HSBC Holdings Plc faces investigation by U.S. authorities and an inquiry by British lawmakers after admitting failings by its Swiss private bank that may have allowed some customers to dodge taxes.

U.S. prosecutors have stepped up efforts to establish whether HSBC, the world's second largest bank, helped Americans evade taxes after media reports said the bank had helped wealthy customers conceal millions of dollars of assets.

U.S. authorities are also probing whether HSBC manipulated currency rates, and a U.S. law enforcement official said on Monday the investigations could prompt the Department of Justice to revisit a 2012 deferred prosecution agreement with the bank.

The agreement was part of a $1.9 billion settlement that allowed HSBC to avoid criminal charges after it was found to have helped move hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit drug money through the U.S. financial system.

"It is quite possible that the (agreement) may be reopened as a result of the bank's activities on either or both the tax evasion and foreign exchange manipulation front," said the U.S. law enforcement official, who requested anonymity because the investigations are ongoing.

British lawmakers said they plan to open an inquiry into the bank after it came under fire for its past practices in Switzerland.

HSBC shares fell 2 percent by 0845 GMT (3.45 a.m. EST) on Tuesday, underperforming the European bank index. They fell 1.6 percent on Monday after media reports about the activities of its Swiss operation based on client data from 2006-07.

A spokesman for HSBC declined further comment on Tuesday after the bank issued a statement late on Sunday in response to the media reports.

Swiss Accounts

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which coordinated the release of details of leaked client data, said a list of people who held HSBC accounts in Switzerland included soccer and tennis players, rock stars and Hollywood actors.

Reuters could not independently verify any of the names listed by the ICIJ. Having a Swiss bank account is not illegal and many are held for legitimate purposes.

The newly released HSBC Swiss client list included royalty such as Morocco's King Mohammed, politicians, corporate executives including former Santander chairman Emilio Botin, who died last year, and wealthy families, the ICIJ said. A spokesman for the Moroccan royal palace declined to comment.

Uruguayan soccer player Diego Forlan, who was also on the list, on Monday denied evading taxes by hiding money in Swiss accounts with HSBC.

The documents also listed arms dealers, people linked to former dictators and traffickers in blood diamonds, and several individuals on the current U.S. sanctions list, including Gennady Timchenko, an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Timchenko's Volga Group declined to comment.

"We acknowledge and are accountable for past compliance and control failures," HSBC said after news outlets published the allegations about its Swiss private bank.

The Guardian and other media cited documents obtained by the ICIJ via French newspaper Le Monde.

HSBC said that its Swiss arm had not been fully integrated into HSBC after its purchase in 1999, allowing "significantly lower" standards of compliance and due diligence to persist.

Currency Brinks

The Guardian asserted that the files showed HSBC's Swiss bank routinely allowed clients to withdraw "bricks" of cash, often in foreign currencies which were of little use in Switzerland.

HSBC also marketed schemes which were likely to enable wealthy clients to avoid European taxes and colluded with some to conceal undeclared accounts from domestic tax authorities, the Guardian said.

The reports began a political debate in Britain ahead of a parliamentary election in May, with Margaret Hodge, a senior opposition Labour Party lawmaker, saying tax authorities had done too little to collect tax money.

HSBC's admission of failing has renewed scrutiny on Stephen Green, who was executive chairman between 2006 and 2010. Green was later made a member of Britain's upper house of parliament and served as minister for trade and investment between 2011 and 2013.

The HSBC client data were supplied by Herve Falciani, a former IT employee of HSBC's Swiss private bank, HSBC said. HSBC said Falciani downloaded details of accounts and clients at the end of 2006 and early 2007. French authorities have obtained data on thousands of the customers and shared them with tax authorities elsewhere, including Argentina.

Switzerland has charged Falciani with industrial espionage and breaching the country's secrecy laws. Falciani could not be reached for comment but has previously told Reuters he is a whistleblower trying to help governments track down citizens who used Swiss accounts to evade tax.

HSBC said it was cooperating with authorities investigating tax matters. Authorities in France,Belgium and Argentina have said they are investigating.

HSBC said the Swiss private banking industry, long known for its secrecy, operated differently in the past and this may have resulted in HSBC having had "a number of clients that may not have been fully compliant with their applicable tax obligations."

Its private bank, especially its Swiss arm, had undergone "a radical transformation" in recent years, it said in a detailed four-page statement.

Feminist activists threw themselves on Dominique Strauss-Kahn's car in protest on Tuesday as the ex-IMF chief, once tipped to become French president, arrived at court to testify over his alleged role in sex parties with prostitutes.

Several topless protesters from the FEMEN group wore slogans painted in black on their chests and torsos as they tried to climb onto the vehicle, before police pulled them away.

Allegations that he participated in a French sex ring emerged after criminal charges that he sexually assaulted a hotel chambermaid maid in New York were dropped in 2011.

Strauss-Kahn, 65, is accused of instigating parties he knew involved prostitutes between 2008-2011 in the northern French city of Lille, Washington D.C., Brussels and Paris.

Strauss-Kahn's lawyers acknowledge their client took part in sex parties but say he did not know the women were prostitutes and so reject the charge against him of pimping, or in legal terms "procuring with aggravating circumstances".

