20/07/2017 Outside Source

Hello, I'm Ros Atkins, this is Outside Source.

Just over an hour ago, this happened. OJ Simpson has been

granted early release by a Parole Board. He has served nine years for

armed robbery. US and European officials say

they've shut down the largest This is the largest dark market web

page takedown in world history. Jeff Sessions has been scolded by Donald

Trump over his decision to stand down from any Russian

investigations. There's a general

strike in Venezuela. It's the latest effort

to oust the government. OJ Simpson has served nine years of

33 year sentence for armed robbery. He will be released from prison. Mr

Simpson, before I cast my vote, I want to let you know that we believe

we are a fair board, we believe we are a consistent board. I will let

you know that consistency also goes to parole, and we do not look kindly

on parole violations, and if I cast my vote to grant, and it concludes

the hearing, our expectation would be that you not violate even the

simplest condition for parole. Having said that, I am prepared to

cast a vote, I am repaired to ask the condition is -- commissioners to

set conditions. The BBC's James Cook is covering this from Los Angeles.

For people coming to this story afresh, remind us why he is in

prison in the first place? OJ Simpson was imprisoned because of a

botched attempt to raid a hotel room in Los Angeles with some armed men,

way back nine years ago now, more than nine years ago, in which he

tried to get this memorabilia back. One of the men pointed a gun at one

of the men in the room and he was subsequently jailed for armed

robbery, 433 years. He served nine years of that sentence, and as we

heard there at this the Parole Board decided he is eligible to be

released on parole. What are the terms of the parole, we told? He

will have to behave! That was made very clear to him. The terms of the

parole are that he must not reoffend. They also judged that he

was at a low risk of reoffending, and they said he had no prior

criminal convictions. That raised some eyebrows. Back in the 1990s,

there could hardly be anyone in the United States or anywhere around the

world who did not know that OJ Simpson did not have a conviction.

His chase across Los Angeles when his ex wife and her friend were

found dead was covered live on television. His subsequent trial was

dubbed the trial of the century, and his acquittal was sensational as

well. He was later found to be responsible for the death in a civil

suit. People remained divided about OJ Simpson, but one recent poll

suggested that only 7% of Americans were sure that he was not a killer.

And for a certain generation, he was as big as a star gets. Is he still a

household name in the US? He is in the sense that people have memory of

his performances in American football. He was generally regarded

as a sensational player, both as a college player and when he entered

the professional arena. Then he went on to be an actor starring in films

such as the towering Inferno, the Naked Gun, and in advertising and

commentating on sports. He was a huge name but he has been out of the

limelight, he has been in the Lovelock correctional Centre in

Nevada for the past nine years. Thank you.

Two of the biggest marketplaces on the dark web have been shut down.

The dark web is the part of the internet that's only

That makes it far easier to remain anonymous or untraceable -

and means just about everything gets bought and sold - drugs, weapons,

The two websites in question are AlphaBay and Hansa.

This is what you now find if you manage to

This is because of co-ordinated action by law enforcement agencies

This is the US Attorney Jeff Sessions earlier.

Today, the Department of Justice announces the takedown of the dark

web market Alphabay. This is the largest dark market web takedown in

world history. Alphabay staff member claimed that this group serviced

more than 40,000 illegal lenders, people who sell illegal products,

for more than 200,000 customers -- vendors. By far most of this

activity was in illegal drugs, pouring fuel on the fire of the

National drug epidemic. You may be wondering have there been lots of

arrests as well. The BBC's Gary O'Donoghue was in the press briefing

and I spoke to him earlier. That have been a few arrests. The guy who

ran Alphabay which was shut down on the 5th of July, he was a Canadian

living in Thailand, and he was arrested, but it seems that he

committed suicide a week later while in custody in Thailand. There is a

bit of a mystery there. The other people in terms of Hansa, some

arrests were made in the Netherlands and Germany as well in relation to

the European side of it. There is some discussion about Alphabay and

some people who work for that in the US getting arrested. I think they

are particularly focusing on finding the service, and they have done

that, and closing them down and closing down this trade, because of

course, Jeff Sessions was very explicit about this, he said

Americans have died as a result of buying opioids like heroin and

artificial opioids on this Alphabay website. He named some names. It is

a big deal for them, particularly because of the coordination they

have managed to pull off with other jurisdictions. I think they are

trying to send a message that this dark web, and these ways into it,

they mentioned a browser as one of the ways you get into that area of

anonymous IPs and things like that, they think they are catching up, if

you like, with the criminals and they are getting as good at it as

the people who are trying to evade and conduct illegal activity. That

is one story concerning Jeff Sessions. This is another one.

