Official: Gunman recorded terror attack on Parisian kosher grocery
By Paul Cruickshank, Jim Sciutto and Steve Almasy, CNN
Updated 0134 GMT (0934 HKT) January 31, 2015
The terrorist who gunned down four people at a kosher market in eastern Paris earlier this month recorded the attack on a camera, a U.S. intelligence official told CNN on Friday.
The information backed up a report by Eric Pelletier, a national security reporter at the French magazine L'Express, who wrote that Amedy Coulibaly recorded seven minutes of the attack, including the moments when he killed three people.
Kyiv hopes for Minsk truce talks as violence continues in Ukraine Ukraine says it is hoping to hold new truce talks after negotiations planned for Friday were postponed. Pro-Russian rebels have vowed to push on with a new offensive if negotiations collapse.
Kyiv said it expected to send its envoy, former President Leonid Kuchma, to the Belarusian capital Minsk on Saturday for talks aimed at shoring up a fragile truce agreement signed in September.
"We expect to sign a document that reinforces the Minsk Memorandum [of September] and the peace plan of presidents [Petro] Poroshenko and [Vladimir] Putin," Kuchma told the Interfax-Ukriaine news agency.
A new round of negotiations planned for Friday under pressure from European envoys was postponed over disagreements about who should represent the pro-Russian separatists who have been waging an insurgency in eastern Ukraine since April.
Iran prepares for premiere of film on Prophet Muhammad
Tehran’s Fajr film festival will show country’s own version of how Islam’s most revered figure lived
Saeed Kamali Dehghan
As controversy swirls on how the Prophet Muhammad is depicted, a multimillion-dollar biopic about his youth – Iran’s most expensive and lavish film to date – is set to premiere on Sunday.
Tehran’s Fajr international film festival, which coincides with the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution, is scheduled to show the country’s own version of how Islam’s most revered figure lived. To protect the prophet’s dignity, the film will be shown out of competition.
Iran has been a vocal critic of the prophet’s portrayal in the West, recently condemning the Charlie Hebdo cover cartoon in the aftermath of the deadly attacks in Paris, which depicted Muhammad weeping and holding up a sign reading “Je Suis Charlie”.
Africa seeks Boko Haram fighting force as Chad captures town
William Davison and Chris Kay
Chad's army drives Boko Haram out of a Nigerian border town as African leaders plan to bolster force fighting Islamist insurgents.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia:Chadian forces captured a Nigerian border town from Boko Haram as African leaders seek a strengthened multinational force to help combat the growing Islamist insurgency.
Chad's military liberated the north-east town of Malam Fatori, Mike Omeri, a Nigerian government spokesman, said by phone on Friday from the capital, Abuja. The town was subjected to a ground and air assault on Thursday morning, with Chad's army planning to move into other captured parts of Nigeria, Jubrin Gunda, a spokesman for a Nigerian militia group, said by phone from the city of Maiduguri.
Forces from Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Benin and Chad will make up the bulk of a mission that must be approved by the United Nations Security Council, Smail Chergui, the African Union's peace and security commissioner, told reporters late on Thursday in Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa.
China builds ever-higher walls against West and its 'values'
'Never let textbooks promoting Western values enter into our classes,' says China's education minister. Meanwhile, Chinese officials are immobilizing VPN's that allow ordinary citizens access to an uncensored Internet.
BOSTON — Beijing’s leaders continue to build defenses against the spread of Western ideas in ways that partly echo China’s self-imposed isolation of the 1960s, while also pushing a new mix of traditional Chinese and communist ideas.
Education Minister Yuan Guiren announced Thursday new restrictions on college textbooks that promote Western values, and said college students should not participate in critical debates on China’s leaders, politics, or history. The move is part of a broader crackdown on access to Western culture in China, including access to the the Internet.
“Never let textbooks promoting Western values enter into our classes,” Mr. Yuan said at a forum in Beijing, according to the Financial Times. “Any views that attack or defame the leadership of the party or smear socialism must never be allowed to appear in our universities.”
31 January 2015Last updated at 01:58
Mexican children cross Texas border to attend school
By Thomas SparrowBBC Mundo, El Paso, Texas
Febe Ara lives in one country but goes to school in another.
