Photographs and personal details about the next head of Britain's MI6 foreign intelligence service, John Sawers, have been removed from social networking website Facebook after a British newspaper published them.
The Mail on Sunday newspaper printed pictures and family information it had obtained from Facebook pages attributed to his wife, Lady Shelley Sawers.
"The information has been taken out," a Foreign Office spokesman said when questioned about the matter.
The newspaper added that the Facebook pages revealed details about where they live and work, who their friends are and where they go on holiday, and included a picture of Sawers in his swimming trunks.
Sawers, currently Britain's ambassador to the United Nations, was named last month as the new head of its MI6 foreign intelligence service, who is traditionally known by his James Bond-style moniker, C.
British foreign secretary David Miliband, speaking on BBC television, described Sawers as an "outstanding professional" and brushed off the story.
"He was appointed 10 days ago to be the head of MI6; he's an outstanding professional who will do a really good job in an outstanding organisation that does a huge amount for this country," Miliband said.
He added: "The fact that there's a picture (showing) that the head of the MI6 goes swimming. Wow, that really is exciting.
"It is not a state secret that he wears Speedo swimming trunks. For goodness' sake, let's grow up."
Sawers, who is 53, will take over at MI6, or the Secret Intelligence Service, in November, replacing John Scarlett, who has spent more than five years in the job.
The Mail on Sunday said the Facebook page had "virtually no privacy protection" and could therefore be viewed by any of the many millions of Facebook users around the world.
"There were fears that the hugely embarrassing blunder could have compromised the safety of Sir John's family and friends," the newspaper said.
Publishing the story on its front page and the pictures on a double-page spread, the Mail on Sunday said the information "could potentially be useful to hostile foreign powers or terrorists".
It was the latest in a string of security blunders, lapses and leaks by British officials that have embarrassed the government of embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
AFP and Reuters
Monday
World News
North Korea may have shot mid-range missile
By Jon Herskovitz and Seo Eun-kyung
SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.S. pointman for sanctions on North Korea begins talks in Malaysia on Sunday, possibly on links banks have to the North's finances, while a report said Pyongyang may have shot mid-range missiles in a series fired on Saturday.
North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles, South Korea's defense ministry said, in an act of defiance toward the United States on its Independence Day, further stoking regional tensions already high due to Pyongyang's nuclear test in May.
"We are on high alert," a South Korean Defense Ministry source said, adding there were no initial signs more launches were coming on Sunday.
The launch, which marks an escalation of tensions by the North, will likely weigh on sentiment when markets open in Asia on Monday, but investors do not expect a major impact.
The North appears to have fired two mid-range Rodong missiles, which can hit all of South Korea and most of Japan, and five Scud missiles, which can strike most of South Korea, Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korean official as saying.
The official said two of the missiles travelled at a greater velocity than the others, indicating they were the Rodong type.
"We found five of the seven missiles fell near the same spot in the East Sea (Sea of Japan), which indicates that their accuracy has improved," another official told Yonhap.
The missiles flew about 420 kms (260 miles) and it will take a few days to confirm what was fired, the official said. Initial reports on Saturday said all the missiles appeared to be Scuds.
The Scud and Rodong are ballistic missiles. Their launch would mark an escalation by the North, which has fired several non-ballistic, short-range missile since the May 25 nuclear test.
North Korea is barred by U.N. resolutions from firing ballistic missiles. It has more than 600 Scud type missiles and 300 Rodong missiles which have been deployed and target U.S. allies South Korea and Japan, defense officials have said.
The North's last major missile launch was in 2006 near the July 4 U.S. holiday when it fired ballistic missiles including its long-range Taepodong-2, which could hit U.S. territory but has not had a successful test flight.
Japan is considering introducing a new ground-based missile defense system to complement interceptors it currently has, the Japanese daily Mainichi reported.
U.S. PRESSES SANCTIONS
The launches came as the United States has cracked down on firms suspected of helping the North in its arms and missiles trade, which was subject to U.N. sanctions imposed after the nuclear test and is a vital source of foreign currency for cash-short North Korea.
