It took the jurors less than two days of deliberations to find Green guilty on all 17 criminal counts, which included rape, premeditated murder and obstruction of justice.

Three other soldiers were given life sentences in the March 2006 atrocity that was devised over whiskey and a game of cards at a traffic check point in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad.

Green, who was named as the ringleader, was tried in civil court after being discharged from the army due to a “personality disorder” before his role in the crime came to light.

While Green confessed to the slayings when army investigators were called to the scene the next day, the involvement of US soldiers did not come to light until stress counselors talked to the squad several months later.

Green’s mother, father and brother — who were not present during the trial at his request — are scheduled to testify on his behalf during the sentencing phase.

His attorney said the verdict was not a surprise because “we never denied his involvement in this case.

“The goal in this case has always been to save our client’s life,” Darren Wolff told reporters. “We’re going to go to the most important phase, which is the sentencing phase, and we’re going to accomplish that goal.”

Lead prosecutor Marisa Ford declined to speak to the media after the verdict was read.

She told jurors during closing arguments that the grueling conditions and tragic losses suffered by Green’s unit in no way excused his actions.

“The evidence in this case suggests the defendant was acting purposefully and intentionally with full knowledge of what he was doing,” Ford said.

She said Green and other soldiers changed their clothes and disguised their appearance to throw suspicion on insurgents.

They also burned the body of the 14-year-old girl, Abeer al-Janabi, and their own clothes to destroy any evidence that might link them to the crime, she said.

“This was a planned, premeditated crime which was carried out in cold blood,” Ford told the jurors.

But Green’s other defense attorney told the jury that the stresses of war had left the soldier a broken man in a strange world.

“Madness. Madness. That’s the only possible word,” Scott Wendelsdorf said in closing arguments Wednesday.

Wendelsdorf blamed the crime on the lack of leadership at Traffic Checkpoint 2, where Green served with the other soldiers involved in the crimes at the Janabi home.

“They didn’t come there as criminals,” he said. “They were made criminals at TCP 2.”

He noted that Green had been diagnosed as having Combat Operational Stress Disorder three months before the attack, and contended that former private first class James Barker and former specialist Paul Cortez took advantage of Green’s mental condition to carry out the crimes.

Jurors last week heard the stories of Cortez and Barker, both of whom admitted to going to the Janabi family home with Green.

The pair told jurors they raped Abeer, while Green took her six-year-old sister and her mother and father to another room, where he shot them to death.

Cortez testified that Green proceeded to rape Abeer and then placed a pillow over the girl’s face and shot her three times with an AK-47.

Private Jesse Spielman also received a life sentence for raping Janabi and participating in the murders while private Bryan Howard was sentenced to 27 months in jail for acting as a lookout.

Spielman, Barker and Cortez will be eligible for parole in ten years under military rules.

Ex US-soldier found guilty of rape, murder

The Book Search settlement, announced in October, followed a three-year battle over Google’s right to display copyrighted books on its Web site. The Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers claimed Google was violating copyrights by doing so. Google eventually agreed to pay $125 million to ensure authors and publishers could register to receive payments anytime their books were viewed within the service.

The deal is proving to be quite divisive, and now, with the Justice Department’s reported antitrust investigation, things could get even more dicey. Here’s a look at five key arguments from both sides of the debate.

Google’s Book Search Deal

Unlike the case of Napster, The Pirate bay doesn’t actually host the copyrighted files, it simply allows users to posts links to copyrighted files on third party servers. That’s why the they were charged of “assisting making available copyrighted material” instead of “assisting copyright infringement”

Could this be the end of torrent file sharing? And how about other torrent search engines, could they be next, If simply posting links to copyrighted materials can be charged of “assisting making available copyrighted materials”, surely there are many sites that fits this profile. One problem is, most of the links to copyrighted materials are posted by users and not necessarily the owners of site.

How about Online file sharing sites like rapidshare, megaupload, easyshare and others, Some of it’s users upload copyrighted materials, Even though they deleted files if found to be in violation of their terms of service. Problem is how to determine if the files are copyright, as most of the uploaded files are archived and renamed. Are the owners of the site also liable?

