FBI took informant off Mohammed Atta’s trail

FBI Informant Says Agents Missed Chance to Stop 9/11 Ringleader Mohammed Atta

Undercover Operative ‘One Million Percent Positive’ Attacks Could Have Been Prevented

ABC News | Sep 10, 2009

By BRIAN ROSS and VIC WALTER

On the eve of the eight year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an FBI informant who infiltrated alleged terrorist cells in the U.S. tells ABC News the FBI missed a chance to stop the al Qaeda plot because they focused more on undercover stings than on the man who would later become known as 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta.

In an exclusive interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC World News with Charles Gibson and Nightline, former undercover operative Elie Assaad says he spotted and became suspicious of Atta in early 2001, when he was sent by the FBI to infiltrate a small mosque outside Miami. Atta was there with Adnan Shukrujuman, an al Qaeda fugitive who now has a $5 million U.S. reward on his head.

“There was something wrong with these guys,” Assaad, a 36-year-old Catholic native of Lebanon who pretended to be an Islamic extremist, says.

The FBI initially declined to comment but released a statement following the ABC News report, saying: “The 9/11 investigation, the most extensive ever conducted by the FBI, has been reviewed in its totality by the 9/11 Commission, Congress and others. The claims made in the news report and the factual conclusions contained in the story are not supported by the evidence.”

The FBI did not specify which claims or conclusions it referred to.

Asaad said he told ABC News the truth and stands by his story.

According to Assaad, Shukrujumah, whose father ran the mosque, invited the undercover FBI operative to meet him at his home, but the FBI told him to stay away. Instead, Assad says the agency assigned him to set up and sting what he calls wannabe terrorists, ending any hope of infiltrating the real al Qaeda terrorists.

Former national security official Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant, said the case is “yet another example of the way the system broke down prior to 9/11.”

“If the system had worked,” Clarke said, “we might have been able to identify these people before the attacks.”

After 9/11

Assaad, who posed as “Mohammed” a personal representative of Osama bin Laden, says he’s a “million percent positive” the 9/11 attacks could have been stopped if the FBI had gone after Atta and Shukrujumah. But because Atta and his men were suspicious of the FBI undercover operative, and secretive, Assaad says his FBI agent handlers sent him after the easier target two wannabe terrorists whose cases were easy to crack and who were both eventually convicted and sent to prison.

“I was right, I was a hundred percent right,” Assaad says of his suspicions. He says that when he learned that Atta was one of the 9/11 hijackers, when the FBI asked if he could identify any of the attackers, he was “very upset, angry” and cried.

“I curse on everybody,” Assaad says. “I destroyed half of my furniture. Uh, I went crazy.”

The FBI’s focus on stings, which Assaad has worked in at least 10 states and overseas since becoming an operative in 1996, are being questioned by many counter-terrorism authorities, who wonder what the true value of the stings are. Since 9/11, the stings have largely targeted people that are more aspirational than operational.

“A lot of the cases after 9/11 were manufactured or enormously exaggerated and were announced with great trumpets by the attorney general and the FBI director so that we felt that they were doing something when, in fact, what they were doing was not helpful, not relevant, not needed,” said Clarke.

While Assaad’s undercover work has been called invaluable by the government in making the U.S. safer and has resulted in successful stings of alleged terrorist cells across the country, defense attorneys call him a master of entrapment against what they consider harmless targets.

After a 2006 sting, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez praised Assaad who was still unnamed at the time  for disrupting a group preparing a violent attack, resulting in the indictments of seven men on terror charges.

FBI undercover video from the case, obtained by ABC News, shows Assaad leading seven young men from Miami’s inner city in a loyalty oath to Osama bin Laden, in which he persuaded them he had been sent by al Qaeda with tens of thousands of dollars to spend on them for weapons and training. The tape shows Assaad , who was working with the South Florida Joint Terrorism Task Force at the time, hugging his targets and welcoming them to al Qaeda.

Another video of a later meeting shows Assaad counting out $1000 for the leader of the Miami group.

After three trials, including two mistrials, five of the seven men were convicted.

