PROTESTING: People hold placards during a sit-in protest called by Act Up gay organisation in front of a ‘Wall of homophobs’ displaying portraits of national and international public personalities stamped by the organisation as homophobic in Paris. — AFP photo

PARIS: France became the 14th country to legalise same-sex marriage yesterday after President Francois Hollande signed the measure into law following months of bitter political debate.

Hollande acted a day after the Constitutional Council threw out a legal challenge by the right-wing opposition, which had been the last obstacle to passing the bill into law. The legislation also legalises gay adoption.

But while gay rights groups hailed the move, opponents of the measures have vowed to fight on.

Hollande made ‘marriage for all’ a central plank of his presidential election campaign last year.

On Friday, he tried to turn the page on months of bitter opposition to the measures, arguing it was “time to respect the law and the Republic”.

And he warned that he would tolerate no resistance.

“I will ensure that the law applies across the whole territory, in full, and I will not accept any disruption of these marriages,” said the president.

French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira, who steered the legislation through parliament, has said the first gay marriages could be celebrated as early as June.

Marriages in France must take place in town halls, most of which take around four weeks to process marriage applications.

The issue of gay marriage and adoption has provoked months of acrimonious debate and hundreds of protests that have occasionally spilled over into violence and is unlikely to drop off the political agenda.

Although the Constitutional Council approved the bill on Friday, the International Day Against Homophobia, its opponents have vowed to fight on.

They have called a major protest rally scheduled for May 26 in Paris – and previous protests have drawn hundreds of thousands of people.

In April, the main right-wing opposition UMP party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy challenged the measures on constitutional grounds immediately after deputies passed the bill in parliament.

But Friday’s statement by the Constitutional Council said same-sex marriage “did not run contrary to any constitutional principles,” and that it did not infringe on “basic rights or liberties or national sovereignty”.

Reacting to the ruling Friday, UMP party chief Jean-Francois Cope told TF1 television: “It is a decision that I regret, but that I respect.” But late on Friday, between 200 and 300 protesters gathered in central Paris to denounce the ruling backing the bill and calling on Hollande to resign. One police officer was injured after a flammable liquid was thrown in his face.

The issue of gay marriage has divided France, which is officially secular but overwhelmingly Catholic. Protests against the bill drew hundreds of thousands, with a handful of hard-core protesters clashing with police.

Last year, the proposals seemed to enjoy solid majority backing among French voters.

But as the opposition campaign got into gear, more recent polls indicated a shift of opinion to the extent that the electorate is now fairly evenly split on both
gay marriage and adoption. — AFP

Eleven flights were affected in total, though the suspect is not alleged to be behind all the threats. The planes were travelling from Beijing, Chongqing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the Beijing News reported.

One flight from Guangzhou on Friday had to be diverted to Fuzhou following an anonymous call to the airports after takeoff. Passengers were evacuated and the plane and baggage searched.

In three of the 11 cases the planes had already arrived at their destination. The threats involved Air China, China Eastern Airlines, China Southern Airlines, Sichuan Airlines and Spring Airlines. — AFP

Ricardo Cerezo’s wife
asked him to take the 11 lotto tickets that had been sitting around the house to the store to check if any of them were winners.

The machine in the shop told him to file a claim on one of them, but he was only expecting to win a few hundred dollars.

“I can’t believe I had US$4.85 million in a cookie jar for over three months!” Cerezo said after a receiving a ceremonial check on Wednesday in Geneva, Illinois. “I’m awestruck, this is unbelievable!”

Asked by lottery officials if he had any advice for other players, Cerezo said “check your old tickets!” — AFP

Sheryl Sandberg

NEW DELHI: Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said in an interview published yesterday says it’s ok for women to cry at work, share emotions and be honest about their femininity.

Sandberg shot to global fame after the publication of her best-selling book “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead” which talks about women’s career struggles and advises women to ‘lean in’ to reach their potential.

It has drawn bouquets from admirers for articulating a new modern feminist vision and brickbats from critics who say her lofty position has made her out-of-touch with the gruelling personal cost of combining career and family. In an interview with India’s Mint business daily, the 43-year-old admitted: “I cry at work,” adding women are not “one type of person Monday through Friday” and “then a different person in the nights and weekend.”

