A wrap-up of the latest international news.

Teens who shot Australian to be tried as adults

DUNCAN, Oklahoma: One of the boys charged with the drive-by shooting death of Australian baseballer Chris Lane burst into tears in an Oklahoma courtroom, but his two co-accused showed no emotion despite their age and the gravity of their alleged crimes.

James Edwards, 15, Chancey Luna, 16, and Michael Jones, 17, shuffled into the Stephens County courtroom in Oklahoma on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) wearing orange prison jumpsuits, and with their hands and legs shackled.

They should have been in jeans and joggers walking into Duncan High School for the first day of the new school year.

It was the trio’s first public appearance since 22-year-old Lane, on a jog last Friday along a road in an upper-class area of Duncan, was shot in the back with a .22 calibre revolver in what authorities believe was a random drive-by.

Luna was the shooter, Jones the driver, and Edwards a passenger in the black Ford Focus that stalked Mr Lane, authorities believe.

“To those friends of ours in Australia, we would say to you this is not Duncan, Oklahoma,” District Attorney Jason Hicks said.

“This is not Stephens County, Oklahoma.

“I am going to do everything I can to ensure these three thugs pay for what they did to Christopher Lane.”

The courtroom was packed and divided.

In the front row sat about 20 family and friends of Sarah Harper, Lane’s longtime American girlfriend. Harper was not in court.

A few rows behind was a distraught Jennifer Luna, coming to grips with a nightmare 12 months that saw the death of her husband in a motorcycle accident and now the prospect her 16-year-old son could spend the rest of his life in prison.

On the right hand side of the courtroom was James Edwards Sr, refusing to believe his son was a killer.

“Yes, I do,” Mr Edwards replied outside court when asked if he believed his son, who hoped to be an Olympic wrestler, was innocent.

In the back left area of the court was Jones’s parents and supporters, including his pregnant girlfriend.

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She sobbed in her seat, eventually leaving the court before Jones came in.

Hicks announced Edwards and Luna were charged with first-degree murder and face life in prison without parole if convicted.

Judge Jerry Herberger refused to grant them bail.

Jones was charged with using a vehicle to facilitate the discharge of a weapon and accessory after the fact of murder in the first degree.

Bail for Jones, who is assisting prosecutors and police, was set at $US1 million.

The three will be tried as adults.

Jones, who faces up to 45 years in jail, burst into tears when told he was looking at a “very, very lengthy prison sentence”.

“I didn’t pull the trigger,” Jones said.

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Edwards and Luna did not appear to be fazed during their court appearance.

Even when Ms Luna stood up in court to answer an administrative question from Judge Herberger, Luna did not acknowledge his mother.

Edwards didn’t look for family members.

The lack of emotion from Edwards allegedly was in contrast to last Friday night when the trio was arrested and were being booked into the Stephens County jail.

Edwards did a dance and was laughing, Mr Hicks said, and the incident was captured by a security camera.

“His demeanour was this thing was a whole big joke,” Mr Hicks said.

AAP

US reviews Egypt strategy

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama and top aides are scrutinising US strategy on Egypt, while the White House denied it had quietly frozen millions of dollars in aid after Cairo’s military crackdown.

Obama on Tuesday chaired a meeting of his National Security Council, which includes top diplomatic, defence, intelligence officials and uniformed military brass.

The meeting produced no imminent changes to US policy amid a cresting political row on aid to Egypt following the ouster last month of president Mohamed Morsi.

An administration official told AFP the meeting was part of a broad review of US policy towards Egypt following a tumultuous two months in the country and was not limited to considering the size of future US aid shipments.

At stake is the entire US strategy towards Egypt, the shape of US assistance, which annually hits $US1.3 billion ($A1.44 billion), and Washington’s response to how key regional players are responding to the coup.

Saudi Arabia, an ally with which Washington has delicate ties, has warned it would step in and help Cairo if US aid trickles to a halt.

The crackdown, which has killed nearly 900 people, has left Obama balancing US political values and hopes for Arab democracy, and national security interests guarded by Cairo’s military.

