Daily Mail – Princess Diana died after attempts to frighten her into dumping Dodi al Fayed and ending her anti-establishment activities went horribly wrong, a leading lawyer has claimed. Michael Mansfield claimed he was sure Diana’s ‘killers’ had no intention of ending her life in a Paris tunnel in August 1997 and simply wanted to scare her. But he claimed the operation to torpedo her relationship with Dodi, and silence her planned criticism of the British government over foreign arms sales, backfired spectacularly. Read article
Telegraph – Thousands of veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq are likely to develop mental health problems, General Sir Richard Dannatt said. The news came as the Prince of Wales launched an appeal by the charity Combat Stress to raise £30million to pay for better mental health services for veterans across the UK. So far 180,000 British troops have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003. General Dannatt, the former Chief of the General Staff, said that as many as 8,500 former servicemen of these will develop mental health problems. Read article
Associated Press – The Pentagon said Thursday the cost to build its next-generation fighter jet has doubled to as much as $113 million per plane since 2001. The bad news about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Progam, delivered Thursday to Congress, was swiftly denounced by lawmakers who said runaway spending on major weapons systems has become all too common. Read article
ABC – United States defence secretary Robert Gates has raised the prospect of some American troops withdrawing from Afghanistan earlier than expected. Mr Gates has been in Afghanistan watching Afghan troops being trained by American and British forces. Although US troops are not due to start withdrawing until the middle of next year, Mr Gates says some could be out earlier than that. Read article
BBC – The governor of Nigeria’s Plateau state has accused military commanders of ignoring warnings of an attack on Sunday near the city of Jos. Hundreds died during attacks on three villages in the area between the mainly Christian south and Muslim north. The massacre is seen as revenge for a previous bout of killings in January. Read article
The Times – Hundreds of Tibetans have been rounded up in Lhasa and armed paramilitaries are patrolling the streets in the run-up to the anniversary of a bloody riot in 2008. The authorities are anxious to avoid a repeat of the anti-Chinese attacks that left about 20 people dead when Tibetans rampaged through the streets of the Himalayan city setting fire to shops, offices and banks. Read Articles
Times Online – Burma’s military dictatorship has set out laws governing a general election promised later this year, reinforcing the predictions of its opponents that it will be a hollow exercise intended to consolidate military power under a democratic façade. The country’s state-run newspapers today published the election commission law, the first of five pieces of legislation which were formally passed on Monday. Under its terms, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the military Government calls itself, will appoint the five-person commission responsible for supervising the election. Read article
BBC – At least 100 people have been reported killed in suspected religious clashes near the central Nigerian city of Jos. Witnesses said several villages just outside of the city were attacked simultaneously overnight. Acting President Goodluck Jonathan has put security forces in central Nigeria on full alert. Read Article
Bloomberg – Missile attacks by U.S. drone aircraft in northwest Pakistan since 2004 have killed as many as 1,216 people, one third of them civilians, according to a report by a Washington-based think tank. The unmanned aircraft based in neighboring Afghanistan have carried out 114 raids in the past six years, killing up to 849 militants, the report by the New American Foundation said. Since Jan. 1, drones have attacked Taliban based in the South Asian country’s tribal areas 18 times, it said. The minimum number of people who likely died in the total attacks is 834, of whom 549 were thought to have been militants. The data was collated from media reports. Read article
Fox News – Drones are aircraft, but the technology that powers them has been advancing more like a rocket. Here’s a look at tomorrow’s drones, which are key to a modern military. Drones are aircraft, but the technology that powers them has been advancing more like a rocket. Here’s a look at tomorrow’s drones, which are key to a modern military. Read article
Al JAzeera – US special operations forces could help the Somali government with an offensive to dislodge al-Shabab fighters from the capital, Mogadishu, a US newspaper report says. Citing an unnamed US official on Saturday, the New York Times website said the offensive could begin in a few weeks. Washington believes al-Shabab has links to al-Qaeda, which has expanded its influence in Yemen across the Red Sea. Read article
BBC – US Defence Secretary Robert Gates is to review allegations of misconduct in Afghanistan by the security company formerly known as Blackwater. The review comes a day after a leading Democrat said the Pentagon should consider barring it from applying for a contract to train Afghan police. The Pentagon said it could not bar the company from applying for the billion-dollar police training contract. A spokesman for company, now called Xe, said it welcomed the review. Read article
Twelve people were killed in Baghdad on Thursday, including seven soldiers and police blown up by suicide bombers, days before a poll that will test Iraq’s prospects for stability as U.S. troops prepare to leave. Thirty-five soldiers and police were also wounded when two attackers with explosive belts struck at centers where security forces were voting early, an Interior Ministry source said. Read article