Strauss-Kahn, who says his political career is already over, faces as much as 10 years in prison and a fine of up to 1.5 million euros ($1.72 million) if convicted.

Investigating magistrates who sent the matter to trial say the procuring charge applies because inFrance it covers any activity seen as facilitating prostitution. In Strauss-Kahn's case, it is alleged that he allowed his rented apartment to be used for sex parties involving prostitutes and that the parties were organized for his benefit.

Moreover, because the charges say he did not pay the prostitutes himself, he is alleged to have received benefit in kind from prostitution.

The three-week trial began last week. Strauss-Kahn is expected to respond on Tuesday for the first time to the testimony of two former prostitutes who say they participated in the parties.

Fourteen people in all, including Strauss-Kahn, are defendants in the "Carlton Affair" trial, so named after the hotel in Lille that sparked the investigation into a sex ring.

New York maid Diallo's accusations in 2011 made it impossible for him to run on the Socialist ticket in France's presidential election in the following year. That allowed Francois Hollande to come forward and beat conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy.

Strauss-Kahn served as French finance minister in the late 1990s and went on to head the International Monetary Fund in 2007. After the criminal charges were dropped, he settled civil proceedings brought against him by Diallo.

Niger's parliament has unanimously approved the deployment of troops to northern Nigeria as part of a regional offensive against Islamist militant group Boko Haram, which has launched several cross-border attacks in recent days.

Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Chad and Benin agreed at the weekend to send a joint force of 8,700 troops to battle the militant group, which has killed thousands of people and kidnapped hundreds more in its bid to carve out a caliphate.

The crisis has prompted Nigeria to postpone its Feb. 14 presidential election by six weeks.

In recent days, Niger has massed more than 3,000 troops in its southern region of Diffa on the border with Nigeria, awaiting parliamentary approval to go on the offensive.

"The pooling of the efforts and resources of concerned countries will contribute without doubt to crushing this group which shows scorn, through its barbaric acts, for the Muslim religion," Niger's parliamentary speaker Adamou Salifou said after the vote late on Monday.

"Our country has never failed it its solidarity with its neighbors," he said.

The vote was supported by all 102 deputies present.

On Monday, Boko Haram militants bombed the Niger town of Diffa, killing five people - its third attack there in four days. It also carried out raids in neighboring Cameroon, kidnapping a bus full of passengers.

Residents in Diffa have voiced fears of further attacks in the coming days. Locals in the town, which lies just a few kilometers from territory controlled by Boko Haram, have long spoken of sleeper cells infiltrating their communities.

An intensification of Boko Haram violence near Lake Chad, which straddles Nigeria, Chad,Cameroon and Niger, has sent tens of thousands of Nigerians fleeing across the border.

Last week Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon assembled a quartet of actors, none of whom had to walk off the set of the new David Fincher film to be there, to appear in a skit. The following morning my Twitter feed reacted like that cabin in the Pierce Brosnan commercial, which is to say that it exploded.

Granted, the Saved by the Bell reunion was a cute idea while also inspiring the epiphany that whatever fountain Rob Lowe is drinking out of, Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Mario Lopez are slurping from the same aquifer. Still, I didn’t understand the hysteria. Is it my age? Would I have reacted similarly to a Square Pegs reunion (“That’s a totally different head”)? Is there a difference between an attention-grabbing stunt and entertainment?

If you are a fanatical Tonight Show fan, the answer to that last question is either (A) No or (B) “Get off my lawn” (which you were about to post in the Comments section below).

On February 17, Fallon, 40, will mark his first anniversary as host of NBC’s late-night institution. It has been a wildly successful rookie season for the relentlessly cheerful host, one in which he has gone Secretariat-at-the-Belmont vs. Jimmy Kimmel (ABC) and David Letterman (CBS) while also ascending a viral staircase of must-watch YouTube clips. Here’s Fallon and his ridiculously over-qualified house band, The Roots, performing “All About That Bass” with Meghan Trainor, using classroom instruments (14 million views); here’s Jimmy doing “Alphabet Aerobics” with Hogwarts alum Daniel Radcliffe (35 million views); and here’s his lip-sync battle with Emma Stone, in which she absolutely destroys “The Hook” by Blues Traveler (42 million views).

Fallon’s predecessor, Jay Leno, was often hailed as “the hardest-working man in show business” (apparently lifted the title from the late James Brown), but no one has ever worked their tush off, definitely no one has ever expended more calories, hosting a late-night show than Fallon. He sings. He dances. He raps. He plays flip cup. He does impersonations. He plays guitar. He plays drums. He literally jumps through hoops, or at least donut holes, to entertain us (although that last stunt would have been far funnier if Fallon had just made his entrance via the Randy’s Donut as opposed to setting up the bit as much as he did).

Jimmy Fallon is the most versatile talk-show host since Steve Allen. There’s just one thing this talk-show host is not very good at: talking.

Watching and listening to Fallon interview a guest is simply more painful and awkward than every conversation that ever took place between Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper. Everything a guest has ever done, including the film, TV show or album he or she is there to promote, is either “amazing” or “awesome.” Usually, both. A Fallon interview is like watching a tennis match with all aces. There are no rallies, no service returns back across the net. There is no honest to goodness badinage.