And One Big question, since Google, Yahoo, MSN Live.com also indexes copyrighted materials, are they also liable?

The Pirate Bay Verdict – Netcrunch

Ransom-hunting pirates equipped with skiffs, guns and grapnels took five ships in 48 hours, the two latest on Monday targeting a British cargo ship and a Taiwanese fishing vessel.

At least 17 ships and more than 250 hostages are now in pirate hands.

"There were two more hijackings today. There is one Italian-operated British-owned ship and a Taiwanese vessel near the Seychelles," an official involved in regional piracy monitoring told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The Seychelles government said it received a distress call saying that a Taiwanese fishing vessel, the MV Winfar 161, and its 29 crew was hijacked in its exclusive economic zone, north of Denis island.

Transport Minister Joel Morgan said military forces had been deployed to intercept the pirates, amid reports that three more Taiwanese ships were trying to escape capture.

The information centre of the European Union’s anti-piracy naval mission Atalanta confirmed the hijacking of the British Panama-flagged Malaspina Castle.

"A 32,000 tonne UK-owned and Italian-operated bulk carrier was hijacked early this morning in the Gulf of Aden … the mixed nationality crew are believed to be safe," it said.

The maritime administration in Sofia said 16 crew members were Bulgarians.

Ecoterra International, an environment group monitoring illegal marine activities in the region, reported that a French yacht was captured Saturday about 640 kilometres (400 miles) off Ras Hafun in northeast Somalia and was heading towards Somali Puntland.

The French foreign ministry said it was checking the report but Ecoterra said brief satellite phone contact was made with the 12.3-metre-long sloop on Sunday.

A source close to the investigation in France said two couples and a three-year-old boy had been onboard the yacht, called the Tanit, which had left in July for the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar.

A blog believed to belong to one of the couples onboard spoke of the risks, with one recent entry saying they had begun traveling with no lights at night.

"We are in the middle of the risk zone for piracy, however nothing to report," it said.

An earlier post said: "The danger exists, and it has undoubtedly grown in recent months, but the ocean is vast. The pirates must not ruin our dream."

Hundreds of ransom-hunting Somali pirates have hijacked dozens of ships over the past year, mostly merchant vessels plying one of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes.

They operate from skiffs towed by pirate "mother ships", which are often hijacked fishing vessels. Last year, their haul included a Ukrainian cargo loaded with combat tanks and a Saudi supertanker.

More than 130 attacks, including close to 50 successful hijackings, were reported in 2008, threatening the vital shipping lane and spurring the international community into joint naval action.

France has shown itself ready to intervene in past incidents. On September 15, French special forces stormed the Carre d’As, a yacht carrying a retired French couple captured by pirates two weeks earlier.

French commandos also went after pirates who had just released the luxury yacht Le Ponant in April 2008.

On Sunday, a Kenya-based maritime official confirmed pirates had also seized a German container vessel.

The ship was taken Saturday about 400 nautical miles from the Somali coast, between Kenya and the Seychelles, said Andrew Mwangura, of the East African Seafarers Assistance Programme.

The prosecutor’s office in the German city of Hamburg confirmed five of the 24 crew members were Germans.

Ecoterra also reported that an Indian cargo, the Shehenshah-e-Medina, and its 18 crew were recently released by Somali pirates after being held for close to a week.

The group’s statement quoted Ahmed Bhaya, secretary of the Salaya Vessel Owners Association, as saying that the ship, which was not carrying any cargo, was hijacked on March 30.

It said that pirates captured a Yemeni tugboat, the Al-Ghaith, and its seven crew on Sunday.

The number of attacks had dipped since the start of the year, owing to an increased international naval presence and unfavourable seas.

But some pirate groups have ventured far into the Indian Ocean, southeast of Somalia, to target ships further out at sea.

Somali pirates on hijacking spree

A Pentagon spokesman told AFP that F-16 fighter jets from NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) responded to a violation of US airspace, intercepting the plane that had been reported stolen from an airport in Ontario, Canada.

"They intercepted the small Cessna at approximately 4:43 (pm) Eastern time" (2043 GMT), the Pentagon official said, adding that the pilot flew the aircraft "erratically" and failed to respond to efforts from the fighter jets to establish contact.