The United States may have found several bank accounts in Malaysia suspected of belonging to North Korea and may freeze them as part of the crackdown, Yonhap reported, citing an unidentified source in Washington.
U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg, the U.S. coordinator for the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, will discuss the banks with officials in Malaysia, the source said.
However, Malaysian Deputy Finance Minister Chor Chee Heung cast doubt on the report when asked if such discussions were the object of Goldberg's visit.
"I don't think so," he told Reuters. "Many U.S. officials have been wanting to visit to find out about things here for themselves, and to visit and discuss with our officials and this is one of those visits ... I believe this visit is just routine."
Goldberg arrives in Malaysia on Sunday evening.
The U.N. resolution, passed June 12, bans export of all weapons by North Korea. It also bans financial transactions that could aid the North's nuclear or missile programs.
Goldberg went to Beijing last week for talks with Chinese officials on enforcing sanctions. The help of China, the North's biggest trade partner and benefactor, is essential for enforcing sanctions, experts said.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement on Sunday regarding the missile launches: "China has taken note of this situation and hopes all sides will show restraint and together maintain the peace and stability of the region." Russia has made a similar comment.
The U.S. Treasury brought North Korea's international finances to a virtual halt in 2005 by cracking down on a Macau bank suspected of aiding the North's illicit financial activities. Other banks, worried about being snared by U.S. financial authorities, steered clear of the North's money.
The impact was seen as especially painful for the country's leadership, which was unable to move money around easily.
(Additional reporting by Yoko Nishikawa in Tokyo, Tom Miles in Beijing and Razak Ahmad in Kuala Lumpur; Editing by Jerry Norton)
Iranian hardliners poised for revenge on dissenters
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent - Analysis
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran's hardline rulers are set to punish reformists linked to the boldest anti-government protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution, despite the damage this might inflict on the system's legitimacy and relations with the West.
Now that security forces have quelled the street turmoil that erupted after a disputed June 12 presidential election, the leadership is preparing to put on trial some of the hundreds of political activists and opinion-makers detained since the vote.
Hints abound that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, shocked by the furor over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election in a vote critics say was rigged, is striking back.
The editor of hardline Kayhan daily urged Saturday that losing candidate Mirhossein Mousavi and reformist ex-President Mohammad Khatami be tried for their "terrible crimes."
Friday, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council that certified the election, said British embassy local staffers accused of inciting unrest had confessed and would face trial. They include the mission's chief political analyst.
The hardline Javan newspaper said 100 lawmakers had asked the judiciary to prosecute the leaders of "post-election riots," citing Mousavi and another defeated candidate, Mehdi Karoubi.
Further stifling of dissent risks discrediting "republican" institutions that have in the past cloaked Iran's clerical rulers with a degree of popular legitimacy, analysts said.
"Once the attempt to steal the elections didn't go as planned, Ahmadinejad opted for the politics of elimination," said Trita Parsi, president of the Washington-based National Iranian American Council. "That too will fail, I believe.
"The violence and brutality shown by the government will not be forgotten. It came at the expense of whatever legitimacy the government had left," he said. "Khamenei and Ahmadinejad can only rule by force now. Their reliance on the security apparatus is greater now than ever before."
Officials say the poll was the healthiest in 30 years and its real winners were the 40 million Iranians who voted. They cast those who cried foul as subversives seeking a "velvet revolution" on behalf of malevolent Western powers.
CONSENSUS SYSTEM AT PERIL
Alireza Nader, a RAND Corporation analyst, said Iran seemed to be moving toward a more militarized system of government, in which the elite Revolutionary Guard would play a bigger role.
"The consensus-driven system of decision-making in Iran appears to be in jeopardy," he said, adding that institutions such as the Majles (parliament) might play an even smaller role.
Nader said Khamenei, who urged all Iranians to rally behind Ahmadinejad after the election, had further sullied his image as a neutral arbiter above the political fray, even though he had already sided with the ultra-conservatives for several years.
