German Islamist spy was Spanish gay porn actor

The bizarre story of a spy for Germany's domestic secret service who was revealed to be an Islamist got even stranger when media reported on Wednesday that he was also once a gay porn star.

Both Bild and the Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the 51-year-old former employee of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) had appeared in gay porn movies before his conversion to Islam in 2014.
According to Bild, agents found the pornographic films in which he appeared while searching his home. The material is not of relevance to the investigation, but will remain a footnote to what is fast becoming the most surreal spy scandal in modern German history.
DPA reports that this is the first time that the BfV has found an Islamist among its agents.
Bild reports that the man was originally from Spain, but had later become a German citizen. Also a father of four children, he had hidden his radicalization from his family.
The agency said on Tuesday that the man had "made Islamist remarks online under a false name, and had offered internal information during online chats".
His chat partner was believed to be another BfV employee. According to the Washington Post, he gave away such precise information that the agents were quickly able to identify him and arrested him the next day.
German media had reported that he was believed to have been planning a bombing at the BfV headquarters in the western city of Cologne.
Der Spiegel and Die Welt said the suspect had partially admitted to the allegations by making references to bomb attacks carried out "in the name of Allah".
But a BfV spokeswoman told AFP that she could not confirm media reports that he was plotting an attack, saying there was no "evidence of a real danger to the office or its workers".
The Washington Post reported that a senior official from the BfV said those who interviewed the man say he may have been mentally ill, and perhaps even had multiple personalities, raising questions about how he could have been employed in the first place.

Fugitive British sex offender arrested in Benidorm

Spanish police said on Friday that they have arrested a British fugitive who was convicted in Britain of raping two teenage boys.

Officers arrested the unidentified man on Monday in Benidorm on Spain's eastern coast less than 24 hours after a European arrest warrant was issued for him, police said in a statement.
Spanish police said he fled to Spain after it was discovered that he sexually abused two brothers aged 14 and 16 on 22 occasions in Britain between 2007 and 2010.
"The fugitive befriended the victims' parents, who allowed him to spend time with their sons, unaware of the sexual acts the boys were subjected to," the statement said.
A British court sentenced the man in absentia to 43 years in jail for six counts of rape and several counts of sexual assault on the minors.   
Spanish police had already detained him for possession of a  "huge amount" of child pornography which he shared online.

Putin Willing to Cooperate with Trump to Fight Terrorism

MOSCOW – The Russian president said on Thursday that he is ready to cooperate with the administration of United States President-elect Donald Trump in the fight against international terrorism.

During his annual State of the Nation Address to the Federal Assembly, President Vladimir Putin said “We hope to unite our forces with the United States in the fight against the real threat, not the fictional one – international terrorism.”

Putin emphasized that he is not interested in disputes or making new enemies, and wants to normalize relations with the U.S. based on commitment “to a friendly, equal dialogue, to upholding the principles of justice and mutual respect in international affairs.”

He also said that U.S.-Russia cooperation to solve global and regional issues responds to the interests of the whole world.

Putin highlighted that this task is also fulfilled by Russian soldiers fighting in Syria, and warned that “attempts to upset the strategic balance are extremely dangerous and could lead to a global catastrophe.”

As for the European Union, the head of the Kremlin said he is prepared for a dialogue to create a Eurasian union.

The Russian leader also shed light on strengthening the cooperation with Asian countries, especially China and India, but denied that this would dictate a cooling of relations with the United States or the European Union.

3 Turkish Soldiers Killed in PKK Guerrilla Attack

ISTANBUL - Three Turkish soldiers were killed and three others wounded on Friday in clashes with Kurdistan Workers' Party fighters in Hakkari province, southeastern Turkey, according to security forces.

Several PKK fighters were also injured in the crossfire, according to the semi-official Anadolu news agency.

Security forces told Anadolu that the operation was ongoing on Güven mountain with the support of the Turkish air force.

Meanwhile, Turkish police arrested 16 suspected PKK members in Gaziantep province, near the Syrian border.

The PKK and the Turkish government suspended in July 2015 a ceasefire which lasted more than two years, and thousands of Kurdish fighters and hundreds of Turkish soldiers have died since.

China's Top Court Rules a Man Executed 21 Years ago Was Innocent

BEIJING - China's Supreme Court Friday revoked the sentence of a man, executed 21 years ago for raping and killing a woman in the northern Hebel province, after another man confessed to the crime.

Nie Shubin was executed in 1995 at the age of 21 years and the case resurfaced in 2005 when Wang Shujin admitted he had committed the crime.

In 2014, the Supreme Court decided to review the case and on Friday concluded that Nie was innocent.