"The plane was coming from Thunder Bay, Ontario. It entered US airspace around 3:25 Eastern time and was unresponsive," the Pentagon spokesman said.

Officials said the pursuit traversed the states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois, before the unidentified pilot eventually landed the aircraft on a highway in central Missouri.

"After intercept, the pilot acknowledged the fighters but was unresponsive to specific non-verbal commands. US Customs Border Protection aircraft intercepted the Cessna as well, but the F-16s followed the aircraft until it landed in an area … northwest of Poplar Bluff, Missouri, at 9:45 pm EDT," (0145 GMT Tuesday) NORAD added in a statement.

Military officials said the pilot was in the custody late Monday of local authorities in Missouri.

US jets chase stolen Canada plane

The 2005 crash at sea off Sicily left survivors swimming for their lives, some clinging to a piece of the fuselage that remained floating after the ATR turbo-prop aircraft splintered upon impact.

A fuel-gauge malfunction was partly to blame but prosecutors also said the pilot succumbed to panic, praying out loud instead of following emergency procedures and then opting to crash-land the plane instead trying to reach a nearby airport.

Another five employees of Tuninter, a subsidiary of Tunisair, were sentenced to between eight and nine years in jail by the court, in a verdict handed down Monday.

The seven accused, who were not in court, will not spend time in jail until the appeals process has been exhausted.

Crash pilot who paused to pray is convicted

According to The Guardian

In a shock move on the third day of his trial, the 73-year-old calmly pleaded guilty to all of the charges against him, including negligent homicide and enslavement. He had already admitted four of the charges against him: incest, rape, coercion and false imprisonment.

ritzl’s lawyer suggested his change of heart came as a result of the psychological impact of yesterday’s gruelling court session, in which he watched a recording of Elisabeth giving evidence.

“All I know is that he asked to see a psychiatrist in his cell [after hearing yesterday's testimony] and after that decided to give a full confession,” Rudolf Mayer told the Guardian.

Responding to reports that Elisabeth had been in court in person yesterday and today watching proceedings from an adjacent room especially set up for victims of sexual attacks, Mayer said he could not confirm that because it would breach the rules of in camera proceedings.

“You can draw your own conclusions from that. I’m the wrong person to ask. If she was there [yesterday], it could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, in terms of his confession,” he told the Guardian.

Today, a 30-strong scrum of photographers followed a van leaving the court after the case was adjourned. The vehicle reportedly contained Elisabeth.

For the first time in the trial, Fritzl arrived in the courtroom without covering his face with a blue folder.

Opening the proceedings, the judge, Andrea Humer, said she wanted to return to Elisabeth’s testimony from yesterday.

“Do you have anything to say to me?” Humer asked Fritzl. “I recognise that I am guilty,” he responded, adding, “I regret it.”

“Why are you saying that now?” asked Humer. “Because of the videotape testimony of my daughter,” said Fritzl.

Referring to the murder charge, Humer asked why Fritzl had not done more to help his newborn baby boy, Michael, who died from breathing difficulties shortly after being born in the cellar in 1996.

“Did you not realise he was gravely ill?”

Fritzl responded: “I just overlooked it. I thought the baby was going to survive. I should have realised. It was only yesterday I realised for the first time how cruel I was to Elisabeth. I had never realised it before.”

Fritzl had previously admitted burning the child’s body in an incinerator in his back garden, but had denied he was responsible for its death. The surviving twin, Alexander, was one of three of Elisabeth’s seven children who “appeared” above ground at the Fritzls’ house in Amstetten, west of Vienna. Alexander was the last of the three children to be raised by Fritzl and his wife, Rosemarie.

Fritzl also changed his plea from partial to full guilt on the rape charge and admitted the enslavement charge.

For the first two days of his trial, Fritzl had also denied that he enslaved Elisabeth in the purpose-built cellar he constructed under his own home.

The jury has been told that Elisabeth was imprisoned under Ybbsstrasse 40 at the age of 18. Her father forced her into the cellar on 29 August 1984 after putting a cloth over her nose and mouth. He then secured a chain around her stomach so she could not escape. The next day he raped her. As she bore his children over the next 24 years, he repeatedly raped her in front of them, the court heard.

