AMSTERDAM – The International Criminal Court is in indirect negotiations with slain Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi’s son about his possible surrender for trial, the chief prosecutor said Friday.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo told The Associated Press talks were being held through intermediaries, whom he did not identify, to assure Seif al-Islam Gadhafi that he would receive a fair trial and that he could be helped to find a new country of residence if he were acquitted.

He said he did not know exactly where Gadhafi is.

The 39-year-old son of Gadhafi was reported to be heading through the desert to Mali, where the former Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi fled Wednesday. Gadhafi and al-Senoussi were indicted in June for unleashing a campaign of murder and torture to suppress the uprising against the Gadhafi regime that broke out in February.

Conveying a sense of urgency, Moreno-Ocampo said he believed Gadhafi also was in touch with unidentified mercenaries offering to find him refuge in an African country that does not cooperate with the court.

He mentioned Zimbabwe as a likely possibility, and said the court was in contact with other countries to prevent Gadhafi’s escape by denying any plane carrying him permission to fly through its air space.

“We are having informal conversations with Seif Gadhafi in order to see if he can be surrendered to the court,” Moreno-Ocampo said in a telephone call from The Hague.

“We know he has a different option because apparently there is a group of mercenaries willing to move him to a country, probably Zimbabwe,” the prosecutor said. Some of the mercenaries may be from South Africa, he said.

Gadhafi was pressing for clarifications about his fate should he be acquitted, and Moreno-Ocampo said he has made it clear to the fugitive that he could ask the judges to send him to a country other than Libya.

“He says he is innocent and he will prove his innocence,” the prosecutor said.

Moreno-Ocampo also said the court was waiting for documentary evidence confirming the death of Moammar Gadhafi to formally close the case against him.

Seif al-Islam, whom the court described as the de facto prime minister during the early months of the uprising, was the heir apparent in the regime that ruled Libya for 42 years.

Word of his movement toward Mali came Thursday from an adviser to Niger’s president, who could not be named because of the sensitivity of the case. The adviser, an influential elder in the ethnic Tuareg community which is spread across several Saharan countries and which overwhelmingly supported Gadhafi, said Seif was somewhere between Algeria and Niger.

He was unlikely to stop in Niger because the government of President Mahamadou Issoufou has said it would arrest him and hand him over to the court in The Hague.

The U.N. Security Council authorized the court, the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal, to investigate events in Libya last February. The council’s action was necessary because Libya did not recognize the court’s jurisdiction and has not ratified its founding treaty.

But after the victory of rebel forces, it was unclear whether the Transitional National Council now governing Libya would seek to have Gadhafi handed over for trial in his own country or let the international court proceed with its case.

PARIS – The euphoric rally in share prices fed by a European deal to cut Greece’s debt and prevent larger countries from falling down the same hole slowed on Friday, as investors began to recognize the significant challenges that still face the continent.

In the weeks before Thursday’s agreement, markets had seesawed between hope that Europe would find a way to stop the crisis’ march and despair that their response would be too cautious. After several delays and half-measures, the deal to greatly increase the firepower of the continent’s bailout fund and to knock euro100 billion ($140 billion) off of what Greece owes hit the right notes, and stocks rocketed up on Thursday.

But analysts immediately raised questions about the lack of detail in the plan, and the euro and oil prices began pulling back on Friday.

“The best we can say is that the EU have engineered a temporary reprieve but there is no guarantee of a final resolution to the crisis,” said Neil MacKinnon of VTB Capital.

Of particular concern is exactly how the bailout fund’s new powers will work. The hope is that by using the euro440 billion ($615 billion) European Financial Stability Facility to insure against some losses on the bonds of wobbly countries like Italy and Spain, Europe will be able to avoid ever having to mount a rescue again.

A first test of how much this has reassured investors could come Friday, when Italy auctions off bonds. Worries about Italy have driven up its bond yields — how much it has to pay to borrow — and the fear is it could eventually be unable to afford to borrow from markets, as Greece was.

“It is all too obvious that the outlook for Italian bond yields is closely intertwined with the fate of EMU (European Monetary Union),” said Jane Foley, an analyst with Rabobank. “If Italian bond yields can be contained the chances that EMU can continue to stumble forward are good. If not, the outlook is dire.”

