Europe Puts Sat-Nav Satellites In Wrong Orbit

Experts are investigating whether plans for a European navigation system to rival the US-developed GPS are in trouble after two satellites were launched into the wrong orbits.

The European Space Agency (ESA) said the satellites ended up in the wrong position above the Earth after being carried into space on a Soyuz rocket on Friday.

The ESA did not clarify whether the problem could be fixed.

Both satellites have ended up on the wrong path. Picture: ESA

However, the Nasa Spaceflight news website said: "It is unlikely the satellites can be eased into their correct orbit."

The satellites were launched from Kourou, in French Guiana, by the agency and Arianespace, a French company.

The European Union's 30-satellite Galileo navigation network is due to be up and running before 2020. It has a budget of £7bn and so far, six satellites have been launched.

Galileo would rival GPS, or Global Positioning System, which was created by the US Department of Defense and has been operational for nearly 20 years.

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Missouri Cops Suspended Over Racial Outbursts

Two Missouri police officers who were involved in crowd control following the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager have been suspended after it emerged they made racially charged outbursts.

Internal investigations have been launched after one officer boasted of being a Jesus-loving "killer", while another compared protesters to a "rabid dog".

The disciplinary action came as a third consecutive night of restrained demonstrations took place in the St Louis suburb of Ferguson over the August 9 police shooting of Michael Brown.

Authorities remain braced for a possible flare-up of disturbances as the 18-year-old's funeral looms on Monday.

The National Guard is withdrawing from Ferguson

Officer Dan Page of the St Louis County Police Department was removed from active duty on Friday after a YouTube video, apparently filmed in 2012, surfaced.

In the clip, Page is seen addressing a St Louis chapter of the Oath Keepers, a conservative group, saying: "I personally believe in Jesus Christ as my lord saviour, but I'm also a killer.

"I've killed a lot, and if I need to I'll kill a whole bunch more. If you don't want to get killed, don't show up in front of me."

The number of arrests is down but residents' grievances remain

The 35-year police veteran and former serviceman adds: "I'm into diversity. I kill everybody, I don't care."

He also made disparaging remarks about Muslims and called President Barack Obama "an illegal alien".

The police department was made aware of the clip by a CNN anchor who was shoved by Page during a live report from Ferguson.

A Ferguson resident at a makeshift memorial for Michael Brown

The outburst was condemned by St Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar, who has been scrambling to repair community relations amid claims from African-Americans that local law enforcement is racist.

Chief Belmar said he was "deeply disturbed" by the comments, which he termed "so bizarre".

Also on Friday, a police department in another St Louis suburb, Glendale, said an officer had been suspended after he posted Facebook rants aimed at Ferguson protesters.

Officers guard the police station in Ferguson, Missouri

Michael Pappert wrote: "I'm sick of these protesters. You are a burden on society and a blight on the community."

He also wrote: "These protesters should have been put down like a rabid dog the first night."

In an apparent reference to the Boston marathon bombing, he wrote: "Where is a Muslim with a backpack when you need them."

Pappert was one of hundreds of St Louis area police officers called into Ferguson as crowd-control reinforcements, according to press photographers.

Glendale Police Department said Pappert's posts "absolutely" did not represent the views of the rank-and-file or the city government.

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Video Shows Collapse Of 12-Storey Gaza Tower

Amateur video footage has emerged of the moment an apartment building in downtown Gaza City was hit by Israeli missiles.

Huge fireballs can be seen erupting after the missiles strike the 12-storey Zafer Tower, part of a group of high rises in the Tel al Hawa neighbourhood.

The building collapses in a cloud of smoke shortly afterwards.

Some 100,000 Gazans have become homeless, with more than 17,000 homes destroyed or damaged beyond repair so far during the conflict, says the UN.

However, Saturday's incident is the first time an entire apartment building has been destroyed.

Smoke billows from the collapsed apartments

The Israeli military said the target was a Hamas operations room in the building, but did not say why the whole tower with 44 apartments was brought down.

Police in Gaza said a warning missile was fired five minutes before impact and some residents were able to get out of the building in time.

Gaza hospital officials said 22 people were wounded, including 11 children and five women.

Resident Maher Abu Sedo said two strikes came within seconds of each other.

"People started shouting Allahu Akbar, and women and kids were screaming," he said.

A warning missile was fired by Israel five minutes before impact

"This is crazy. The state of Israel has resorted to madness.

"In less than a minute, 44 families have become displaced... They lost everything, their house, their money, their memories and their security."

Elsewhere in Gaza, an Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinians in the enclave on Sunday as militants in Gaza kept up rocket fire.

The pace of Israeli raids was slower than Saturday when at least 60 strikes pounded Gaza.

