Canadian archbishop in pedophile case

Canadian police have charged the head of the Archdiocese of Canada of the Orthodox Church in America with two counts of sexual assault on young boys.

Archbishop Kenneth William Storheim, who has held many Church positions in Canadian communities, turned himself in to Winnipeg police on Wednesday after being charged. He has since been released on bail and is waiting to appear in court on January 10.

Authorities launched an investigation into the allegations after Storheim resigned from his post in October.

Canadian media report that the archbishop sexually assaulted the boys while he was the rector of a Winnipeg parish from 1984 to 1987.

Spy agencies closely monitoring climate change talks

I have written before about the increasing involvement of intelligence agencies in ongoing climate change negotiations between the world’s governments.

In October, the Central Intelligence Agency announced the establishment of its Center on Climate Change and National Security, despite fierce opposition by Republican lawmakers.

Earlier this month, it was alleged that the hackers who stole and leaked onto the Internet hundreds of University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit emails were operating via a Russian military and security network, a claim that has been disputed by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB – Federal’naya sluzhba bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii).

However, a recent article in Australian daily The Canberra Times provides the first mainstream indication that a Western intelligence agency is “giving top priority” to the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference currently taking place in Denmark. The paper cites “intelligence and diplomatic sources” in claiming that the government of Australian Prime Minister Kevin Michael Rudd is relying on the country’s intelligence apparatus to gain “a critical negotiating advantage” over other countries participating in the talks.

Spearheading the Australian effort appears to be the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD), the Australian military’s communications interception organization, guided by directives from the country’s federal National Intelligence Collection Committee, a coordinating body founded in 2008. It is worth noting that much of the intelligence collection on climate change is not from open sources, but rather from “secret intelligence, especially signals intelligence”, which provides Australian decision-makers with “insights into what foreign governments are really thinking”, according to the article.

Australian Government Gives Green Light for Internet Censorship

The Australian Federal Government has detailed its plan to require internet service providers (ISPs) in Australia to block a list of banned material.

When Parliament resumes next year the Government plans to introduce amendments that will require ISPs to block banned material on overseas servers.

Broadband and Communications Minister Senator Stephen Michael Conroy says some internet content is simply not suitable in a civilized society.

He says the Government will not determine what is blacklisted on the internet in Australia, rather an independent body will determine what sites are rated as RC for refused classification.

Refused classification material will include child sex abuse, sexual violence and detailed instruction on crime.

The plans were announced following a Government internet filtering trial in partnership with major service providers.

The Government has been testing the filter since late May and was due to report in July on the outcomes of the trial.

It has faced fierce criticism that it will strangle free speech on the internet, is open to potential government abuse and will ban sites that should not be coming under scrutiny.

In March, an alleged list of about 1,000 sites already banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) was leaked online, revealing that harmless sites had also been marked as unacceptable.

Nine ISPs originally agreed to take part but iiNet Limited pulled out of the trial in March, saying the filter would not work and was a dead parrot.

However, SingTel Optus Pty Limited joined the trial in April.

In May 2008, the Government said it would spend $125.8 million over four years on several measures to strengthen cyber safety, including the filter.

The Government maintains the filter is not designed to curtail freedom of speech.

See also:

Rudd website attacked in filter protest

Internet filter plan ‘wasting time, money’

Save the Children opposes internet filter

The Australian National University sets up ‘spy school’

The Australian National University is set to become an elite educational centre for Australia‘s spies and security experts.

Prime Minister Kevin Michael Rudd yesterday announced that former Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Michael L’Estrange would head up Australia’s new national security college.

A joint venture between the Federal Government and the Australian National University, the college is to provide ”world class education and training in national security policy issues”.

Mr Rudd said the college would provide executive development programs for senior national security officials and provide access to ANU teaching and research programs, with the aim of ”better preparing national security personnel for the increasingly complex challenges they face”.

British Medical Journal accuses Roche of withholding evidence from Tamiflu trials

Hoffmann-La Roche, the manufacturer of Tamiflu (Oseltamivir), has made it impossible for scientists to assess how well the anti-flu drug stockpiled around the globe works by withholding the evidence the company has gained from trials, doctors alleged today .

A major review of what data there is in the public domain has found no evidence Tamiflu can prevent healthy people with flu from suffering complications such as pneumonia.

Tamiflu may shorten the bout of illness by a day or so, the investigators say, but it is impossible to know whether it prevents severe disease because the published data is insufficient. Roche has failed to make some of the studies carried out on the drug publicly available, the scientists say.

“Governments around the world have spent billions of pounds on a drug that the scientific community now finds itself unable to judge,” said Dr Fiona Godlee, editor of the British Medical Journal, which published the new review online and collaborated in a joint investigation with Channel 4 News, shown this evening .

Roche has made a fortune out of the drug, with sales of £1.6bn this year alone. The British government has stockpiled enough for half the population.

In the review, Professor Chris Del Mar, from Bond University in Australia, analyzed 20 published trials that focused on prevention, treatment and adverse reactions. The authors say they were hampered by the “paucity of good data”.

‘Multi-National’ to drop from U.S. unit names in Iraq

BAGHDAD — One of the last vestiges of the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq will soon be retired.

As part of a consolidation of its command structure ahead of next year’s planned troop reductions, the U.S. military will drop the “Multi-National” name from its unit designations starting in January. The last non-U.S. troops, from the United Kingdom, Australia and Romania, left Iraq in July.

Under the plan, the top two levels of the U.S. command, known as Multi-National Force-Iraq and Multi-National Corps – Iraq, will be merged and renamed United States Forces-Iraq. The U.S. command that oversees training of Iraqi forces will also fall into the new command.

The four U.S. operational commands in the country, now known as Multi-National Divisions, will also drop the “Multi-National” from their names.

Here’s That Leaked Copyright Treaty Document

The secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement document we wrote about on Wednesday appeared on Wikileaks today, and our source has cleared us to publish it here as well.

We wrote that the document, (.pdf) if true, amounted to policy laundering at its finest -– that the United States was pushing the world to require ISPs to adopt “graduated response” policies that amounted to terminating internet service of repeat, copyright offenders.

We refrained from publishing the three-page leaked document in its entirety at the request of our source.

On Friday, ACTA participating nations concluded a sixth-round of top-secret negotiations. The countries include Australia, Canada, European Union states, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States.

The countries are to meet again in January, Sweden announced.

 

Asian leaders eye EU-style bloc

Asian leaders meeting in Thailand are discussing plans to “lead the world” by forming an European Union-style community by 2015.

Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama argued nations should take advantage of the region’s more rapid recovery from the recession than the West.

“It would be meaningful for us to have the aspiration that East Asia is going to lead the world,” he said.

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are meeting other regional heads at Cha-Am beach resort.

Aussies Drop US Surveillance Program

Australia‘s defense minister said today his government has decided not to go ahead with the U.S. Navy on the next phase of the Broad Area Maritime Surveillance program — an ambitious project to continuously collect and disseminate maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data.

Under Project Air 7000 Phase 1B, the Defense Ministry aims to acquire an uninhabited aerial surveillance system based on the Global Hawk aircraft built by Northrop Grumman.

The delivery schedule for the U.S. Navy’s BAMS program has slipped and resulted in the earliest possible in-service date for the BAMS aircraft moving out to 2015.

Australian Web Filter To Block 10K Web Sites

AUSTRALIA’S mandatory net filter is being primed to block 10,000 websites as part of a blacklist of unspecified “unwanted content”. Some 1300 websites have already been identified by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.