Brazil Leader Breaks Silence Over Protests

Brazil's President has addressed the nation after crisis talks with key ministers to discuss how to respond to two weeks of nationwide protests against alleged corruption and high prices.

Speaking during a TV broadcast, Dilma Rousseff said the government knew there were many things "we can do quicker and better" and that Brazil "fought hard to become a democratic country", but that she could not tolerate violence committed by "a minority".

She added: "We need to oxygenate our political system ... and make it more transparent."

Dilma Rousseff has condemned the violence by 'a minority'

Ms Rousseff, a former Marxist rebel who fought against Brazil's 1964-85 military regime and was imprisoned for three years, pointedly referred to sacrifices her generation made to free the nation from dictatorship.

Her comments came after nearly one million demonstrators took to the streets on Friday across the country to denounce poor public services to the billions of dollars spent preparing for next year's World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics in Brazil.

Ms Rousseff had cancelled a trip overseas because of the unrest, but has stayed away from the public eye for most of this week.

President Rousseff supports peaceful protest

Earlier, Roberto Jaguaribe, the nation's ambassador to Britain, said the government was first trying to contain the protests.

He labelled as "very delicate" the myriad demands coming from protesters in the streets.

"One of our ministers who's dealing with these issues of civil society said that it would be presumptuous on our part to think we know what's taking place," Mr Jaguaribe said.

"This is a very dynamic process. We're trying to figure out what's going on because who do we speak to, who are the leaders of the process?"

But critics of Ms Rousseff and her government have accused them of paying "lip service".

Marlise Matos, a political science professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, said: "The government has to respond, even if the agenda seems unclear and wide open.

"It should be the president herself who should come out and provide a response. But I think the government is still making strategic calculations to decide how to respond. What I'd like to see as a response is a call for a referendum on political reform. Let the people decide what kind of political and electoral system we have."

Nearly a million protesters took to the streets on Friday

Carlos Cardozo, a 62-year-old financial consultant who joined Friday's protest in Rio, said he thought the unrest could cost Ms Rousseff next year's elections.

"Her paying lip service by saying she's in favour of the protests is not helping her cause," Mr Cardozo said. "People want to see real action, real decisions, and it's not this government that's capable of delivering."

At least one protester was killed in Sao Paulo on Thursday night when a motorist - apparently enraged about being unable to drive along a street - rammed his car into a crowd of demonstrators.

Unconfirmed news reports also said a 54-year-old cleaning woman had died on Friday after inhaling tear gas.

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Edward Snowden 'Charged With Espionage'

Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who revealed secret government spying programmes, has been charged by US authorities.

A provisional arrest warrant has been issued and Hong Kong authorities have been asked to detain him.

US federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint, charging Mr Snowden with offences including theft of government property and unauthorised communication of national defence information.

The former CIA technician, who has worked for America's National Security Agency (NSA), leaked details of American telephone and internet surveillance programmes.

He revealed the existence of a surveillance system called Prism that was set up by the NSA to track the use of the internet directly from ISP servers.

The NSA and FBI have said that the secret programme provided "critical leads" in preventing "dozens of terrorist events" - although some terror experts dispute the claims.

Court papers list three offences including theft of government property

President Obama has also said the programmes were carried out with "systems of checks and balances" and overseen by the courts and the US Congress.

The Prism revelations sparked outcry in the UK when The Guardian reported that the GCHQ eavesdropping agency had been accessing information about British citizens through Prism.

Mr Snowden fled to Hong Kong on May 20 after copying the last set of documents he intended to disclose at the NSA's office in Hawaii.

Sky News Asia correspondent Mark Stone said the move marks the official start of government attempts to bring him back to the US.

"We are yet to hear from the Hong Kong police and authorities on whether or not they will act on the request by the Americans to arrest Edward Snowden.

Protests in support of Mr Snowden have taken place in Hong Kong

"It's my understanding that they know exactly where he is. The Americans haven't yet asked for his extradition, they have simply asked the authorities to arrest him."

There are reports a private plane is on standby to take Mr Snowden from Hong Kong to Iceland, where he hopes to get asylum.

The latest documents from Mr Snowden claim to show that British spies have secretly accessed fibre-optic cables carrying emails, Facebook messages and other communications.

The Guardian reports that GCHQ can analyse data from the network of cables that carry global phone calls and internet traffic under an operation codenamed Tempora.

