10/07/2014 World News Today

This is BBC World News Today, with me, Kasia Madera.

On a knife edge - that's how the United Nations is describing

where Israeli strikes have pounded the territory for the third day.

Palestinian officials say at least 78 people have been killed

Civilian casualties increase in Gaza as Israeli and Palestinian militants

trade rocket attacks. The UN urges a cease-fire. Our paramount concern is

the safety and well-being of all civilians, no matter where they are.

It pains me, and it should pain us all.

Emergency laws, expelled diplomats and thwarted bomb plots.

We look at the issue of surevillance in Europe.

Also coming up, a month after major Iraqi cities

fell under the control of the Sunni militant group ISIS,

we look at what their long term strategy could be.

Hello and a warm welcome to the programme.

Israel has today continued its campaign of air strikes on Gaza

amid further rocket attacks from Palestinian militants.

After three days of hostilities, the death toll in Gaza has risen to

over 80 according to health officials there.

There have been no Israeli fatalities over the same period.

Israel says it wants to eliminate the threat of rocket attacks

from Gaza for good, while Hamas says Israel must stop

its blockade of Gaza and release Palestinian prisoners.

From Khan Younis, the scene of one of the Israeli attacks,

In the Khan Younis refugee camp, the bodies kept coming. This was the

funeral of this family. A mother and a father killed alongside their six

children. They were asleep in their beds when the Israeli air strike

hit. It flattened their home. There was little left to salvage. In

total, 17 people were killed at Khan Younis, the worst nights so far for

Gaza. They did not warn us, says their neighbour, it was the first

time they hit a house without any warning. The Israeli military

usually gives advance notice of an attack. The family did not receive

it. It is not yet clear why Israel bombed this particular site.

Families live cheek by jowl. These were the homes to six separate

families, all of whom have been destroyed. Israel says it is

investigating what happened here, but in Khan Younis there is anger.

They want to destroy Palestinian, but we can save this land because

this is our land. Hamas continued to attack Israel. Rockets hit this

home. It landed in the children's playroom. The family were not home.

When the siren sound, Israeli people run for cover. Hamas rockets are

reaching further and deeper into the country. As long as they keep

coming, Israel says it will keep it in Gaza. It blames high Mass for any

civilian casualties. Israel has taken great measures to avoid

harming innocent civilians. Israeli defence forces war Gaza of imminent

strikes. At the same time, Hamas instructs civilians to stand on the

roof of those buildings and act as human shields. Israeli tanks began

taking up positions near Gaza today. This has already been costly for

civilians. It's one month since

Iraq's second city, Mosul, fell to the Sunni

militant group ISIS. Since then the group has

swept across the country. They've taken control

of vast areas in the north and west of Iraq,

including the town of Tikrit, and there's been

fierce fighting in Fallujah. The self proclaimed Islamic state

now extends from the Syrian province of Aleppo

to the city of Diyala in Iraq, and this yellow area is

the territory As the crisis continues to unfold,

the Kurdish leader has called on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to