"Khamenei may have also damaged his credibility among the traditional clergy by behaving in such a singular manner."
While some top Shi'ite clerics, such as Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi, are aligned with Ahmadinejad, at least two grand ayatollahs -- longtime dissident Hossein Ali Montazeri and his reformist ally Yusof Saanei -- have criticised the authorities.
"I hope that the path of the Iranian people to continue their legal protest could be open," Saanei said Saturday in a website message that also urged the authorities not to commit the "great sin" of violating people's rights.
But with the doors to public protest and legal challenge already slammed shut, reformists who have defied the Supreme Leader's final verdict on the election face an uncertain future.
RED LINE
"There is a great possibility of charges being brought against Mousavi," said Mehrdad Khonsari, a London-based secular dissident. "He tried hard to say he believes in the fundamentals of the revolution, but he crossed a red line in disobeying Khamenei's last word. They are not just going to let it go."
The Islamic Republic's spectacular spasm of "people power" has petered out for now. The focus could shift to internal rivalries within the ruling establishment, whose leading members often have business as well as political interests at stake.
Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful figure since the 1979 revolution, backed Mousavi in the election and appears to have emerged weakened in its aftermath.
He was unable to persuade Khamenei to reprove Ahmadinejad for publicly accusing him and his sons of corruption, but has perhaps prudently opted not to defy the Supreme Leader.
"I think he is being inched out," said Zeineb al-Assam, of the London-based risk consultancy Executive Analysis.
"He sensed it, which is why he withdrew his support from Mousavi," she argued. "Rafsanjani has extensive commercial interests in Iran and I'm sure he wants to conserve those. He is competing with companies owned by the Revolutionary Guards, which have increasingly encroached on his business interests."
Assem said she expected Iran to "behave like a police state" in the coming months, leaving few options for the opposition.
"Mousavi doesn't have the heavyweights in the ruling establishment sufficiently behind him," she said. "And crucially he doesn't have the support of the Revolutionary Guards, who are very much behind the Supreme Leader and Ahmadinejad."
Iran's display of intolerance of internal opposition has alarmed the West, which had hoped for new talks on what it suspects is an Iranian nuclear arms quest. Tehran denies this.
The European Union is already weighing whether to withdraw the ambassadors of its 27 member states from Tehran or find some other response to the plight of the British embassy detainees.
U.S. President Barack Obama's offer of a new start with Iran if it "unclenches its fist" seems frozen at best.
"It's out the window," said Khonsari. "But the West does not want to close the door on the engagement offer because of the nuclear issue. While these events have been taking their course, Obama is very aware the nuclear clock is ticking."
(Editing by Charles Dick)
Blast outside church in Philippines kills 5
By Manny Mogato
MANILA (Reuters) - A bomb exploded outside a church in the southern Philippines during Sunday morning mass, killing five people and wounding 45, an army spokesman said.
Rogue Muslim rebels were suspected of placing the bomb near a food stall outside the church in Cotabato City, said Colonel Jonathan Ponce. The device was detonated when an army truck was passing, he added.
"This is the handiwork of the rogue members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)," Ponce told reporters.
"The rebels are getting desperate and they are no longer choosing their targets. They are now attacking even places of worship."
A woman selling roast pork was killed on the spot while four others, including a soldier and a three-year-old boy, died in a nearby hospital. Five soldiers were among those wounded, Ponce said.
Witnesses said the bishop celebrating the mass had just finished reading the gospel and was about to begin his homily when an explosion was heard.
"The explosion was so loud as if the cathedral was about to collapse," Merly Sandoval, a churchgoer, told a local radio station. "It was like loud and frightening thunder."
Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, who conducted the mass, said: "This is not just a crime, this is a sacrilege. Violence does not achieve anything. Let's all pray for the conversion of the bombers."
Ponce said the crude bomb, made from a mortar shell and remotely detonated by a mobile phone, was placed across the road from the church.
NOT A RELIGIOUS CONFLICT
Mohaqher Iqbal, a senior leader of the MILF, the largest Muslim rebel group in the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines, denied his group was involved in the attack.