It claims that communications between innocent people are being processed, as well as those from people marked out as security threats.

"It's not just a US problem," Mr Snowden told The Guardian.

"The UK has a huge dog in this fight. They (GCHQ) are worse than the US."

The NSA programme helped to prevent terror attacks, say US spy chiefs

The newspaper said data had been shared with the organisation's US counterpart, the National Security Agency. It claims that Tempora has been running for 18 months.

A source told Sky News' political correspondent Sophy Ridge that GCHQ scanned data for possible indications of a threat to national security, and that most of the information is not looked at in detail.

The work is legal and subject to ministerial scrutiny, the source said.

Mr Snowden worked for the NSA as an employee of various outside contractors, including Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton.

"I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building," Mr Snowden previously told The Guardian.

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Syria: Rebels Risk Own Lives Over DIY Weapons

By Sam Kiley, Middle East Correspondent, in northern Syria

High explosive powder is shaken into the nose cone of an improvised missile through a funnel fashioned from a mineral water bottle.

Then along comes a man with a long bolt. He shoves it down into the powder and starts whacking it with a steel headed hammer.

One spark, a drift of cigarette ash, and the detonation of this arms factory would be heard and seen for many, many miles.

We agreed with our hosts, Syrian rebels with no connection to al Qaeda-linked groups, that we would not reveal the location of this installation. The reason was obvious.

For more than two years rebels fighting Bashar al Assad had been begging the outside world for help.

They had seen how effective a no-fly zone had been in Libya.

Some of the extraordinary weapons being produced

A generous interpretation of a United Nations Security Council Resolution which mandated the use of "all necessary means" to protect Libya's civilian population had meant that Nato and her allies were able to deploy aircraft effectively as the rebel air force.

Surely, given the scale of Mr Assad's assault on his own people, the Syrian fighters reasoned, they would get the same sort of support their Libyan brothers had enjoyed. They were wrong.

The West, led by the US, was heavily focussed on getting out of, not into, conflicts in the Islamic world. Namely Iraq and Afghanistan.

And there was no chance that Russia would allow a UN resolution that sanctioned the use of air power against its ally in Damascus.

So no no-fly zone, and no weapons shipments - aside from limited supplies from Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The rebels were forced to improvise, or die. Weapons had to be made if they could not be given, or captured.

This explosive device looked like a cartoon bomb

The factory we saw turned out some extraordinary weapons. The most primitive was a "cannon" which ejected an explosive charge, made from a length of pipe stuffed with explosive which was detonated by a fuse that had to be lit with a match before being fired. It looked like a cartoon bomb.

A similar, smaller, contraption had been made from an old shotgun. The rebels make their explosive out of fertilizer and sugar.

Mortar barrels and rockets are turned on industrial lathes, using pipes bought from a builders' merchant.

The rocket detonators are hand turned. A worker dropped one last week, and paid for the mistake with his life.

"We have invested a lot of money and effort in trying to get better at this, some of us have been killed working here - one man died last week, and many have lost pieces of themselves," said Abu Yahya, the manager of the factory.

The US has recently decided to send lethal aid to the rebels - not game-changing equipment such as anti-aircraft weapons or tank killing missiles - just small arms and rocket propelled grenades.

The weapons-makers are self-taught engineers

These will be welcome - but they are the sort of thing that the rebels make for themselves.

The US is reluctant to send more powerful equipment because of fears that it could find its way into the hands of al Qaeda-affiliated groups who could then use anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down civilian aircraft.

Prime Minister David Cameron supports arming those rebels with no affiliations to al Qaeda - but whether he can sell the idea to parliament remains in question.

Many British MPs do not believe that their national interests would be served by backing rebels who may turn against Europe.

But there remains another, more subtle, problem.

The arms factory we saw was a hive of innovation and improvisation. The self-taught engineers were making a remote controlled rocket launcher out of plastic drainage pipes, the working parts of an adjustable TV satellite receiver, and an old starter motor.

That level of artisanal arms manufacturing may, one day, pose a threat to the outside world from people who were abandoned by it.

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Clashes In Brazil As 'One Million' March

Demonstrators and riot police have clashed on a new day of mass nationwide protests over poor public services, government corruption and the cost of hosting the World Cup.