“I think we are all of us emotional beings and it’s okay for us to share that emotion at work,” said Facebook’s number two, who was named in Time magazine’s 2013 list as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Studies have shown women are more prone than men to cry at work because males are schooled not to cry in public and it can hurt their career progression.

Sandberg, who is married with two young children, said on the subject of her book “the messages of believing in yourself and sitting at the table, getting compensated fairly, those can happen at any point in your career.”

It is necessary to talk about gender-related issues honestly in the workplace, and a need for employers to say: “I am here to support you”, she added in the interview.

The question of whether women can ‘have it all’ in terms of pursuing careers and raising families is ‘very problematic’, added Sandberg, who got US$26.2 million in salary, bonus and shares last year from the US social networking giant.

Men never face such questions because society assumes they can have both professions and children, she said in the interview. — AFP

All three jumped to their deaths at a plant in the central city of Zhengzhou run by the Taiwanese electronics giant.

A 30-year-old married man killed himself on Tuesday following the similar deaths
of a 23-year-old woman on
April 27 and a 24-year-old man three days earlier, media reports said.

“The reasons for these building jumpings are unclear,” the New York-based China Labor Watch rights group said in a statement.

Foxconn, which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia, has come under the spotlight after suicides and labour unrest at its Chinese plants since 2010.

In 2010, at least 13 Foxconn employees in China died in apparent suicides, which activists blamed on tough working conditions, prompting calls for better treatment of staff.

Although Foxconn denied the accusations, it raised wages by nearly 70 per cent at its China plants in 2010. — AFP

TRAPPED: This handout photograph received from Freeport Indonesia shows rescue personnel at the collapsed section of a tunnel as they continue rescue operations for trapped mine workers in the tunnel of Big Gossan area at the Grasberg complex. — Reuters photo

JAKARTA: Freeport McMoRan Copper Gold Inc said yesterday that rockfalls were hampering rescue efforts after a tunnel collapse four days ago at its giant Indonesian copper mine, with hopes fading of finding alive any of the 23 still missing.

Freeport closed the world’s second largest copper mine on Wednesday, a day after a tunnel fell in on 38 workers undergoing training.

Five are known to have died. Several of the 10 rescued are still in hospital.

The Grasberg mine in West Papua is in one of the most remote regions of the Indonesian archipelago.

“We continue to carry out these (rescue) efforts non-stop, 24 hours a day as quickly as can be done safely to do everything possible to save lives, but as more time passes the possibility of there being any survivors becomes less likely,” Freeport Indonesia’s Mine general manager, Nurhadi Sabirin, who heads the emergency response team, said in a statement.

Rockfalls were slowing rescue efforts, he said.

The company is using a device to detect vibrations to help find out if any of those trapped are still alive.

“This device has detected vibrations that could be consistent with a human heartbeat, but this is not conclusive and could be caused by a number of other vibrations,” he said.

“We have not detected any other potential signs of life in the past 72 hours.” The training tunnel is outside the mining area and around 500 metres from the entrance of the Big Gossan mine.

A trade union leader on Friday demanded that Arizona-based Freeport keep the mine closed while it investigated the accident, which he blamed on the company.

“All operational activities, including production activities, have to be stopped during the investigation process,” union leader Virgo Solossa told Reuters.

“We think that the accident has been caused by the company’s carelessness. This has to be investigated.” — AFP

Disputes between indigenous groups and companies have become increasingly tense in recent years, as soaring global demand for commodities like palm oil has seen plantations encroach on forests.

In Thursday’s ruling, Constitutional Court judges said that a 1999 law should be changed so it no longer defines forest that has been inhabited by indigenous groups for generations as “state forest”, according to court documents.

“Indigenous Indonesians have the right to log their forests and cultivate the land for their personal needs, and the needs of their families,” judge Muhammad Alim said as he handed down the ruling, state news agency Antara reported.

While environmentalists welcomed the ruling, they warned it could unintentionally lead to an upsurge in disputes between authorities and communities over the classification of indigenous land.

In March, seven villagers were shot and at least 15 police officers were injured in northern Sumatra, where a dispute over a forest claimed by both the community and government has been simmering since 1998.

The National People’s Indigenous Organisation filed the challenge to the 1999 law, which they say has let officials sell permits allowing palm oil, paper, mining and timber companies to exploit their land.

The group said Friday’s ruling affected 40 million hectares of forest — slightly larger than Japan, and 30 percent of Indonesia’s forest coverage.