"Who needs a Christian-Muslim conflict?," Iqbal told Reuters in a mobile phone text message.
"There's no religious conflict in the south. We're fighting for our right of self-determination. We're only defending our people and our communities."
However, rogue members of the MILF have been fighting the army since August, when the government ended peace talks with the MILF after the Supreme Court stopped a deal to expand an existing Muslim autonomous region on the southern island of Mindanao.
Nearly 600 people have been killed since then, many civilians caught in the fighting.
Fighting around the marshlands on central Mindanao has escalated in the last eight weeks, forcing more than 350,000 people to flee their homes and farms and pushing back any chance of resuming the peace talks.
The 40-year Muslim separatist conflict on Mindanao is driving away potential investments into the impoverished region, believed to be sitting on rich deposits of minerals, oil and natural gas.
(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Valerie Lee)
By Jon Herskovitz and Seo Eun-kyung
SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.S. pointman for sanctions on North Korea begins talks in Malaysia on Sunday, possibly on links banks have to the North's finances, while a report said Pyongyang may have shot mid-range missiles in a series fired on Saturday.
North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles, South Korea's defense ministry said, in an act of defiance toward the United States on its Independence Day, further stoking regional tensions already high due to Pyongyang's nuclear test in May.
"We are on high alert," a South Korean Defense Ministry source said, adding there were no initial signs more launches were coming on Sunday.
The launch, which marks an escalation of tensions by the North, will likely weigh on sentiment when markets open in Asia on Monday, but investors do not expect a major impact.
The North appears to have fired two mid-range Rodong missiles, which can hit all of South Korea and most of Japan, and five Scud missiles, which can strike most of South Korea, Yonhap news agency quoted a South Korean official as saying.
The official said two of the missiles travelled at a greater velocity than the others, indicating they were the Rodong type.
"We found five of the seven missiles fell near the same spot in the East Sea (Sea of Japan), which indicates that their accuracy has improved," another official told Yonhap.
The missiles flew about 420 kms (260 miles) and it will take a few days to confirm what was fired, the official said. Initial reports on Saturday said all the missiles appeared to be Scuds.
The Scud and Rodong are ballistic missiles. Their launch would mark an escalation by the North, which has fired several non-ballistic, short-range missile since the May 25 nuclear test.
North Korea is barred by U.N. resolutions from firing ballistic missiles. It has more than 600 Scud type missiles and 300 Rodong missiles which have been deployed and target U.S. allies South Korea and Japan, defense officials have said.
The North's last major missile launch was in 2006 near the July 4 U.S. holiday when it fired ballistic missiles including its long-range Taepodong-2, which could hit U.S. territory but has not had a successful test flight.
Japan is considering introducing a new ground-based missile defense system to complement interceptors it currently has, the Japanese daily Mainichi reported.
U.S. PRESSES SANCTIONS
The launches came as the United States has cracked down on firms suspected of helping the North in its arms and missiles trade, which was subject to U.N. sanctions imposed after the nuclear test and is a vital source of foreign currency for cash-short North Korea.
The United States may have found several bank accounts in Malaysia suspected of belonging to North Korea and may freeze them as part of the crackdown, Yonhap reported, citing an unidentified source in Washington.
U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg, the U.S. coordinator for the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, will discuss the banks with officials in Malaysia, the source said.
However, Malaysian Deputy Finance Minister Chor Chee Heung cast doubt on the report when asked if such discussions were the object of Goldberg's visit.
"I don't think so," he told Reuters. "Many U.S. officials have been wanting to visit to find out about things here for themselves, and to visit and discuss with our officials and this is one of those visits ... I believe this visit is just routine."
Goldberg arrives in Malaysia on Sunday evening.
The U.N. resolution, passed June 12, bans export of all weapons by North Korea. It also bans financial transactions that could aid the North's nuclear or missile programs.