Police and experts, quoted by Brazilian media, said at least one million marched in more than 100 cities across the country - the biggest outpouring of public anger the South American country has seen for decades.

President Dilma Rousseff has called an emergency meeting of her cabinet later today to discuss the situation, according to reports.

Riot police have been battling protesters in at least five cities, with some of the most intense clashes happening in Rio de Janeiro.

A man confronts riot police in Rio

In the capital Brasilia, demonstrators have come under fire from rubber bullets and clouds of tear gas.

Security forces blocked protesters trying to break into the building of the foreign ministry.

Other government buildings have been attacked around the capital's central esplanade where police have tear gas and rubber bullets in attempts to scatter the crowds.

Clashes have also been reported in the Amazon jungle city of Belem, in Porto Alegre in the south, in the university town Campinas north of Sao Paulo and in the northeastern Brazilian city of Salvador.

The largest protest is taking place in Rio de Janeiro where an estimated 800,000 people have gathered.

Riot police have struggled to maintain order

They are marching around four kilometres (2.5 miles) through the commercial centre of the city to the town hall which is less than one kilometre from the Maracana football stadium where Spain and Tahiti are to due play in a Confederations Cup match.

Police said they would not allow protesters to interrupt the game.

The demonstrations have gone ahead despite leaders in Brazil's two biggest cities reversing an increase in bus fares that ignited the protests two weeks ago.

Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes said it was proof the government was "listening to the voices of the man on the street".

Sao Paulo Mayor Fernando Haddad said it "will represent a big sacrifice and we will have to reduce investments in other areas".

Protesters in Sao Paolo

He did not give details on where other cuts would occur.

However, the purpose of the demonstrations have moved well beyond outrage over the fare hikes into anger over lack of investment in public services.

This is held in stark contrast with the $13.3bn (£8.6bn) being spent on stadiums for next year's World Cup and the $12bn (£7.75bn) set aside for the Rio Olympics in 2016.

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Woman And Child 'Used As Slaves' In Ohio

A mentally disabled woman and her child were allegedly kept as slaves by three people who threatened them with snakes and a pit bull dog.

The woman and child, who the Federal Bureau of Investigation have not named, were held for many months in a basement in Ashland, Ohio.

Ashland is just 60 miles south of Cleveland, where three missing women who had themselves allegedly been held captive were discovered recently.

The FBI, who issued an indictment against the Ashland woman's alleged captors, said they threatened and abused her, and threatened the child with snakes.

Later, they allegedly forced the woman and child to sleep in a padlocked room with a "large iguana".

Jessica Hunt with her snakes that were allegedly used to terrify the child

The woman finally escaped by stealing sweets from a shop, prompting police to arrest her.

She told officers she would rather go to jail than go home as her housemates "were mean to her".

Her alleged tormentors have been arrested on human trafficking charges.

Jordie Callahan, 26, Jessica Hunt, aged 31, and 33-year-old Daniel Brown were detained on Tuesday and charged by the FBI with forced labour.

Callahan was also charged with an additional count of tampering with a witness. Callahan and Hunt are said to be in a relationship.

Stephen D. Anthony, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI's Cleveland Office, said: "These defendants violated the victim's most basic civil right, freedom, by exploiting her most basic instinct, the protection of her child.

"The FBI continues to aggressively pursue and bring to justice those individuals who abuse and harm innocent members of our community."

The FBI said the alleged 'slavery' began in May 2011 and continued until October 2012, when the woman was arrested by police.

They identified the woman only as S.E.

An FBI statement, outlining an affidavit which contained the allegations, said: "Callahan and Hunt forced S.E. to clean the house, do laundry, walk to the store to do their shopping, and care for their numerous pit bulls and reptiles.

Hunt and Callahan kept pit bulls that were allegedly used against the pair

"S.E. was timed when she went to the store and was not allowed to bring her child with her.

"At various points, Callahan threatened S.E. with a gun. S.E. and her child initially were forced to sleep on a cement floor in the basement with no mattress.

"Later, they were moved to a room upstairs, again with no bed or mattress.

"Callahan and Hunt also repeatedly taunted and threatened S.E. and (her child) with injury from the couple's snakes, including a poisonous coral snake, a ball python, and a Burmese python that weighed 130 pounds."

The affidavit said the three slammed a rock into the woman's hand on one occasion and injured her back on another so she could get medication for the pain, which they then used.