Christiane Burkheiser, the prosecuting lawyer, described the cellar as Fritzl’s ­”playground”, where he used his daughter like a “toy”.

The case was adjourned until tomorrow morning. The eight members of the jury, assisted by three judges, will decide the sentence after hearing closing statements. Fritzl is likely to spend the rest of his life in jail.

Josef Fritzl: the man who held his daughter captive for 24 years pleads guilty

The latest hoaxes came after it was separately revealed that the perpetrator of Wednesday’s bloodbath, Tim Kretschmer, had probably not given an Internet warning — contrary to what investigators had previously been led to believe.

Those behind the message that officials initially believed was a chilling warning by Kretschmer — citing weapons and intent to go to his old school in Winnenden — have yet to be discovered.

German police in Lower Saxony, hundreds of kilometres (miles) from the scene of Wednesday’s rampage, said they arrested a 21-year-old man after he boasted in a chat room that he would carry out a similar crime.

“I have a gun and I’m going to kill everybody,” read the message.

The man, who has not been named and who faces up to three years in jail or a fine, said that it was meant “as a joke.”

French police dealt with a similar scare, arresting at 6:00 am (0500 GMT) an 18-year-old youth after he too posted a “joke” website warning of a shooting spree at a school in the Paris suburbs.

“In Raincy (high school) there will be blood — I have weapons,” this message read.

In the Netherlands, an 18-year-old man was arrested at 4:00 am (0300 GMT) in Rijsbergen for a similar warning posted on a US website, police sources said.

The teen was arrested at home after having been traced through the IP address of his computer, said a police statement. He admitted to being the author.

And on Thursday, Swedish police took in for questioning a 17-year-old suspected of posting a picture of himself posing with a weapon on an Internet forum, along with a threatening message against a high school.

On Friday, a school at Ilsfed, near the scene of Wednesday’s killing, was cordoned off and searched by police after another Internet threat, but it turned out to be a false alert, local police spokesman Roberto Monaci told AFP.

Dressed in black combat gear and armed with a gun taken from his father’s bedroom, Kretschmer shot dead eight girls, one boy and three female teachers at his old school.

He then killed a passer-by outside a psychiatric clinic where he had been due to receive treatment, hijacked a car and shot two others at a car dealership.

By this time hundreds of armed commandos were on his trail, some in helicopters, and Kretschmer died in a shootout with police around 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the school. Police believe he shot himself.

The interior minister of the state where this took place said on Friday that the 17-year-old — described as unremarkable and reserved if socially awkward and suffering from depression — had announced his intentions on the Internet.

But on Friday the minister, Heribert Rech, admitted that he had been duped.

“Some crazy person obviously put out this dreadful false message,” Rech said. “It must have been made up afterwards.”

After analysing Kretschmer’s computer, on which he had spent hours playing “shoot-em-up” video games, a spokesman for local police said no trace had been found of the message.

The picturesque town near Stuttgart was still in a state of shock on Friday, with people laying flowers and candles outside the Albertville secondary school, which remained closed.

Chancellor Angela Merkel will attend a memorial service on March 21 in the town, her spokesman said on Friday.

Two policemen injured in Wednesday’s car park shootout were still in hospital, as were five pupils from the school, police said. Some the pupils had gunshot wounds and others had broken bones after jumping out of windows.

Hoax arrests across Europe after German massacre

Documents filed by defence lawyers estimate that Madoff and his wife, Ruth, have assets worth between $823m and $826m (£589m to £591m) including four homes, four boats, a share in a private jet and a Steinway piano. To maintain their properties, they are burning through cash at a rate of $346,757 a month.

In a filing to the US appeals court, Madoff’s lawyer, Ira Sorkin, says his client was fully co-operative with the terms of his release before judge Denny Chin jailed him on Thursday.

Sorkin says the judge’s description of Madoff as a “flight risk” is “clearly erroneous”, pointing out that he made no attempt at escaping during three months under house arrest even though he was “always cognisant of the fact that he would die in prison”.

Sorkin says Madoff and his wife have told the US government that they are “willing to relinquish many of their assets”.