Also, although the deal threw a lifeline to Greece, it asks banks to shoulder much of the cost by accepting losses of 50 percent on the Greek bonds they hold. Many of the continent’s banks are already struggling with tighter access to the loans they need to run their day-to-day operations, and the prospect of substantial losses could further weaken them.

Markets appeared to be starting to absorb some of that skepticism by Friday and saw only small gains.

Britain’s FTSE 100 was up 0.2 percent at 5,723.71. Germany’s DAX gained 0.6 percent to 6,376.85 and France’s CAC-40 rose 0.5 percent at 3,385.93.

The euro was already pulling back after a meteoric rise in the hours after the deal was agreed. It fell 0.2 percent to $1.4153 on Friday.

Wall Street was expected to open lower. Dow Jones industrial futures fell 0.2 percent to 12,140 and S&P 500 futures were 0.3 percent lower at 1,278.50.

Earlier in Asia, stocks were still riding the bump from the deal.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index jumped 1.4 percent to close at 9,050.47, its highest close since Sept. 1. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 1.7 percent to 20,01924 and South Korea’s Kospi rose 0.4 percent to 1,929.48.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.1 percent to 4,353.30 and the Shanghai Composite Index added 1.6 percent to 2,473.41. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia and Thailand were also higher.

Benchmark crude for December delivery was down $1.32 at $92.60 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Brent crude was down $1.14 at $110.94 a barrel on the ICE Futures Exchange in London.

___

Pamela Sampson contributed to this report from Bangkok.

28 October 2011
Last updated at 03:51 ET










By Paul Rincon
Science editor, BBC News website

Scientists who announced that sub-atomic particles might be able to travel faster than light are to rerun their experiment in a different way.

This will address criticisms and allow the physicists to shore up their analysis as much as possible before submitting it for publication.

Dr Sergio Bertolucci said it was vital not to “fool around” given the staggering implications of the result.

So they are doing all they can to rule out more pedestrian explanations.

Physicists working on the Opera experiment announced the perplexing findings last month.

Neutrinos sent through the ground from Cern (the home of the Large Hadron Collider) in Geneva toward the Gran Sasso laboratory 732km away in Italy seemed to show up a tiny fraction of a second earlier than light would have.

The speed of light is widely regarded as the Universe’s ultimate velocity limit. Outlined first by James Clerk Maxwell and then by Albert Einstein in his theory of special relativity, much of modern physics relies on the idea that nothing can travel faster than light.

For many, the most comforting explanation is that some repeated “systematic error” has so far eluded the experimenters.

Since September, more than 80 scientific papers about the finding have been posted to the arXiv pre-print server. Most propose theoretical solutions for the observation; a few claim to find problems.

Dr Bertolucci, the director of research at Cern, told BBC News: “In the last few days we have started to send a different time structure of the beam to Gran Sasso.

“This will allow Opera to repeat the measurement, removing some of the possible systematics.”

The neutrinos that emerge at Gran Sasso start off as a beam of proton particles at Cern. Through a series of complex interactions, neutrino particles are generated from this beam and stream through the Earth’s crust to Italy.

Originally, Cern fired the protons in a long pulse lasting 10 microseconds (10 millionths of a second).

The neutrinos showed up 60 nanoseconds (60 billionths of a second) earlier than light would have over the same distance.

However, the time measurement is not direct; the researchers cannot know how long it took an individual neutrino to travel from Switzerland to Italy.

Instead, the measurement must be performed statistically: the scientists superimpose the neutrinos’ “arrival times” on the protons’ “departure times”, over and over again and taking an average.

But some physicists say that any wrong assumptions made when relating these data sets could produce a misleading result.

This should be addressed by the new measurements, in which protons are sent in a series of short bursts – lasting just one or two nanoseconds, thousands of times shorter – with a large gap (roughly 500 nanoseconds) in between each burst.

This system, says Dr Bertolucci, is more efficient: “For every neutrino event at Gran Sasso, you can connect it unambiguously with the batch of protons at Cern,” he explained.