Guardian – The US is facing a surge in anti-government extremist groups and armed militias, driven by deepening hostility on the right to Barack Obama, anger over the economy, and the increasing propagation of conspiracy theories by parts of the mass media such as Fox News. The Southern Poverty Law Centre, the US’s most prominent civil rights group focused on hate organisations, said in a report that extremist “patriot” groups “came roaring back to life” last year as their number jumped nearly 250% to more than 500 with deepening ties to conservative mainstream politics. Read article
Reuters – The Pentagon should consider blocking a potential $1 billion contract with the company formerly known as Blackwater to train Afghan police because of questions about its conduct in Afghanistan, a top U.S. senator said. In letters to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said there was evidence of misconduct in a previous subcontract awarded to a Blackwater affiliate to conduct weapons training for the Afghan National Army. Read article
Times Online – China has unveiled a 7.5 per cent increase in its military spending for this year, the first time in nearly two decades that the budget has grown by less than double-digit figures. The slowdown in defence expenditure growth surprised international experts who had expected a slight decrease from last year but were forecasting a rise in the region of 14.5 per cent. Read article
BBC – Millions of dollars in Western aid for victims of the Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 was siphoned off by rebels to buy weapons, a BBC investigation finds. Former rebel leaders told the BBC that they posed as merchants in meetings with charity workers to get aid money. They used the cash to fund attempts to overthrow the government of the time. One rebel leader estimated $95m (£63m) – from Western governments and charities including Band Aid – was channelled into the rebel fight. Read article
New York Times – An official at the United States Embassy in Iraq has told federal prosecutors that he believes that State Department officials sought to block any serious investigation of the 2007 shooting episode in which Blackwater Worldwide security guards were accused of murdering 17 Iraqi civilians, according to court testimony made public on Tuesday. Read article
BBC – The military leadership in Niger has formed a new transitional government of 20 ministers, including five soldiers and five women. According to state radio, the defence, sport and environment ministries, went to three generals close to the former President, Mamadou Tandja. Read article
Times Online – Russia is to buy four warships from France in the biggest defence deal with a Nato member since the end of the Cold War. In a move that has alarmed Georgia and the Baltic States, France and Russia said that they were in “exclusive talks” on the sale of Mistral-class amphibious assault ships. President Sarkozy said that he wanted to “turn the page on the Cold War” after meeting President Medvedev in Paris. Read article
Telegraph – The Ministry of Defence will destroy all future UFO reports it receives so it does not have to make them public, a previously secret memo discloses. Britain’s official UFO investigation unit and hotline were closed down at the start of December. Since then reports of strange sights in the skies sent to the MoD have been kept for 30 days before being thrown out, the newly released policy document shows. This stance was adopted so defence officials would not have to publish the information in response to freedom of information (FoI) requests or pass it to the National Archives. Read article
Ed – One could be forgiven for thinking this is just lazy public servants not wanting to have to deal with FOI requests. But if that were the case, why bother creating any paperwork in the first place?
BBC – Britain will be “militarily engaged” in Afghanistan for a further five years, the head of the Army has said. General Sir David Richards told the Daily Telegraph, while on a visit to Helmand, that he expected the military conflict to “trail off in 2011″. But British troops will continue in training and support roles, he said. Read article
Politico – Former officials familiar with the deal say that Blackwater is likely to get a Defense Department-issued contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars to train and mentor Afghan police. The police training contract is supposed to be decided next month, and the company has not been officially notified that it’s getting it. But the only competing bid for the contract, submitted by Northrop with MPRI, has been disqualified, a former official knowledgeable about the contract said. Read article
ABC – In Turkey, two retired generals have been charged over an alleged coup plot in 2003 – the most senior military officers to be charged so far. A total of 33 officers have been charged. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued a warning to anyone conspiring against the elected government that they will be brought to justice. Read article
The Register – Who remembers Echelon, the top-secret telecommunications spy network said to be run by the US and allied Anglophone nations, and to be triggered as soon as certain key words or phrases are spoken on the phone? A lot of you, we’d guess. So it’s interesting to note that Pentagon boffins have now stated that perhaps the most intriguing reputed capability of Echelon – the ability to automatically pick out words of interest and flag that conversation up as important to its human masters – doesn’t work. Or anyway, it only works on good, clear lines: a noisy or degraded signal frustrates it. Read article
