The Hungarian Guard Association said it was a movement not a party and could not be dissolved by a court order.

The organisation regularly marches in uniform through Roma-populated areas in protest at what it calls “Gypsy crime”.

On Tuesday, a Budapest court ordered the group to be dismantled for racial discrimination against the Roma.

The Hungarian government and Roma groups welcomed the verdict.

But the Guard Association - which claims to have 1,500 adherents - said it would continue its activities as before.

A record cut in oil output of two million barrels a day has been agreed by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the Saudi oil minister says.

The Opec cut, which will be its largest ever, could be complemented by combined reductions from non-Opec members Russia and Azerbaijan of 600,000 barrels a day.

The reduction will take 2.6 million barrels of oil out of the market.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said though there is commitment to root out piracy in Somali waters, the issues of peace and security should not be divorced from the general security operation.

Somalia, one of the world’s busy routes, has the most dangerous waters in the world with more than 100 ships having been seized by pirates for ransom in the Gulf of Aden since the beginning of the year.

The case was given to the jury Tuesday evening after nearly a month’s worth of testimony and arguments. Jurors said they wanted to wait until Wednesday to begin deliberating. They will be sequestered.
The suspects are all foreign-born Muslim men who lived for years in a Philadelphia suburb. They face life in prison if convicted of the most serious counts. Those include conspiracy to kill military personnel and attempted murder.

The action was triggered by a recent decision by the Paris authorities to enforce a ban on artists’ tips, known as “cornet” after the rolled-up cone of drawing paper in which painters traditionally dropped some money for their models.

Stalin still considered a ‘hero’ With hundreds of thousands of people casting their votes by email, text and phone, Alexander Nevsky, a name little known to outsiders, has emerged in first place so far.

Nevsky was an early Russian hero who is now revered as a saint.

In second place is perhaps the predictable favourite, Peter the Great. However, the third place winner is a historical figure which will surprise many outside Russia: Joseph Stalin.

They say the operation targeted the bosses of local clans who were planning to rebuild the Sicilian Mafia - also known as Cosa Nostra.

A police statement said the raids involved some 1,200 police officers.

The Sicilian Mafia was dealt a huge blow with the arrest in 2006 of its boss Bernardo Provenzano.

The police operation, codenamed Perseus, involved the use of helicopters and dogs in a vast sweep across Italy, says the BBC’s Duncan Kennedy in Rome.

Dr Bilal Abdulla was part of a cell that set up a bomb-making factory and bought five cars to convert into firebombs to create a terrorist “spectacular” in Britain.

Abdulla, 29, tried to detonate homemade devices in two Mercedes cars packed with gas canisters, petrol and hundreds of nails outside Tiger Tiger, a West End night club in London, on June 29 last year.

Sen. Ken Salazar is expected to become Interior Secretary in President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet, with a formal announcement to come within days, sources told the Rocky Mountain News on Monday.

Salazar has long been considered a leading candidate for Interior Secretary, based in part on his past work leading the state Department of Natural Resources.

On Monday, three Democratic sources who spoke on condition of anonymity said Salazar had been offered the job, and the announcement was expected within 48 hours.

“It’s a done deal,” said one source, although others said it was a difficult decision for Salazar, four years into his first term as U.S. senator.

“He’s a very thoughtful guy, and this is a big decision,” one source said. “It’s a great opportunity, but so is being in the Senate.”

Pakistani troops recently began escorting convoys through the Khyber Pass to the border to protect them from Taliban ambushes. Western military officials insist their Afghan operations are not at risk.

However, suspected militants have pulled off a series of bold raids on depots near the city of Peshawar in recent weeks, killing several guards and burning hundreds of vehicles, including scores of Humvees.