This article titled “Hurricane Earl weakens as it hits US east coast” was written by Ewen MacAskill in Washington, for guardian.co.uk on Friday 3rd September 2010 15.13 UTC

Thousands of people abandoned their homes and drilling on oil rigs was suspended today as Hurricane Earl moved along America’s Atlantic coastline, but the worst fears were avoided as it was downgraded to a category two storm.

North Carolina, the first state in the firing line, escaped all but minor damage, although as the storm moved northwards there were fears it might swipe New England early tomorrow.

The US president, Barack Obama, declared North Carolina and Massachusetts as disaster areas, and the Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick, declared a state of emergency, but this was essentially a precaution.

About 35,000 people were advised by the federal government to evacuate North Carolina’s Outer Banks. While some holidaymakers cut short their trips and some residents abandoned their homes, many opted to sit it out, armed with generators in case of power cuts. They were joined by surfers making the most of the big waves.

The national weather downgraded the storm today from a category four to category two, and it was weakening as it moved north, hitting New Jersey this morning, before heading towards New York’s Long Island, Cape Cod, Maine, and Canada’s Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. The storm was offshore but weather forecasters warned there was a risk of a landfall at Cape Cod or further north.

Winds of more than 100mph had been predicted, with gusts of 145mph, but the weather forecasts predicted that, as the storm moved north, it would drop to 80mph and gradually down to around 40mph.

Authorities in Massachusetts advised people to leave their homes along the coast but it was not mandatory. Today storm shelters were being opened, shops were putting up shutters and some yacht owners lifted their boats out of the water. There were lines of cars at some popular island holiday spots in New England as holidaymakers and residents headed for safer locations. Others said they were determined to stay, looking forward to seeing the high waves.

Storm warnings are commonplace in the summer in the Gulf of Mexico and Florida but are more unusual along the US north-east. In 1999 Hurricane Floyd killed 50 people.

The energy company Encana said it had suspended drilling and taken its workers off a Nova Scotia rig. Exxon Mobil also took non-essential staff off its Sable field in Nova Scotia.

Beverly Perdue, the governor of North Carolina, said there had been no serious damage. Mark Van Sciver, a spokesman for the North Carolina Emergency Operations Centre, said: “Swiping the coast was always better than coming ashore. We’re very grateful that the brunt of the storm passed us by.”

Washington was among the locations at risk of being hit by the outer edges of Hurricane Earl, but today life appeared to carry on as normal, with temperatures above 90F, no rain, wind of around 5mph and residents going to work as usual.

• This article was amended on 6 September 2010. The original gave Washington’s temperature as 90C. This has been corrected.

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This article titled “Al-Qaida video shows Guantánamo Bay’s youngest detainee ‘making bomb’” was written by Haroon Siddique and agencies, for The Guardian on Friday 13th August 2010 08.54 UTC

The youngest prisoner at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp went on trial yesterday accused of war crimes, with prosecutors showing an al-Qaida video of him allegedly making and planting bombs in Afghanistan.

Omar Khadr, now 23, was 15 when he was captured in 2002. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges he is accused of, including spying, supporting terrorism and murder for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a US special forces soldier.

The defence claims that Khadr was pushed into war as an impressionable child by his father, alleged al-Qaida financier Ahmed Said Khadr. But prosecutor Jeff Groharing told the military jury at the US navy base in south-east Cuba that Khadr embraced terrorist ideology as his own and described his operations against US forces with pride after his capture.

“‘I am a terrorist trained by al-Qaida.’ Those are Omar Khadr’s own words,” said Groharing, describing one of the detainee’s first interrogations at Guantánamo. “Omar Khadr decided to conspire with al-Qaida so he could kill as many Americans as possible.”

But Khadr’s Pentagon-appointed defence lawyer, Lieutenant Colonel Jon Jackson, insisted: “He was there because his father told him to go there. He was there because Ahmed Khadr hated his enemies more than he loved his son.”

The video of Khadr was introduced as one of the first pieces of evidence recovered along with bomb-making materials from a mud-walled compound in eastern Afghanistan where he allegedly threw the grenade that killed Sergeant 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, New Mexico during a four-hour firefight on 27 July 2002.