Clicking in

Physicist Matt Strassler, who raised concerns about the original methods, welcomed the new experimental design.

Writing on his blog, Prof Strassler, from Rutgers University in New Jersey, said: “It’s like sending a series of loud and isolated clicks instead of a long blast on a horn; in the latter case you have to figure out exactly when the horn starts and stops, but in the former you just hear each click and then it’s already over.”

The re-jigged neutrino run will end in November, when Cern has to switch from accelerating protons to accelerating lead ions. Opera scientists hope to include these measurements in the manuscript they will submit for publication in a scientific journal.

One of the main challenges to the collaboration’s work comes from Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow and his Boston University colleague Andrew Cohen.

In a recent paper, the physicists argue that if neutrinos can travel faster than the speed of light, they would rapidly lose energy, depleting the beam of more energetic particles. This phenomenon was not seen by the Opera experiment.

Cross checks

Dr Bertolucci called this study “elegant”, but added: “An experimentalist has to prove that a measurement is either right or wrong. If you interpret every new measurement with older theories, you will never get a new theory.

“More than a century ago, Michelson and Morley measured the speed of light in the direction Earth was moving and in the opposite direction. They found the speed was equal in both directions.”

This result helped to spur the development of the radical new theory of special relativity.

“If they had interpreted it using classical, Newtonian theory they would never have published,” said Dr Bertolucci.

Next year, teams working on two other Gran Sasso experiments – Borexino and Icarus – will begin independent cross-checks of Opera’s results.

The US Minos experiment and Japan’s T2K experiment will also test the observations. It is likely to be several months before they report back.

Paul.Rincon-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

OAKLAND, Calif. – The display of police force in Oakland, Calif., and Atlanta has unnerved some anti-Wall Street protesters.

While demonstrators in other cities have built a working relationship with police and city leaders, they wondered on Wednesday how long the good spirit would last and whether they could be next.

Will they have to face riot gear-clad officers and tear gas that their counterparts in Oakland, Calif. faced on Tuesday? Or will they be handcuffed and hauled away in the middle of the night like protesters in Atlanta?

“Yes, we’re afraid. Is this the night they’re going to sneak in?” said activist William Buster of Occupy Wall Street, where the movement began last month to protest what they see as corporate greed.

“Is this the night they might use unreasonable force?” he asked.

An Iraq War veteran marching with demonstrators suffered a crack skull in the chaos between officers and protesters in Oakland further raising concern among some in the movement. Scott Olsen, a 24-year-old Marine veteran, was in critical condition Wednesday after he had been struck, said a spokesman for Highland Hospital in Oakland.

It was not clear exactly what type of exact object hit the veteran or who might have thrown it, though Guy’s group said it was lodged by officers. Police did not return calls for comment ahead of late afternoon news conference.

The message, meanwhile, from officials in cities where other encampments have sprung up was simple: We’ll keep working with you. Just respect your neighbors and keep the camps clean and safe.

Business owners and residents have complained in recent weeks about assaults, drunken fights and sanitation problems. Officials are trying to balance their rights and uphold the law while honoring protesters’ free speech rights.

“I understand the frustration the protesters feel … about inequity in our country as well as Wall Street greed,” Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said. “I support their right to free speech but we also have rules and laws.”

Some cities, such as Providence, R.I., are moving ahead with plans to evict activists. But from Tampa, Fla., to Boston, police and city leaders say they will continue to try to work with protesters to address problems in the camps.

In Oakland, officials initially supported the protests, with Mayor Jean Quan saying that sometimes “democracy is messy.”

But tensions reached a boiling point after a sexual assault, a severe beating and a fire were reported and paramedics were denied access to the camp, according to city officials. They also cited concerns about rats, fire hazards and public urination.

Demonstrators disputed the city’s claims, saying that volunteers collect garbage and recycling every six hours, that water is boiled before being used to wash dishes and that rats have long infested the park.

When riot gear-clad police moved in early Tuesday, they were pelted with rocks, bottles and utensils from people in the camp’s kitchen area. They emptied the camp near city hall of people, and barricaded the plaza.

Protesters were taken away in plastic handcuffs, most of them arrested on suspicion of illegal lodging.