Fallon is fawning. Compared to Fallon, Arsenio Hall was Sir Laurence Olivier’s sadistic Nazi dentist asking Dustin Hoffman, “Is it safe?” in Marathon Man. At the mere suggestion of whimsy or wit by a guest, Fallon claps or convulses into laughter. Giddiness is a default mechanism. If I wanted to see someone awestruck—and dumbstruck—at the prospect of interviewing a celebrity, I’d save NBC $12 million a year and just watch old clips of The Chris Farley Show.

Last month Nicole Kidman appeared on the show and revealed that she and Fallon once went on a date—Fallon apparently had been oblivious—and I had to wonder what one-liner Dave or Johnny Carson might have countered with. Here’s Johnny (where have I heard that before?) melting the sweater off Angie Dickinson in 1981, demonstrating the fine art of flirting. And while it is unfair to compare Fallon just a few years into hosting late-night talk shows with a seasoned Carson, it’s slightly maddening (and yes, a sign of the generational gap) that the Fallon clip has been viewed more than 24 million times while the Carson clip has garnered less than 150,000 views.

It may be curmudgeonly to take a dislike to Fallon (this is a human being who actually devotes a running bit to penning “Thank You” cards), but I don’t find him funny. He is occasionally amusing, always good-natured, and again, a genuinely talented and versatile performer. Taxonomically, he should be classified not as a talk-show host but as a variety-show host. He’s closer to Sid Caesar and Carol Burnett than he is to Kimmel or Letterman.

But Fallon is hosting a talk show; social ineptness should be a serious drawback. When Kidman appeared and recounted their “date,” she recalled that Fallon mostly just mumbled and then put on a video game. Did anyone else notice the irony in that? The Australian beauty was describing most episodes of the Tonight Show.

Wayne and Garth put on a talk-show in a parent’s basement, played guitar, were socially awkward around beautiful women (“We’re not worthy!”) and possessed the emotional maturity of 13-year-olds. Fallon has completely usurped their schtick. And NBC doesn’t care because the ratings are boffo.

But shouldn’t we? For every musically inspired bit (e.g.“Ragtime Gals”), there’s an insipid installment of celebrities-play-games that Fallon’s obsequious audience laps up because, you know, whatever a celebrity does is awesome and amazing. Fallon’s demographic, or so it feels, is comprised primarily of the same dolts  that Leno used to interview for his “Jay Walking” bits.

As the Cult of Fallon grows, it matters less whether a bit is humorous or insightful than it does that everyone is blathering about it (the Kardashian Effect). Was it really funny to see Will Ferrell, Kevin Hart and Fallon engage in a lip-synch competition that lasted 13 minutes on Super Bowl Sunday night (Movie News Guide breathlessly exclaimed, “OMG! Is it hilarious or what?” Answer: what), or was it just a case of the popular kids in the back of the classroom making farting noises? In other words, is it still “hilarious or what” if three less popular people do it?

And is it not worth noting that Fallon’s lip-synch battles are just like his interviews: mouths are opening and closing but nothing is actually being said?

Last week I had the night light tuned to CBS, where Late Show host David Letterman and guest Phil McGraw (a.k.a. Dr. Phil) were partaking in some good, old-fashioned banter. “Biggest mistake I ever made was retiring,” lamented Letterman, who this April will abandon the desk after 35 years.

“Well, you haven’t yet,” said Dr. Phil.

“No, no, but it’s coming,” Letterman said. “And the next thing you know I’m going to be sitting home every day watching Ellen.”

With that McGraw, whose own syndicated show competes against that of Ellen DeGeneres in most markets on weekday afternoons, mimed pulling a knife that had been plunged into his chest. As the audience laughed, Letterman appeased Dr. Phil by teasing, “Oh, I’ve got you recorded. I save you for night when I really need you.”

“Well, I’m watching Kimmel,” Dr. Phil countered.

Shortly thereafter I flipped to NBC, where Fallon was playing “Password” with a trio of celebrity guests—Ellen among them!—and the secret word was “joint.”

Letterman is 67 and Fallon is 40. When Dave was 40 he was donning suits made of Alka-Seltzer tablets and dunking himself into tanks of water, something Fallon would gladly do now. However, 40-year-old Dave was unafraid to disagree with a guest or to challenge one. He was never obsequious. When Cher told Letterman in 1986 (he was 38) that she thought he was“an asshole,” (3:57) he wore that as a badge of honor. As he should.

And yet, if you watch the entirety of that interview, you are treated to seeing two spectacularly talented adults challenge one another with wit and opposing viewpoints. Letterman has always been a curmudgeon, while Fallon may forever be Peter Pan. Letterman has always been the kid who didn’t think he deserved to be at the party, while Fallon is the kid who is hosting the party.

On that same episode with Dr. Phil last week, Letterman unburdened himself to his psychologist guest on the couch—perhaps they should have switched places—that he found fatherhood challenging. “This little boy,” said Letterman, alluding to his 11 year-old son, Harry,  “he’s the only perfect thing I’ve ever done. And now I’m barking at him to get off the damn iPad.”

“That’s because you’re his father,” said Dr. Phil. “His friends tell him the things he wants to hear. His father should be telling him things he needs to hear.”

That’s the finest summation of the contrast between Fallon and Letterman you will ever hear.