This 16-year-old girl begins her day in Ciudad Juarez, in northern Mexico, before crossing one of the most active international borders in order to study in El Paso, Texas.
"I wake up about five in the morning, and I cross the bridge at about half past six," she tells the BBC shortly before her school day starts at the Lydia Patterson Institute, or La Lydia as it is more commonly known.
For her, changing countries every day has become a routine. "We've gotten used to crossing the bridge, but when it's cold - wow! - it's worse because it's freezing and we have to get up early," she says.
It is one of those days today. Febe is sitting next to her brothers, Emanuel and Angel, at a very long table where her classmates are rushing to finish their English vocabulary homework, chatting loudly in Spanish and eating eggs and toast for breakfast.
Over the summer and autumn of 2014, as this increasingly divisive debate brought thousands of Hong-Kongers onto the street, People & Power went behind-the-scenes with activists as they embarked on an unprecedented display of civil disobedience and tried to convince Beijing to make concessions.
In the first two of three special reports, filmmakers James Leong and Lynn Lee charted the origins and rise of the Occupy Central protest movement, the increasing role played by student activists, and the dramatic demonstrations and occupations which brought the territory to a standstill.
Amman, Jordan (CNN) ISISmilitants have launched an attack on the oil-producing northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.
Militants
have taken over Maktab Khalid, an area southwest of the city after
heavy clashes with Kurdish Peshmerga troops. Among those killed was
Brig. Gen. Shirko Fateh, the highest-ranking operational commander of
the Peshmerga brigade located in Kirkuk.
Separately, heavily armed militants
attacked an abandoned hotel in central Kirkuk used by local police as
headquarters. Police and Peshmerga sources in Kirkuk told CNN that armed
men put snipers on the rooftop of the hotel and security forces are
surrounding the area.
There has been
recent speculation that ISIS might attack Kirkuk to force Kurdish troops
to divert their efforts away from Mosul, ISIS' stronghold in Iraq.
Peshmerga fighters have moved in around the outskirts of Mosul recently,
backed by coalition airstrikes.
South Africa apartheid assassin de Kock given parole
South African apartheid-era death squad commander Eugene de Kock has been granted parole after 20 years in jail.
He was nicknamed "Prime Evil" for his role in the killing and maiming of activists fighting white minority rule in the 1980s and early 1990s.
Justice Minister Michael Masutha said he would be released "in the interests of nation-building".
He was sentenced in 1996 to two life terms in prison and a further 212 years for the crimes he committed.
China to force buyers of computers and phones in Xinjiang to register names
Reports that new measure is designed to ‘prevent people spreading harmful information’
Reuters
Anyone buying a mobile phone or a computer in the restive far-western Chinese region of Xinjiang will have to register their personal details with police, state media reported, in the latest sign of tightening government restrictions.
The measures were designed to “prevent people spreading harmful information and carrying out illegal activities”, the English-language Shanghai Daily reported, citing government officials.
Xinjiang, which borders Central Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, has struggled with violence in recent years between majority Han Chinese and mostly Muslim Uighurs.
Isis hostage crisis: The prisoner swap has only one purpose for the militants - recognition its Islamic State exists and that foreign nations acknowledge its power
The Jordanian pilot, the failed Iraqi suicide bomber and the Japanese journalist are all part of Isis's frontier re-drawing in the Middle East - whether they realise it or not
However tragic the ending, the weird and unprecedented prisoner swap – of a failed suicide bomber, an air force pilot and a journalist – has only one purpose for Isis: recognition that its Islamic State exists and that foreign nations acknowledge its power.
You only had to listen to the number of reporters talking in the last few hours about “the Islamic State” – without the usual “so-called”and “self-styled” in front of it – to realize that we are already, with scarcely a thought for the consequences, accepting the Caliphate as a viable, if illegitimate, nation. Forget the original demand for cash – Isis is funneling the stuff in from its friends in the Arab Gulf – because a Jordanian king and a Japanese deputy foreign minister are more valuable than a billion dollars.