The White House also took a new public shot at Egypt’s military-backed government, by calling the arrest on Tuesday of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie incompatible with the military’s pledge for an “inclusive political process”.

Badie had been in hiding since July 10 when a warrant was issued for his arrest over accusations he incited the deaths of protesters outside the Muslim Brotherhood’s Cairo headquarters in late June.

Egypt’s authorities have this month rounded up dozens of senior Brotherhood leaders, drawing US rebukes.

Debate over US aid to Egypt was fuelled by a report that suggested that Washington had already frozen pending military aid shipments.

Several of Obama’s top congressional opponents say sending billions of dollars to Egypt is now incompatible with US values, after protesters were shot dead in the streets.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said there had been no final decision on a review of US aid to Egypt, launched after the military’s ouster of Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected leader.

“Reports to the contrary that suggest that assistance to Egypt has been cut off are not accurate,” he said.

In an increasingly confusing game of semantics, Earnest insisted that the flow of aid was not a “faucet” that could be turned off and on.

“Assistance is provided episodically, assistance is provided in tranches…. This is not a matter of turning the dial one way or the other,” he said.

Earlier, an aide to Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat who heads the subcommittee on foreign operations, said the flow of aid had been “stopped”.

“This is current practice, not necessarily official policy, and there is no indication of how long it will last,” the aide said.

AFP

Partner of leaks journo takes legal action

LONDON: The partner of the US journalist behind the Edward Snowden leaks has launched legal action against Britain for holding him under anti-terror laws as the prime minister’s office admitted it was kept informed about his detention.

David Miranda, a Brazilian national who has been working with his boyfriend Glenn Greenwald on the leaks, was held for almost nine hours on Sunday as he passed through London Heathrow Airport.

The Guardian, meanwhile, said the British government had forced it to destroy files or face a court battle over its publication of US security secrets leaked by Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum by Russia.

“David Miranda is taking a civil action over his material and the way that he was treated,” editor Alan Rusbridger, whose newspaper has worked with Greenwald and Snowden, told the BBC.

British police confiscated some of Miranda’s electronic equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles, according to The Guardian.

“He wants that material back and he doesn’t want it copied.”

The detention of Miranda, 28, has caused an international outcry and sparked protests from Brazil. He was travelling home to Rio de Janeiro from Berlin at the time and was held in a Heathrow transit lounge.

The White House has said it received a “heads up” from the British government that police were about to arrest Miranda under anti-terror legislation but denied it had requested the action.

A source in Cameron’s 10 Downing Street office denied any political involvement in Miranda’s detention.

“The detention was an operational matter for the police. Number 10 was kept informed in the usual way,” the Downing Street source told AFP.

Britain’s Home Office interior ministry defended the decision to detain Miranda, saying police could detain an individual if they believed he possessed “highly sensitive stolen information that would help terrorism”.

The legal firm acting for Miranda, Bindmans, said it was challenging the legality of Miranda’s detention under Schedule 7 of Britain’s Terrorism Act 2000, which applies to ports and airports, after being contacted on Sunday.

Bindmans said it had written to the Home Office saying it would go to court this week if it did not receive assurances that “there will be no inspection, copying, disclosure, transfer, distribution or interference, in any way, with our client’s data pending determination of our client’s claim.”

The wider questions of state secrecy and the law intensified when Rusbridger made his claim about being ordered to destroy some of The Guardian’s Snowden files.

Writing in Tuesday’s edition of The Guardian, Rusbridger said that two months ago he had been contacted by “a very senior government official claiming to represent the views of the prime minister”.

The call led to two meetings in which “he demanded the return or destruction of all the material we were working on”.

At the time, the paper was publishing a series of candid revelations about mass surveillance programs conducted by the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, after former NSA worker Snowden handed them thousands of documents.

Rusbridger claimed that in a call “from the centre of government”, someone he does not identify told him: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.”

The editor said the government threatened to use the courts to try and obtain the leaked documents if the paper did not destroy them themselves.

AFP