step down, saying he is "becoming

hysterical" after Mr. Maliki accused the Kurds of

harbouring jihadists. Richard Barrett is Vice President of

the Soufan private security group and a former coordinator of the UN's

Al-Qaeda-Taliban Monitoring Team. Thank you very much for joining the

programme. ISIS has taken control of this large area, it has proclaimed

itself, it is one thing taking control, it is a completely

different thing running an area such as this. Tell us in your opinion,

have they got the capabilities of doing that? You make a very good

point, it is much more difficult to run an area under your control than

just to capture it. Their recruits so far have been soldiers, they have

called out now for administrators to join and other people who can help

them as technocrats to govern the areas they now control. But where

those people are going to come from, they are not motivated in the same

way as the fighters, they have a task on their hands there. How have

they become so successful? I think there are two Mac reasons. First of

all, they have managed to gain a whole lot of momentum by looking

very effective on the battlefield, first in Syria and now in Iraq. At

the flip side is that the opponents have looked so weak. Success brings

success, as they have been able to advance more people have joined

them, not necessarily because they are ideologically aligned, but

because they see ISIS is perhaps giving them a chance to gain

territory and influence, reading influence -- regain influence. Local

Sunni tribes and people associated with the Saddam Hussein regime. They

have also been effectively using social media. A posted gruesome

images online. They have, that seems to be the main way they have

attracted young fighters from overseas, through social media. They

make it all look like good fun. They are banned -- a band of brothers

together. But they are very intolerant and violent. This is a

black and white group, you are either for or against them. If you

are against them you had better watch out because you will probably

not survive. People joining them will probably get disillusioned

quickly, and feel that they ought to try and escape. That will affect the

momentum as well. We're seeing swathes of refugees fleeing from the

areas they now control. Yes, it is enormously disruptive, hundreds of

thousands of Iraqis displaced on top of the millions of Syrians displaced

by the fighting there. It is a very serious humanitarian problem. The

Islamic state will have to deal with that. What is it going to do to

provide people who are displaced in its areas of operation with food and

water, health and sanitation? This is not an easy problem, even for an

organisation like the United Nations. For a ragtag army of

Islamist fighters, it will maybe you beyond their reach. They have got

much wealth and resources, they are not that ragtag. I would still say

they are ragtag. If you look at what they have done as a terrorist group,

they are very effective and have been able to infiltrate places over

many months and soften them up so they could take it quickly. They

have been able to make alliances and so on, they have been able to rely

on people who have many skills. In essence, the Islamic state is not a

very big band of people who do not have very much experience in running

something. They have always been fighters rather than administrators.

Ragtag you may find to severe criticism, but nevertheless I do not

think they are a particularly competent force. They do not have

established procedures for establishing a great many soldiers,

let alone a great member that man -- let alone a great many civilians.

Thank you very much for your expertise.

Here in the UK, emergency powers to ensure police and security services

can continue to access phone and internet records

Prime Minister David Cameron said urgent action was needed to

protect the public from "criminals and terrorists"

after the European Court of Justice struck down existing powers.

But civil liberties campaigners have warned

Who did you called last year? Who did you text and e-mail? When did

you do it, we were you at the time? That is not just your business, see

the police and security services, it is the business. They say they need

the data to keep you safe. Emergency legislation has been drawn

up with all-party support... This morning the Cabinet was summoned to

Downing Street to be told that the three main party leaders had agreed

that emergency new laws were needed. Two Mac hours later, the prime

Minister, who have disagreed over these issues, faced the media to

make their case together. We face real and credible threats to our

security. Serious organised, from the activity of paedophiles, the

collapse of Syria, the growth of ISIS in Iraq, and I am simply not

prepared to be a prime minister who has to address this after a

terrorist incident and explain that I could have done more to prevent

it. These powers have already been used to help find the killers of

this 11-year-old. To stop terrorist plots to blow up planes. But now

there is a problem. Judges at the European Court of Justice ruled

three months ago but the EU law under which these operations were

carried out is no longer legal. Companies like Vodafone post that

they protect their companies -- customers' privacy. If the law is

unclear, ministers would face pressure to destroy the data they

now hold. But why does a new law need to be published and passed?

Does history not war is to be very suspicious of politicians who say,

we all agree, there is an emergency, we need to legislate in

haste. I am not standing here asking for new powers and capabilities. I

am standing here saying we need to legislate, very rapidly, to keep

those powers that we have. Nick Clegg says he has insisted on

safeguards. It will fall, in December 2016. We are not depending

permanently on the statute. The powers that will be passed next week

will not give the state new powers to read our messages or to listen

into our phone calls. But the politicians are under pressure from

the police and the security services to take that step in future. But

thanks to the revelations of this man, Edward Snowden, the politicians

face pressure to snoop less and to be more transparent about what they

are doing. We have engaged in detailed discussions with the

government to ensure the right safeguards are in place, because

there are do need to be safeguards when it comes to these kind of

issues. The party leaders may agree for now but backbenchers are worried

on both sides either rush to action. British people are not stupid or

ideological when it comes to this kind of thing. Why can they not have

time to discuss it with elected representatives? Whatever happens,

the debate about who should be able to read and listen to what has long

way to go. He's the Executive Director of

The Open Rights Group which campaigns for

digital openness. National Security Council is

privacy, it is a small price to pay to be safe to lose a bit of privacy,

surely? This is not ever a dichotomy between privacy and security.