French schoolboy (8) suspected of ‘defending terrorism’
Police summons of child who would not take part in ‘Charlie Hebdo’ minute’s silence sparks national debate
An eight-year-old schoolboy identified by French media only as “Ahmed” was questioned by police in Nice for at least half an hour on suspicion of “defending terrorism”. The boy’s father was summoned with him and was also interrogated.
The Committee Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) said the treatment of Ahmed and his father “illustrates the collective hysteria into which France has plunged since early January.” Seventeen people were killed by three Islamist gunmen, who were in turn killed by police, on January 7th, 8th and 9th.
The director of the Flore primary school in Nice filed a complaint with police on January 21st. The boy had refused to participate in a minute’s silence in homage to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and refused to hold hands with other students in a “circle of solidarity”. More than 200 similar incidents were reported in schools across France.
Argentina's Kirchner proposes intel reform: needed change or diversion?
President Kirchner says prosecutor Nisman, who was buried Thursday in Buenos Aires, was killed by rogue Argentine spies. She told the nation that a change to the Intelligence Secretariat is the best way forward.
BUENOS AIRES — The mysterious death of a federal prosecutor who filed an explosive criminal complaint against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is roiling Argentina. While investigators try to establish if Alberto Nisman was killed or driven to suicide, the president is calling for radical changes to a powerful intelligence agency she accuses of conspiring against her.
Many Argentines believe the government had a hand in Mr. Nisman’s death as a way to silence his accusations that the president secretly sought to shield former Iranian officials from charges that they directed a fatal car-bomb attack on a Jewish center here in 1994. He was buried Thursday in a Jewish cemetery.
But the government says that a shadowy intelligence agent fed Nisman misleading information to build a false case against President Kirchner, then plotted the prosecutor's death to make it appear a government cover-up.
It's always a laugh when the Chinese government insists its citizens have the right to freedom of expression be it through art, music or words. Somehow it never quiet works out. I'm sure these freedoms are allowed by the government just as long as they're approved by the government.
Demolition in China is often a sensitive, political subject, touching on
the relative powerlessness of local residents in the face of omnipotent
local officials.
A few months ago, colourful, poignant paintings began to appear amid the rubble on at least two building sites.
They're the work of French graffiti artist Julien Malland and Chinese artist Shi Zheng.
They probably would have gone largely unnoticed - however, a
few days ago some of the images were published in a Chinese newspaper,
and they went viral.
The art appeared to resonate with many members of the public, evoking
a sense of sadness for something that's been lost amid China's
decades-long construction boom.
Children appear frequently in the work, lovingly clutching
small representations of their homes to their chests, or wearing them,
like bags, on their backs.
The publicity, though, attracted dozens of curious visitors
and amateur photographers to one of the demolition sites in Shanghai's
Jing'an district.
A coalition of pro-democracy reformers want Hong Kong's next chief executive to be directly elected in 2017. The Chinese government insists that the leader must be chosen from a pre-approved list.
Over the summer and autumn of 2014, as this increasingly divisive debate brought thousands of Hong-Kongers onto the street, People & Power went behind-the-scenes with activists as they embarked on an unprecedented display of civil disobedience and tried to convince Beijing to make concessions.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group set a deadline for Jordan to release an al-Qaeda-linked female prisoner, saying the group would kill a Jordanian pilot it holds "immediately" if the women is not freed by sunset on Thursday.
In a new audio recording a voice identifying itself as Japanese freelancer Kenji Goto said his captors would kill pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh if Iraqi death row prisoner Sajida al-Rishawi is not handed over by the end of the day.
"If Sajida al-Rishawi is not ready for exchange for my life at the Turkish border by Thursday sunset, 29th of January, Mosul time, the Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh will be killed immediately," Goto said, in an unverified audio message distributed by ISIL-linked Twitter accounts.
Have we reached 'peak food'? Shortages loom as global production rates slow
Staples such as wheat, chicken and rice are slowing in growth – with dire consequences
The world has entered an era of “peak food” production with an array of staples from corn and rice to wheat and chicken slowing in growth – with potentially disastrous consequences for feeding the planet.
New research finds that the supply of 21 staples, such as eggs, meat, vegetables and soybeans is already beginning to run out of momentum, while the global population continues to soar.
