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UN Security Council to vote on Syria as Homs suffers
Yet another crackdown on the city of Homs has left at least 217 people dead, claims the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Syrian forces are said to have used artillery and mortars, killing 138 in a district of Homs called Khalidiya. This came on the same day people commemorated the death of more than 10,000 people who died when the government put down an Islamist uprising in Hama in 1982. The United Nations Security Council is expected to vote on a resolution on Saturday, asking President Bashar al-Assad to hand power over to his deputy. However, it is unclear whether Russia – which has significant ties to Syria – will use its veto. More about: Bashar al-Assad, Clashes and riots, Syria, UN Security Council, United Nations

NATO report dismissed as ‘old wine in even older bottles’
The Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar has dismissed as ‘old wine in even older bottles’, the NATO report leaked by media sources in Britain which has claimed her country supported the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. “I don’t think these claims are new, these claims have been made for many many years. I think I can just disregard this as potentially a strategic leak or otherwise,” she told a press conference in Kabul after a meeting with the Afghanistan president. The Taliban, its claimed in the report are set to take control of Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw. Analysts believe it could be seen as a damning assessment of the war which is now in its 11th year. Concrete links between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence the ISI and the Taliban have been dismissed in Islamabad. “There may be some sort of indirect contact, some sort of business relationship between certain segments of the ISI and the Pakistan military and the Taliban. But to suggest that there is a formal relationship , a formal channel of support between the ISI and the Taliban, I think it’s pretty much preposterous,” said Imtiaz Gul, Chairman of Centre for Research and Security Studies in Islamabad. The leaked report comes at what many believe is a sensitive time. Pakistan is already blocking the supply route to coalition forces in Afghanistan, following a NATO attack in which 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed. More about: Afghanistan, NATO, Pakistan, Taliban

Fears for blogger after extradition
Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari has been deported from Malaysia back to Saudi Arabia. The 23-year-old columnist had sparked outrage following controversial Twitter comments on the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed which were seen to be insulting. The columnist had fled the oil-rich kingdom and was arrested in transit through Kuala Lumpur airport on Thursday. Malaysia and Saudi have close ties. Some Islam clerics had called for him to face the death penalty. Blasphemy is a crime punishable by execution under Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law. It is not a capital crime in Malaysia. Human rights groups have protested. Adding to the controversy is a claim his lawyer had obtained a court order preventing deportation, but had not been allowed to see his client. More about: extradition, Freedom of speech, Internet, Islam, Saudi Arabia, social network

Spanish jobs reform plan looms
Spain is approaching more hard decisions about jobs. This Friday, the conservative government of Mariano Rajoy is scheduled to announce its reform plan for the labour market. Spain has five million people out of work. Jobs minister F??tima B???�ez says the priority is to stop employment destruction, notably, to somehow prevent companies from laying people off. This seems a tall order, looking at the trend in Spain since 2008. This year the country is set to have 5.2 million jobless, with a recession likely. The forecast is for average 23% unemployment. Look at the case of Villaca?�as, in central Spain, not far south of Madrid. It went from full employment, producing most of the country’s doors, to 23% unemployment. Here is a company, Visel, that has had to tell its 800 employees not to come back – the same story for half the factories in town. Former general manager Raimundo Garc?�a said: “We grew till we were selling a million doors per year, pulled along by the property bubble.” Since 2008, Spain has seen 2.7 million jobs swept away, 55% of them in the building trades. It had been easy to find work, but then many people who had left school early found themselves underskilled and undereducated. In Villaca?�as, 93% of the work pool have only basic elementary school qualifications. Now that so many are out of a job, it is a problem. Adult night schools are thriving, as people scramble to catch up. The government has also announced it is reforming professional training. It plans to guarantee access to work-based learning for life. More about: Economic crisis, Jobs, Spain, Unemployment

Julian Assange makes fresh extradition appeal
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will ask Britain’s Supreme Court on Wednesday to quash a decision to extradite him to Sweden. Swedish prosecutors want Assange to answer allegations that he sexually assaulted two women who once worked for his website. The case comes after a lower court rejected an appeal to block his extradition. The claims came to light at a time when WikiLeaks faced intense scrutiny from Washington for publishing secret US diplomatic cables. Assange says the charges are politically motivated and fears Sweden plans to extradite him to the United States. He may take his case to the European Court of Human Rights if this appeal fails. The 40-year-old faces other legal woes: his former lawyers are suing him in a separate case over unpaid fees. More about: Julian Assange, Justice, Sweden, United Kingdom, WikiLeaks