Demonstrators returned later in the day to march and retake the plaza. They were met by police officers in riot gear. Several small skirmishes broke out and officers cleared the area by firing tear gas.

The scene repeated itself several times just a few blocks away in front of the plaza.

Tensions would build as protesters edged ever closer to the police line and reach a breaking point with a demonstrator hurling a bottle or rock, prompting police to respond with another round of gas.

The chemical haze hung in the air for hours, new blasts clouding the air before the previous fog could dissipate.

The number of protesters diminished with each round of tear gas. Police estimated that there were roughly 1,000 demonstrators at the first clash following the march. About 100 were arrested.

Demonstrators planned to try again on Wednesday night to march, and could clash again with police.

In Atlanta, police in riot gear and SWAT teams arrested 53 people in Woodruff Park, many of whom had camped out there for weeks as part of a widespread movement that is protesting the wealth disparity between the rich and everyone else.

Mayor Kasim Reed had been supportive of the protests, twice issuing an executive order allowing them to remain.

Reed said on Wednesday that he had no choice to arrest them because he believed things were headed in a direction that was no longer peaceful. He cited a man seen walking the park with an AK-47 assault rifle.

“There were some who wanted to continue along the peaceful lines, and some who thought that their path should be more radical,” Reed said. “As mayor, I couldn’t wait for them to finish that debate.”

Reed said authorities could not determine whether the rifle was loaded, and were unable to get additional information.

An Associated Press reporter talked to the man with the gun earlier Tuesday.

He wouldn’t give his name — identifying himself only as “Porch,” an out-of-work accountant who doesn’t agree with the protesters’ views — but said that he was there, armed, because he wanted to protect the rights of people to protest.

People who were arrested trickled out of jail as a crowd of several dozen supporters chanted “freedom” as they left.

“I think Mayor Reed would do well to learn quickly that you cannot intimidate, you cannot threaten, you cannot jail something whose time has come,” activist Derrick Boazman said. “The fact of the matter is this movement’s time has come.”

In Portland, Ore., the protest seems to be at a crossroads. Organizers have been dealing with public drunkenness, fighting and drug abuse for weeks, especially among the homeless who are also in the camp.

Some are floating the idea of relocating it, possibly indoors. Others see that as capitulation.

“I don’t know if it would be a good idea. Part of the effectiveness of what’s going on here is visibility,” protester Justin Neff said. “Though I’d do it if there’s a possibility that we’d get seen and noticed. I don’t know how that would work indoors.”

City officials haven’t said what would cause them to forcibly evict the protesters. They said they evaluate the camp daily.

In Baltimore, protesters like Casey McKeel, a member of Occupy Baltimore’s legal committee, said he wasn’t sure aren’t sure what to expect from city officials, noting that some cities have arrested protesters in recent weeks.

“Across the country we’re seeing a wide range of reactions,” he said. “For now we’re hoping the city will work with us.”

The mayor, Rawlings-Blake, said she is willing to work with them, but they should realize that they are camping out in a city park and that was not its intended use. She said their free-speech rights don’t trump the public’s right to enjoy the space.

“I have absolutely no interest in a violent exchange,” she said. “We want to work with the protesters, but the point is to talk about inequity and talk about how we can work together to have a more just society or more equitable Baltimore.

“It’s not about pitching a tent. It’s about getting the work done,” she said.

___

Associated Press writers Nigel Duara in Portland, Ore., Sarah Brumfield in Baltimore, Md., Verena Dobnik in New York, Harry R. Weber, Errin Haines and Jeff Martin in Atlanta, Erica Niedowski in Providence, R.I., Michael J. Crumb in Des Moines, Iowa., Ben Nuckols in Washington, Samantha Gross in New York and Jay Lindsay in Boston contributed to this report.

26 October 2011
Last updated at 20:14 ET

Former Argentine naval officer Alfredo Astiz has been jailed for life for crimes against humanity during military rule in 1976-83.

Astiz – known as the “Blonde Angel of Death” – was found guilty of torture, murder and forced disappearance.

Among his victims were two French nuns and the founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo human rights group.

Seventeen other former military and police officers are being sentenced alongside him.