Alleged Law Enforcement Entrapment

Defense lawyers including attorney Richard Houlihan, who represented Naudimar Herrera one of the two men who were found not guilty, called the case a classic example of law enforcement entrapment.

“Without [Assaad’s] performance, none of this would have happened,” Houlihan told ABC News. “He’s dealing with seven basically inner-city kids from Liberty City. Poor, uneducated, looking for money.”

Herrera said he and the others played along with Assaad because of the financial incentives promised by him.

“He was like, “Oh your name here. You say your name here.” It was more like, it was more like a movie script,” Herrera told ABC News. He said that anyone “blind about greed” would be “vulnerable to [Assaad’s] intelligence.”

Assaad said some tactics like suggesting targets, as he did in this case with FBI offices in Miami are necessary in undercover stings.

“Sometimes you have to see what he’s willing to do what’s he’s capable of doing,” says Assaad of suspected terrorists.

“When you are working undercover,” Assaad says, “your job is to lie.”

Megan Chuchmach contributed to this report.

Web-monitoring software gathers data on kid chats

AP | Sep 4, 2009

By DEBORAH YAO

Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids’ online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children’s chat messages — and sell the marketing data gathered.

Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games. The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids.

“This scares me more than anything I have seen using monitoring technology,” said Parry Aftab, a child-safety advocate. “You don’t put children’s personal information at risk.”

The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids’ information at risk, since the program does not record children’s names or addresses. But the software knows how old they are because parents customize its features to be more or less permissive, depending on age.

Five other makers of parental-control software contacted by The Associated Press, including McAfee Inc. and Symantec Corp., said they do not sell chat data to advertisers.

One competitor, CyberPatrol LLC, said it would never consider such an arrangement. “That’s pretty much confidential information,” said Barbara Rose, the company’s vice president of marketing. “As a parent, I would have a problem with them targeting youngsters.”

The software brands in question are developed by EchoMetrix Inc., a company based in Syosset, N.Y.

In June, EchoMetrix unveiled a separate data-mining service called Pulse that taps into the data gathered by Sentry software to give businesses a glimpse of youth chatter online. While other services read publicly available teen chatter, Pulse also can read private chats. It gathers information from instant messages, blogs, social networking sites, forums and chat rooms.

EchoMetrix CEO Jeff Greene said the company complies with U.S. privacy laws and does not collect any identifiable information.

“We never know the name of the kid — it’s bobby37 on the house computer,” Greene said.

What Pulse will reveal is how “bobby37” and other teens feel about upcoming movies, computer games or clothing trends. Such information can help advertisers craft their marketing messages as buzz builds about a product.

Days before “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” opened in theaters on July 15, teen chatter about the movie spiked across the Internet with largely positive reactions.

“Cool” popped up as one of the most heavily used words in teen chats, blogs, forums and on Twitter. The upbeat comments gathered by Pulse foreshadowed a strong opening for the Warner Bros. film.

Parents who don’t want the company to share their child’s information to businesses can check a box to opt out.

But that option can be found only by visiting the company’s Web site, accessible through a control panel that appears after the program has been installed. It was not in the agreement contained in the Sentry Total Home Protection program The Associated Press downloaded and installed Friday.

According to the agreement, the software passes along data to “trusted partners.” Confidentiality agreements prohibit those clients from sharing the information with others.

In recognition of federal privacy laws that restrict the collection of data on kids under 13, the agreement states that the company has “a parent’s permission to share the information if the user is a child under age 13.”

Tech site CNet ranks the EchoMetrix software as one of the three best for parental control. Sales figures were not available.

The Sentry and FamilySafe brands include parental-control software such as Sentry Total Family Protection, Sentry Basic, Sentry Lite and FamilySafe (SentryPC is made by a different company and has no ties with EchoMetrix).

The Lite version is free. Others range from $20 to download and $10 a year for monitoring, to about $48 a year, divided into monthly payments.

The same company also offers software under the brands of partner entities, such as AmberWatch Lookout.

AmberWatch Foundation, a child-protection nonprofit group that licenses its brand to EchoMetrix, said information gathered through the AmberWatch-branded software is not shared with advertisers.