They said this area was legally classified as “customary forest”, the term that describes forests that have been inhabited by indigenous people for a long time.

“About 40 million indigenous people are now the rightful owners of our customary forests,” said the group’s chief Abdon Nababan.

However, a senior forestry minister official said he believed the total amount of “customary forest” was far lower, and stressed it could take time to implement the changes as local governments would all need to issue a decree.

Stepi Hakim, Indonesia director of the Clinton Climate Initiative, said the ruling would give legal grounds for indigenous communities to challenge businesses operating in their forests, but this could lead to a string of new disputes. — AFP

The Beidou, or Compass, system started providing services to civilians in the region in December and is expected to provide global coverage by 2020. It also has military applications.

Thailand, China, Laos and Brunei already use the Chinese system, which currently consists of 16 operational satellites, with 30 more due to join the system, according to English-language China Daily.

Huang Lei, international business director of BDStar Navigation, which promotes Beidou, told the newspaper the company would build a network of stations in Pakistan to enhance the location accuracy of Beidou.

He said building the network would cost tens of millions of dollars.

American website Defensenews.com reported early May that Pakistani military experts were in favour of using the Chinese system, even though the availability of the signal could not be guaranteed in case of conflict. — AFP

The woman, identified only by her initials AR, was arrested at a hotel in the city of Surabaya, East Java province, last month with 1.47 kilograms of the drug, the national narcotics agency said.

“Because she smuggled drugs weighing more than five grams, she could face the death penalty,” agency spokesman Sumirat Dwiyanto told AFP.

He declined to give further details about the woman or when she was likely to be charged.

The case comes just months after British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford was sentenced to death for attempting to smuggle 2.4 million of cocaine into the resort island of Bali.

In the latest case, AR, who lives in China, admitted after her arrest on April 29, that a Nigerian had asked her to bring the drugs to Indonesia, the agency said. The Nigerian was still at large, it added.

The woman also identified two other people she had been planning to pass the drugs to in Surabaya and Jakarta, and they were also detained, the agency said. It did not say what their nationalities were.

The trio are being held at the agency’s headquarters in Jakarta, it said. — AFP

CONTENTIOUS ISSUE: Chen stresses a point on a document containing a letter requesting a joint investigation over the fatal shooting incident of the Taiwanese fisherman during a news conference at the Taipei Economics and Cultural Office in Makati city, metro Manila. — Reuters photo

MANILA: The Philippines yesterday rejected Taiwan’s allegations that Filipino coastguards had intentionally murdered a Taiwanese fisherman whose death has triggered a major diplomatic spat.

The 65-year-old fisherman was shot dead by Philippine coastguards who said his vessel intruded into Philippine waters.

Chen Wen-chi, head of the Taiwan team investigating the May 9 incident, said most of the bullets had hit the fishing boat’s cockpit where its crew hid.

“By combining the evidence, it clearly shows that the Philippine law enforcers were intentionally shooting the Guang Ta Hsin 28 crew members, which indicates their intent of murder,” Chen told a news conference in Manila.

The shooting, which Manila insists occurred inside Philippine territorial waters but which Taipei counters happened within its exclusive economic zone, has led to Taiwanese sanctions against its neighbour.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima and President Benigno Aquino’s spokesman Ricky Carandang rejected the murder allegations.

“There is an investigation ongoing so any premature statements that tend to confuse the issues and inflame passions should be avoided,” Carandang told AFP.

De Lima in a separate statement also urged everyone to refrain from making statements “that would further fuel or aggravate the prevailing tension between the Philippines and Taiwan”.

Chen’s comments echoed those made by Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou in Taipei on Friday.

“If (Philippine) civil servants used automatic weapons to fire at unarmed and unprovocative fishing boats, this was not carrying out their job duties. This is cold-blooded murder,” Ma said.

Aquino made a ‘personal’ apology on Wednesday over the ‘unintended’ death arising from the patrol’s duty of protecting Philippine waters against illegal fishing.

Manila insisted its forces fired in self-defence to disable the boat’s engine and prevent it ramming the patrol craft.

Taiwan has rejected the apology.

It recalled its de facto envoy, banned the hiring of new Philippine workers and staged a military drill in waters off the northern Philippines earlier this week.