Andrew Wakefield is both revered and reviled. To a small group of parents, he’s a hero who won’t back down from his assertion that the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine can cause autism.

To most, however, he’s the man who authored a fraudulent study that has been refuted many times and was retracted by the journal that published it, a man whose views carry dangerous consequences for all of us. They will tell you that the former doctor—stripped of his license in 2010 by the U.K.’s General Medical Council for ethical violations and failure to disclose potentially competing financial interests—has derailed public confidence in vaccination programs that were safely eradicating serious and highly contagious diseases.

In the wake of the most recent measles outbreak in the U.S.—which began at the Disneyland theme park in Southern California in late December 2014 and has since spread to 17 states and infected more than 100 people—Wakefield defends his views about the measles vaccine. “The responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of those that have been involved in vaccine policymaking, which is totally inadequate and bordering on dangerous,” he says. “The government has only themselves to blame for this problem.”

The now-retracted paper that set the MMR-autism dominoes tumbling was published by Wakefield and a dozen co-authors in The Lancet in February 1998. It provided case histories for 12 children, exploring incidences of chronic enterocolitis, inflammatory bowel disease and regressive developmental disorder—as well as immunization with the MMR vaccine. “In eight children, the onset of behavioral problems had been linked, either by the parents or by the child's physician, with measles, mumps, and rubella vaccination,” the authors wrote.

Vaccination rates in the U.K. plummeted after publication of that paper, and the study helped launch the anti-vaccine movement in the U.S. In a National Consumers League survey conducted in the U.S. last year, one-third of parents with children under the age of 18 and 29 percent of adults overall believe that vaccinations can cause autism.

In the 1980s, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched efforts to curb measles outbreaks by increasing immunization rates, says Dr. Robert Amler, who led the push. The CDC worked with state legislatures to require every child to provide proof of immunization in order to enroll and stay in public or private school, and began to see reductions in measles cases within four or five years. By 2000, indigenous transmission of measles was stamped out in the U.S., according to Dr. Walter Orenstein, chair of the National Vaccine Advisory Committee and former director of the CDC's National Immunization Program.

But measles has been coming back of late, and 2014 saw the highest measles cases count (more than 600) since the disease was declared eradicated in the U.S., the CDC says. And there were more cases of measles in January 2015 than in all of 2012. Between January 1 and February 6, 121 cases of measles were reported.

Wakefield dismisses the notion that he bears any responsibility for the current outbreak, despite decreasing vaccination rates in some parts of the country and the perpetuated fear of an MMR-autism link: “The people who put the blame on me are really just displacing their inadequacy on others.”

He points out that his now infamous study never asserted a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism. “We merely reported the parent’s description of what happened to their children, and the clinical findings,” he says. “We made no claims about the vaccine causing autism. In fact, we said this does not prove an association. And all we urged was further research.” The authors of the paper wrote at the time, “We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described."

India Ampah holds her son, Keon Lockhart, 12-months-old, as pediatrician Amanda Porro M.D. administers a measles vaccination during a visit to the Miami Children's Hospital on June 02, 2014 in Miami.Joe Raedle/Getty

However, during a press conference two days before the paper’s publication, Wakefield was already pushing for the use of separate vaccines over the combined MMR. "With the debate over MMR that has started,"he said then, "I cannot support the continued use of the three vaccines given together. We need to know what the role of gut inflammation is in autism…. My concerns are that one more case of this is too many.”

Asked recently whether he still believes the MMR vaccine causes autism, Wakefield responded unequivocally. “Yes, I do. I think MMR contributes to the current autism epidemic.”

For years, Wakefield has repeatedlystated his opinion that the risk lies with the MMR vaccine—not single vaccines. “MMR does not protect against measles,” he says. “Measles vaccine protects against measles.” He argues that the reason we are seeing more cases is because the U.K. and U.S. governments took the single vaccines off the market, leaving the MMR as the only option—and that, increasingly, parents reject that option.

Merck, the maker of MMR, stopped making the three monovalent (or single) vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella in 2008 due to manufacturing constraints, a company spokeswoman says. In 2009, based on input from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, customers and professional societies such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians, Merck decided not to resume production of the single vaccines and to focus resources on the combined MMR vaccine.

Today most public health officials stand by the combined vaccine. “There was no evidence for the need for individual vaccines,” says Orenstein. “The safety was thought to be comparable. It avoided three injections and extra visits and made it easier to get children protected.”

Moreover, the combined vaccine makes sense, says Amler. The body is designed to handle multiple things at once, and it has been “shown again and again that giving more than one antigen” at a time creates “no increase in side effects or adverse effects.” On the other hand, if health care providers were to administer antigens individually, it would lead to more doctor visits and would “hurt the chances that the child is going to get fully protected on time.”

Critics have contended that Wakefield’s advocacy for a single measles vaccine is financially motivated. Investigative journalist Brian Deer claimed in his scathing takedown in the BMJ that Wakefield used fraudulent data gathered, as the General Medical Council found, with “callous disregard for the distress and pain the children [subjects] might suffer.” Deer also revealed that Wakefield had filed an application at the U.K. patent office for a new “vaccine/therapeutic agent” for measles and inflammatory bowel disease in June 1997, several months before the Lancet study was published.