Goldberg went to Beijing last week for talks with Chinese officials on enforcing sanctions. The help of China, the North's biggest trade partner and benefactor, is essential for enforcing sanctions, experts said.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement on Sunday regarding the missile launches: "China has taken note of this situation and hopes all sides will show restraint and together maintain the peace and stability of the region." Russia has made a similar comment.
The U.S. Treasury brought North Korea's international finances to a virtual halt in 2005 by cracking down on a Macau bank suspected of aiding the North's illicit financial activities. Other banks, worried about being snared by U.S. financial authorities, steered clear of the North's money.
The impact was seen as especially painful for the country's leadership, which was unable to move money around easily.
(Additional reporting by Yoko Nishikawa in Tokyo, Tom Miles in Beijing and Razak Ahmad in Kuala Lumpur; Editing by Jerry Norton)
Iranian hardliners poised for revenge on dissenters
By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent - Analysis
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Iran's hardline rulers are set to punish reformists linked to the boldest anti-government protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution, despite the damage this might inflict on the system's legitimacy and relations with the West.
Now that security forces have quelled the street turmoil that erupted after a disputed June 12 presidential election, the leadership is preparing to put on trial some of the hundreds of political activists and opinion-makers detained since the vote.
Hints abound that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, shocked by the furor over President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election in a vote critics say was rigged, is striking back.
The editor of hardline Kayhan daily urged Saturday that losing candidate Mirhossein Mousavi and reformist ex-President Mohammad Khatami be tried for their "terrible crimes."
Friday, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council that certified the election, said British embassy local staffers accused of inciting unrest had confessed and would face trial. They include the mission's chief political analyst.
The hardline Javan newspaper said 100 lawmakers had asked the judiciary to prosecute the leaders of "post-election riots," citing Mousavi and another defeated candidate, Mehdi Karoubi.
Further stifling of dissent risks discrediting "republican" institutions that have in the past cloaked Iran's clerical rulers with a degree of popular legitimacy, analysts said.
"Once the attempt to steal the elections didn't go as planned, Ahmadinejad opted for the politics of elimination," said Trita Parsi, president of the Washington-based National Iranian American Council. "That too will fail, I believe.
"The violence and brutality shown by the government will not be forgotten. It came at the expense of whatever legitimacy the government had left," he said. "Khamenei and Ahmadinejad can only rule by force now. Their reliance on the security apparatus is greater now than ever before."
Officials say the poll was the healthiest in 30 years and its real winners were the 40 million Iranians who voted. They cast those who cried foul as subversives seeking a "velvet revolution" on behalf of malevolent Western powers.
CONSENSUS SYSTEM AT PERIL
Alireza Nader, a RAND Corporation analyst, said Iran seemed to be moving toward a more militarized system of government, in which the elite Revolutionary Guard would play a bigger role.
"The consensus-driven system of decision-making in Iran appears to be in jeopardy," he said, adding that institutions such as the Majles (parliament) might play an even smaller role.
Nader said Khamenei, who urged all Iranians to rally behind Ahmadinejad after the election, had further sullied his image as a neutral arbiter above the political fray, even though he had already sided with the ultra-conservatives for several years.
"Khamenei may have also damaged his credibility among the traditional clergy by behaving in such a singular manner."
While some top Shi'ite clerics, such as Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi, are aligned with Ahmadinejad, at least two grand ayatollahs -- longtime dissident Hossein Ali Montazeri and his reformist ally Yusof Saanei -- have criticised the authorities.
"I hope that the path of the Iranian people to continue their legal protest could be open," Saanei said Saturday in a website message that also urged the authorities not to commit the "great sin" of violating people's rights.
But with the doors to public protest and legal challenge already slammed shut, reformists who have defied the Supreme Leader's final verdict on the election face an uncertain future.
RED LINE
"There is a great possibility of charges being brought against Mousavi," said Mehrdad Khonsari, a London-based secular dissident. "He tried hard to say he believes in the fundamentals of the revolution, but he crossed a red line in disobeying Khamenei's last word. They are not just going to let it go."