Peak chicken was in 2006, while milk and wheat both peaked in 2004 and rice peaked way back in 1988, according to new research from Yale University, Michigan State University and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany.
Afghans live in peril among unexploded Nato bombs that litter countryside
Ordnance left by parting international troops kills or injures about 40 people a month – the vast majority children
International troops pulling out of Afghanistan have left behind a lethal legacy of unexploded bombs and shells that are killing and maiming people at a rate of more than one a day. The vast majority are children.
Bombs dropped from the air coupled with munitions left behind in makeshift firing ranges in rural Afghanistan have made parts of the countryside perilous for locals who are used to working the land for subsistence and raw materials.
Since 2001, the coalition has dropped about 20,000 tonnes of ammunition over Afghanistan. Experts say about 10% of munitions do not detonate: some malfunction, others land on sandy ground. Foreign soldiers have also used valleys, fields and dry riverbeds as firing ranges and left them peppered with undetonated ammunition.
Dead Argentina prosecutor Nisman was fearful of own guards
The Argentinian prosecutor found dead in suspicious circumstances did not trust the security assigned to protect him, according to the last person who saw him alive. The man gave Alberto Nisman the gun that killed him.
Special prosecutor Alberto Nisman did not trust his own bodyguards and acquired a gun to protect his daughters, according to his long-time acquaintance, Diego Lagomarsino.
Nisman's suspicious death on January 18, hours before he was due to testify against senior government officials, sparked a crisis for the government of President Cristina Kirchner.
Nisman had accused Kirchner's government of helping to cover up Iran's alleged role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center, in exchange for trade benefits.
Lagomarsino told a news conference in Buenos Aires that Nisman pleaded for the gun the day before he died. Nisman was found dead the next day in his apartment with the .22 caliber revolver beside him. Who pulled the trigger is not yet clear.
Murder highlights plight of Rohingya refugees in Malaysia
Aubrey Belford
Bukit Mertajam:Abul Kassim, a Rohingya asylum seeker, was snatched from his home in the northern Malaysian state of Penang on January 12. His beaten and bloodied body was found the next morning.
That day, police moved on the 40-year-old's alleged killers. Raiding a house in the neighbouring state of Kedah, they rescued 17 Rohingya migrants being held against their will, according to a statement by Penang police.
Eight alleged traffickers from Malaysia, Myanmar and Bangladesh were arrested.
The murder of Mr Kassim casts rare light on what Rohingya activists say is widespread abuse by human traffickers in Malaysia, who are willing to use extreme methods to protect their lucrative but illegal business.
Mr Kassim regularly supplied police with information on the activities of traffickers, said Abdul Hamid, president of the Kuala Lumpur-based Rohingya Society in Malaysia.
Mexico: Missing students are dead, but many questions remain (+video)
Mexico's top law enforcement officer said Tuesday that all 43 students who disappeared four months ago are dead. But no one seems to know why they were killed – or if Mexico is doing enough to prevent such a crime from happening again.
MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials announced this week that there is “legal certainty” that the 43 teacher’s college students who disappeared in Guerrero state four months ago are dead.
Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam at a news conference Tuesday reiterated the government’s account of events, first presented last November, and provided more details, gathered from detainee testimonials, to support it. Mr. Karam offered photos of the remains gathered near a trash dump outside of Iguala and clips of taped confessions.
“Without a doubt, the evidence allows us to determine that the students at the teachers’ college were abducted, killed, burned, and thrown into the San Juan River,” Karam said. He noted that 99 suspects have been detained, 39 confessions have been made, and hundreds of testimonies gathered.
Israeli soldiers injured in Shebaa Farms missile attack
Israeli army reportedly returning fire after missile attack on military vehicle injured at least four soldiers.
The Israeli army has said an anti-tank missile was fired at a
military vehicle in Shabaa farms on the border with Syria and Lebanon.
Israeli media reports on Wednesday said four soldiers were wounded as a result of the attack.
The Israelis then fired shells across the border into southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese army.
A Lebanese army spokesman said the missile was not fired from
Lebanese territory, and that the artillery response by Israel was
randomly falling on areas along the border, although no shells have
fallen into villages with civilians yet.
