President Bashar al-Assad's government and the rebels fighting him have accused each other of using chemical weapons, a step which the United States had said would cross a "red line" in a conflict which has killed 100,000 people.

Like the broader Syrian conflict, the issue of chemical weapons has divided world powers. Washington said in June it believed Assad's forces have used them on a small scale, while in July Moscow said rebels fired sarin gas near Aleppo in March.

The U.N. team, including weapons experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, will try to establish only whether chemical weapons including sarin and other toxic nerve agents were used, not who used them.

The 20-member team declined to comment to reporters as they checked into a hotel in central Damascus on Sunday. A U.N statement in New York said they would start work on Monday.

Led by Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom, the team had been on standby since early April to visit Syria but the mission was held up for months by negotiations over the access Damascus would grant them.

Syrian officials originally insisted they should only investigate allegations of chemical weapons use in Khan al-Assal, near the northern city of Aleppo, but the team has been urged to look into at least a dozen other incidents, mainly around Damascus, Homs and the northern town of Saraqeb.

The experts now plan to visit Khan al-Assal and two other sites, which they have not yet specified.

Glencore's management, no strangers to Xstrata given the trader's 34 percent stake in the miner, have been reviewing Xstrata's assets as owners over the past three months and they had been expected to book a hit alongside maiden results.

Analysts and an industry source said on Sunday the group writedown, mostly on the value of former Xstrata assets, would likely amount to $5 billion to $7 billion.

Nickel assets - including Xstrata's $5 billion Koniambo operation in New Caledonia - are likely to take the brunt of the pain as nickel prices languish at less than a third of their 2007 highs and supply continues to exceed demand.

But the value of other assets including copper projects, which accounted for a large slice of Xstrata's pipeline of future mines and expansions, could also be cut back.

The mining industry has been pummeled by billions of dollars in writedowns since the start of the year, paying the price for boom-year deals and big-ticket projects that soured as prices fell. Rio Tinto (RIO.L) announced in January $14 billion of impairments tied to underperforming Mozambican coal and Canadian aluminum operations - a cut that resulted in the abrupt exit of its chief executive.

Glencore declined to comment on Sunday.

A consensus estimate of 13 analyst forecasts provided by Glencore saw half-year core profit, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) at $5.88 billion, and attributable profit, or net earnings, of $1.7 billion.

Bo Xilai, formerly the Communist Party chief of Chongqing, was expelled from the party after a scandal surrounding the murder of a British businessman.

His wife Gu Kailai was jailed last August for the killing of Neil Heywood.

The Bo Xilai scandal rocked China with claims of corruption at the top of the Communist Party.

Mr Bo has been accused of taking advantage of his office to accept money and property, as well as embezzling public money. The trial will start on Thursday morning at the Intermediate People's Court in the eastern city of Jinan, Shandong province, state-run news agency Xinhua said. Correspondents say it is common for high-profile political trials to take place away from their home province to stop them getting beneficial treatment.

The trial date comes amid a high-profile crackdown on corruption.

Xinhua news agency also reported on Sunday that Liu Tienan, a former top Communist Party economic official, has been placed under investigation for suspected bribe taking.

Allegations against Mr Liu emerged online in December, when a well-known journalist accused him of corruption.

Fall from grace

Mr Bo's fall began in February 2012, when his former chief of police in Chongqing, Wang Lijun, briefly fled to the US consulate in Chengdu. Wang, who has since been jailed for 15 years, triggered an investigation into the murder of UK businessman Neil Heywood.

Mr Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, has been convicted and given a suspended death sentence for Mr Heywood's death.

Gu did not contest charges at her one-day trial that she poisoned Mr Heywood in November 2011.

Mr Bo was suspected of trying to cover up the murder, and was stripped of his party positions.

Analysts say the Chinese leadership has tried to minimise the political fallout from the case, which exposed deep divisions within its ranks.