Practically speaking, few people ever read the fine print before they click on a button to agree to the licensing agreement. “Unless it’s upfront in neon letters, parents don’t know,” Aftab said.

EchoMetrix, formerly known as SearchHelp, said companies that have tested the chat data using Pulse include News Corp.’s Fox Broadcasting and Dreamworks SKG Inc. Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures recently signed on.

None of those companies would comment when contacted by the AP.

EchoMetrix has been losing money. Its liabilities exceeded its assets by nearly $25 million as of June 30, according to a regulatory filing that said there is “substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

To get the marketing data, companies put in keywords, such as the name of a new product, and specify a date range, into Pulse. They get a “word cloud” display of the most commonly used words, as well as snippets of actual chats. Pulse can slice data by age groups, region and even the instant-messaging program used.

Pulse also tracked buzz for Microsoft Corp.’s “Natal,” a forthcoming Xbox motion-sensor device that replaces the traditional button-based controller. Microsoft is not a client of Pulse, but EchoMetrix used “Natal” to illustrate how its data can benefit marketers.

Greene said children’s conversations about Natal were focused on its price and availability, which suggested that Microsoft should assure teens that there will be enough stock and that ordering ahead can lock in a price.

Competing data-mining companies such as J.D. Power Web Intelligence, a unit of quality ratings firm J.D. Power and Associates, also trolls the Internet for consumer chats. But Vice President Chase Parker said the company does not read any data that’s password-protected, such as the instant message sessions that EchoMetrix collects for advertisers.

Suresh Vittal, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said EchoMetrix might have to make its disclosures more apparent to parents.

“Are we in the safeguarding-the-children business or are we in the business of selling data to other people?” he said. If it’s the latter, “it should all be done transparently and with the knowledge of the customer.”

United Nations conference calls for new global currency

Raw Story | Sep 8, 2009

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said in a report published Monday that the U.S. dollar should be replaced as the world’s standard reserve currency, giving rise to a new global currency managed by an as-yet undetermined financial regulatory organization.

Heiner Flassbeck, director of the conference, told Bloomberg News that changes needed in the world’s financial systems rival the scope of the Bretton Woods or European Monetary System agreements.

The Bretton Woods agreement established in 1944 the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, following allied victory in World War II.

“[The] dominance of the dollar as the main means of international payments [has] played an important role in the build-up of the global imbalances in the run-up to the financial crisis,” the report says. “Another disadvantage of the current international reserve system is that it imposes a greater adjustment burden on deficit countries (except if it is a country issuing a reserve currency) than on surplus countries.”

The UN adds: “Such a multilateral system would tackle the problem of destabilizing capital flows at its source. It would remove a major incentive for speculation and ensure that monetary factors do not stand in the way of achieving a level playing field for international trade. It would also get rid of debt traps and counterproductive conditionality. The last point is perhaps the most important one: countries facing strong depreciation pressure would automatically receive the required assistance once a sustainable level of the exchange rate had been reached in the form of swap agreements or direct intervention by the counterparty.”

The move should not be surprising to observers of global economics, as a U.N. panel of currency experts came to the same conclusion in March, according to Reuters.

The conference specifically emphasizes the enhancement of the International Monetary Fund’s “special drawing right” (SDR), which may serve as the “supranational” currency.

World-wide shake-up
The past year has seen a dramatic shake-up in oversight and management of the U.S. and global economies.

For months, Russia and China have been calling for a new world reserve currency.

Russia, for its part, supports replacing the dollar on the world stage, suggesting the Chinese yuan may be the quickest path to diversified reserves.

“There is a need to make the IMF a true representative of the world’s leading economies. It’s not there right now,” said Russian finance minister Alexei Kudrin in June, noting that China had a lower representation quota than Switzerland or Belgium.

Kudrin also said he did not expect to see any new monetary unions rise, although the Gulf states agreed in May to use Saudi Arabia as a base for a pending “monetary union” and new central banking authority.

The issue of IMF reform should therefore be raised “in earnest, in a bold way,” Kudrin said, adding countries should be “represented in proportion to the strength of these economies and their role in the world economy.”

