Florida court hands down sentences of up to 25 years against men who peddled worthless shares in 'boiler-room' scheme

Three British conmen who left thousands of victims penniless as they frittered £85m in stolen money on a private jet, yachts and holiday homes in the Caribbean have been jailed by a Florida court.

Richard Pope, Paul Gunter and Simon Odoni lived a luxurious life while defrauding at least 2,300 Britons, many of whom lost their entire life savings and one of whom was driven to suicide.

They were jailed at a court in Florida, where Gunter, 64, was sentenced to 25 years. Odoni, 56, was given 13 years and four months and Pope, 55, was sentenced to four years and nine months.

Detective Inspector Kerrie Gower said: "Pope, Gunter and Odoni are amongst the most ruthless and destructive criminals the City of London police have ever dealt with and deserve every day they will spend behind bars in America.

"Unfortunately this sentencing will not repair the huge damage they caused to the lives of thousands of people who were simply looking for a safe place to invest their money, but hopefully it will bring a measure of comfort and a sense of closure to those caught up in what was fraud committed on a truly massive scale."

DA NANG, Vietnam -- In many ways, Nguyen Thi Ly is just like any other 12-year-old girl. She has a lovely smile and is quick to laugh. She wants to be a teacher when she grows up. She enjoys skipping rope when she plays.

But Ly is also very different from other children. Her head is severely misshapen. Her eyes are unnaturally far apart and permanently askew. She's been hospitalized with numerous ailments since her birth.

Her mother, 43-year-old Le Thi Thu, has similar deformities and health disorders. Neither of them has ever set foot on a battlefield, but they're both casualties of war.

Le and her daughter are second- and third-generation victims of dioxin exposure, the result of the U.S. military's use of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, when the U.S. Air Force sprayed more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange and other herbicides over parts of southern Vietnam and along the borders of neighboring Laos and Cambodia. The herbicides were contaminated with dioxin, a deadly compound that remains toxic for decades and causes birth defects, cancer and other illnesses.

To this day, dioxin continues to poison the land and the people. The United States has never accepted responsibility for these victims - it denies that Agent Orange is responsible for diseases among Vietnamese that are accepted as Agent Orange-caused among American veterans - and it's unclear when this chain of misery will end.

Riot police free more than 100 MPs and ministers blockaded for more than eight hours as anti-government protests grow

Police in Bulgaria have broken up a blockade of parliament by anti-government protesters to escort out more than 100 MPs and ministers who had been trapped inside the building for more than eight hours.

Police in riot gear pushed away the protesters early on Wednesday and formed a corridor to allow those trapped out of the building.

Protests in Bulgaria's capital, which have been continuing for 40 days, escalated on Tuesday evening when several hundred demonstrators trapped the officials inside parliament in a bid to oust the left-leaning government.

Police had tried to escort the officials out by a bus on Tuesday, but protesters blocked the vehicle and hurled stones. Seven protesters and two police officers were treated in hospital for head wounds.

The Socialist-backed government took office after early elections in May, following the resignation of the previous cabinet amid anti-austerity protests. The government commands only 120 seats in the 240-seat Parliament and has to rely on the support from a nationalist party.

The appointment of media mogul Delyan Peevski as head of the national security agency sparked the most recent wave of protests. The appointment was immediately revoked but demonstrators insist the government is corrupt and must resign.

Recent public-opinion polls show the protests are supported by about two-thirds of Bulgaria's 7.3m people, who have the lowest incomes in the European Union.

The Bulgarian president, Rosen Plevneliev, issued a statement calling on the protesters to keep the demonstrations "peaceful and civilised."

"For the first time since the start of the protests we have now witnessed tension and attempts for provocation," Plevneliev said, urging the protesters to restrain from any acts which increased the tension and breach public order. He also called on the police to help keep the protest peaceful.

Consumers look set to shoulder higher food prices following recent hikes in the cost of key ingredients, particularly pork, the Commerce Ministry has reported. The ministry found that retail prices of many Thai-style fast-food dishes have already increased by around Bt5 per dish following a hike in the price of raw materials, in particular pork and other meats, and ahead of a rise in the LPG price scheduled for September.

The ministry reported that the price of pork at fresh markets rose to Bt140 per kilogram from an average of Bt130-135 per kilogram last month.

A swine-farming source said the rise in the price of pork was due to a drop in the supply of pigs after farmers cut back in response to an over-supply starting in the middle of last year. That oversupply led to huge losses among farmers.

