of one-time presidential hopeful Dominique Strauss-Kahn last year.

Some women's groups said the decision, by France's highest constitutional body, would leave victims without legal protection until a new law is penned, while others argued an improved law could lead to more convictions.

Former International Monetary Fund chief Strauss-Kahn was arrested last May, accused of sexual assault by a hotel maid. The charges were later dropped but the ensuing scandal cast a harsh light on a practice in France of hushing up or shrugging off sexual advances by powerful figures. Feminists demanded a change of attitude.

Strauss-Kahn had already been rapped over a sexual relationship with a subordinate in 2008, who said she felt pressured to sleep with him, and French writer Tristane Banon filed a complaint after the New York case alleging he tried to assault her in 2003.

Junior civil service minister Georges Tron was forced to resign in June after two women who had worked for him filed sexual harassment complaints. One said the debate sparked by the Strauss-Kahn scandal had prompted her to break her silence.

Friday's repeal of the law should eventually lead to clearer guidelines for judges. But the fact the measure goes into effect immediately means that all ongoing sexual harassment cases not yet ruled on in court will be thrown out.

Peshawar, Pakistan - An American drone fired a volley of missiles into a house close to the Afghan border on Saturday, killing eight suspected militants and indicating U.S. resolve to continue with the attacks despite renewed Pakistani opposition, officials said.

The strike in North Waziristan was the second American drone operation in Pakistan this week.

The attacks come amid American efforts to rebuild its relationship with Pakistan, which in November blocked the passage of U.S. and NATO war supplies to neighboring Afghanistan. The country's parliament has called for an end to the drone strikes, which many here regard as an unacceptable violation of sovereignty.

Up to eight missiles were fired at a house in the Dra Nishtar area of North Waziristan early Saturday, Pakistani intelligence officials said. They didn't give their names because they were not authorized to be named in the media.

Pakistan's foreign office issued a statement condemning the attack, saying it was a violation of sovereignty and international law. It did the same after the strike last Sunday, which was the first since lawmakers demanded they end. Previously, individual attacks rarely drew official complaint.

Athens, Greece - Voters in Greece prepared Saturday to take part in parliamentary elections, with wide uncertainty over what government will emerge from Sunday's vote and how it will handle the austerity crisis gripping the nation.

No party is expected to win a majority of the vote, meaning a coalition will again have to be formed.

The outgoing coalition government pushed through a series of painful austerity measures in order to secure emergency bailout funding for Greece, which is at the center of the eurozone debt crisis.

The two main parties which formed that coalition in November, PASOK and New Democracy, are expected to lose votes to a raft of smaller parties, as people express their unhappiness at their country's economic plight.

Campaigning came to a close on Friday.

Evangelos Venizelos, leader of the left-leaning PASOK party, declared "everything is at stake Sunday," as he addressed a final campaign rally in the capital's central Syntagma Square, scene of many anti-austerity protests.

John Yoo, a former Department of Justice attorney who crafted legal memos authorizing the Bush administration's notorious torture programs, will not have to face a lawsuit filed by Jose Padilla, an American citizen accused of terrorism who claims he was tortured while in U.S. military custody.

In a unanimous decision (PDF) Wednesday, three judges with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Yoo should be granted immunity because torture law was not fully settled in 2001-2003, when Yoo wrote the memos.

"[Although] it has been clearly established for decades that torture of an American citizen violates the Constitution, and we assume without deciding that Padilla's alleged treatment rose to the level of torture, that such treatment was torture was not clearly established in 2001-03," Judge Raymond C. Fisher wrote.

"For several years, Padilla and his attorneys have been harassing the government officials he believes to have been responsible for his detention and ultimately conviction as a terrorist," Yoo told The Associated Press. "He has now lost before two separate courts of appeals, and will need to find a new hobby for his remaining time in prison."

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© John Moore/Getty ImagesUS Pentagon contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, which helped build the Guantánamo camp, is bidding for a £1.5bn privatisation contract to run policing services in Surrey and the West Midlands.

US firm KBR, which helped build detention camp, among consortiums bidding to run police services in West Midlands and Surrey

A US Pentagon contractor that was involved in building Guantánamo Bay is on a shortlist of private consortiums bidding for a £1.5bn contract to run key policing services in the West Midlands and Surrey.

The Texas-based Kellogg Brown & Root, which was sold off by the controversial Halliburton corporation in 2007, is part of a consortium which has made it to the final shortlist for a contract that will see large-scale involvement of the private sector in British policing for the first time.

When KBR was still part of Halliburton it won a large share of Pentagon contracts to build and manage US military bases in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Its former chief executive, Dick Cheney, was US vice-president.

The Guardian has learned that 15 groups of companies and individual firms have made it on to the most recent shortlist. More than 200 firms initially expressed an interest at a "bidders' conference" held in March.

Makhachkala, Russia - Two car bomb attacks hit a police post in the North Caucasus republic of Dagestan on late Thursday evening, killing at least twelve people and injuring more than 25 others, local media reported.

The first attack happened at around 10:10 p.m. local time when a suspected suicide bomber blew up his explosives-laden vehicle at a police field post on the outskirts of Makhachkala, the capital of Russia's Dagestan.

As emergency teams arrived at the scene to attend to the victims, about ten minutes after the initial attack, a second blast followed. Police said the second blast was likely caused by an explosive device planted in a van near the police post, according to the Itar-Tass news agency.

It is a year since America successfully concluded its unfinished business with Osama bin Laden, delivering a measure of closure both to the US nation and to the friends and families of the 2,819 people who died on September 11 2001. Tomorrow morning, in a purpose-built hangar on the old airstrip in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the next stage of that process begins when Khaled Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators in the attacks on the Twin Towers are arraigned for what is already being billed as the "trial of the century".

But as the five men register their pleas in front of a specially designed military war crimes tribunal, it is already clear that it will not just be them on trial. Also in the dock will be the Obama administration, the US Congress, the CIA, the US military and, indeed, the very values of freedom and democracy that America has professed to defend in its decade-long "war on terror".

Even before it starts, opponents of the process have dismissed the tribunal as a legal sham and "second-tier" justice: the kind of unconstitutional kangaroo court that if it were put on in China or North Korea would be dismissed as a "show trial" whose outcome - the execution of the accused - has been predetermined from the start.