Today, Wakefield claims that patent was not for a vaccine. "What we had was a naturally occurring substance that occurs in breast milk. It’s not a drug or vaccine, it’s a nutritional supplement, but it boosts the immune system."

While he continues to champion the single vaccine and to blame government regulators for suggesting that it be discontinued, Wakefield is also pushing an MMR-autism connection. Asked if he had done further research to prove a causal link, Wakefield said he had published roughly 15 additional papers that dealt with the gastrointestinal disease that linked the MMR vaccine to autism.

Almost all of the medical community disagrees with him. Several studies have put his hypothesis to the test and looked at thousands of children, not just 12. A 1999 study of 498 children published in The Lancet did not support a causal association between MMR and autism. A 2002 study of 535,544 children vaccinated in Finland showed no association between MMR vaccination and encephalitis, aseptic meningitis or autism. Another 2002 study, which looked at 537,303 children born in Denmark, provided “strong evidence against the hypothesis that MMR vaccination causes autism,” the authors wrote. Wakefield takes issue with the Danish study, saying that the methodology was flawed.

However, though it’s difficult to prove a negative, Amler argues that “study after study after study has failed to show association. [It’s] simply not there.”

In a rigorous 2012 immunization safety review looking at “Adverse Effects of Vaccines: Evidence and Causality,” the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reviewed 22 studies related to vaccines and autism. The nonprofit, which Orenstein calls an “independent group not influenced by industry or government,” chose the same Danish study as one of only a handful that did not have serious limitations or flaws in design or methodology. Ultimately, the review rejected a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism.

Wakefield says the CDC has known for years about an association between the MMR vaccine and autism and created a “smokescreen” to “protect special interests.” He has received, he says, 5,000 pages worth of documents, transcripts and recordings from a whistle-blower that “confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that CDC were involved in fraud to cover this up.”

Claims of a CDC cover-up, Orenstein says, are based on a 2014 paper titled “Measles-mumps-rubella vaccination timing and autism among young African American boys: a reanalysis of CDC data,” by Brian Hooker, which was published in the journal Translational Neurodegeneration. That paper reevaluated a data set from a 2004 study undertaken by CDC researchers and published in Pediatrics; Hooker reported that African-American boys who received the MMR vaccine before 24 or 36 months of age were more likely to be diagnosed with autism. However, like Wakefield’s 1998 Lancet study, it was later retracted because of undeclared competing interests as well as “concerns about the validity of the methods and statistical analysis,” the editors wrote. “The Editors no longer have confidence in the soundness of the findings.”

Two documents Wakefield sent to Newsweek, recent letters submitted by Wakefield and Hooker to the CDC and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, allege that the CDC researchers who wrote the 2004 study reformatted age groups and replaced school records with birth certificates (in order to deceptively exclude some participants) to avoid reporting a statistically significant increase in autism.

In a statement published on its website, the CDC explained it chose to include only children with birth certificates rather than all the children because these documents offered information on additional characteristics that could be risk factors for autism, such as a child’s birth weight, the mother’s age and education, which school records did not.

It also said the findings showed that vaccination between 24 and 36 months was slightly more common among children with autism. “This finding was most likely a result of immunization requirements for preschool special education program attendance in children with autism,” the CDC says. It did not comment on the alleged reformatting of age categories in its statement and did not respond to Newsweek’s request for comment.

“Additional studies and a more recent rigorous review by the Institute of Medicine have found that MMR vaccine does not increase the risk of autism,” CDC reiterated in its statement.

Wakefield takes strong issue with the CDC and calls for the establishment of an independent organization, “like the FAA, that investigates allegations of vaccine injury and conducts the science. We need to take all financial and political incentive out of it and put child safety above everything else.”

But other federal agencies that seem to have little stake in the vaccination program have come to similar conclusions. The U.S. Court of Federal Claims issued a decision in 2009 as part of its Omnibus Autism Trials in the case of Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services, in which Special Master George L. Hastings Jr. wrote, “Considering all of the evidence, I found that the petitioners have failed to demonstrate that...the MMR vaccine can contribute to causing either autism or gastrointestinal dysfunction.”

Recently, the federal Vaccine Injury Compensation Program awarded millions of dollars to two children with autism. However, the case documents are sealed, and it is unclear whether the vaccine-induced encephalopathy cited in both cases had anything to do with the children’s diagnoses of autism.

Meanwhile, Amler says that the CDC continuously evaluates and reevaluates its immunization recommendations. For example, he says, a rotavirus vaccine introduced in the late 1990s turned out to have an uncommon complication after moving from trials into widespread use. Although it was a rare complication and “in aggregate, less severe [a problem] than all the babies admitted with rotavirus,” Amler says, the CDC pulled it. The rotavirus vaccine now given to babies was introduced years later and has not resulted in the same kinds of complications.

“We do have mechanisms to evaluate and make changes when the data or science shows that there are risks that were unanticipated or when the benefits no longer outweigh the risks,” says Orenstein. He explains that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices works as a built-in safeguard at the CDC to make new recommendations when necessary and to develop the routine immunization schedule along with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians.

While Wakefield insists that the “the dam is about to burst” and we’ll all soon see that he’s been right all along, major professional organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and groups like Autism Speaks continue to emphasize the safety and efficacy of the MMR vaccine and urge parents to fully vaccinate their children. The bottom line, says Amler, is that all the evidence points to the fact that “being exposed to the measles virus is a greater threat than any side effect or adverse reaction.”