The US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been just

about as loyal to Donald Trump as anyone in the last 18 months -

And, as usual, Russia is at the centre of the story.

The President says Mr Sessions has been "very unfair" to him.

He's talking specifically about this moment.

I have now decided to recuse myself from any existing or future

investigations of any matter relating in anyway to the campaigns

for president of the United States. Mr Sessions recused himself

from a Russia investigation after failing to declare a meeting

with the Russian ambassador. Here's Mr Trump talking

to the New York Times. He said, "Sessions should have

never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse

himself, he should have told me before he took

the job and I would have This is not really a normal day, the

president made very disparaging remarks about you, the Attorney

General of the United States. Given what he said, what is your reaction

to those remarks and how seriously are you considering resigning? I

have the honour of serving as Attorney General. It is something

that goes beyond any thought I would ever have had for myself. We love

this job, we love this department and I plan to continue to do so, as

long as that is appropriate. Let's turn to Anthony Snobeck in

Washington. I am getting a bit confused by this. How can Jeff

Sessions have told Donald Trump he would recuse himself when he did not

know that would happen? That is a very good question. The Russian

investigation at the time Jeff Sessions was appointed to be

Attorney General was just getting started. We did not find out the

Trump campaign was under the spotlight until James Komi testified

to Congress about a month and a half later. For him to say, and he said

during his hearings, that if an investigation was pointed towards

the campaign he would recuse himself if he was somehow implicated in it.

Jeff Sessions gave the groundwork for when he might recuse himself, he

might have seen this could have been on the horizon, for Trump to say if

he had known ahead of time for this to happen when there are multiple

sets to get to this point, it kind of defies logic. And as ever with Mr

Trump's stories, this is in part confusing and certainly unusual.

What does it add up to in practical terms? I think it adds up to the

fact that once again, he is questioning people within his own

administration. He is under cutting some of his own staff. I was reading

an article earlier about how people in the White House right now or in

shock. If Donald Trump can go after Jeff Sessions, who as you mention

was loyal from the start, was probably the first national figure

to endorse Donald Trump when he was running for president, when nobody

else thought he was going to win, if Donald Trump could start

undercutting him, then who is beyond Donald Trump's questioning? Who does

he think is safe from being second-guessed? I think there are a

lot of people in the White House who are feeling a little uneasy with

this development. Anthony, thank you.

We have started Outside Source. In a few minutes we will turn to

Venezuela. There are protests on the streets and clashes with the police

to try and get president Madeira out of power, some thing he says he has

no intention of doing. There has been a rise in crime in

England and Wales. Here is Daniel Sandford.

There has been an increase. What are other is doing about it? -- what are

officers doing about it? The first thing is we tackle

those who we know are The second thing is around our crime

prevention piece so we would encourage people to do the basics

around crime prevention. Crime figures are not

easy to interpret. A separate survey of people's

personal experiences still suggests crime overall is falling

but the government's own statisticians think that may be

out of date and at least some crimes Our lead story is OJ Simpson has

been granted early release after serving nine years of 33 sentence

for armed robbery. North Korea is facing severe food

shortages after being hit by its worst drought since 2001. That is

according to the UN. The most vulnerable, and the elderly, will be

worst hit says a report from BBC World Service radio.

Teenagers from Burundi taking part in a competition in the US are

missing. A team of girls from Afghanistan were originally not

allowed to attend the Robotics campaign because of Donald Trump's

travel ban. That was resolved. You will remember

two years ago Cecil the lion was killed by an American trophy hunter

in Zimbabwe. It appears his son has also been killed during a hunt.

There is a general strike in Venezuela designed to push president

Maduro from power. Roads have been barricaded and there

are protesters out on the street. You can see protesters and armed

police on the streets. This is nothing new, there have been

protests since April. Since April these protests have been going on,

dozens of people have been killed. They are all designed to get rid of

President Maduro. He says he is not going anywhere. A couple of other

things to show you. The national news agency has been putting out

images showing people going about their work. This sign says the

National Assembly is unstoppable. These are public sector workers

apparently showing their support for the government but it is very

difficult to judge how natural that photo was. And the situation is

febrile. The head of the Association of United States said in a report

yesterday, the fear we have, and which we are afraid to say out loud,

is that this situation could turn us into a bloodbath.

We are broadcasting from the BBC newsroom. We can speak to our

Americas editor. Here she is assessing the scale of the protests.

People in Caracas woke up to shops closed and barricades in the main

highways. There is no traffic. This may be replicated in other cities as

well. It seems to be quite a big strike. The last time they tried

this was in 2002 and it lasted over months and months, when they were

trying to get rid of President Maduro predecessor Hugo Chavez. Why

does the president say he has no need to listen to these protesters?