Over the weekend, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner argued successfully to strengthen the “Basel II” framework for international commerce, which would see all G20 member nations increase their currency liquidity and allow centralized, “global supervision” of financial industries. The Obama administration is committed to full compliance with the framework by 2011.

The Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors plan to meet in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Sept. 24 and 25. Several major liberal groups are planning demonstrations, including the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition. The city has already secured a deal to use National Guard troops provide a security buffer for the world’s financial elite during their meeting.

Also on Sunday, a key Chinese official predicted that the dollar’s increasing supply, which grows with added liquidity, meant the currency could “fall hard” within “a year or two.” The official also signaled that China is moving its reserves away from the dollar and toward gold, euros and yen.

Washington has staunchly defended the dollar as the world’s reserve, with President Obama, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner all insisting there is no need for a new global reserve currency.

The UN report which makes the recommendations is available online (PDF link).

Washington about to be Dan Browned

The House of the Temple, a Masonic building located at 1733 16th Street, NW in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The entrance is flanked by two stone sphinxes, Wisdom (pictured) and Power, sculpted by Adolph Alexander Weinman in 1915. The House of the Temple was designed by noted architect John Russell Pope in the neoclassical style, and is a contributing property to the Sixteenth Street Historic District. Photo and text: Wikimedia Commons.

Mysteries All Over the Map

Dan Brown’s D.C.-Set Sequel Is About to Land. The Fury & Flurry Are Already Here.

Washington Post | Sep 10, 2009

By Monica Hesse and David Montgomery

Washingtonians, brace yourselves.

In just six days, residents will awaken to find themselves in a changed city. One invaded by Founding Fathers scandal, by fictitious Harvard symbologists, by very short chapters ending in cliffhangers and exclamation points! One to which the tourists will flock, brandishing conspiracy theories. We want the real story, they’ll say to helpless docents at the Smithsonian, perhaps, or the Scottish Rite Masonic temple. This is the real story, docents will reply. No, the reeeeal story. Wink wink.

Washington is about to be Dan Browned.

The inciting incident is the release of “The Lost Symbol,” the third installment of Brown’s mondo-selling adventure zeitgeist, sequel to “Angels & Demons” and “The Da Vinci Code.” In “Angels,” professor Robert Langdon races through Rome, saving the city from an explosion and uncovering religious secrets that rock Christianity to the core. In “Da Vinci,” he races through Paris and London, solving a mysterious death and uncovering religious secrets that rock Christianity to the core.

In “The Lost Symbol,” Langdon will be back again, this time racing through Washington. What exactly he’ll be doing here is unclear. In the five-plus years Brown has been researching and writing this novel, nary an important plot point has leaked.

This much is known: The initial print run of “The Lost Symbol” is 5 million copies, the largest in Random House history, the publisher claims. Clues found on the novel’s recently released cover, combined with decoded messages from the “Da Vinci” jacket and elsewhere (“Is there no help for the widow’s son?”), suggest that Freemason history will play a central role.

People. Are. Freaking. Out.

The “Today” show has begun a week-long Dan Brown blitz, featuring Matt Lauer traipsing around the Washington locations expected to appear in the novel. Over on Amazon.com, a corporate notice assured readers that the site is securing its “Lost Symbol” stockpile “under 24-hour guard in its own chain-link enclosure, with two locks requiring two separate people for entry.” Facebookers and Twitterers have been feverishly working overtime to decipher the novel-related clues — such as “AOFACFSOA FSZWBEIC EIOA ZOHSFWQWOA OQQSDW” — frequently posted by Brown’s marketing team on his social networking pages.

Masons are preparing themselves.

“I’m expecting [tourism] to skyrocket,” says Heather Calloway, director of special programs for the Masonic House of the Temple on 16th Street NW, which receives about 10,000 visitors a year. She will double the staff of part-time tour guides, if necessary, to handle the crush.

“We might have to spend the next 25 years responding to Dan Brown’s fiction,” says Mark Tabbert, director of collections at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandria. “That’s what I dread.” (Think he’s overstating? Wait until you hear from his European counterparts, who are still drowning in their own Brown invasions.)

Then there’s the “Lost Symbol” companion industry: the piles of documentaries, Web sites and books created to analyze the meaning of a novel that has not yet come out.