Stephen Green, the former boss of HSBC’s Swiss private banking arm at the time of its alleged assistance of wealthy clients’ tax avoidance, “knew perfectly well” what was occurring at the bank, according to the whistleblower at the heart of the scandal, Herve Falciani.

Revelations that Europe’s biggest bank colluded with rich clients to help them hide undeclared accounts has sparked international condemnation with legal action being threatened in U.S., Belgium, France, Argentina and Switzerland. Lord Green, a peer sitting in Britain’s House of Lords and a Church of England priest, was chairman of the bank between 2006 and 2010, but he has so far refused to comment on the revelations unearthed by the files.

Speaking to Newsweek, Falciani says that Green “came to Geneva to present the world strategy at the time [the allegations took place]” and therefore “knew perfectly well” of “every problem” at the Swiss private bank, a HSBC subsidiary.

When asked if he believed other members of HSBC management knew of the tax avoidance assistance being offered to the bank’s clientele, the whistleblower said: “Of course, this is absolutely clear. Every problem was not a tiny one, the internal problems were huge. It was ongoing.”

He said that his life since he leaked the files has been “a constant run” and that there are “more parts not used or revealed” so far in the leak that will emerge, but declined to comment further.

Lord Green acted as HSBC’s chief executive before becoming the chairman of the bank from May 2006 to December 2010. He was then given a peerage and appointed trade minister in British prime minister David Cameron’s coalition government following its election in 2010.

Richard Murphy, leading tax expert and director of Tax Research UK, says that Green should have known what was taking place on his watch and must take responsibility for what took place at the bank’s Swiss operation because it was his “fundamental duty” as its director.

“He was chairman of the Swiss Private Bank. So he has no excuses whatsoever. He was not just involved in HSBC worldwide, he also happened to be chair of the Swiss private banking operation. He was a director of the bank where this happened,” says Murphy. “For him, very clearly there is no buck which he can find to stop that. He has to take responsibility.”

Murphy then turns his attention to the senior HSBC management, underneath Green, to call for an investigation into their conduct as they “should have known” that such assistance was being provided to rich clients.

“In the case of the senior management more generally, if they did not know, then they should have known. I think that obviously requires an investigation as to whether those people are fit and proper to be directors of any company, let alone a bank.

“Some of them will have undoubtedly retired, some of them should be retired and some of them certainly should not be advising the Church of England on how to train their ministers in the future as Stephen Green is.”

In reaction to the leak, British MPs on the Public Accounts Committee have launched an “urgent” inquiry into the bank’s conduct, which will call Lord Green, while French prime minister Manuel Valls also announced an investigation.

"Today's shocking revelations about HSBC further expose a secretive global industry serving a wealthy elite," said Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge.

"The Public Accounts Committee will be launching an urgent inquiry to which we will require HSBC to give evidence - and we will order them if necessary".

HSBC has defended itself against the revelations that it helped its global clients evade tax as, even though it was “accountable for past control failures”, it had now “fundamentally changed”.

"We acknowledge that the compliance culture and standards of due diligence in HSBC's Swiss private bank, as well as the industry in general, were significantly lower than they are today," it added.

However, Murphy does not see the lower regulation standards during this period as an acceptable excuse.

“HSBC’s position on this is untenable whichever way they move. They should have known what was happening in their bank,” he argues. “You can’t just say ‘we wash our hands of what our subsidiary did because it is a subsidiary, we had a federal structure and we didn’t know.’”

Markus Meinzer, senior analyst at the Tax Justice Network, says that there is a culture of “willful blindness” and a “systematic ignorance” present within banking institutions that is allowing such misconduct to go unnoticed.

“There is a general tendency of passing on the buck, of not wanting to see that it is being encapsulated into the very structure of the reporting systems of the bank.

“When the management has no knowledge about the individual cases of crooks depositing money in their banks, it is willful blindness that has led to this not knowing and this systematic ignorance of what is going on.

The accounts of over 100,000 of the bank’s clients across the world were leaked by Falciani in 2007. Since being handed the data in 2010 HM Revenue and Customs have identified 1,100 people, out of 7,000 British client accounts, in the leaked files who had hidden their tax. However, British authorities have only prosecuted one person in connection with the data.

Stephen Green was not reachable for comment.

A human rights expert has warned that freedom of speech in France is facing “a major threat” and is in a “very dangerous situation”, as a stringent anti-terror law came into force in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo terror attacks last month.

The new law went into effect this week, allowing the French police to block websites that are considered to be promoting terrorism without first seeking a court order. The French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, has said that the move is vitally important in the fight against terrorism, but others disagree.

According to Clemence Bectarte, a lawyer for the International Federation for Human Rights, it is just the latest example of the French state clamping down on free speech. “France is still very emotional in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks,” she says, “but what we need is a more serene debate. What we are witnessing at the moment is very alarming.”

Bectarte is particularly concerned about the increasing numbers of those being detained under French hate speech laws. In the week following the attacks, French newspaper Le Monde reported that almost 70 legal proceedings for "apology and threats of terrorist attacks" had opened.The offence carries a sentence of between five and seven years in prison.