He feels that they are criminal, that they are engaged in an economic

war against him, and are backed by what he says are foreign forces. He

usually means the US in this case. For him, he feels he is arguing that

they are stopping him from creating a peaceful situation and tackling

the economic difficulties in the country is having. The president

would argue that despite the fact he is elected he has got to go because?

He is taking away their rights. They have been striking since March when

the Supreme Court is simply decided to take over the role of the

National Congress. We have seen months and months and months of near

daily protests, mostly from young people who have no jobs. The schools

are closed and the economy is in tatters. So this is not a one-day

strike, it could roll on further? They tend to take it day by day.

They tend to gauge what the situation is on the day before they

make those decisions. Let's look at this two each from

Elon Musk, the man behind Tesla. He said, just received verbal

government approval to build an underground and why Phil Baltimore,

DC hyperlink. I will need some help to understand that. Here is Samir

Hussein in New York. These tweets from anybody else would not be taken

very seriously, but Elon Musk has and for making the impossible

somewhat closer to reality and the case in point is space X and Tesla.

He says he has some verbal approval from someone in the government that

he can build a hyperlink. We have already seen some tests for the

hyperlink. It is a superfast train he says between New York and the

Washington corridor he will be able to build the hyperlink which will

allow us to get from one place to another in 29 minutes. Anyone in

this corridor will at this news because trying to get between the

two places is very difficult, especially now we have so many train

derailment and so many slowdowns. That said, it is unclear who he got

this tacit approval from. Really, if you wanted to get something like

this off the ground, you would have to go to each individual state.

There would be environmental rules to go through and it would be mired

in so much red tape that it is hard to believe one governmental

organisation picked up the phone and said go for it. This is the man who

is building the world's biggest battery in Australia at the moment.

Let's talk about easyJet. Sales have gone up by 16% over the last three

months and the profit forecast is up for the year. Here is one analyst on

the news. This year we have had much better punctuality and a few other

things coming to fruition. People are still wanting to spend on

holidays and travel and prioritising that. You have seen despite capacity

being added across the industry, easyJet has been able to sell more

seats to more people. The world's largest comic book

convention is being held in San Diego. 130,000 people show up. Here

is one comic artist talking about how Hollywood is starting to

influence his industry. It is more comic book themed than ever. The

movies are starting to prove that. These movies are reaching a new

audience. With every new Marvel movie and every DC one, and even

comics like the Walking Dead, really helps the business. We had the first

issue of the Avengers in the shop and it sold ?4000. We will shift

from San Diego to South Africa. Allegations of high-level corruption

are being fuelled by a leak of confidential e-mails. Mixed up in

the scandal is a British PR company which is accused of fuelling racial

tensions. Andrew Harding has this report. These are murky times in

South Africa. Leaked e-mails are fuelling

accusations of a giant political scandal. A grievous crime has been

committed against the people of South Africa. By President Zuma?

President Zuma comes across to me as an aid -- aider and a better. The

group tos hired a British public relations firm Bell Pottinger to try

and improve their public image. The company distracted from the issue by

highlighting racial disruption. What they did is appalling. They sewed

back into our nation is strong racial narrative, with the history

of our country, I think it is indefensible. A social media

campaign against the power of white businesses went ugly. Was part of a

black Ops propaganda campaign to get the media off this corrupt network's

back. Africa is ours, it is not yours. Soon, the vitriol was

spilling onto the streets. A radical group with alleged ties to the group

tos began threatening white journalists who had investigated

high-level corruption. You are worried about the book tos because

you believe they are organising black people to take the wealth back

-- you are worried about the Guptas. But a backlash followed against the

Guptas, President Zuma and Bell Pottinger's highly controversial

role. Eventually, the company dropped the Guptas as clients,

apologised for an offensive and inappropriate campaign, sacked the

partner in charge and launched an internal investigation. Many here

believe Bell Pottinger must do much more. If they want to truly retain

some credibility of the saga, it must be on the basis of total

transparency. That makes my blood boil. It makes me so angry that

essentially they came here to destroy what we have painstakingly

painfully built. That anger is now fuelling a larger fight back against

corruption within the governing a MC and what many fear is this country's

dangerous decline. -- the governing ANC. That is a

complex story, if you would like more information on it, you can find

it via the BBC website. If you have a smartphone but you don't have the

BBC News at One you can put that right by going to the App Store and

searching for BBC News and you can download it quickly.

In the next half of Outside Source we will hear from Katya Adler with

her verdict on the second round Brexit talks and we will have a

report on the first day of the Open, the golf, that is. Plus many more

stories from around the world. I will speak to you in a minute.

Hello. There will be a detailed look at the weather here in the United

Kingdom just before the top of the hour. First, it is time for some

world weather