Details of the couple’s wealth are unlikely to please Madoff’s victims. The financier has in effect been living off the proceeds of crime for nearly two decades, having admitted in court that he began operating his investment firm as a Ponzi scheme as far back as the early 1990s.

The couple’s flat on Manhattan’s upper east side is valued at $4m, while a house in the millionaires’ playground of the Hamptons is worth $1.58m. A Palm Beach getaway has a price tag of $2.46m and a property in the French resort of Antibes is pegged at $900,000. They keep a $7m yacht named Bull on a $1.5m boatslip near their house on the Côte d’Azur. Another boat, Sitting Bull, is worth $320,000 while a vessel in Florida described as a “Rybovich fishing boat” is valued at $2.2m.

Madoff’s lawyers say they need constant access to him so that he can help compensate his victims: “Mr Madoff’s contribution to this effort could be severely hampered, if not altogether eliminated, if he is remanded.”

Much debate has centred around what Madoff’s wife can legitimately keep. Most of the property is in her name and despite her husband’s change of fortunes, she continues to lease a BMW, has jewellery worth $2.6m and plays a $39,000 piano.
Rich list

Bernard Madoff and his wife, Ruth, have assets including:

$7m Manhattan penthouse apartment

$3m Beach residence in the Hamptons

$11m Palm Beach holiday house

$7m A Leopard yacht called Bull”

$39,000 Steinway piano

$2.6m Jewellery

$12m 50% share in a private jet

$21,717 His current account balance

$17m Her current account balance

Madoff appeals for bail and reveals wife’s huge fortune

Outside were many more, and they still represented only the tip of an iceberg that is thought to comprise thousands of Madoff victims around the globe, from retirees and celebrities to some of the richest people in the world.

Hollywood mogul Steven Spielberg, whose net worth this year was estimated at $3 billion, lost some of his philanthropic dollars to Madoff, according to a 162-page list compiled by AlixPartners, a restructuring firm tasked with helping liquidate Madoff’s investment company.

Several billionaires, as well as foundations or companies funded by or associated with billionaires, were also included. Among them: First Manhattan Co., a private investment firm founded by long-time Warren Buffett associate David Gottesman.

Gottesman, who sits on the board of Berkshire Hathaway, was worth an estimated $1.8 billion when we priced our list of the wealthiest Americans this year. Last year he was listed at $2.5 billion.

Art collector Norman Braman, 76, who made his first appearance on the Forbes 400 in 2008, with a net worth of $1.7 billion after a frothy run-up in the value of his contemporary art collection, is also among those cited in the who’s who of Madoff victims. Today, we estimate, he is worth $1.2 billion.

In December, Braman told Katie Couric of CBS News he had known Madoff for years and had invested a “considerable amount” of money with him. “I want to see him pay for what he has done to all these people,” he told Couric.

Nobel Peace Prize recipient and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel is another who has been vocal about Madoff’s betrayal, reportedly referring to him as “a crook” and “evil.” In a statement in December, the nonprofit Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity admitted to having “$15.2 million under management with Bernard Madoff Investment Securities”–an amount that represented substantially all of the foundation’s assets.

Not named directly in the February bankruptcy filing: real estate billionaire Mort Zuckerman, whose net worth has fallen from $2.3 billion to $1.5 billion in the last 12 months. He told Erin Burnett on CNBC three months ago that his charitable foundation lost $30 million via Madoff investments. Zuckerman, however, said that the money was being managed by an outside financial adviser and that he had no knowledge that the foundation was invested with Madoff until he was told after the story broke late last year.

Also not named but believed to have been affected by the Ponzi scheme were Alicia Koplowitz, who was considered Spain’s richest woman last year but lost half her fortune in the past year, and fugitive financier Marc Rich.

Other reported celebrity victims include baseball star Sandy Koufax and New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon. Actors Kevin Bacon and his wife Kyra Sedgwick, as well as John Malkovich and Zsa Zsa Gabor were also among the many believed to be defrauded.

“I thought it would end quickly, but it proved impossible,” said Madoff, before being remanded to jail and facing a possible 150-year sentence. “I am ashamed for these criminal acts. I always knew this day would come.”

Bernie Madoff’s Billionaire Victims