Racism row rocks parliament in France
Furore in the French parliament as MPs from the ruling centre-right party walked out in protest after an opposition member appeared to compare the interior minister’s stance to that of the Nazis. Serge Letchimy, a socialist ally representing Martinique, attacked Claude Gueant over his comments that not all civilisations were equal. He accused him of implying that some were superior, a negation of humanity’s richness. “Mr Gueant, you are dragging us back to the days of those European ideologies which gave birth to the concentration camps. Mr Gueant, the Nazi regime – so worried about purification – was that a civilisation?” said Letchimy. The row comes amid heightened pre-election tension. Claude Gueant has been accused of trying to woo potential far-right voters with its hardline on immigration and Muslim issues. Later on French television the socialist presidential candidate for the Elysee Francois Hollande refused to condemn his colleague. “What I disapprove of is this useless controversy. It’s these wounding divisions, it’s this strife… do you realise an interior minister who should be putting the country in order, that’s his peaceful mission, has just fanned the flames of division and discord, that’s enough!” said Francois Hollande. French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who employed Gueant as a close aide before making him interior minister, trails his socialist rival by eight points according to one poll this week. With the National Front leader Marine Le Pen running a close third, those right wing votes could be decisive in April’s election. More about: France, French politics, Nazism, Parliamentary debate, Racism

Florida hot to vote
Political commentator Cokie Roberts spoke to euronews on the context of Tuesday’s Republican Party primary vote in Florida. Adrian Lancashire, euronews: Florida is a turning point in deciding who the Republicans will pick to run against Barack Obama for the US presidency. Contenders have been eliminated. Voters have narrowed the race to Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, two very different men. What does this tell us about the Republican establishment? Cokie Roberts: Well, the Republican establishment such as it is has weighed in very heavily against Newt Gingrich. I have really never seen anything quite like it,with former politicians, former Republican nominees like Bob Dole, who was the candidate in 1996, and John McCain who was the candidate in 2008, just saying really strong things against Newt Gingrich. And it seems to be having an effect, that plus money, which Mitt Romney has a great deal of, have him running well ahead of Gingrich in the latest polls in Florida. euronews: The economy is the biggest concern in this election but the US is still connected with the outside world. Foreign policy doves may vote Democrat; hawks may vote Republican. What actions by the US or other countries – say Iran, Syria or Afghanistan – could affect the course of the election? Cokie Roberts: Well you know foreign policy will not really be an issue unless it is. That is what we normally see here is that the economy particularly a bad economy such as we still have, is what voters care most about, unless some big foreign policy issue strikes them in the face. And generally that involves having American troops abroad, or a disaster such as September 11. So, at the moment it is not clear that Iran or Afghanistan would play much of a role at all in this election. But that could change overnight, and that is one of the things that frightens candidates so much because they really can not control that; they could be on course to be doing very well in an election and then some big foreign policy event can blow up and change the entire course of the campaign. We saw that in the off year election in 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and changed the outcome of several congressional races. euronews: There is still no political agreement on how to solve America’s huge debt and deficit. Between Obama and those who want his job, is it clear yet where the voters see the most realistic promise? Roberts: You know it is really interesting: hardly anyone is even talking about the debt and the deficit. The president gave his big state of the union speech last week and we never heard those words. It was remarkable. Obviously, it is still an enormous problem in this country, as it is in Europe, and there are still voices calling on the president and congress to take stern action but they have really not talked about it much at all. It is of course not something that anyone much wants to talk about because all of the solutions are unpleasant. It is either cut programmes that people like or raise taxes that people don’t like. euronews: The two leading Republicans have toned down their rhetoric gradually… only for it to spike, occasionally. Will this continue? Roberts: Newt Gingrich’s rhetoric over the weekend and this morning has been just as hot as it can be. He is now running so far behind Mitt Romney in the Florida polling that he is really going all out to attack Romney as a ‘Massachusetts Moderate’, which in Republican terms is not a good thing, saying that Romney is way too close to Barack Obama in his views, and really going after his honesty and integrity. So I think that we are seeing it heat up again. euronews: What is the next big electoral day for us to watch, is it in early March? Roberts: Yes, we have after this spate of January activity a quiet time after the Florida primary, where there are some little caucuses where people decide what they want to do about a candidate in a variety of states. At the very end of February, there are big primaries in Michigan and Arizona, and then March 6. It is so-called ‘Super Tuesday’, where a lot of states hold their contest, and so that is the next really big one coming up. More about: Barack Obama, Florida, Mitt Romney, Republicans, USA presidential elections 2012

