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An official from a gold mine in Egypt said he was confident it was not aimed at gold production but at individual exports.

A decree banning the export of gold in all its forms, including jewelry and ornaments, was issued by newly appointed Trade Minister Samir el-Sayyad. It takes effect immediately and continues until June 30, the official news agency MENA reported.

Eric Kiraithe, a police spokesman, said the man was an official at Kenya’s Revenue Authority.

“We have not arrested any suspects involved in gold smuggling but we have identified three Kenyans who are part of the cartels involved in gold smuggling,” he said.

Police commissioner Matthew Iteere told reporters an investigation had been launched into the shooting.

Kenyan media said the official was shot by four armed men at the weekend while he was sitting in his car, waiting for the gate to his house to be opened.

They said he was leading the investigation into the discovery of two and a half tonnes of gold worth about $100 million.

An unnamed official in Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province told Reuters last week that “large amounts” of gold from eastern Congo had been recovered in Nairobi and Tanzania’s Dar es Salaam.

Congo’s government has not confirmed the smuggling.

Three provinces in Congo’s east are subject to a mining ban imposed last year by President Joseph Kabila to weed out what he called the “mafia groups” controlling the mineral trade.

A United Nations report published last year said the gold trade in North and South Kivu provinces was worth around $160 million per year, with at least 80 percent of it smuggled illegally out of the country.

It seems unusual, but it’s exactly what the staff of Foreign Policy has done to Seymour Hersh, following a lecture the venerated reporter gave at Georgetown University’s campus in Doha, Qatar. You may know Hersh as the dogged investigator who exposed the My Lai Massacre during Vietnam. You may know him as the staff writer for The New Yorker who published some of the earliest pieces on Abu Ghraib in May 2004. You might even know him as the man derided and then vindicated for claiming that Dick Cheney was running a secret assassination squad right out of the Vice President’s office. (In truth, the squad was and is a bipartisan affair, initiated under Clinton and still operative under Obama.)

ATLAS looks like a headless Terminator, with a torso, two legs and two arms, all controlled by an array of servos, pistons and robotic muscles. His killer feature is lifelike agility, and will be able to tackle difficult terrain by walking upright, sidling through narrow passages and using his hands for balance, support and grip.

“ATLAS will walk like a man, using a heel-to-toe walking motion, long strides and dynamic transfer of weight on each step,” explains Rob Playter, the ATLAS principal investigator and VP of Engineering at Boston Dynamics. Dynamic agility systems will allow the robot to use his own momentum to throw or swing himself across gaps and between handholds. It’s not entirely clear why he lacks a head.

The UN Security Council agreed on Saturday evening to freeze international assets belonging to the Gaddafis and their key aides, to ban them from travelling and to block all arms sales to Tripoli. It also called for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the killings of demonstrators.

This inquiry could lead to senior Libyan ministers and officials being indicted to stand trial for crimes against humanity at The Hague and being given lengthy prison sentences.

But it has been widely alleged that many of the attacks were in fact carried out by foreign mercenaries hired by Colonel Gaddafi. And the US insisted that the UN resolution was worded so that no one from an outside country that is not a member of the ICC could be prosecuted for their actions in Libya.

This means that mercenaries from countries such as Algeria, Ethiopia and Tunisia – which have all been named by rebel Libyan diplomats to the UN as being among the countries involved – would escape prosecution even if they were captured, because their nations are not members of the court.

The company said that several hundred thousand customers had lost voice, text and internet access.

Burglars hit the facility in the early hours of Monday morning, stealing computer equipment and network hardware.

Most of the users affected were in the M4 corridor area, to the west of London.

In a statement, Vodafone said: “We had a break in last night at one of our technical facilities which resulted in damage done to some of our equipment.

“We are working quickly to restore these and will be back to normal as soon as we can.”

At least five men in plain clothes, who appeared to be security personnel, punched and kicked the reporter at Beijing’s Wangfujing shopping street at 2:45 p.m. local time yesterday. They also took the video camera he was carrying and detained him in a roadside store.

Uniformed police arrived after the attack and escorted the journalist to a nearby station where he filed a report of the attack before seeking treatment for his injuries at a local hospital. Police returned the video camera while the reporter was at the station, saying a passerby had found it.

“We’ve been reaching out to many different Libyans who are attempting to organize in the east and, as the revolution moves westward, there as well,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said en route to Geneva for talks on Libya. The U.S. will provide “any kind of assistance” to those seeking to end Qaddafi’s 41-year dictatorship, she said.

The analyzer, about the size of a laser printer, initially will be used to determine kinship among refugees and asylum seekers. It also could help establish whether foreigners giving children up for adoption are their parents or other relatives, and help combat child smuggling and human trafficking, said Christopher Miles, biometrics program manager in the DHS Office of Science and Technology.

Only DNA can positively determine family relationships, Miles said Wednesday during a conference on biometrics and national security.

Eventually, the analyzer also could be used to positively identify criminals, illegal immigrants, missing persons and mass casualty victims, he said.