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• PI nuisance calls still plaguing consumers

  14-12-2014 21:22
  
  Information commissioner says accident claims are third most common cause of complaints. 
  
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• PI nuisance calls still plagueing consumers

  14-12-2014 21:22
  
  Information commissioner says accident claims are third most common cause of complaints. 
  
  Read more

• UK torture inquiry could summon Blair and Straw - The Guardian

  14-12-2014 21:18
  
  The Guardian
  UK torture inquiry could summon Blair and Straw
  The Guardian
  Tony Blair and his former foreign secretary Jack Straw could be summoned before a parliamentary inquiry in an attempt to determine the extent of any British involvement in torture of terror suspects. The two senior figures from the last Labour ...
  Demands grow on David Cameron for judicial inquiry into UK role in US tortureThe Independent
  CIA torture: UK to seek redacted material on its interrogation roleIrish Times
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• Dick Cheney insists 'rectal feeding' was for medical reasons, not torture in defence of CIA

  14-12-2014 21:10
  
  Former US vice-president robustly defends CIA interrogation methodsRepublicans and intelligence community attack Senate reportControversial rectal feeding technique used to control behaviourRectal rehydration and more: the CIA torture report’s grisliest findingsDick Cheney, the former US vice-president who was at the forefront of the post-9/11 push towards aggressive interrogation techniques since denounced as torture, has defended the use of “rectal feeding” of terror suspects, claiming i
  
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• Torture will just push our enemies to more violent excess

  14-12-2014 21:00
  
  It’s time to confront the brutal physical reality and the gruesome official justification of state-sanctioned tortureThe jail was completely dark, its prisoners subjected to constant white noise and freezing cold. They were kept naked, forbidden to speak or be spoken to. One man died from hypothermia, others had food inserted into their anuses on behalf of the US, after medical sign-off. But the most sickening thing that happened at the CIA’s torture site in Afghanistan, codenamed Cobalt, wa
  
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• ICC chief prosecutor shelves Darfur war crimes probe

  14-12-2014 20:12
  
  Fatou Bensouda prompts triumphant response from Sudanese president and concerns over viability of Hague-based institutionThe war crimes investigation in Sudan’s Darfur region had already been stagnant for five years when the international criminal court formally suspended it last week, a lawyer representing the victims has claimed.Chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced on Friday that she was shelving the Darfur probe, prompting a triumphant response from Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir an
  
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• Dick Cheney insists 'rectal feeding' was for medical reasons, not torture

  14-12-2014 18:49
  
  Former US vice-president robustly defends CIA interrogation methodsRepublicans and intelligence community attack Senate reportCome clean on British links to torture, UK MPs tell SenateRectal rehydration and more: the CIA torture report’s grisliest findingsDick Cheney, the former US vice-president who was at the forefront of the post-9/11 push towards aggressive interrogation techniques since denounced as torture, has defended the use of “rectal feeding” of terror suspects, claiming it was
  
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• UK torture inquiry could summon Blair and Straw

  14-12-2014 18:29
  
  Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chair of intelligence and security committee, says he will investigate allegations ‘without fear of favour’Tony Blair and his former foreign secretary Jack Straw could be summoned before a parliamentary inquiry in an attempt to determine the extent of any British involvement in torture of terror suspects.The two senior figures from the last Labour government may be asked to give evidence to the intelligence and security committee (ISC) in the wake of the publication of a
  
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• Shaker Aamer: Britain’s last Guantánamo Bay prisoner

  14-12-2014 18:00
  
  Joanne MacInnes spends most days inflating and deflating a giant, blow-up Guantánamo Bay detainee. Why? In the hope it will expedite the release of the camp’s final UK captiveIt is easy not to bother too much about cases like Shaker Aamer’s. But activist and actor Joanne MacInnes bothers constantly. “I can’t bear the idea of him in there day after day,” she says. “There’s not a morning that I wake up without thinking: ‘Another day for Shaker! And for all of them.’”It is diff
  
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• Gun-friendly Texas prepares to roll back ban on open carry of firearms

  14-12-2014 17:57
  
  Governor-elect Greg Abbott to lead push with Republican legislature in 2015Texas ban dates back 140 years but state allows concealed handgunsLong depicted as the capital of American gun culture, Texas is actually one of the few states to ban outright the open carrying of handguns.That could change in 2015, when the Republican-dominated state legislature and governor-elect Greg Abbott are expected to push for expanded gun rights. Continue reading...
  