Our private lives on the web
Protecting our personal data has never been more important, amid the growing threat of cybercrime and identity theft. ??? Many feel we have lost control over who knows what about us online. Our exact location can even now be tracked. The notion of a private life has changed, as hundreds of millions connect on social networking sites. But what happens to all that information? Austrian law student Max Schrems tried to find out. He was surprised when Facebook agreed to send him more than 1200 pages of data it had about him, even stuff he had long deleted. Schrems made 22 complaints to the data protection commissioner in Dublin, where Facebook in Europe is based, and where an audit was already planned. “A lot of very sensitive information was in there,” said Schrems. “So, for example, there were all my deleted messages in there. And by just searching individual words – you can type in for example all the political parties that exist in Austria – and within a blink of a second you know what I was voting for, or which I’m in favour of, because of course I was discussing in private chats with other people about, I don’t know, recent political developments. “But all that is retained for three, four, five years, or probably 10 years in the end,” he added. “And that is something that is really new, that one individual company holds that much information about one individual user. And I do think that a lot of it is not very transparent and communicated to the user in a way that they really understand that.” Euronews reporter Seamus Kearney said that as a result of the investigation carried out in Dublin, Facebook has agreed to a number of changes on its website to meet privacy rules. Richard Allan, the Director of Policy at Facebook told euronews: “We are a service where people come and voluntarily disclose information to the service. They post it on the service in full knowledge of what they’re doing, because we have a very comprehensive data use policy and very clear information actually on the site about what you’re going to be sharing and who you’re going to be sharing it with. “And we do have facilities … we’ve always had facilities … for people to be able to remove the data once they no longer want it to be on their profile,” he added. “So we feel the service was absolutely in compliance with the principles that the European Union data protection framework is based on. But what the Irish have done is come in and suggest areas where we can make that even more effective than today.” But the case goes on. Both sides are in face-to-face talks, with Irish officials under pressure to formally rule on the complaints. Surveys show that more than 70 per cent of Europeans are worried about what happens to their data online. Brussels is proposing a reform of regulations drawn up 17 years ago, sparking widespread debate. The changes would include one set of EU rules, bigger fines for breaches, more informed consent and greater delete options with a so-called right to be forgotten. Users would also have easier access to their data, with the right to transfer it from one service provider to another. User groups cautiously welcome the plan. Falk Lueke from the group Digital Society in Germany said: “In principle I would always approve the rules because they’re highly necessary. The crucial question of course is how will it take shape, and there are also a few smaller problems, where it is not yet clear how they could be regulated in detail. But this is something that will be dealt with in the consultation that’s planned.” The Director of Privacy International, Simon Davies, said: “Well, some of the changes are long awaited and they’re much needed. They fall short in some respects, because it’s still the case that privacy in Europe is based on trust. And it doesn’t matter how hard the commission tries to enforce privacy, while the willingness is not there from industry and government, we’re still going to end up in a surveillance society.” But officials in Brussels say national data agencies would have more powers and citizens would expect them to act. Paul Nemitz, the Fundamental Rights Director at the European Commission, told euronews: “And if the laws are not enforced, then the natural ally of European integration, of European law, namely the national judge, comes into play. Because the national authorities, if they don’t act, they can be made to act by citizens who turn to the courts and say ‘Here is European law, I want my right, I want this authority to act’.” Google is also caught up in big controversy over its privacy policies. The company was not available for an interview, but its Global Privacy Counsel, Peter Fleischer, did give euronews the following statement: “We support simplifying privacy rules in Europe to both protect consumers online and stimulate economic growth. It is possible to have simple rules that do both. We look forward to debating the proposals.” And what about automatic profiling, the collecting of data for targeted advertising, for example? Or profiling used to track down people suspected of breaking the law? J?�rg Polakiewicz, the head of the human rights department at the Council of Europe, said: “Some people say it’s only about wrong decisions, because it’s based on automatically generated profiles, that the risk of course is mistaken identity, that you’re taken for a terrorist, arrested, maybe even tortured in extreme cases. But in the Council of Europe we think it’s not only about these extreme cases of discrimination but also it’s really a human right, that you have the right to control your data.” But one company whose products are used for profiling reckons the technology itself is not the issue. John Boswell, the Vice President of SAS data analysis, said: “Where I think the EU should be focused is on making sure that only appropriate decisions are made, not focusing on how those decisions are made, what technology is used. No one is in favour of discrimination, no one is in favour of making bad decisions. Whether those are made personally or through the use of a computer shouldn’t matter, and so I think the focus on automated profiling is misdirected.” Euronews’ Seamus Kearney reported that some experts believe the greatest threat to privacy in the future is the rapid development of location tracking systems, via mobile devices that pinpoint and memorise our exact location. For now questions over consent and who can access, share and store the localisation data remain unanswered. And experts are looking into whether some kind of private zones can be established. User options are also very complex. Maria Luisa Damiani, a computer scientist at the University of Milan said: “A fundamental problem is trying to understand what mechanisms we can use to make protection of privacy technology easy to use. Because we can’t imagine users constantly having to reset the privacy settings on their smartphone or ipad every time they use an application. There are so many applications.” But to worry about internet privacy does not mean staying in the shadows. Max Schrems, for example, still logs on to Facebook. “The thing is, what we wanted to do is improve Facebook and not just abandon it somehow,” he said. “So we’re kind of having the idea that data protection makes you trust more in the services and therefore you can use them more. And so what was very important to us was to have this positive attitude, improving the things, instead of just ignoring them.” More about: European Union, Internet, Justice