They came after a shell from the territory hit a farming village in southern Israel and killed a four-year-old boy.

Firemen at the scene of the mortar attack that killed a four-year-old boy

Israeli media reported that many residents of communities near the Gaza border were leaving their homes to head for safer areas following the death in the Nahal Oz kibbutz.

Since the fighting began on July 8, Israel has launched some 5,000 airstrikes on Gaza, while militants have fired almost 4,000 rockets and mortars, according to Israel.

More than 2,100 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, have been killed, according to the UN and Palestinian health officials.

Sixty-four Israeli soldiers and four civilians have also died.

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Footballer Killed By Object Thrown From Stands

A footballer has died after being hit in the head by an object thrown from the stands after a match, his club have announced.

Cameroonian striker Albert Ebosse, who has national caps, was fatally struck by a projectile at the end of JS Kabylie's game against USM Alger in Algeria.

He had scored a goal in the game, which his club lost 2-1. 

Footage posted on YouTube shows the player on a stretcher with his head wrapped in bandages after the attack in the northern city of Tizi Ouzou.

A Facebook page dedicated to the player has been created, offering tributes and condolences to his family.

A statement published on Kabylie's website said: "The Ministry of Interior and Local Government, speaking through minister Tayeb Belaiz, has given an instruction to open an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death of Albert Ebosse.

"The JSK player succumbed to a head injury after being hit in the head at the end of the meeting with USM Alger."

Reacting to the news, USM Alger said in a statement: "This terrible news is saddening for football in our nation and in Cameroon and arrives like a bombshell.

"In these painful circumstances, USM Alger and its members send their deepest condolences to the family of the deceased and to JS Kabylie.

"May Albert Ebosse rest in peace."

The 24-year-old played for Coton Sport FC, Unisport Bafang and Douala AC in Cameroon, before transferring to Malaysian side Perak FA in 2012.

He joined JS Kabylie, one of Algeria's richest clubs, in July 2013. He reportedly had six international caps, mainly with Cameroon's B team.

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UK Steps Up Help For Kurds Amid Massacre Fears

Britain will supply Kurdish forces with "non-lethal" equipment, including night-vision goggles and body armour, in their fight against militants in northern Iraq.

No 10 said the Government was stepping up its efforts to help defeat Islamic State (IS) by also appointing a special representative to the country's Kurdistan region.

Security envoy Lieutenant General Sir Simon Mayall will support Kurdish and wider Iraqi efforts to counter IS and work with Iraq's leaders as they try to establish a unity government.

He will travel to the country next week to meet political chiefs in Baghdad and the Kurdistan regional government in Irbil to encourage all sides to unite against IS, formerly known as ISIS or ISIL.

Some of the Kurdish forces who are taking on Islamic State

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has said the Government was investing "significant resources" to tackle "a barbaric ideology".

And he warned that if the IS militants are not stopped in Iraq and Syria "sooner or later they will seek to strike us on British soil".

It comes as the United Nations warned of a "possible massacre" in an Iraqi town which has been besieged by IS insurgents.

The UN's special envoy to the country said immediate action was needed to protect 17,000 people in Amerli.

Nickolay Mladenov said reports "confirm that people are surviving in desperate conditions" and there is "unspeakable suffering".

Shia Turkmen residents of the town, in the Salaheddin province north of Baghdad, have been cut off from food and water supplies by IS for months.

An IS fighter in the city of Mosul

Sky's Stuart Ramsay, reporting from Kalar, about 25 miles from Amerli, said: "We understand the Iraqi military is north and south of the town and it is claimed they are attempting to get in to try and relieve the people who are in pretty terrible conditions.

"No food, no water and running very low on ammunition. How they have been holding out against IS I simply cannot imagine. I suspect IS have not tried to go in with any great force because they are well-organised and extremely well-armed."

Thousands of Kurdish peshmerga forces have been fighting Sunni extremists around northeastern towns including Jalula and Sa'dya, which have been controlled by IS for weeks.

Meanwhile, at least 30 people were killed on Saturday in explosions in Baghdad and the northern city of Kirkuk, where three blasts went off in a crowded commercial area.

In the capital, a suicide bomber drove a car full of explosives into the gate of the intelligence headquarters in the Karrada district - killing civilians and security personnel.

In Irbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, local media said a car bomb had exploded.

After pouring in from Syria across a desert border that it does not recognise, IS has taken over large parts of both countries and declared its own caliphate.

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Bardarbunga Volcano Risk Lowered After Quakes

Iceland has lowered the aviation risk from the Bardarbunga volcano from the highest to the second-highest level.

The Civil Protection Department says there is no immediate threat of an eruption.

However, seismic activity continues at the subglacial volcano, which has been hit by thousands of earthquakes over the past week.