The Philippines officially recognises Beijing over Taipei but maintains trade ties with the island, which employs about 87,000 Filipinos.

Philippine Vice President Jejomar Binay on Friday urged Taiwan to ensure the safety of Filipino workers following reports of attacks by angry Taiwanese. — AFP

TIGHT LIPPED: Isao Iijima being surrounded by reporters upon his arrival at Beijing airport from Pyongyang. — AFP photo

TOKYO: An aide to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned home from a trip to North Korea yesterday but declined to shed any light on the reason for his mysterious visit.

Isao Iijima, a senior adviser to Abe, was tight lipped when confronted by reporters in Beijing on his way home.

“I won’t accept any interview on this issue,” he told reporters, according to Japan’s public broadcaster NHK.

Abe said yesterday that Iijima would report back to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s top government spokesman, on the visit.

Iijima’s trip fuelled speculation that the North may be trying to thaw icy relations with Japan at a time when ties with the US and South Korea have gone into deep freeze after nuclear and missile tests.

South Korea dubbed the trip ‘unhelpful’ to international efforts to forge a united front against Pyongyang, while the US expressed its surprise.

The US, along with its two Asian allies, has increased pressure on Pyongyang to drop its nuclear ambitions and to join the international community.

The North’s state media this week showed footage of Iijima holding talks on Thursday with Kim Yong-Nam, North’s Korea’s ceremonial head of state, according to NHK and other Japanese media.

But it was not clear what exactly the two had discussed.

Iijima was a senior aide to Japan’s former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, and is known to have played a role in organising his trips to Pyongyang in 2002 and 2004 for talks with then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il.

Abe accompanied Koizumi on the 2002 visit.

When Koizumi visited Pyongyang in 2002, North Korea admitted its agents kidnapped Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s to train spies in Japanese language and customs.

Some of those snatched were allowed to return to Japan along with children who were born in the North, but Pyongyang said the rest of them had died. — AFP

South Korea was maintaining intense surveillance of the North and keeping a high-level of readiness to deal with any risky developments, he added.

North Korea sometimes launches short-range missiles for tests or as part of military drills.

The launches followed a joint South Korea-US naval exercise this week, slammed by North Korea as a ‘wanton’ provocation and rehearsal for war.

A US strike force led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz participated in the two-day drill that ended on Tuesday.

A US defence official said last week that two North Korean missiles that had been primed for firing as tensions on the peninsula flared in the run-up to the North’s national celebrations on April 15 had been moved from their launch site.

US and South Korean officials had been worried that any test of the Musudan medium-range missiles would trigger a fresh surge in tensions, which escalated after the North carried out a nuclear test in February. — AFP

Lieutenant General Curtis ‘Mike’ Scaparrotti, if confirmed by the Senate, will take over at a delicate moment after North Korea toned down weeks of bellicose rhetoric that saw tensions soar and US forces reinforced in the region.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced at a news conference that President Barack Obama will nominate Scaparrotti to succeed General James Thurman in South Korea.

During Thurman’s tenure, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il died and was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-Un, who threatened nuclear war with the US during the recent crisis.

Thurman “had done a tremendous job for our country” during a “very uncertain time,” Hagel said, adding that his “steady, wise leadership has really counted.”

Scaparrotti currently serves as the director of the Joint Staff, under the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, the military’s top officer.

Dempsey also praised Thurman and said Scaparrotti had displayed ‘quiet confidence’ and excellence in his career, including as the head of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force joint command in Kabul in 2011-2012.

Scaparrotti earlier commanded 82nd Airborne Division troops in eastern Afghanistan. — AFP

“One new case of novel coronavirus was recorded in the Eastern Region” where most of the kingdom’s cases have been registered, said the ministry, which this week created a special web page dedicated to the outbreak.

“One case of coronavirus has been recorded in the Eastern Region, and he is now under the medical healthcare receiving the proper treatment,” the web page in English reported.

The latest case takes to 31 the number of officially recorded cases of the virus in the oil-rich Gulf kingdom since September. Fifteen of those have died.

On Wednesday, the Geneva-based World Health Organisation reported that two Saudi health workers have contracted the deadly coronavirus from patients – the first evidence of transmission in a hospital setting.

“This is the first time health care workers have been diagnosed with nCoV (novel coronavirus) infection after exposure to patients,” the WHO said in a statement.