"The retail price of pork is expected to increase this week as the farm-gate price of pigs has increased by Bt2-Bt3 a kilo. As a result, prices of some foods and other protein sources could rise along with rising pork prices," the source said. Farm-gate value is the net value of a product when it leaves the farm, after marketing costs have been subtracted.

Food prices tipped to treble over the next 20 years as an explosion in the world's population triggers a global fight for food.

A government adviser said everyday products such as cocoa and meat could become relative luxuries by the 2040s.

Professor Tim Benton, head of Global Food Security working group, added there could be shortages in the UK in the future as the emerging middle class in south-east Asia sparks a revolution in "food flows" such as the trade in grain and soya around the world.

Professor Benton, from the University of Leeds, told the Daily Telegraph: "Food is going to be competed for on a global scale. There's been a lot written about where food prices are going to go but they are certainly going to double, with some trebling. It's not just fruit and vegetables, but everything."

The shock forecast came as the chief executive of Tesco, Philip Clarke, warned the era of cheap food was over because of the forecast surge in demand.

A Polish prosecutor and four experts are conducting an additional examination of seat fragments in the debris from a jet that crashed in Russia in 2010, killing Poland's then-president, Lech Kaczynski, the Polish Main Military Prosecutor's Office reported.

An Office spokesman said the Polish delegation's visit to Russia had been coordinated with the Russian side beforehand. The experts will work in the western Russian city of Smolensk until the end of next week.

The Russian-made Tu-154 jet, carrying Kaczynski, his wife and a host of top officials, crashed in heavy fog as it attempted to land at an airfield near Smolensk on April 10, 2010. The delegation was flying to Smolensk to mark the 70th anniversary of the 1940 Katyn massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police. All 96 people aboard the plane died.

A couple from Virginia pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges in connection with the abuse of a young boy they adopted from Russia.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Sweeney, an officer in the US Navy, pleaded guilty to a charge of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and received a suspended sentence of 60 days behind bars.

His wife, Amy Sweeney, pleaded guilty to felony abuse and neglect, and will be sentenced in December.

The couple adopted Daniil Kruchin from Russia in 2006 and renamed him Daniel Alexander.

He was eight years old when the abuse case first came to light in July of last year. The boy left his home in the middle of the night on July 17 and rang the doorbell of a nearby home in the early morning hours the next day.

An Australia-bound boat carrying asylum seekers has sunk off the coast of Indonesia, with up to 60 people thought to be dead or missing, Australian media report.

The boat, carrying 170 people, encountered harsh sea conditions and simply broke, News Ltd reported on Tuesday. Rescue efforts by local fishermen have managed to save more than 100 of the passengers, mostly Iranian and Sri Lankan nationals.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has confirmed an official rescue operation, declining to comment further.

The incident comes days after Australia ruled that any refugees arriving by boat would be redirected without exception to neighboring Papua New Guinea for individual assessment before settling there

Gunmen armed with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars raid prisons, as attacks elsewhere kill 13.

The jurors who acquitted George Zimmerman say they acted in strict accordance with US law. That in itself speaks volumes

"O, wad some Power the giftie gie us /

To see oursels as others see us! /

It wad frae monie a blunder free us, /

An' foolish notion."

- Robert Burns

The US is always collectively amazed, on those rare occasions when it has cause to glimpse at how it is perceived by its less friendly critics abroad. The most egregious example, of course, was 9/11, when even the brutal enormity of the attack against America was not quite enough to still the hateful tongues of people crass enough to insist that the US had got what was coming to it. The citizens of the US have an absolute right to go about their business without being slaughtered. Of course they do. Which is why the world is aghast that this right does not extend as far as Trayvon Martin.

When the unarmed 17-year-old was shot dead by neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman on 26 February 2012, the killer wasn't even arrested for 44 days, having said that he fired in self-defence. Self-defence? He'd already called the police, telling the operator that Martin was acting suspiciously - "up to no good, on drugs or something". Zimmerman had been told by the operator not to follow the teenager. But nevertheless he found himself and his gun right next to Martin, provoking a struggle. What kind of self-defence is this, when you decide that someone is trouble, and that you're going to stalk him, safe in the knowledge that if things get out of hand ... well, you're armed? Yet a jury decided that going out armed, looking for a particular person to defend yourself against, is still self-defence, and on 13 July Zimmerman was acquitted of murder.

Only protest from the public ensured that Zimmerman was tried for killing Martin at all. Only protest from the public has ensured that this killing has been seen through the prism of race. Yet to an outsider, it is obvious that Martin died because he was black, and that Zimmerman walked free after killing him for the same reason.