Generally speaking it is personal security and how that might be

affected by the removal of privacy. The big problem is if the status

collective, as it is, then can abuse, police can overuse powers,

the future police can abuse their powers in the future, candidate be

accessed by people it shouldn't? We have recently seen scandalous things

with the police and the use of traditional surveillance powers

putting surveillance into environmental groups, Doreen

Lawrence's campaign to find out what the police were doing with her

family. The police are not above using surveillance in ways which are

deeply inappropriate. You should limit surveillance to what is

absolutely necessary, and you should make sure the courts are supervising

what the police do. Those are crucial safeguards that the European

Court of Justice demanded, they are absent in this bill. We should be

debating why they are absent and whether we really need them. We are

talking about communications data, not the actual conversations. It is

which numbers you called, what time you called them, when the Crown

Prosecution Service says that 95% of all serious organised cases, handled

by the CPS, meta data was used, essential. Surely it is a small

price to pay? No, meta data is extremely important in crime, but

equally it is something that tells a lot about who you are, what you are

doing, where you are, who your friends are. We give up a lot of

that information quite willingly on Facebook and different website.

Again that's a problem, and you need to be able to control the

relationships you are having with these private companies. They are

not meant to be storing it and holding it. This bill goes in the

opposite direction. It says you must store it and hoard it because the

police might want to use it. If you allow anybody to start gathering

this information, saying, you must gather this information, just think

we're that could go and how many things. It is easy for this

principle to get out of hand. Only when you need this data should you

be storing it. On suspect identified in this country, 121 arrests were

made possible in suspected cases, compared to Germany, where there is

no such arrangement as we have here. Out of 377 German suspects, there

were no arrests. This information will be held for 12 months. It seems

a small price to pay for 121 arrests. Germany should be having

data freezing arrangements to make it possible to make this kind of

investigation. That should be in place. But we are not talking about

that at the moment. Paedophiles, other kinds of investigations, it is

possible to decide who you are interested in and then decide to

keep the data about those individuals. This isn't about

removing the capability of the police to investigate, it is about

making them be a bit more careful about who and when they target, and

also about restraining the possibility of abuse. I am sure we

could talk about this all evening but we are out of time. Thank you.

Now a look at some of the day's other news.

More than a million public sector workers are on a one-day strike in

the UK today in a dispute over pay, pensions and working conditions.

They include teachers, firefighters, refuse collectors and council staff.

Unions say it's the biggest strike to hit the Government since

Ministers say they can't afford large pay increases.

All Catholic Church processions in a small,

southern diocese in Italy have been suspended by the local bishop.

This is after it emerged that a parade took

a detour in order to salute a mafia boss who was under house arrest.

The mayor, police and priests were among the crowds following

the large statue of the Virgin Mary as it wound its way through

the town of Oppido Mamertina, before altering its route.

The incident has caused national outrage.

One of South Africa's most notorious figures

from the apartheid era has seen his hopes for parole quashed today.

Eugene De Kock, former commander of South Africa's police, is serving a

212-year prison sentence for crimes committed in the apartheid era.

From the early 1980s his counter-insurgency unit hunted down

He was part of the team that blew up the

De Kock was found guilty on 89 charges, including murder,

but has claimed he was only acting on orders.

Tropical Storm Neoguri, which killed three people in the south of Japan

and injured several others, has been downgraded but is still causing

considerable damage, as Jenny Wivell reports.

The effect of several days of torrential rain. Typhoon Neoguri

might have weakened to a Tropical Storm Washi its path of devastation

is stretching further and further afield. Here in central Japan,

conditions are perilous. Landslides have decimated huge areas of the

countryside. TRANSLATION: I thought it was an

earthquake at first and then Earth and sand flowed into the house. I

was clinging to a wooden pillar. Here, a 12-year-old boy was killed

when his house was swept away, just ten minutes before he was due to be

evacuated. Two men also died when they fell into irrigation ditches.