Since last September, the WHO says it has been informed of a global total of 40 laboratory confirmed cases of the virus, including 20 deaths.

While the virus has been deadliest in Saudi Arabia, cases have also been reported in Jordan, Qatar, Germany, Britain and France, where two patients are now in hospital in the northern city of Lille.

The virus is a cousin of
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which triggered a scare 10 years ago when it erupted in east Asia, leaping to humans from animal hosts and eventually killing some 800 people. — AFP

Depardieu is preparing to shoot a new film in Moscow and the Chechen capital Grozny – a city rebuilt from the ground up after nearly two decades of war – as he settles in to his new role as global ambassador of Russian culture.

The hulking actor received his new citizenship during a dinner with Putin – object of scorn from Russia’s youth-driven opposition movement – in January after getting into a fight with the French authorities over a new 75-per cent tax on the super-rich.

He told the Komsomolskaya Pravda daily in an interview published Saturday that he felt proud of what Putin has done in his 13 years in charge.

“I have many Russian friends – Putin, for example,” said the star of films such as “Cyrano de Bergerac” and winner of a multitude of the industry’s most coveted awards.

“I will say what I think about Putin: the Russian nation needs a person just like this – with a Russian temper. Putin is trying to return just a bit of dignity back to the people.”

He then added: “For me, he is like (former French president) Francois Mitterrand or Pope John Paul II. I never said this to journalists before, but this is what I think.”

The late pope was a staunch anti-Communist who is partially credited with helping to give strength to the pro-Western Solidarity movement in his native Poland in the 1980s.

Putin himself has called the collapse of the Soviet Union one of the great tragedies of the 20th century and is blamed by the opposition of failing to expose and condemn the worst of the atrocities committed by the dictator Joseph Stalin.

Depardieu hotly denied that he took on Russian citizenship as some public relations stunt aimed at reviving his career.

“That is just laughable,” he told the popular Moscow tabloid.

“I have more that 200 films. Who needs PR after that?!” — AFP

The twin blasts occurred minutes apart in Aino Mina, an upmarket complex on the outskirts of Kandahar city that was conceived in 2002 and built by investors including President Karzai’s businessman brother Mahmoud Karzai.

The target of the attack was a convoy of police vehicles, officials said, but many of the victims were local residents who had gathered at the end of the Friday holiday to eat and socialise.

“This pointless attack on innocent Afghans in a peaceful family park is inexcusable,” Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa said in a statement issued by the province’s media centre.

Kandahar, one of the most volatile and lawless cities in Afghanistan, was the birthplace of the Taliban movement in the 1990s and it remains a hotbed of the Taliban insurgency against President Karzai’s US-backed government.

“There were two vehicle IEDs (improvised explosive devices),” Javed Faisal, spokesman for the Kandahar governor, told AFP. “Nine people are dead, including three policemen, and more than 60 people are wounded.”

He said seven police were among the injured, but the other dead and wounded were local people, many of them children.

The Kandahar media centre said the bombs were planted in two Toyota Corolla cars and had been detonated at about 7.30pm (1500 GMT).

It said police and emergency services treated wounded people at the scene in Aino Mina, a complex that includes private security guards, large villas and sports facilities.

Kandahar police chief Abdul Raziq confirmed the incident and the death toll of nine.

The attack came a day after a suicide car bomb hit a foreign military convoy in Kabul, killing 15 people including six Americans.

The Taliban launched their annual “spring offensive” on April 27, opening a key period as Afghan security forces take the lead in offensives against the insurgents.

All Nato combat missions will finish in Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and foreign troops have already begun to withdraw from the battlefield as Afghan police and army take over the fight against the insurgents.

More than 11 years after the Taliban regime was ousted in 2001, efforts to seek a political settlement ending the violence have so far made little progress, but pressure is growing ahead of the Nato withdrawal. — AFP

Lawmakers hammered Steven Miller, who resigned this week at the request of President Barack Obama, over abuse of power at the agency that Democrats and Republicans alike criticized as outrageous and unacceptable.

The Internal Revenue Service acknowledged last week that in 2010 employees subjected conservative groups, including those with “Tea Party” and “Patriots” in their names, to increased scrutiny when they applied for non-profit status.

Miller, at a tense hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee, apologized for what he acknowledged were “mistakes” and “horrible customer service” provided by the IRS.