The evidence used to sentence Nie was neither sufficient nor accurate and did not meet the conditions for a sentence, according to a statement by the court.

Nie confessed to the crime just a few days after his arrest although it appears he did it under pressure while in custody, his lawyer had said at the time.

In the statement, the Supreme Court says there are doubts regarding the veracity and legality of Nie's confession, which in principle corroborated the other evidence.

The court's decision was received with some bitterness by Nie's family, who has been proclaiming his innocence in the courts and his mother told a local daily that she was happy with the decision but that it had come too late.

In its latest report Amnesty International reported that torture continues to be a part of police routines in China, which has a very high percentage of sentences and the highest number of executions in the world, according to human rights groups.

"The overturning of the original verdict is a very positive move, and shows how some within the Chinese government - especially the Supreme People's Court - are willing to correct historic injustices," AI researcher William Nee said.

"However, this case also illustrates that the death penalty as currently applied in China is still flawed and prone to mistakes. The only way to truly ensure that tragic cases like Nie Shubin don't recur, is to stop tinkering with the machinery of death, and abolish the death penalty," he told EFE.

Trump Claims He Won Popular Vote, If “Illegal” Votes for Clinton Are Deducted

WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump claimed Sunday that he not only won the electoral vote but the popular vote as well, if the “millions” of “illegal” votes cast for his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in the Nov. 8 election are deducted from the tally.

“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” wrote Trump on Twitter, referring to the vote recount effort in three states being headed by Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.

In the Nov. 8 election, Trump apparently garnered at least 270 electoral votes, which technically is all that is required to win the presidency regardless of whether or not a candidate wins the popular vote.

Trump won 290 electoral votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232, with the votes from Michigan still untallied, although Clinton beat the New York mogul by at least two million votes in the popular vote.

In his tweet, one of several that Trump has fired off in the wake of the Clinton campaign’s stating it will “participate” in the recount effort, the magnate offered no proof of the alleged irregularities he claims took place in the voting, although he said that it would have been much easier for him to win the popular vote if he had limited his campaign to three or four states.

“It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4 -- states instead of the 15 states that I visited. I would have won even more easily and convincingly (but smaller states are forgotten)!” said Trump in two separate tweets.

Trump said earlier Sunday on Twitter that “nothing will change” as a result of the recount campaign, adding that Clinton “conceded the election when she called me just prior to (my) victory speech and after the results were in.”

In addition, the next day, Clinton telephoned Trump to say that “we have to accept the results and look to the future,” he said, paraphrasing what she had said in one of the presidential debates.

“So much time and money will be spent – same result! Sad,” the president-elect went on to say, via Twitter.

This is the first time that Trump has claimed that illegal votes were cast for Clinton, while all during the campaign he had stated that the election was going to be “rigged” against him and threatened that he might not acknowledge the results if he lost.

According to the latest vote tally, Clinton obtained 64.22 million votes to Trump’s 62.21 million.

Stein’s campaign last Wednesday launched a fundraising effort to finance vote recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, all of which Trump apparently won by narrow margins.

Wisconsin announced on Friday that it will conduct a vote recount in response to the formal request presented by Stein and another independent presidential candidate Rocky De La Fuente.

According to the Green candidate’s campaign, there is “compelling evidence of anomalies” in voting in the three states in question and, therefore, it is necessary to verify the results in those states’ counties that depend on electronic voting machines to tally the ballots.

Clinton’s campaign, meanwhile, is backing the decision by Wisconsin authorities to conduct the recount despite saying that no irregularities have been detected in the election, and it said that it will also support recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan if the Green Party, as expected, formally requests them.

On Saturday, Trump issued a statement in which he called the Green Party’s effort a “scam.”

Israel Bombs South Syria after IS-Linked Militant Attack

JERUSALEM - The Israeli army bombed a building in Syria used to launch an Islamic State-linked attack against a military patrol, said an army statement on Monday.

An Israeli military source told EFE that the Air Force on Sunday hit an abandoned United Nations building which had been used as an operational center by Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, a local organization that swore allegiance to the IS.

Early Sunday morning, the IS opened machine gun and mortar fire against a Golani Brigade patrol on duty in the Golan heights, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

The Israeli army responded by bombing the vehicle the militants were driving.

The military spokesperson could not confirm the exact number of casualties during the operation.

The Golan Heights have been a hotspot of violence since the Syrian conflict began five years ago, with stray artillery shells often landing on the Israeli occupied zone.

Israel responds by returning fire against the attackers or by shelling Syrian army positions.

The last incident took place on Nov. 9, when Israeli aircraft bombed a series of Syrian positions in response to a shell that hit Israeli occupied territory.