In a speech to military and police officers, army chief Abdel Fattah el-Sisi promised to crack down on anyone using violence, but also struck an apparently inclusive note, telling Mursi's supporters: "There is room for everyone in Egypt," according to the army's Facebook page.

The Brotherhood, under huge pressure since police stormed its protest camps in Cairo and killed hundreds of its supporters, said it was planning more marches to demand the reinstatement of Mursi, ousted by the army on July 3.

Egypt, the most populous Arab nation, is grappling with the worst bout of internal bloodshed in its modern history, just 30 months after President Hosni Mubarak's overthrow was hailed as heralding democratic change across a region ruled by autocrats.

Around 800 people have died, including about 79 police, in a crackdown that has earned the military rulers condemnation from major aid donor the United States and the European Union, but support from wealthy Arab allies led by Saudi Arabia, which fear the spread of Brotherhood ideology to the Gulf monarchies.

Before the cabinet met, the liberal deputy prime minister, Ziad Bahaa el-Din, had floated a conciliatory proposal, seen by Reuters, advocating an end to a state of emergency declared last week, political participation for all parties and guarantees of human rights, including the right to free assembly.

But his initiative seemed at odds with the position of Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi, who suggested outlawing the 85-year-old Brotherhood, which would effectively force it underground.

"There will be no reconciliation with those whose hands have been stained with blood and who turned weapons against the state and its institutions," Beblawi told reporters on Saturday.

A middle-ranking security officer, who asked not to be named, said there would be no let-up in the anti-Brotherhood struggle, regardless of any political proposals or international criticism.

"THE PEOPLE SUPPORT US"

"We have the people's support. Everybody is against them now as they see the group as an armed terrorist organization with no future as a political power," the officer said.

The capital's frenetic streets, unusually empty in the past few days, were returning to normal, although the army kept several big squares closed and enforced a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

At night, soldiers standing by armored personnel carriers man checkpoints and vigilantes inspect cars for weapons.

He has, however, made fighting economic inequality a central goal of his presidency, delivering forceful speeches and advocating policies aimed at shrinking the income gap and increasing social mobility. When he speaks later this month on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Obama will be at the confluence of efforts to reduce racial and economic divisions.

As the president addresses a crowd from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28, current and former advisers say, he will want to impress upon listeners how progress toward racial equality will require progress toward economic equality.

Obama, who keeps a framed program from the “March on Washington” in the Oval Office, has said he has often reminded people that the march was as much about what he called economic justice as a demonstration for civil rights.

“He wants to create opportunity and to make sure the level playing field is ready for everybody,” said Valerie Jarrett, one of Obama’s senior advisers and close friends. “If you look at poverty or unemployment, they disproportionately affect people of color. People who don’t have health insurance are disproportionately of color. There is inevitably an overlap in addressing racial equality at the same time you’re trying to create economic empowerment.”

Advisers say Obama sees his message as building on the themes of Martin Luther King Jr. and other leaders a half-century ago. He is likely to discuss the progress that has been made since 1963, they say, as well as the barriers that remain.

Many of the most overt forms of racial discrimination and bias have faded, but yawning economic gaps have persisted since 1963, and there has been essentially no narrowing of the unemployment gap between blacks and whites. The financial crisis and recession scarred minorities more than any one else.

Fifty years ago, the unemployment rate was 5 percent for whites and 10.9 percent for blacks, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Today, it is 6.6 percent for whites and 12.6 percent for blacks. Over the past 30 years, the average white family has gone from having five times as much wealth as the average black family to 61 / 2 times, according to the Urban Institute.

The highly unusual meeting was brokered by Evgeny Lebedev, son of the billionaire Russian Alexander Lebedev, owner of the Independent, after Fry publicly called for a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Sochi next year.

Cameron is under pressure from activists including Fry to condemn new laws in Russia that impose heavy fines on anyone disseminating information about homosexuality to under 18s.

The issue has been in the spotlight as Moscow is hosting the world athletics championships, where there have been protests by sportsmen and women.

Fry, who has more than six million followers on Twitter, is an influential voice in the campaign to boycott the Sochi Games, comparing the situation to the decision to hold the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany.