Shabaa Farms is a small strip of disputed land at the intersection of
the Lebanese-Syrian border and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Isis Japanese hostage crisis: Kenji Goto's mother pleads with Shinzo Abe to save son after militants give 24 hours for prisoner swap
Prime Minister had earlier condemned threats as 'extremely despicable'
An audio released by Isis threatened to kill Mr Goto and the Jordanian pilot Lieutenant Mu'ath al-Kaseasbeh unless a prisoner swap is carried out within 24 hours.
Ms Ishido begged Mr Abe to work with the Jordanian government to secure her son's release, saying: "Kenji has only a little time left."
Beijing smog makes city ‘unliveable’, says mayor Polluting factories and skyrocketing vehicle ownership blamed as report finds tourism to Chinese city falls 10% on year before
Beijing’s mayor, Wang Anshun, has called the city “unliveable” because of its noxious smog, according to state media.
“To establish a first-tier, international, liveable and harmonious city, it is very important to establish a system of standards, and Beijing is currently doing this,” he said last Friday, according to the China Youth Daily newspaper.
Anshun’s speech came days before the market research company Euromonitor International announced, in its findings on the global tourism market in 2013, that tourism to Beijing had declined by 10% from the year before due to pollution and a countrywide economic slowdown.
Report reveals magnitude of criminality in South Africa police
Institute of Race Relations finds 1 per cent of officers have criminal records
Bill Corcoran
A new study into serious and violent crimes perpetrated by members of South Africa’s police force has revealed that the public’s propensity to distrust and fear the nation’s law enforcement officers is often well placed.
Released today, Broken Blue Line 2 is the second instalment of a two-report project compiled by the Institute of Race Relations that examines police criminality and the official response to it, which the institute claims is falling short of what is required to stamp out the problem.
Although authorities have been making arrests and efforts to clean up the police force, there has been no significant decline in criminality compared to what the first Broken Blue Line report found in 2011, the institute claims.
The Belgium Question:Why Is a Small Country Producing So Many Jihadists?
Relative to the size of its population, no other country in Europe sends as many young jihadists to Syria as Belgium does. But why? Some say one problem lies with the fractured nature of the country itself.
Chantal Lebon last saw her son at a bus stop in Brussels. That was two years ago in October "at exactly 10:25 p.m.," she says. Abdel had driven his mother there in a car, stopped in a parking spot and lifted her suitcase onto the sidewalk.
"Au revoir, maman," he said. "Au revoir, mon fils," she replied. It was only months later that she would again see her son's face -- in a YouTube video. It showed him wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh and holding a Kalashnikov. The video was stamped with the flag used by the Islamic State in Syria.
Washington (AFP) - Large numbers of foreign fighters are among the jihadists killed in the battle for the Syrian town of Kobane, a senior US official said Tuesday, saying the concerted campaign was halting the militants' march.
The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) announced the "liberation" of Kobane on Monday, depriving the Islamic State group (IS) of a strategic prize to add to its territory in Syria and Iraq.
The United States says Kurdish fighters are now in control of about 90 percent of the town on the Syrian-Turkish border.
"ISIL is now, whether on order or whether they are breaking ranks, is beginning to withdraw from the town," a senior State Department official told reporters.
But he warned that the militants, also known as ISIL, were "adaptive and resilient" and no-one was declaring "mission accomplished" yet.
The US and some 60 coalition partners is engaged in the "first phase of a multi-year campaign," he stressed.
28 January 2015Last updated at 08:22
Apple posts the biggest quarterly profit in history
US technology giant Apple has reported the biggest quarterly profit ever made by a public company.
As thousands of Chinese are hunting for their dream homes abroad, we investigate the impact of their shopping spree.
Cashed up and determined to buy, Jennifer Tao is a real estate agent's dream.
The Shanghai native owns five houses in California and has a property portfolio worth $8m. Tao is one of thousands of wealthy Chinese buying homes abroad - from Californian mansions and Manhattan apartments to Sydney family homes.
China's economic rise has produced a wealthy elite that is increasingly looking to invest, and in many cases, live abroad. Surveys show over half of the country's 70 million wealthiest people want to emigrate.