One example Bectarte gives was that of a visibly drunk man who had shouted in public that the police killed in the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January “deserved what they got.” He was sentenced to three months in prison. There have also been reports that a man with learning difficulties was sentenced to six months for shouting at police: “They killed Charlie, I laughed.”

In late January French police detained and questioned an eight-year-old boy who had reportedly praised the Charlie Hebdo attacks and refused to take part in a national minute of silence that was held for the victims on 9th January. “Let’s be serious”, says Bectarte. “How can we consider it right that an eight-year-old boy should be kept in custody?”

French legal expert and member of PEN, a group that campaigns internationally for the rights of authors and journalists, Emmanuel Pierrat agrees, and fears that harsher laws will soon be introduced. “Things are not so perfect in this supposed liberal state. Just because this is not China or Saudi Arabia, we think we’re safe.”

He warns that the French government crackdown in the past few weeks has been the wrong response, and will be counter-effective in the long-run. “The main problem is the education of young people, and integration. Giving more money to the police to block websites is not the solution.”

Pierrat is concerned that imprisoning increasing numbers of young people could result in French jails becoming breeding grounds for terrorism, as young offenders meet more hardline extremists. “If you send a young guy to these courts, you are giving them the chance to be converted by existing Islamists in the prisons.The problem will only get worse.”

Tensions remain high between communities in France. The French graffiti artist known as Combo wrote last week on Facebook how he had been beaten up after he posted an image of him standing next to his latest work - the word ‘coexist’, written with religious symbols.

“I would like to be optimistic, but there have been lots of anti-Muslim acts since Charlie Hebdo acts and it is a major cause for concern”, Bectarte concludes.

Human rights lawyers in the UK are also worried about the situation in Britain, and say that an “ongoing trend to criminalise speech on the internet” was underway well before Charlie Hebdo.

The 2003 Communications Act ruled that someone can be jailed for writing something “grossly offensive” on social media - defined by the Crown Prosecution Service as being “offensive, shocking and disturbing”.

“These laws are not going away”, warns Adam Wagner, a barrister and founding editor of the UK Human Rights blog. According to him the Communications Act has been used to prosecute  teenagers or young adults who have put careless, offensive comments on their Facebook walls. “They will go to prison for it, and it will potentially ruin their lives. It’s a real problem,” he says.

Wagner is concerned that the importance of human rights in the UK has become less critical in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and fears that if the Conservative Party win a majority in the next election, they will water down human rights protections in the country by downgrading the role of the European Court of Human Rights in UK law.

“If you could take an overall lesson from anti-terrorism law and human rights, it would be that you shouldn’t make laws when you’re angry, but in the cold light of day when you’re calm. One of the big mistakes you can make as a society is to think only in the short term.”

He continues: “Even the most democratic and liberal societies can bring in oppressive laws. It’s a given that when people suffer a terrorist outrage people are less tolerant with legal niceties. I hear it all the time: ‘Why are we bothering with human rights?’ But they are what separate us from the terrorists.”

“What makes us liberal is that when we catch them we subject them to due process of law as we would to any other human being,” Wagner concludes. 

Once the green van screeched to a halt, doors swung open and the blindfold was removed. Words were irrelevant. Teary eyed, Slavik clutched his mother tightly, before reaching for his father, the chief architect of his extraordinary release. His first words, when they eventually came, were simple: “You don’t understand how much I’ve dreamt of the forest, fried potatoes and the chance to play my guitar again.” Twenty four hours later, Slavik was back on Ukrainian-controlled soil, 15 days after being taken prisoner at Donetsk airport.

When 22-year old Slavik volunteered to join the ill-fated Wednesday 12 January airport rotation, he had little idea of what to expect. On Thursday and Friday, however, he realised the life-changing significance of his decision. Over the second and third days, the balance of the battle shifted dramatically in the rebels’ favour, as they responded hard to the unexpected rotation, and established strategic positions in the floors above the Ukrainians in the new terminal.

The deterioration, which was evident via increasingly panicky cellphone calls with this reporter, required a quick response from Ukrainian commanders. “We needed just two tanks and two APCS dispatched at the right time, and we’d have held the terminal,” recalls Slavik. The tanks never came and rebel forces were instead able to gain access to the third floor of the terminal, from where they threw grenades and tear gas at the Ukrainians below. Without gas masks, the Ukrainians were forced into a smaller, more open section of the western side of the terminal. This would help them when the first of two explosions destroyed walls in the eastern side of the building on Monday.

Birds fly near the traffic control tower of the Sergey Prokofiev International Airport damaged by shelling during fighting between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces in Donetsk, October 9, 2014.Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters

Tuesday began in silence. Slavik says he had anticipated a second explosion, and moved to a new position in the basement. When the blast came at 15.30, it took most of the structure of terminal with it, and crushed two thirds of the 50-odd Ukrainians who remained inside. Slavik was saved by reinforced concrete in the basement. “We managed to pull a few guys out, but there were many more buried deep within,” he says. “Despite their cries, we couldn’t help them.” Slavik still receives calls from desperate relatives trying to find out what happened to their loved ones.