After Fry called for "an absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics", Cameron tweeted a reply saying that attending the event was a better way of challenging prejudice.

It is understood the two men met on Monday night, two days after the Twitter exchange, for drinks at the Grapes pub in Limehouse. The pub is jointly owned by Lebedev and the actor Ian McKellen.

Fry has maintained his silence on Twitter about the meeting, but sources said it was a friendly conversation rather than official talks. A spokesman for Lebedev said the matter was private.

Fry has previously said he "instinctively dislikes" the Conservatives but admires Cameron's achievement in legalising gay marriage.

On Sunday campaigners said Cameron had still not made it clear what he would do about Russia's stance on gay rights, despite winning positive publicity for his meeting with Fry.

Peter Tatchell, the veteran human rights and LGBT campaigner, said: "It's great that David Cameron met Stephen Fry but what's the actual outcome of this meeting? David Cameron said he wouldn't support a boycott of Sochi Winter Olympics but he hasn't said what he'll do himself."

Tatchell, whose presence at Downing Street functions has been repeatedly vetoed in recent years, said a coalition of gay rights groups would hold a protest outside Downing Street in early September as part of a new campaign called Love Russia, Hate Homophobia.

"It will be just before the G20 summit hosted by President Putin," Tatchell told the Guardian. "The main message of this is directed at David Cameron. We want him to give an undertaking that he will raise the issue at the G20 summit and to publicly appeal to President Putin to repeal the anti-gay laws. Our hope is that the London protest on 3 September will turn into a global protest."

For almost three decades, Emahoy Tsegué-Mariam Guebrù has been closeted at the church, devoting herself to her life's twin themes – faith and music. The Ethiopian nun, whose piano compositions have enthralled those who have stumbled across a handful of recordings in existence, has lived a simple life, rarely venturing beyond the monastery's gates.

But this month the nonagenarian's scribbled musical scores have been published as a book, ensuring the long-term survival of her music. And on Tuesday, the composer will hear her work played in concert for the first time, at three performances in Jerusalem. Guebrù may even play a little.

Her music has been acclaimed by critics and devotees. Maya Dunietz, a young Israeli musician who worked with Guebrù on the publication of her scores, says in her introduction to the book that the composer has "developed her own musical language".

"It is classical music, with a very special sense of time, space, scenery," Dunietz told the Guardian. "It's not grand; it's intimate, natural, honest and very feminine. She has a magical touch on the piano. It's delicate but deep. And all her compositions tell stories of time and place."

Guebrù's inspiration comes not only from her faith, but from her life: an extraordinary journey from an aristocratic family in Addis Ababa, with strong links to Emperor Haile Selassie, to a monastery in the historic centre of Jerusalem .

She was born Yewubdar Guebrù on December 12 1923 and lived in the Ethiopian capital until, aged six, she and her sister were sent to boarding school in Switzerland. In one of two seminal moments of her life, there she heard her first piano concert, and began to play and study music.

After her return to Addis Ababa, and a period of exile for her family followed by yet another return, Guebrù was awarded a scholarship to study music in London. But she was unexpectedly denied permission to leave by the Ethiopian authorities. n the bleak days following this calamity, Guebrù refused food until, close to death, she requested holy communion. Embracing God was the second seminal moment of her life. She abandoned music to devote herself to prayer, and after several years joined a monastery in northern Ethiopia. She spent 10 years there, barefoot and living in a mud and stone hut.

The bird charity says regulations are inadequate to ensure water, landscapes and wildlife are protected.

But Cuadrilla, which is exploring the sites, says its activities will not harm birds or other wildlife.

On Monday, Prime Minister David Cameron urged the UK to back fracking, which involves shattering shales to release trapped gas.

These are the first formal objections to fracking from the RSPB, and they concern a drilling proposal at Singleton in Lancashire, 0.8 miles (1.2km) from an internationally important area for pink-footed geese and whooper swans. The society is also protesting against drilling at Balcombe in West Sussex on the grounds that no environmental impact assessment has been carried out.