“It’s all about, what’s Dan Brown going to assert?” says author Dan Burstein, who edited companion work “Secrets of the Widow’s Son” back in 2005 based on his early research. He has another book coming out in December called “Secrets of the Lost Symbol.”

“Could he go in the direction of human cloning?” Burstein wonders. “Could some Freemasons . . . could they have known something about the cloning? And now we hear that Dan Brown is interested in the Rosicrucians,” a secret society of mystics formed in medieval Europe. “So what does that mean? Some theories say the Rosicrucians had a piece of the cross. Maybe if you had bloodstains on some pieces of the cross, you could clone Christ.”

Burstein is one of many scholars who operate in a tiny and speculative field: What Would Dan Brown Do?

Why Should Anyone Care?

Brown might be one of the best-sellingest authors of recent times (81 million copies for “Da Vinci”), but almost everyone agrees that, literarily, he stinks. The linguist Geoffrey Pullum once described his writing as “not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad,” which might explain why in some circles people brag about not having read “The Da Vinci Code.”

Still, there is something exuberant about that preposterous prose. Brown’s books contain everything the human brain thrives on: breakneck pacing, bite-size didja-knows, looming conspiracies, Scooby-Doo plot twists. His books are literary crack, or, in PG terms, they are Harry Potter for grown-ups. His notorious reclusiveness only adds to his mystique; for every interview he declines and cryptic clue his team tweets, his persona increasingly resembles the enigmatic characters of his novels. Like Robert Langdon, the man wears tweed.

But his greatest achievement, arguably, is the outsize impact his fictitious novels have had on the cities in which they’re set.

When Dan Brown comes to town, things get a little bit nutty.

Just ask Colin Glynne-Percy, director of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, the rural Scottish church featured in “The Da Vinci Code,” which Langdon believed to be the location of the Holy Grail.

“Before the book came out, we had about 40,000 visitors a year,” Glynne-Percy says. “It went to 80,000. Then to 120,000. Then to 175,000. We had very small facilities. We had only two restrooms. We could survive on that for 40,000 but . . .” They’ve put in temporary bathrooms and added several new staff members.

Just ask Robin Griffith-Jones, master of the Temple Church in London, which makes the eensiest of cameos in “Da Vinci.” (Langdon pops in to search for clues on the stone effigies’ decorative orbs, then pops out.)

This minor role hasn’t stopped tourists from roaming the circular nave in search of the orbs examined by Langdon.

Small problem: “There is no question of any orb in this church,” Griffith-Jones says. “Knights didn’t have orbs. Only kings had orbs,” and it’s mostly knights depicted at the temple. Griffith-Jones began offering a weekly lecture to dispel the myths of “Da Vinci” and eventually wrote a book on the subject. Still the tourists come. “I feel like King Canute, with the rising ocean tide I cannot stem.”

In Italy, more of the same. One Roman tour guide describes how her tours of the Colosseum were so frequently interrupted by tourists more interested in “Angels & Demons” faux-history that she had to create a special tour for them.

Washingtonians, we are next.

Already, Old Town Trolley Tours is considering a Secret Symbols tour of Washington. Already, the Masonic Service Association in Silver Spring is readying a special truth-squad Web site to fact-check “The Lost Symbol.”

“We’re in the cross hairs,” says S. Brent Morris, managing editor of the Scottish Rite Journal. “It could be good; it could be bad. We’ve decided to take a deep breath, take a chill pill and see what happens.”

Back in Britain, Griffith-Jones is also keeping an eye on the release of “The Lost Symbol.”

“I’m very slightly worried that if the next book focuses on the Freemasons, then there will be mention of the Knights Templar,” he says.

Which would be a problem because . . .

“We were built by the Knights Templar. It will all start again.”

___________

‘Gang culture’ and ‘mob mentality’ rife among police officers, warns top barrister

‘Possessed’: Mr Mansfield says a police uniform can completely change the character of an ‘ordinary guy’

Daily Mail | Sep 10, 2009

Police officers working together for too long become an unruly gang with a ‘mob mentality’, a top barrister has warned.

Michael Mansfield QC said some officers, including those working in firearms, become ‘possessed’ when they put on their uniform.