TRANSLATION: It is always scary at this time of year when there is

heavy rainfall. When the storm ploughed into the western shore of

this island, it was gusting at 126 mph. -- kilometres per hour. Bridges

have been destroyed, cars overturned and railway lines ripped from the

ground. Hundreds of flights and trains have been cancelled,

including the bullet, which connects cities. Workers have a ready started

to clear up debris after the storm, but as the rain continues to fall,

concern over the next 24 hours is spreading across the rest of Japan.

Well, it's not just the UK's security that is under scrutiny.

In France, details have emerged of an alleged Al-Qaeda plot

a year ago to blow up landmarks, including the Eiffel Tower.

The revelations coincide with the government's announcement

If you are looking for a very high-profile target in France, the

first place you would think of is the Eiffel Tower, and it does seem

that the Eiffel Tower was on the list of potential targets of this

alleged would-be jihadist, whose e-mails have been published in the

French media. One way, is said, of carrying jet had into France would

be to attack the ordinary French in bars and markets, but another way

would be to hit national monuments, like nuclear power stations, or like

the Eiffel Tower. This man, a year ago, was about to travel out to

southern Algeria for a training camp when he was arrested. The

intelligence services stepped in and picked him up. It doesn't seem that

this plan was anything more than rudimentary. There is no suggestion

that anything was about to happen, but this is the point, it is exactly

this type of contact between radicalised French nationalists,

residents here, and foreign-based jihadi groups, that is the nightmare

of French governments. And now, with hundreds of people travelling out to

Syria to join ISIS and other extremist groups out there, the fear

is that some of them will return to France, motivated, desensitised to

the most appalling violence, and ready to carry the fight back here

in France. Reports from Berlin say the German

government is to expel a top American diplomat who represents the

secret service at the US embassy. A representative for the country's

parliament said the action is being taken because of American spying

on German politicians, and failure to cooperate with German

attempts to get information. Steve, the relationship between

Germany and the US was not exactly amicable to begin with. This will

make it even worse. A year ago it looked very amicable. President

Obama came to Berlin and was greeted by Chancellor Merkel, very friendly

body language, and it looks like a sunny relationship. But it then

transpired that her mobile phone was being eavesdropped by his security

people in the embassy. In the last month we have had the revelation,

the discovery of two American agents working for the German government.

One of them actually working with secret documents for a parliamentary

committee actually investigating spying. Given all that, there has

been anger among German politicians. Chancellor Merkel and

other politicians have gone to the American government and said, can

you explain this, can you assure us that is not going to happen? They

have not had satisfaction, so the government, and that means her in

this case, has decided that the man responsible for security matters in

the embassy, the man, the CIA person, man or woman, we don't know,

will be expelled. The German government does not use the word

expelled. It says, asked to leave, but it is expelled. It is certainly

different from the amicable pictures of the two families together. What

do they do next? How do they try to bridge the gap and bring those

relationships back together? They keep talking, I think. Angela Merkel

is in a difficult position. Because she is angry. She was angry and

probably remains angry. But at the same time, she is quite pragmatic,

and she doesn't want to dent this relationship more than she has to.

But with each new revelation, people around her in the Parliament get

more difficult to control, if you like, as she might see it. At some

stage, without some kind of threat of a worsening of relationships that

harms real politics, if you like, it's hard to see how anything

changes, apart from continued grouchy nurse. -- continued grouchy

behaviour. An American pilot whose flight was

forced to land because of bad weather managed to keep

his passengers happy when they were forced to sit in

the plane for hours on the ground. Speaking to BBC Radio,

Captain Bradner explained his decision to order 50 takeaway

pizzas to be delivered to I ordered half cheese

and half pepperoni, a safe choice, And we consider the passengers

our extended family. And once they set foot on my

aircraft, I will take care of them. If that includes feeding them,

so be it. The president of the company called

me and insisted on reimbursing me. I am not a hero,

I just ordered pizza. In has been a mixed bag of weather

over the last 24