Harry Huyton, from the RSPB, said: “Singleton is on the doorstep of an area that is home to thousands of geese and swans, which will arrive from as far away as Siberia to roost and feed next month and stay for the winter.

“There may not be as many local residents as in Sussex, but this area is protected by European law because it is so valuable for wildlife, and Cuadrilla has done nothing to investigate what damage their activities could do to it."

The charity believes there could be 5,000 sites and a total of up to 100,000 wells in the North of England.

"The idea that these will have a benign impact on the countryside is very difficult to believe,” Mr Huyton added.

When asked whether swans were so sensitive as to be disturbed by industrial activity nearly a mile away, an RSPB spokesman said: “If Cuadrilla did their assessments and found there wasn’t a serious concern, we’d accept that.

"But no assessments have been done. This is all in too much of a hurry – the regulations simply aren’t in place.” The group’s other main objection is that a push for shale will divert funds and attention from the UK’s push towards an electricity system almost completely powered by clean energy by 2030.

If studies prove that fracking does not leak methane into the atmosphere, then shale gas will indeed be much less polluting than coal.

But the Environment Agency’s Chris Smith said an expansion of gas for power generation was only compatible with legally binding climate targets if technologies were fitted to remove the carbon emissions from the exhaust. So far, the government has given no commitment to that.

The report follows revelations by former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden of widespread surveillance, including a program known as PRISM, by the National Security Agency and his assertion that the agency hacked into critical network infrastructure at universities in China and in Hong Kong.

Documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has had access to vast amounts of Internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.

"At present, thanks to their technological superiority, many of our core information technology systems are basically dominated by foreign hardware and software firms, but the Prism scandal implies security problems," the newspaper quoted an anonymous source as saying.

China's Ministry of Public Security declined to comment on the reported probe, and the State Council's Development Research Centre, one of the groups reportedly involved, told Reuters they were not carrying out such an investigation.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which oversees China's IT industry, said it could not confirm anything because of the matter's sensitivity. Another MIIT official told Reuters they were unaware of the reported probe.

IBM said in an emailed statement to Reuters that the company was unable to comment. Oracle and EMC were not immediately available for comment.

China, repeatedly accused by the United States of hacking, was given considerable ammunition by Snowden's allegations, which Beijing has used to point the finger at Washington for hypocrisy.

Chinese regulators and the police have begun a series of investigations in recent weeks into how foreign and domestic companies do business in the world's second-biggest economy.

"The Prism scandal certainly provides ample material for real concern," said Mark Natkin, managing director of Beijing-based market intelligence firm Marbridge Consulting.

Google has blocked users from watching videos via the app, saying it violated its terms of service.

The search company had requested the app be made using HTML5 code language, but Microsoft said it was unable to.

Microsoft said the issues were "manufactured" and Google was deliberately hindering the Windows Phone platform.

'Inconsistent'

In a blog post entitled "The limits of Google's openness", Microsoft lawyer David Howard requested that Google lift the block, and outlined his company's issues with the stance. "Google's objections to our app are not only inconsistent with Google's own commitment of openness, but also involve requirements for a Windows Phone app that it doesn't impose on its own platform or Apple's."

He added: "It seems to us that Google's reasons for blocking our app are manufactured so that we can't give our users the same experience Android and iPhone users are getting.

"The roadblocks Google has set up are impossible to overcome, and they know it."

In a statement, Google defended its actions: "Unfortunately, Microsoft has not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully featured YouTube experience, and has instead re-released a YouTube app that violates our terms of service. It has been disabled.

'Odd request'

"We value our broad developer community and therefore ask everyone to adhere to the same guidelines."

The Windows Phone platform is, according to some metrics, the third most popular mobile operating system in use worldwide.

However, it lags well behind Google's Android and Apple's iOS.

As a result, there are considerably fewer apps available for Windows Phone. To address this, Microsoft is investing its own resources to bring some key services to its platform.