The leading lawyer has now proposed that officers be moved to different posts after two years to prevent them posing a risk to the public.

Mr Mansfield, 67, told Police Review magazine: ‘You have to be careful how long you allow the same group of officers to work together so you do not get a boys’ own shop.

‘You have to allow them enough time to do the job and it is a delicate balancing act but you do have to have a healthy throughput.

‘The danger is a mob mentality developing; a collective spirit where they lose control.

‘Bonding is important but if they are together too long it becomes a gang culture.

‘You give an officer a uniform and a shield and he thinks he has to smack people in the face but you take the uniform off and he is just an ordinary guy.

‘The uniform transforms some ordinary guys into another kind of person; they become possessed, as if donning the uniform allows them a latitude to do things they will probably never do without the uniform.’

Mr Mansfield will address the Superintendents’ Association’s annual conference in Warwickshire next week.

But Meredydd Hughes from the Association of Chief Police Officers has slammed Mr Mansfield’s proposals.

He said: ‘I would be happy to show Mr Mansfield the levels of professionalism maintained in what are highly trained and dedicated firearms and public order units across the service.

‘His ideas would put the public at risk and create an unnecessary financial burden.’

Paul McKeever, chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said: ‘To suggest that after two years in a post officers should move on is a shockingly frivolous idea that would be a huge waste of skills, expertise and resources and be a drain on the taxpayer who would foot the bill.

‘Using Mr Mansfield’s skewed logic, if he believes that putting a uniform on makes an officer want to smack people, then what does he suggest is the outcome of a barrister donning a wig?’

Big Brother targets parents as one in four Britons are to be vetted for giant child protection database

Now Big Brother targets helpful parents as one in four Britons are to be vetted for giant child protection database

Daily Mail | Sep 11, 2009

By James Slack

Parents could face a £5,000 fine for driving their children’s friends to a sports event or Cub Scout meeting.

They face punishment and a criminal record if they have not been vetted first by a massive new government agency.

An astonishing 11.3million people  –  one adult in four  –  are likely to come under the watchful eye of the Independent Safeguarding Authority.

Target: Parents will face a £5,000 fine for driving their children’s friends to sports events or Cub Scout meetings when the new Independent Safeguarding Authority is launched next month.

Launched next month, it will be the biggest vetting and clearing system in the world.

Every person who comes into regular contact with children or the elderly, through work or volunteering, must be approved by ISA officials checking for criminal convictions, disciplinary action and even unproven allegations.

It goes way beyond the current Criminal Records Bureau system, which covers only 6million people.

For the first time, 300,000 school governors, dinner ladies and parents who visit schools or nurseries to read to children will be involved.

It will even apply to parents who, at the request of organisations like junior football teams or the Guides, give their children’s friends lifts to or from events.

If they do so without first being vetted by the ISA’s 200 staff, they could be fined up to £5,000 and given a criminal record.

The clubs themselves will face a £5,000 fine – potentially enough to ruin them. Parents who host foreign pupils on school exchange trips will also have to be vetted.

MPs and academics fear the change will have disastrous consequences.

Shadow home secretary Chris Grayling said: ‘We are going to drive away volunteers, we’ll see clubs and activities close down and we’ll end up with more bored young people on our streets.’

Liberal Democrat spokesman Chris Huhne said: ‘We are in danger of creating a world in which we think every adult who approaches children means to do them harm.

‘The creation of the world’s biggest checking system is a disproportionate response to the problem it is trying to solve.’

The Office of the Information Commissioner said there were ‘inevitable’ security risks in collecting large amounts of personal data.

Philip Pullman, best-selling author of His Dark Materials, has already pledged to stop giving readings in schools in protest at the scheme.

He has called it ‘corrosive to healthy social interaction’ because it will encourage children to see everyone as a potential rapist or killer.

The scheme was recommended by the Bichard report into the Soham murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman by school caretaker Ian Huntley.

Huntley was given the job because allegations of sex with underage girls were not passed on.

The Home Office said: ‘The Vetting and Barring Scheme does not cover personal or family relationships, so parents making informal arrangements to give lifts to children will not have to be vetted.

