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The question, mostly directed to employees of the clandestine service branch, was: Which are the best allies among friendly spy services, in terms of liaison with the CIA, and which are the worst? In other words, who acts like, well, friends?

“Israel came in dead last,” a recently retired CIA official told me the other day.

Not only that, he added, throwing up his hands and rising from his chair, “the Israelis are number three, with China number one and Russia number two,” in terms of how aggressive they are in their operations on U.S. soil.

Israel’s undercover operations here, including missions to steal U.S. secrets, are hardly a secret at the FBI, CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. From time to time, in fact, the FBI has called Israeli officials on the carpet to complain about a particularly brazen effort to collect classified or other sensitive information, in particular U.S. technical and industrial secrets.

The most notorious operation employed Jonathan Pollard, the naval intelligence analyst convicted in 1987 and sentenced to life in prison for stealing tens of thousands of classified documents for Israel.

One of Israel’s major interests, of course, is keeping track of Muslims who might be allied with Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, or Iran-backed Hezbollah, based in Lebanon.

As tensions with Iran escalate, according to former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, “Israeli agents have become more aggressive in targeting Muslims living in the United States as well as in operating against critics.”

“There have been a number of cases reported to the FBI about Mossad officers who have approached leaders in Arab-American communities and have falsely represented themselves as ‘U.S. intelligence,’ ” Giraldi wrote recently in American Conservative magazine.

“Because few Muslims would assist an Israeli, this is done to increase the likelihood that the target will cooperate. It’s referred to as a ‘false flag’ operation.”

Giraldi’s piece continued, “Mossad officers sought to recruit Arab-Americans as sources willing to inform on their associates and neighbors. The approaches, which took place in New York and New Jersey, were reportedly handled clumsily, making the targets of the operation suspicious.”

“These Arab-Americans turned down the requests for cooperation,” Giraldi added,”and some of the contacts were eventually reported to the FBI, which has determined that at least two of the Mossad officers are, ironically, Israeli Arabs operating out of Israel’s mission to the United Nations in New York under cover as consular assistants.”

“Oh, sure, they do that,” the other former CIA official said, waving a dismissing hand, when I asked about Giraldi’s story. “They’re all over the place.”

While it is not clear how many of those businesses won contracts, at least three had deals with the United States military or the Central Intelligence Agency, according to former government and company officials. Since 2001, the intelligence agency has awarded up to $600 million in classified contracts to Blackwater and its affiliates, according to a United States government official.

The Senate Armed Services Committee this week released a chart that identified 31 affiliates of Blackwater, now known as Xe Services. The network was disclosed as part of a committee’s investigation into government contracting. The investigation revealed the lengths to which Blackwater went to continue winning contracts after Blackwater guards killed 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007. That episode and other reports of abuses led to criminal and Congressional investigations, and cost the company its lucrative security contract with the State Department in Iraq.

The city was left devastated after the quake struck 30km west of the city at 4.35am this morning.

The quake was at a depth of 33km and was centred near Darfield.

Water and sewage pipes are burst with Mayor Bob Parker saying the city may resort to taking water from the Avon River.

He says the water and sewage system in not operating. Power is also out in large parts of the city.

Burwood Hospital in Christchurch is among many homes and services without water.

Plans are in place to get milk tankers full of water into the city but the water was likely to be rationed and people must conserve it.

The verdict being read out today at a Lisbon court brings to an end the long-running scandal over a child prostitution racket involving young boys from the Casa Pia network of orphanages.

Clients included people from the country’s professional, government and media elites, according to trial evidence. Systematic sexual abuse involving orphanage employees was also revealed.

Newspaper websites and television stations provided live running coverage of this morning’s reading of what the Portuguese legal system calls the “proven facts” of a case that has shocked the country.

Carlos Cruz, a married TV presenter who was once voted Portugal’s most popular man, paid for sex with a 14-year-old, according to Expresso newspaper’s website. He also abused at least one other boy.

Cruz, a father of two, became known as “Mr Television” after several decades of presenting.

A former ambassador to Unesco, Jorge Ritto, and a doctor, Ferreira Diniz, were also deemed to have abused several young boys.