“Even the perception of partisanship has no place at the IRS,” Miller said. “I do not believe that partisanship motivated the people who engaged in the practices described” in an internal report on the abuse.

“Foolish mistakes were made by people trying to be more efficient in their workload selection.”

Miller faced a four-hour grilling from lawmakers, including Republican committee chairman Dave Camp, who was angry that the IRS never told Congress that top officials, including Miller, knew about the abuse in May 2012.

“In fact, we were repeatedly told no such targeting was happening,” Camp told Miller. “That isn’t being misleading, that is lying.”

Camp demanded that Miller tell Congress “who started the targeting, who knew, when did they know, and how high did it go?”

Obama said Thursday he had no prior knowledge of the abuse, and Miller told the hearing he “absolutely” did not contact the White House when he first learned of the burdensome scrutiny of the conservative groups last May.

Miller’s successor was ordered to launch a thorough review of the agency in the wake of the scandal.

US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew gave Daniel Werfel one month to report progress in revamping the organization “in an effort to restore public confidence in the IRS and ensure the organization is providing excellent and unbiased service to the taxpayer,” a Treasury official said. — AFP

A gallery show — “The Neighbors” — of the pictures taken surreptitiously by American photographer Arne Svenson opened last week at the Julie Saul Gallery in lower Manhattan.

The images were taken by Svenson through the windows of his apartment building in lower Manhattan’s Tribeca neighbourhood, as he trained his lens on his unsuspecting neighbours.

They show Svenson’s neighbors, unawares, in various candid poses — bending, kneeling, carrying children.

A press release on the gallery’s website said Svenson was intrigued by the idea of capturing “the daily activities of his downtown Manhattan neighbours as seen through his windows into theirs.”

“He was intrigued not only by the implied stories within the frame of the glass but also by the play of light upon the subjects, the shadows, the framing of the structure,” the statement said, adding that he “doesn’t photograph anything salacious or demeaning” and is “careful not to reveal identities.”

“Svenson is not photographing the people as specific, identifiable individuals, more as representations of humankind, of us,” the Chelsea gallery said.

It called the photo series “social documentation in a very rarified environment.”

But Svenson’s subjects strongly disagreed, saying that his picture-taking violated their privacy.

Some said they also resented that he snapped pictures of them with their young children, making the intrusion into their lives even worse.

“This is about kids. If he’s waiting there for hours with his camera, who knows what kind of footage he has. I can recognize items from my daughter’s bedroom,” one mother told the New York Post.

A gallery spokeswoman said that the pictures go for between US$6,200 and US$8,400, and that some of the images have already been sold. — AFP

One of the suspects is believed to be the man who posted the threat from an Internet cafe, leading police to deploy across high schools in the eastern region of Strasbourg on Friday, a day after a gruesome suicide at a
Paris primary school.

No other details on the suspects were immediately available.

Following the threat, 750 police officers deployed across 59 high schools that were placed on alert in the Strasbourg region.

On Thursday, a 50-year-old man with a history of family problems shot himself dead with a sawn-off shotgun in a Paris primary school near the Eiffel Tower, in front of about a dozen stunned children.

Police sources said the man, whose face was partly blown off, had apparently been depressed after separating from his wife in 2009. — AFP

Litvinenko’s widow Marina said she was “utterly dismayed” by the decision. She accused Britain of making a deal with Moscow to improve relations chilled by the murder of her husband, who once worked as a spy for Russia.

Coroner Robert Owen announced his decision in a pre-hearing ruling on Friday. It followed an application by Britain’s foreign ministry to keep the information concerning Russia secret.

But Owen said he would be failing in his duty “to undertake a full, fair and fearless inquiry into the circumstances of Mr Litvinenko’s death” if he was forced to disregard the evidence for national security reasons.

He suggested that the death could instead be considered in a public inquiry in which the evidence alleging Russian state involvement “could be taken into account”.

Under English law, evidence cannot be heard in secret as part of an inquest, but could be presented behind closed doors as part of a public inquiry.

The coroner said he now wanted to hear submissions from Marina Litvinenko and the couple’s son on the possibility of holding an inquiry, parts of which would have to take place behind closed doors.

Litvinenko, 43, suffered a slow and agonising death after he was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210 slipped into his tea at an upmarket London hotel in 2006.

Marina Litvinenko’s solicitors said it was a “very sad day for British justice”. — AFP