‘However, anyone working or volunteering on behalf of a third party organisation – for example, a sports club or a charity – who has frequent or intensive access to children or vulnerable adults will have to be registered.

‘We believe this is a commonsense approach and what parents would rightly expect.’

Registering with the ISA will cost £64 in England and Wales, although unpaid volunteers will be exempt.

Registration will be needed for activities which involve contact with children or vulnerable adults three times in a month, every month, or once overnight, as well as jobs in places such as schools, prisons and children’s homes.

In a ‘belt and braces’ approach, everyone currently working with children and old people will have to be vetted, even if they have already been cleared by the Criminal Records Bureau.

Those whose jobs involve mandatory enhanced CRB checks will continue to undergo them.

An enhanced CRB check costs £36, which means that, on top of the £64 ISA fee, being cleared to work with children could cost £100.

Scientist admits 20 years of global cooling could make people lose faith in global warming

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (centre) walks with scientists on the Polar Ice Brim, Norway

The world could get colder over the next two decades – but still hotter in the long run, expert predicts

‘People will say this is global warming disappearing,’ he told more than 1,500 climate scientists at the UN’s World Climate conference in Geneva last week.

Daily Mail | Sep 10, 2009

By David Derbyshire

The world could get colder over the next two decades because of natural changes in the Earth’s climate, a leading environmental scientist has warned.

Dr Mojib Latif, one of the world’s top climate modellers, believes predictions of imminent global warming may be wrong and that the Earth could be heading for up to 20 years of cooler temperatures.

However, the dip will be temporarily – and the long term trend is still for a warmer planet, he says.

‘People will say this is global warming disappearing,’ he told more than 1,500 climate scientists at the UN’s World Climate conference in Geneva last week.

‘I am not one of the sceptics. However, we have to ask nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it.’

Related

World cooling has set-in warns astrophysicist

Alaskan glaciers advance one-third of a mile in less than a year

Global temperatures ‘have plunged .74°F since Gore released ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

Dr Latif, an author of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and climate physicist at the University of Kiel, Germany, is the latest scientist to question short term predictions of global warming.

His model forecasts that a natural cooling trend could dominate over the next decade – offsetting any rise in temperatures caused by humans, New Scientist reports today.

The cooling will be caused by changes in the atmosphere and ocean currents in the North Atlantic – a phenomenon called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the Atlantic Meridional Oscillation.

Risking the wrath of other climatologists, he said the NAO may have been responsible for some of the rapid rise in temperatures of the last three decades.

‘But how much? The jury is still out,’ he told the conference.

The NOA is now moving into a pattern than could cool the earth, he said.

However Dr Latif still believes that carbon dioxide released from the burning of fossil fuels stored underground for millions of years will still warm the planet in the longer term.

Other climate scientists say predicting short term changes in the climate is still too difficult. Phenomena like the NAO and El Nino – where the Pacific Ocean warms for a few years – can lead to significant changes in temperature.

The world’s warmest year in recent history – 1998 – was caused by an unusually strong El Nino.

Vicky Pope of the Met Office said natural variability was as important as the long term warming trend when predicting climate change over the next few years.

‘In many ways we know more about what will happen in the 2050s than next year,’ she said.

Dr Pope also warned the conference that the dramatic Arctic ice loss in recent summers was partly a product of natural climate cycles – and not just caused by man-made global warming. Early reports suggest there has been less melting this year than in 2007 and 2008.

Although the warmest year on record was 10 years ago, the Met Office says man-made carbon dioxide emissions are still heating up the planet.

The 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997 while the average world temperatures for 2000 to 2008 are almost 0.2C higher than the average for the 1990s.

Here’s what readers have had to say so far. Why not add your thoughts below, or debate this issue live on our message boards.

Obama Extends Bush 9/11 National Emergency

NewsRoom | Sep 10, 2009

U.S. President Barack Obama has extended the state of emergency put in place by President George W. Bush following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1622(d), provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue.

President Obama says consistent with this provision, he has sent a notice to the Federal Register stating that the emergency declared with respect to the terrorist attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, is to continue for an additional year.