On Saturday Iceland raised the alert level from orange to red, warning an ash-emitting eruption could be imminent.

It followed an earthquake under a glacier about 15 miles (25km) from the Bardarbunga range.

The decision to lower the alert level comes after two more earthquakes shook the Bardarbunga volcano overnight.

Iceland's Met Office said in a statement a magnitude 5.3 quake at a depth of three miles (5km) struck after midnight.

Another, with a magnitude of about 5.0, followed about five hours later.

The Bardarbunga volcano is in the middle of Iceland

"These are the strongest events measured since the onset of the seismic crisis at Bardarbunga and the strongest since 1996," the Met Office said on its website.

But it insisted there was no sign of any eruption at Bardarbunga.

It added: "Probably, earthquakes near the Bardarbunga caldera are a consequence of adjustment to changes in pressure because of the flow of magma from under the caldera into the dyke which stretches to Dyngjujokull."

Bardarbunga is Iceland's largest volcanic system and is located under the ice cap of a glacier.

It is in a different range to Eyjafjallajokull, which erupted in 2010, throwing up a huge cloud of ash that caused massive disruption to air travel.

More than 100,000 flights were cancelled and the fear is that similar chaos will follow if Bardarbunga erupts.

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Ukraine Rebels Show Off Captives In Parade

Pro-Russian separatists marched Ukrainian prisoners through Donetsk in mockery of the country's Independence Day celebrations.

The rebels also displayed wreckage of Ukrainian military vehicles on a day the country had hoped to send a defiant message to the insurgents and Moscow.

A military parade was held in Kiev to mark the country's 23-year independence from the Soviet Union.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told a crowd of thousands the country would face a military threat "for the foreseeable future".

He also pledged $3bn (£1.8bn) to re-equip his nation's forces.

The Government held a military parade in the capital

"It is clear that in the foreseeable future, unfortunately, a constant military threat will hang over Ukraine," he said.

"And we need to learn not only to live with this, but also to be always prepared to defend the independence of our country."

But the march in Kiev was ridiculed by the rebels in their stronghold of Donetsk.

They paraded dozens of captured Ukrainian soldiers in front of a jeering crowd that shouted "fascists" and "get on your knees" at the dishevelled group.

The captives were followed by dustcarts to "clean" where they had walked.

It came as fighting continued to rage in eastern Ukraine between government troops and separatist fighters.

Mr Poroshenko has pledged to re-equip his nation's military

Earlier, shelling struck a hospital building in Donetsk.

Stunned patients, being treated in nearby buildings, looked on as separatist fighters inspected the scene.

Rocket attacks on Donetsk have become common as government forces seek to drive out the rebels, causing several hundred thousand civilians to flee.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Kiev on Saturday and pushed for a new ceasefire in crisis talks with Mr Poroshenko.

During her trip, Ms Merkel called for a "bilateral ceasefire and effective border controls" to help stop four months of fighting in Ukraine.

The bloody conflict in eastern Ukraine has killed an estimated 2,000 people

Her visit came ahead of crucial talks on Tuesday between Mr Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin alongside top EU officials.

Tensions surged on Friday when Russia sent a convoy of trucks it said was carrying aid to the rebel-held city Luhansk in an unauthorised move Kiev described as a "direct invasion".

The West sharply rebuked Russia over the convoy, which left on Saturday, with Washington describing it as a "dangerous escalation".

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British Man With Ebola On Flight Back To UK

Nigeria Confirms First 'Secondary' Ebola Cases

Updated: 8:47am UK, Sunday 24 August 2014

Ebola fears in Nigeria have heightened after two more people tested positive, despite having no contact with the man who brought the virus into the country.

The infected people are the spouses of a man and woman who had contact with Patrick Sawyer, the Liberian-American who died in July after flying into Abuja and infecting 11 others.

It comes as blood tests confirmed an Irish engineer who died on Thursday did not have ebola.

Dessie Quinn, 43, had been working in Sierra Leone, one of the countries struggling with the current outbreak.

Nigerian officials now have more than 200 potential ebola cases under "surveillance" after the discovery of the secondary infections.

"They were quarantined two days ago," said Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu.

"But the other ones that were quarantined along with them have been released.

"Those on treatment (in isolation) currently are four - two primary contacts, two secondary contacts. Presently altogether we have 213 on surveillance."

Patrick Sawyer, 40, died from ebola after becoming sick during a flight to Nigeria from the Liberian capital, Monrovia.

Two doctors, two nurses, and a man who picked him up from Abuja airport also died.

The World Health Organisation said earlier this week it was hopeful over the situation in Nigeria because all the cases there had come from a single chain of transmission.

The country now has 14 confirmed cases, including five deaths.

Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have suffered the worst from the outbreak, accounting for most of the 1,350 fatalities.

Liberian capital Monrovia, in particular, has seen chaotic scenes in recent days as ebola cases increase.

The local crematorium is struggling to burn the infected bodies and is having to send some back to the hospital, according to the Red Cross.

Troops have also fired tear gas to enforce a quarantine zone and prevent looting in the city's huge West Point slum.

A teenage boy, Shakie Kamara, has died after being shot by security forces earlier this week, Information Minister Lewis Brown said on Friday.

Senegal has become the latest country to lock down its border with an ebola-affected neighbour, closing its land border with Guinea.

Decisions to bar widespread use of an experimental ebola drug have caused controversy.

Two Americans, Kent Brantly, 33, and Nancy Writebol, 60, recovered after taking ZMapp, but there are no plans to send it to the heart of the outbreak.

Specialists believe the pair, who were treated in Atlanta, now pose "no public health threat" and will probably be immune to the disease.

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Iran Military 'Shoots Down Israeli Drone'

Iran's military says it has shot down an Israeli drone as it approached one of the country's nuclear sites.

Forces fired a missile at the drone as it neared a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, according to a statement on the Revolutionary Guards' website.

The statement said: "The downed aircraft was of the stealth, radar-evasive type and it intended to penetrate the off-limits nuclear area in Natanz... but was targeted by a ground-to-air missile before it managed to enter the area.

"This wily act further exposed the Zionist regime's adventurous temperament and added yet another black page to a record filled with crime and mischief."

The Revolutionary Guards did not say when the drone was shot or how they established it was Israeli.

Israel has not yet commented.

Natanz is 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of the capital Tehran

The incident comes as world powers negotiate with Iran over its contested nuclear program.

Tehran says its program is for peaceful purposes - but the West fears Iran is trying to establish itself as a nuclear power.

A deal struck last November saw sanctions eased in exchange for Iran limiting its uranium enrichment.

Israel has not ruled out taking military action against the country's nuclear facilities if its capability to build an atomic weapon progresses.

Iran's nuclear program has been the target of espionage and sabotage efforts in the past, notably in 2010 when the Natanz plant was struck by the so-called Stuxnet computer virus.

Since then, Iran has said it has discovered timed explosives planted on centrifuges, but disabled them before they could go off.

In 2011 Iran said it captured several American drones that violated its airspace.

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UK Close To Identifying James Foley's Killer

The British ambassador to the US says the UK is close to identifying the Islamic State (IS) militant who murdered an American journalist.

The extremist, believed to be British, beheaded James Foley in a video released last week.

Ambassador Peter Westmacott told CNN that "we are not far away" from identifying the masked killer and "we are putting a lot into it".

He added "sophisticated" technology, including voice recognition software, was being used by authorities to track him down.

The security services MI5 and MI6 have reportedly worked out the identity of the insurgent, dubbed "Jihadi John", who had an English accent. But no details have been disclosed.

The jihadist claimed the killing was in retaliation for US airstrikes on IS positions in northern Iraq. The Islamist militant group has taken over large parts of the country and also areas of Syria in recent months.

A hunt is taking place for Mr Foley's murderer

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the beheading was "an utter betrayal of everything the British people stand for".

Writing in the Sunday Times, he said it was horrifying that the perpetrator "could have been brought up in Britain".

He said the Government was investing "significant resources" to tackle "a barbaric ideology", warning if the IS militants are not stopped in Iraq and Syria "sooner or later they will seek to strike us on British soil".

Mr Hammond said the threat from Iraq and Syria would last a generation, echoing comments made by Home Secretary Theresa May as she announced plans to bring in new laws to tackle the threat of British jihadists.

But former shadow home secretary David Davis dismissed suggestions the new laws, dubbed asbos for terrorists, would prevent Britons fighting for IS, also known as ISIS and ISIL.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has warned of the extremist threat

Instead, he said, the jihadists should be stopped from returning to the UK and stripped of their citizenship.

Mr Davis said the Government's response to the crisis in Iraq had been "tentative, uncertain, almost limp".

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, also called for Britons fighting for IS in Iraq and Syria to lose their passports.

He wrote in the Mail on Sunday: "They should not have access to the privilege of travelling under a British passport... and they certainly should not be able to travel back with the barbaric and bloodthirsty skills they have gained."

The Home Office has insisted it would take the "strongest possible action" against people travelling to fight in Iraq and Syria.

A spokesman said: "The police, security services and Border Force are actively working to identify, detect and disrupt terrorist threats, including from British fighters attempting to return to the UK.

"They use a wide range of powers including those which allow them to detain and interview individuals at the UK border suspected of being involved in terrorism."

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