In May, Microsoft's first attempt at creating a YouTube app was blocked after Google complained it failed to display ads correctly.

The companies agreed to work together to devise a new version, but Google insisted it was created using HTML5, an open web coding standard, rather than code specific to the Windows Phone platform.

Mr Howard said this was an "odd request", and one that was unfair to Microsoft. 'Significant resources' "Neither YouTube's iPhone app nor its Android app are built on HTML5," he wrote.

"Nevertheless, we dedicated significant engineering resources to examine the possibility.

The May 2012 audit found 2,776 incidents of "unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications" in the preceding 12 months, the Post reported in its story Thursday.

"Most were unintended. Many involved failures of due diligence or violations of standard operating procedure," said the Post article by reporter Barton Gellman. "The most serious incidents included a violation of a court order and unauthorized use of data about more than 3,000 Americans and green-card holders."

The paper said most incidents involved unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the country.

In one case, the NSA decided it didn't need to report the unintended surveillance. In 2008, a "large number" of calls placed from Washington were intercepted due to a programming error that confused the capitol's 202 area code for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt. The information came from a "quality assurance" review that wasn't distributed to the NSA overnight staff, according to the Post.

Separately, an NSA new collection method went undiscovered by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for months. The court, which has authority over some of the agency's operations, ruled it unconstitutional.

Responding to the Post's story, the NSA said, "A variety of factors can cause the numbers of incidents to trend up or down from one quarter to the next." Factors can include implementation of new procedures, technology or software changes and expanded access.

"The one constant across all of the quarters is a persistent, dedicated effort to identify incidents or risks of incidents at the earliest possible moment, implement mitigation measures wherever possible, and drive the numbers down," the agency said.

The agency released another statement Thursday night defending its programs. "NSA's foreign intelligence collection activities are continually audited and overseen internally and externally," it said. "When NSA makes a mistake in carrying out its foreign intelligence mission, the agency reports the issue internally and to federal overseers -- and aggressively gets to the bottom of it."

The London-based developer, Canonical, has generated $10,288,472 (about £6.6m) in pledges, passing the record set by Pebble smartwatches last year.

But with six days of its campaign left the company is far from reaching its funding goal of $32m.

Canonical would have to return all the money if it does not reach the target.

The developer had said that if its campaign on the Indiegogo crowdfunding website was successful, it would aim to deliver 40,000 handsets to qualifying backers by next May.

'Bringing the future forward'

In an interview with the BBC, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth said public interest in the Ubuntu Edge smartphone was high.

"The campaign has sparked a level of interest that has surprised even us," he said, adding that it had seized the attention not only of phone enthusiasts but innovators and futurists as well as manufacturers.

He added that some large manufacturers had come "out of the woodwork" to discuss the device with him. Last week, Bloomberg said it had made an $80,000 contribution to the campaign, explaining that the open-source initiative could benefit its clients and influence the future of mobile computing.

But Mr Shuttleworth conceded the product might be too much of a departure from the current generation of smartphones for many institutional investors, such as major telecom companies, to consider backing it now.

If the Edge managed to find enough funding, "we would have been bringing the future forward a year or two at least", Mr Shuttleworth said.

Programs on the proposed smartphone would look like standard mobile apps when the handset was being used as a standalone device.

But they would change their user interfaces to that of a desktop application when the phone was docked with a monitor, Canonical said.

In addition, the operating system could support apps written in the HTML5 web language, albeit at slower speeds.

Particularly in regions such as Asia, Mr Shuttleworth said, businesses as well as individuals expressed interest in this type of device.

'Naive' strategy

But he acknowledged that, with one week of the campaign left, there was still a long way to go to meet the funding target.

Canonical aimed to raise $32m. Indiegogo's current funding record is $1,665,380, which was raised by Scandu Scout - a scheme to build a Star Trek-style Tricorder medical scanning device.

Its rival Kickstarter's record is $10,266,845 for the Pebble smartwatch.