He said the terrorist threat that led to President Bush declaring a national emergency on September 14, 2001 continues, and for this reason it is necessary to continue the national emergency in effect after September 14, 2009.

“Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1622(d), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States,” the President said.

The National Emergencies Act of 1976 eliminated or modified some statutory grants of emergency authority and required the President to declare formally the existence of a national emergency and to specify what statutory authority, activated by the declaration, would be used. It also provided Congress a means to countermand the President’s declaration and the activated authority being sought.

In a paper prepared for Congress a specialist in American National Government, Harold C. Relyea, said Federal law provides a variety of powers for the President to use in response to crisis, exigency, or emergency circumstances threatening the nation.

Mr Relyea said when the President formally declares a national emergency, he may “seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abroad, institute martial law, seize and control all transportation and communication, regulate the operation of private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a variety of ways, control the lives of United States citizens.”

However he says there are limits and restraints upon the President in his exercise of emergency powers.

“With the exception of the habeas corpus clause, the Constitution makes no allowance for the suspension of any of its provisions during a national emergency. Disputes over the constitutionality or legality of the exercise of emergency powers are judicially reviewable. Indeed, both the judiciary and Congress, as co-equal branches, can restrain the executive regarding emergency powers. So can public opinion,” he wrote.

France set to impose carbon tax

It will apply to households as well as enterprises, but not to the heavy industries and power firms.

Two-thirds of French voters say they are opposed to the new levy, fearing they will struggle to pay higher bills.

BBC | Sep 10, 2009

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced plans for a new carbon tax aimed at combating global warming.

The tax will be introduced next year and will cover the use of oil, gas and coal, he said.

The new tax will be 17 euros (£15) per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide (CO2). It will be phased in gradually.

It will apply to households as well as enterprises, but not to the heavy industries and power firms included in the EU’s emissions trading scheme.

Most electricity in France – excluded from the new carbon tax – is nuclear generated.

Mr Sarkozy said revenues from the new tax would be ploughed back into taxpayers’ pockets through cuts in other taxes and “green cheques”.

The carbon tax plans have already encountered stiff opposition across the political spectrum.

France’s Le Monde newspaper says the tax will cover 70% of the country’s carbon emissions and bring in about 4.3bn euros (£3.8bn) of revenue annually.

Mr Sarkozy insists the new tax is all about persuading the French to change their habits and cut energy consumption, the BBC’s Emma Jane Kirby reports from Paris.

Critics say it is just a ploy to boost ailing state finances.

Two-thirds of French voters say they are opposed to the new levy, fearing they will struggle to pay higher bills.

Prime Minister Francois Fillon had previously set the new tax rate at 14 euros per tonne of CO2.

British public has become more sceptical about climate change over the last five years

UK climate scepticism more common

BBC | Sep 10, 2009

By Sudeep Chand

The British public has become more sceptical about climate change over the last five years, according to a survey.

Twice as many people now agree that “claims that human activities are changing the climate are exaggerated”.

Four in 10 believe that many leading experts still question the evidence. One in five are “hard-line sceptics”.

The survey, by Cardiff University, shows there is still some way to go before the public’s perception matches that of their elected leaders.

The results were announced at the British Science Festival in Guildford by Cardiff’s Lorraine Whitmarsh.

A questionnaire survey was filled in by 551 people, from a range of ages and backgrounds, between September and November last year.

Although the findings are similar to those of other UK surveys, this is the first to show that people may be becoming “tired” of claims surrounding climate change.

“Unfortunately, some people latch on to this uncertainty and say ‘let’s carry on as we are’.”

She feels that many people are not “playing their part” in reducing humanity’s impact on the environment.

“In general people are showing little willingness to change their lifestyles.

“They will recycle, unplug the TV and change their light bulbs; but they won’t change how they travel or how they eat.

“These are the things that are going to make the biggest difference.”

Alarmist

Half of the people surveyed believed the media was too alarmist.

And a third said there was too much conflicting evidence to know what is actually happening.

Dr Whitmarsh added: “We need to make it clear to people what is due to climate change and what is not.

“It is time we made it real to people.”

Other surveys have shown that people in the UK are more sceptical than those in Europe, but less than those in the US.