A former ombudsman at the Casa Pia orphanages, Manuel Abrantes, also sexually abused the children. Two more men and a woman were also found to have been involved in the paedophile ring.

During the trial, the court heard evidence of young boys being taken to a house in the eastern town of Elvas to meet the paedophile clients. Abuse had also taken place at various addresses in Lisbon.

Some of the 30 or more victims who gave evidence were reportedly present to hear the verdicts. Psychiatrists who have helped the victims said several had tried to kill themselves after denouncing the abuse to the police.

Lawyers had said before the verdicts were read out that their clients would almost certainly appeal against any guilty sentences. “It seems inevitable that we will have to appeal,” said Cruz’s lawyer, Antonio Serra Lopes. “This is the first round.”

It was not clear whether today’s reading of the “proven facts” would include sentencing. The court broke for lunch and was to resume the reading this afternoon.

One of the judges, Ana Peres, had earlier warned those present that the proven facts would be shocking. “Some of the accounts could be considered pornographic,” she said.

Portuguese media reported that the judges had decided to read an abbreviated version of the verdict, with a fuller version to be sent to defendants and prosecutors next week.

The court case has already dragged on for six years, and the first arrests were made eight years ago – though abuse had reportedly been continuous for more than three decades.

The Casa Pia scandal rocked the country’s political establishment after the former socialist Labour minister Paulo Pedroso was arrested in 2002. He was cleared four months later. Socialists claimed the allegations against Pedroso were politically motivated and a court later ordered the state to pay him damages for wrongful arrest.

A former senior government official also revealed that allegations of abuse at the orphanages had been presented to the country’s then president, General Ramalho Eanes, in the 1980s.

Former secretary of state for families Teresa Costa Macedo, who presented the evidence to Ramalho Eanes and sent a dossier to police that was later lost, said she received anonymous threats by phone and post.

“They said they would kill me, flay me and a lot of other things,” she said.

She had no idea how bad the economic collapse would be. She still doesn’t understand exactly why it was so bad. The response to the collapse was inadequate. And she doesn’t have much of an idea about how to fix things.

What she did have was a binder full of scary descriptions and warnings, offered with a perma-smile and singsong delivery: “Terrible recession. . . . Incredibly searing. . . . Dramatically below trend. . . . Suffering terribly. . . . Risk of making high unemployment permanent. . . . Economic nightmare.”

Users play the game by simulating everything from holding hands to sending flirty text messages, and can even use the device’s built-in microphone to hold simulated conversations. But unlike traditional video games, LovePlus+ users say the point of the experience isn’t simple fun or virtual competition. 19-year-old player Tatsuya Fukuzawa tells the Journal’s Wakabayashi, “There isn’t a lot of romance in my life. This helps me cope with some of the loneliness.”

The SEC is investigating the practice called “quote stuffing” where exceptionally large numbers of orders to buy or sell stocks are placed and canceled almost immediately, the Journal said citing anonymous sources. It is also reviewing another practice known as “sub-penny pricing,” where orders are priced in increments smaller than a penny, but are far from the price at which the stock is trading.

Quote stuffing and sub-penny pricing have become more prevalent as high-frequency computer trading has become the dominant part of the stock market in recent years, the Journal said.

The SEC could also be trying to determine if the pair of practices played a role in the May 6 “flash crash,” a panicked disruption in trading that saw the Dow Jones industrials drop hundreds of points in minutes.

The bank eventually will close all in-house trading to comply with new U.S. curbs on investment banks, said the person, who asked not to be identified because New York-based JPMorgan’s decision hasn’t been made public.

Closing the proprietary trading desk for commodities affects fewer than 20 traders, one in the U.S. and the rest in the U.K., the person said. The unit is based in London, and traders there were given notice on Aug. 27 that their jobs were at risk as required by U.K. law, according to the person. Proprietary traders in fixed-income and equities, who account for 50 to 75 employees, will need to find jobs when those desks are shut down, this person said.

Congress passed restrictions on financial firms this year designed to prevent a recurrence of the 2008 credit crisis, which almost caused the banking system to collapse. Proprietary trading involves transactions made on behalf of the bank rather than its customers. The curbs are known as the Volcker rule, named after former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who campaigned for limits on risk-taking by lenders.