When she fled, one of those who she lived with alleged that the woman had abused the child herself. Police investigated, but have taken no further action.

Andrew Hyde, who has represented Callahan, called the charges against his client ludicrous and said the woman moved in and out as she pleased.

Mr Hyde said: "There was never any forced labour, any forced co-habitation. She was never forced to do anything."

He said: "She used this story to get out of trouble she was in," referring to the abuse she allegedly carried out on her child.

Mr Hyde accused federal investigators of not looking at all the evidence before jumping to conclusions.

Callahan's mother, Becky Callahan of Ashland, told the Associated Press that the allegations were "all lies."

She said that the alleged victim was friends with her son and Hunt, her son's girlfriend, and that they tried to help the woman out by offering her a place to live because she didn't have a home.

A federal defence attorney for Hunt, Ed Bryan, said his client will plead not guilty and said there were credibility issues with the mother.

A little more than a month ago, three women were freed from a house in Cleveland, Ohio where a man allegedly imprisoned them for a decade, raping them during that time and fathering a child with one of them.

Ariel Castro has pleaded not guilty to more than 300 counts against him, which include kidnapping, rape and felonious assault.

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Obama Speaks In Berlin 50 Years After JFK

By Robert Nisbet, Europe Correspondent

President Obama has used a visit to Berlin to call for a reduction in the number of nuclear weapons deployed by the US and Russia, and to defend the controversial Prism surveillance programme.

The city has been the venue for historic pronouncements by US Presidents before: John F Kennedy famously declared "Ich bin ein Berliner" 50 years ago, while Ronald Reagan asked President Gorbachev to "tear down this wall".

In this speech, the current American leader told an invited audience at the Brandenburg Gate that he would like to see nuclear arsenals in Russia and the US slimmed down further.

He said: "After a comprehensive review, I've determined that we can ensure the security of America and our allies, and maintain a strong and credible strategic deterrent, while reducing our deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one third."

The Russian response to President Obama's offer for talks on reducing nuclear weapons was far from promising.

President Vladimir Putin reiterated Moscow's concerns about anti-missile shields in Europe and the level of accuracy now possible with America's conventional weapons.

Mr Obama met with Angela Merkel

Moscow also said it wanted other powers as well as Russia and the US to be involved in any discussions on future nuclear arms cuts.

Both men discuss non-proliferation when they met on the sidelines of a G8 summit in Northern Ireland this week.

Mr Obama last visited Berlin's Tiergarten in 2008 when he was still a senator for Illinois, receiving a rock star welcome from a crowd of 200,000 people.

As the crowd chanted his campaign slogan "Yes We Can", his political rivals back in the US used the event to mock his status as an international celebrity, rather than a weighty candidate capable of rescuing America from the growing economic crisis.

Some harsh editorials in the German press suggest Barack Obama's political patina has been tarnished since he moved into the White House.

Frankfurter Allgemeine noted that there has been a "gradual cooling of enthusiasm" amongst Germans for the US President, now in his second term.

The secret surveillance programmes have stirred anger

It cites a number of different issues: America's continued use of unmanned drones, the "Prism" surveillance scandal in which German Facebook users saw their data passed to US intelligence services and the failure of the administration to close Guantanamo Bay detention camp.  

President Obama sought to defend Prism saying the US was not "rifling through Germans' emails".

He said: "All of it is done under the oversight of the courts. And as a consequence, we've saved lives.

"We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information not just in the United States, but, in some cases, threats here in Germany. So lives have been saved."

Moscow and Washington could not bridge differences on Syria during the G8

Chancellor Angela Merkel was cool in her response, suggesting any programme had to be "proportionate" and balanced with protections for civil liberties.

There is also a growing gulf between the US President and the German Chancellor over how to address the continuing slump besetting the global economy.

While he favours stimulus and quantative easing to kick-start the US economy, Angela Merkel still believes in budgetary restraint both in Germany and among other Eurozone countries.

The US administration has urged leaders in Europe to reconsider austerity as the sole policy response, and to use investment to trigger a return to growth.

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Iran's New President Calls For Moderation

Hassan Rouhani: A Moderate Profiled

Updated: 2:18pm UK, Saturday 15 June 2013

Hassan Rouhani, the bearded cleric who is leading the pack in Iran's presidential election, is a moderate who has pledged to engage more with world powers in hopes of easing crippling economic sanctions.