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• These days, money buys you a better class of citizenship | Zoe Williams

  14-12-2014 17:20
  
  Natalie Engel is too poor to be allowed to keep her family together in the UK. It’s an assault on the very idea of BritishnessIn July 2012 rules were introduced for people who wanted to sponsor a non-European Union spouse. It didn’t affect our rights to marry foreign nationals; it only applied if we wanted to live with them in the UK. There was a new minimum income requirement of £18,600, calculated by the migration advisory committee as the least you would need to not requir
  
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• Privacy is not dead: Microsoft lawyer prepares to take on US government

  14-12-2014 17:05
  
  Interview: Brad Smith tells Dominic Rushe US demand for access to customer’s emails on server in Dublin strikes at heart of balance between safety and privacyImagine this scenario. German police investigating a press leak descend on Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt. They serve a warrant to seize a bundle of private letters a US reporter is storing in a safe deposit box at a bank branch in Manhattan. The bank complies and orders the branch manager to open the reporter’s box and fax the
  
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• Romanian ex-spy chief acknowledges CIA had ‘black prisons’ in country

  14-12-2014 16:15
  
  Ioan Talpes, who led SIE agency, says Bucharest cooperated but ‘took no interest’ in sites as country was trying to join NatoA top official from Romania has for the first time confirmed that the CIA had “at least” one prison in the country.Ioan Talpes, the former head of the country’s intelligence service said the CIA had “centres” in Romania, including a transit camp or compound, where prisoners were kept before being moved to other locations. He is the first Romanian official to
  
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• British torture inquiry not afraid to embarrass PM, head says

  14-12-2014 12:15
  
  Intelligence committee chief Sir Malcolm Rifkind says he will ask US for missing passages revealing any UK involvement in torture and renditionThe parliamentary inquiry into the involvement of British intelligence agents in the torture of terror suspects is not afraid to embarrass the prime minister and former senior political figures, its head Sir Malcolm Rifkind has said.Rifkind, the chairman of parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC), promised he would investigate without fea
  
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• British torture inquiry ‘not afraid to embarrass PM’

  14-12-2014 12:15
  
  Intelligence committee chief Sir Malcolm Rifkind says he will ask US for missing passages revealing any UK involvement in torture and renditionThe parliamentary inquiry into the involvement of British intelligence agents in the torture of terror suspects is not afraid to embarrass the prime minister and former senior political figures, its head, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, has said.Rifkind, the chairman of parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC), promised he would investigate “withou
  
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• Justice for All and Million March NYC police brutality protests – how the day unfolded

  14-12-2014 02:12
  
  Reports of arrests in Boston as marches take place in many citiesProtests concern deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and othersThousands march in major cities to protest police brutalityEffigies of black lynching victims found hanging at Berkeley campus 8.12pm ET With that, we’re going to wrap up our coverage of today's protests around the country. Thanks for joining us throughout the afternoon and evening. 8.11pm ET From coast to coast, tens of thousands of people marched – and were still
  
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• MPs to vote on move to make firms publish gender pay gap figures

  14-12-2014 01:05
  
  Commons motion would require bigger companies to reveal any differences between the wages of male and female staffMPs will vote this week on a motion that would require larger UK companies to reveal disparities in what they pay male and female workers.The vote comes as new analysis of official figures shows that women earn hundreds of thousands of pounds less over their lifetimes as men doing the same jobs, and still take home only 81p to a man’s £1. Continue reading...
  
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• Ten years on, a survivor’s fear of torture doesn’t go away

  14-12-2014 01:05
  
  Jabuli endured seven months in a torture chamber in a central African country, an ordeal that has left him struggling to recoverJabuli prefers to stay indoors, on his own. When he does go out, he seeks crowded public spaces so that there will be witnesses if his tormentors reappear to kidnap him again. Ten years on, time and distance have not healed the damage that comes from torture.“You live with the fear that the people who tortured you may come back to torture you again,” he said, “reg
  
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• CIA torture report: at least the Americans came clean. In Britain, no one is held to account | Henry Porter

  14-12-2014 01:04
  
  This is a cross-party conspiracy to hide the truth about British agents and tortureWe can be sure of one thing about the US Senate report into the torture of terror suspects by the CIA: it would not have been published in the Britain of today. Even in the Unites States, the crucible of so many wrongs since 9/11 – including torture, drone attacks and the Guantánamo gulag – the system of democratic accountability is evidently more alive than it is in Britain.The CIA has been exposed; th
  
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• The Observer view on torture | Observer editorial

  14-12-2014 01:03
  
  It is time to nail the lies in this shameful episode in US and British historyThe extraordinary row in Washington over the report by the Senate intelligence committee into the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme in the years after the 9/11 attacks is, primarily, a product of guilt and fear. Guilt that America’s most senior leaders, from former president George W Bush down, directed and condoned the use of “abhorrent” illegal techniques against terrorism suspects that plainly amou
  
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