Some of the world's leading cities are on their wishlists. The most popular overseas destinations for Chinese buyers are the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, according to online portal, Juwai.com
Real estate agents say some Chinese buyers do not even bother inspecting properties before signing on the dotted line.
All non-emergency vehicles were banned in New York City from 23:00 on Monday (04:00 GMT Tuesday) and subway services were suspended. Similar measures were in place in Boston, Massachusetts.
Some 60 million people may be affected.
An emergency has been declared in the states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Boston, which is forecast to receive some of the highest snowfalls, has also suspended public transport and car travel.
Holocaust survivor recalls desperate battle to stay alive: ‘I just wanted to live’
Sabina Miller hid in the woods after fleeing the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. As the world marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, she shares her story
When Sabina Miller awoke from typhoid fever in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw she had a vivid memory. It was of her mother standing at her bed in the one room the family of six shared, telling her: “You will survive.”
Sitting in her flat in West Hampstead, London, Sabina, now 92, does not know if it was a hallucination. She does know when she came round. After 18 days of fever, both parents were dead of typhoid.
That memory sustained her in the ghetto “where people fell ill very quickly, were hungry and you walked in the middle of the street where they were bodies, covered with newspaper, dead”.
Kobani 'back in Kurdish hands' after Isis militants desert city
Photographs posted on social media appeared to show male and female Kurdish fighters shaking hands and Kurdish flags flying over recaptured territory
The Syrian border city of Kobani, the site of a totemic four-month battle between coalition-backed Kurdish and Iraqi forces and militant fighters from Isis appeared to be drawing towards a conclusion last night amid reports that the region was back in control of Kurdish forces.
Kurdish fighters from the People’s Protection Units (YPG) backed by Iraq’s Kurdish peshmerga forces claimed to have wrestled back ownership of the city pushing Isis fighters out of the area in a battle that has killed over 1,300 people, according the London-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The group yesterday suggested that Isis (also known as Islamic State) militants had deserted much of the area. "I can see the YPG flag flying over Kobani. There are the sounds of jets flying above," Tevfik Kanat, a Turkish Kurd near the border told Reuters yesterday. "People are dancing and singing, there are fireworks. Everyone feels a huge sense of relief.”
Benjamin Netanyahu's planned US speech a slap in the face to Barack Obama
Joel Greenberg
Jerusalem:Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing growing criticism in Israel for a planned speech to the US Congress about Iran, accused by his political rivals of damaging ties with Washington to promote his election campaign.
Mr Netanyahu accepted an invitation from House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, to address a joint session of Congress on March 3, two weeks before the Israeli elections.
The invitation was not coordinated with the White House and it was widely seen as a Republican attempt to enlist Mr Netanyahu, who advocates tougher measures against Iran, in the dispute with US President Barack Obama over whether to impose new sanctions on Iran.
Fighting extremism in coastal Kenya: a mosque rebounds
Locals have reclaimed a mosque in the port city of Mombasa after it was overrun by young extremists late last year. But the youth won't give it up that easily.
MOMBASA, KENYA — Musa Mosque reclaimed its name on Friday, declaring it was back on track after an eight-month takeover by radical Islamic youth who have surged in number amid increasing extremism along Kenya's coast.
The professional sign hung by the steward Khatib Khamis, recognizing the mosque’s founder, Musa, was seen by many in the Majengo neighborhood as a victory lap. But it will take a lot more than a sign to shake off the mosque's reputation as a haven for extremists and to ensure that other mosques in the port city don’t go through the same cycle.
Argentina to dissolve intelligence agency
President announces plans over suspicions rogue agents were behind death of prosecutor probing tragic 1994 bombing.
Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez has announced plans to dissolve the country's intelligence agency amid suspicions that rogue agents were behind the murky death of a state prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre that killed 85 people and wounded 200 others.
The death of Alberto Nisman this month, just before he was due to answer questions about his allegation that Fernandez conspired to derail his investigation, shone a spotlight on the powerful state spy apparatus which some analysts say operates with too much autonomy.
The government said that Nisman's allegations and demise were linked to a power struggle at the intelligence agency and agents who had recently been fired.