Rouhani, who headed Iran's nuclear negotiating team in the early 2000s under reformist president Mohammad Khatami, has been an outspoken critic of outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accusing him of needlessly antagonising the international community.

The 64-year-old has said there will be "no surrender" to Western demands in talks on Iran's controversial nuclear programme but has promised a more constructive, less adventurist approach.

The lone cleric among the six candidates approved to stand in Friday's election, Rouhani benefited from the withdrawal from the race of the only other moderate in an original field of eight -- Khatami's reformist first vice president Mohammad Reza Aref.

That and endorsement by both Khatami and his moderate conservative predecessor Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani enabled Rouhani to win the votes of reformists and moderates alike even though he is a member of the conservative Association of Combatant Clergy.

While Rouhani has won the endorsement of key reformers, he has been careful throughout the campaign to keep his distance from the reformist standard bearers of the last presidential election in 2009, both of whom remain under house arrest after claims of fraud sparked months of mass protests.

When pictures of one of them, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, were displayed at one of his rallies and prompting several arrests, his campaign put out a statement condemning "any improper action" and asking everyone to respect the law.

A committed supporter of the founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, even before the 1979 revolution, Rouhani has held a succession of leading posts.

He served as a member of parliament from 1980 to 2000, when he became a member of the Assembly of Experts, the body that supervises the work of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

From 1989 to 2005, he served as secretary of the supreme national security council, Iran's top security post, and remains a council member.

He prides himself on maintaining good relations with Khamenei, who has the final say in all strategic matters, including nuclear policy.

As nuclear negotiator from 2003 to 2005, Rouhani oversaw a moratorium on uranium enrichment, the process at the heart of Western concerns over Iran's ambitions. That won him the respect of his European interlocutors and the monicker "diplomat sheikh".

But the policy, which was abandoned after he quit, earned him the derision of hardliners who accused him of "falling under the spell of the tie and after-shave" of then British foreign minister Jack Straw."

Rouhani chose a key as his campaign symbol, telling a campaign rally: "This is the key to solving Iran's problems."

"I have come forward to save Iran's economy and forge a constructive interaction with the world through a government of wisdom and hope," he said when he announced his candidacy.

"This administration made fun of sanctions, deriding them as scrap paper, while we could have avoided them or to some extent reduced them."

EU and US sanctions that have bitten over the past two years have sent the inflation rate soaring to more than 30 percent as the rial has lost nearly 70 percent of its value against the dollar.

Rouhani has vowed to restore diplomatic ties with arch-foe the United States, which cut relations in the aftermath of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy by Islamist students.

He has also pledged that "discrimination against women will not be tolerated" by his administration.

Married with four children, Rouhani holds a doctorate in law from Scotland's Glasgow Caledonian University, according to his official CV.

He was born in 1948 in the town of Sorkheh, near Semnan, southeast of Tehran.

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India: Flood Deaths As Homes Fall Into River

At least 23 people have been killed in northern India after torrential rain and flooding led to homes plunging into the River Ganges and roads being washed away.

More than a dozen people died in the Rudraprayag district of Uttarakhand state, while another 50 people were missing, said officials.

A landslide triggered by the monsoon rains, which arrived weeks ahead of schedule, buried a bus, killing three in Almora district.

Heavy rains eroded the soil along the swollen river, plunging several houses into the water.

At least three people were washed away when a three-storey apartment building toppled into the water and was carried away by the swift-moving current, said government spokesman Amit Chandola.

Many residents in the town of Yamunagar in northern Haryana state said they were trapped by the floods.

The monsoon rains arrived weeks ahead of schedule

"We are caught here as there is water everywhere. There is no way to go. Nobody has come here, even police haven't come here to check if anyone has drowned," said local resident Ajay Singh.

Army and paramilitary troops were leading efforts to rescue scores of people from the rooftops of their flooded homes.

The state government was preparing food parcels and drinking water pouches to be air dropped to villages cut off after roads were washed away.

More than 10,000 pilgrims stranded along a mountain pass leading to a Hindu religious site were being evacuated by helicopter after roads to the pilgrimage spot were blocked by landslides.

The River Ganges and its tributaries were flowing above the danger mark in several areas in the Himalayan state.

"The situation is very grim. The meteorological office has predicted that the rain will continue for another three days at least," said Mr Chandola.

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