Khadr has denied throwing the grenade and Jackson said another fighter lobbed the explosive before he was killed by a US soldier who also shot Khadr twice in the back.

No eyewitness saw Khadr throw the grenade. Defence lawyers say the case depends on purported confessions extracted through mistreatment, including an interrogation conducted while Khadr was still on a stretcher in Bagram, Afghanistan.

Jackson said Khadr only made a confession after his first interrogator told him a story about an uncooperative Afghan youth who was sent to an American prison and raped.

Khadr is the first Guantánamo detainee to be tried under Barack Obama’s administration. Khadr’s case was delayed for years by legal wrangling and a series of challenges to the system of war-crimes trials, known as military commissions, set up during the Bush administration. They were criticised by human rights groups for not including the same protections as federal courts or traditional courts-martial, and Obama revised the system to offer more protections to defendants.

The first day of testimony was adjourned early after Jackson collapsed while questioning a witness. The trial is expected to last three to four weeks.

Khadr’s father, an Egyptian-born Canadian citizen, was killed in 2003 when a Pakistani military helicopter attacked the house where he was staying with senior al-Qaida operatives.

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This article titled “Q&A: Conrad Black fraud case” was written by Mark Tran, for The Guardian on Wednesday 21st July 2010 15.10 UTC

What is the basis of Conrad Black’s appeal?

The appeal follows a US supreme court ruling last month. The decision threatens to unravel some of the biggest white-collar crime cases in recent years, not just that of Black but also of Jeffrey Skilling, the former chief executive of energy firm Enron. The supreme court used an appeal by Black and Skilling to limit the use of a criminal statute known as the honest services law, which targets individuals for not fulfilling the duties of their office. The court ruled in decisions written by supreme court judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg that the statute applied only to instances of bribery or kickbacks. Skilling’s lawyers said the ruling was fatal to the government’s case. Black’s lawyers this week applied for bail. The question now will be the extent to which prosecutors relied on the honest services provision in convincing juries that considered the two cases. The same appeals court rejected Black’s appeal two years ago, before the supreme court decision. If the convictions are overturned, prosecutors are unlikely to resurrect efforts to retry him, according to legal experts.

What was Black convicted of?

Along with three other former Hollinger International executives, Black was convicted in 2007 of swindling the media empire’s shareholders out of .1m (£3.9m). He was acquitted of nine other charges, including racketeering and wire fraud. Black was also convicted of obstruction of justice after jurors saw a video of him carrying boxes of documents sought by government investigators out of his offices, loading them into his car and driving off with them.

Does Black face other legal problems?

Black and former Hollinger International executives face a raft of civil lawsuits. The US internal revenue service is also after Black, who surrendered his Canadian citizenship to be ennobled Lord Black of Crossharbour in 2001. The IRS claims Black owes almost m in unpaid taxes and penalties. The IRS alleges that Black failed to report and pay taxes on income stemming from personal use of Hollinger’s corporate jets, the use of corporate money to acquire papers written by president Franklin Roosevelt and Roosevelt’s private secretary, and Hollinger’s purchase in 2000 of a .9m New York apartment for his use. Black says he was not required to file tax returns because he was not a US resident.

What are Black’s assets?

Black’s net worth was estimated to be 0m at his peak. His fortune is considerably less now but it is difficult to pin down as investigators do not know whether he salted money away in alleged offshore accounts. Black denies any accusations to do with such accounts. What we do know is that the loyal Lady Black, the former columnist Barbara Amiel, has a 26-carat diamond worth .6m. There is a house in Palm Beach, Florida, worth m, where his wife lives, and another in Toronto, said to be leveraged “to the hilt”. Black sold his Kensington home for m and an apartment on Park Lane in New York for .5m.

What happened to Hollinger International?

The Barclay brothers acquired Hollinger International’s UK titles, including the Telegraph, for £665m in 2004. The Jerusalem Post was sold in the same year to Mirkaei Tikshoret and CanWest, Canada’s biggest media group, for .2m. In 2006, Hollinger International changed to the Sun-Times Media Group. It filed for bankruptcy last year and was bought in October by the Chicago financier James Tyree and a team of investors for m.

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