The Islamic Republic's spectacular spasm of "people power" has petered out for now. The focus could shift to internal rivalries within the ruling establishment, whose leading members often have business as well as political interests at stake.
Former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful figure since the 1979 revolution, backed Mousavi in the election and appears to have emerged weakened in its aftermath.
He was unable to persuade Khamenei to reprove Ahmadinejad for publicly accusing him and his sons of corruption, but has perhaps prudently opted not to defy the Supreme Leader.
"I think he is being inched out," said Zeineb al-Assam, of the London-based risk consultancy Executive Analysis.
"He sensed it, which is why he withdrew his support from Mousavi," she argued. "Rafsanjani has extensive commercial interests in Iran and I'm sure he wants to conserve those. He is competing with companies owned by the Revolutionary Guards, which have increasingly encroached on his business interests."
Assem said she expected Iran to "behave like a police state" in the coming months, leaving few options for the opposition.
"Mousavi doesn't have the heavyweights in the ruling establishment sufficiently behind him," she said. "And crucially he doesn't have the support of the Revolutionary Guards, who are very much behind the Supreme Leader and Ahmadinejad."
Iran's display of intolerance of internal opposition has alarmed the West, which had hoped for new talks on what it suspects is an Iranian nuclear arms quest. Tehran denies this.
The European Union is already weighing whether to withdraw the ambassadors of its 27 member states from Tehran or find some other response to the plight of the British embassy detainees.
U.S. President Barack Obama's offer of a new start with Iran if it "unclenches its fist" seems frozen at best.
"It's out the window," said Khonsari. "But the West does not want to close the door on the engagement offer because of the nuclear issue. While these events have been taking their course, Obama is very aware the nuclear clock is ticking."
(Editing by Charles Dick)
Blast outside church in Philippines kills 5
By Manny Mogato
MANILA (Reuters) - A bomb exploded outside a church in the southern Philippines during Sunday morning mass, killing five people and wounding 45, an army spokesman said.
Rogue Muslim rebels were suspected of placing the bomb near a food stall outside the church in Cotabato City, said Colonel Jonathan Ponce. The device was detonated when an army truck was passing, he added.
"This is the handiwork of the rogue members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)," Ponce told reporters.
"The rebels are getting desperate and they are no longer choosing their targets. They are now attacking even places of worship."
A woman selling roast pork was killed on the spot while four others, including a soldier and a three-year-old boy, died in a nearby hospital. Five soldiers were among those wounded, Ponce said.
Witnesses said the bishop celebrating the mass had just finished reading the gospel and was about to begin his homily when an explosion was heard.
"The explosion was so loud as if the cathedral was about to collapse," Merly Sandoval, a churchgoer, told a local radio station. "It was like loud and frightening thunder."
Archbishop Orlando Quevedo, who conducted the mass, said: "This is not just a crime, this is a sacrilege. Violence does not achieve anything. Let's all pray for the conversion of the bombers."
Ponce said the crude bomb, made from a mortar shell and remotely detonated by a mobile phone, was placed across the road from the church.
NOT A RELIGIOUS CONFLICT
Mohaqher Iqbal, a senior leader of the MILF, the largest Muslim rebel group in the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines, denied his group was involved in the attack.
"Who needs a Christian-Muslim conflict?," Iqbal told Reuters in a mobile phone text message.
"There's no religious conflict in the south. We're fighting for our right of self-determination. We're only defending our people and our communities."
However, rogue members of the MILF have been fighting the army since August, when the government ended peace talks with the MILF after the Supreme Court stopped a deal to expand an existing Muslim autonomous region on the southern island of Mindanao.
Nearly 600 people have been killed since then, many civilians caught in the fighting.
Fighting around the marshlands on central Mindanao has escalated in the last eight weeks, forcing more than 350,000 people to flee their homes and farms and pushing back any chance of resuming the peace talks.
The 40-year Muslim separatist conflict on Mindanao is driving away potential investments into the impoverished region, believed to be sitting on rich deposits of minerals, oil and natural gas.
(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Valerie Lee)
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