Several attempts to rescue the seriously injured were made over the final days of the airport battle, but, crucially, no decision was made to evacuate. The convoys that came on Sunday and Monday, insufficient to remove even the lightly injured, were also, it seems, used by senior officers to flee. “Both our commanders left in the Monday convoy, and I know only one of them was injured,” says Slavik. The young paratrooper never considered leaving. “Who would have looked after the injured, the bleeding? I’d have been ashamed to jump into that convoy.” On Tuesday evening, the remaining commanders left under the cover of darkness.

A further six soldiers died over the night of Tuesday and Wednesday, leaving only 16 (relatively) fit soldiers and “enough munitions for five minutes resistance”. On Wednesday morning, having lost all communication with their commanders, it was clear the fight was over, and a sergeant walked out of the terminal waving a white flag. Some of the soldiers tried to dissuade him. “We didn’t want to be taken prisoner by Chechens,” says Slavik. He says he was not the only soldier to consider shooting himself.

What turned Slavik’s thoughts against suicide was a realisation that, by wit and luck, he had escaped the bloodiest of battles without a single scratch. “I started to think I could live through whatever they threw at me: beatings, even if they cut something off.” In the end, his Chechen fears were unfounded. “There were one or two of them, but most of the soldiers were locals, and they had probably only been shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ to intimidate us,” he said.

A soldier stands guard in the streets of Donetsk, Ukraine. Inna Varenitsa/Media Port

Having fallen into the battalion of the infamous rebel commander Givi, Slavik’s fate was still in the balance. “They said we would be put through seven circles of hell,” says Slavik. On the first day, the rebels beat the prisoners; Slavik was beaten on the back of his head with a metal pipe. Once they were transferred to more senior authorities their treatment improved. Slavik’s head wound was stitched up and he was offered food, cigarettes, and clothing – “warm, if not exactly stylish”.  Slavik certainly didn’t look his best the next day when, with other prisoners, he was marched in front of angry locals in an ugly “parade of disgrace”. But, head humbly bowed and propping up an injured comrade, Slavik was able to convey a different form of style. “You wouldn’t see this kind of behaviour in Lviv,” admits the soldier, “but I understood it as the Russian way of showing anger. Russia isn’t a territory, Russia is a state of mind”. Ukrainians should forget about controlling Donbass, he said.

Following an emotional appeal for clemency, and secret negotiations with rebel leaders via journalists and mediators, Slavik’s parents arrived in Donetsk last Tuesday. His father, also called Slavik, admits he did not know what to expect – whether he would be able to even see his son – but he says he anticipated another forced parade. “My appeal was calculated and I knew there would be a price to pay, but our eyes were bone dry and we had to take the risk”, he says. In the end, rebel leader Aleksandr Zakharchenko limited the family’s ordeal to an inspection of civilian injuries in the local hospital. “We were taken from ward to ward, and of course most were not happy to see us. One woman was appalled that I should think of collecting my ‘bastard son’,” recalls Slavik Snr.

Aside from media publicity, the only condition Zakharchenko set was that Slavik didn’t return to fight in Donbass. He also offered political asylum in the new republic – suggestion that was politely declined. For Slavik, a new, civilian life beckons. He says he was changed by the experience and no longer wishes to be a soldier. “I wanted to live so much and realised I’d be happy if I was to spend the rest of my life as a docker. The dirtiest, hardest life is better than death.” His father looks at him with a smile of pride. “My son is a hero. Simply for staying alive,” he says. 

Updated | At 10:45 a.m., the Newsweek Twitter account, @Newsweek, was hacked by a group calling themselves the "Cyber Caliphate." The group claimed to be affiliated with the Islamic State (ISIS) and has previously hacked @Centcom, the Twitter account of the United States Central Command, as well as the official Twitter account of Taylor Swift. The Newsweek account remained hacked for 14 minutes until 10:59 a.m., when Twitter's support team regained control of the account at the publication's request.

"We can confirm that Newsweek's Twitter account was hacked this morning, and have since regained control of the account,"Newsweek managing editor Kira Bindrim said in a statement. "We apologize to our readers for anything offensive that might have been sent from our account during that period, and are working to strengthen our newsroom security measures going forward." 

During the hack, the @Newsweek account's profile picture and banner were changed to images of a masked man and the Black Standard flag, along with a message "Je su IS IS." The group tweeted out offensive messages threatening Michelle Obama and praising "cyber jihad." Images the hackers claimed were confidential were also tweeted, specifically from the Defense Cyber Investigations Training Academy and the Pentagon. 

The FBI is investigating the hack as some of the tweets sent threatened the Obama family. 

Also on Tuesday, ibtimes.com, the website of the International Business Times, was hacked by what appeared to be the same group. A subsidiary Newsweek Tumblr account, nwkarchivist.tumblr.com, was also briefly hacked. The official Twitter account of Latin Times was also hacked. Newsweek, International Business Times and Latin Times share a parent company, IBT Media.

Jeb Bush, the leading Republican candidate for the 2016 presidential election, released an archive on Tuesday containing eight years' worth of his private correspondences from his time as governor of Florida from 1999 to 2007. In an accompanying ebook, Bush writes he spent around 30 hours each week responding to emails from constituents after he released his personal email address—jeb@jeb.org—to the public.

Most of the emails are mundane and consist of little more than the day-to-day drudgery of governing. "I am so proud of your efforts on Medicaid," wrote one constituent on January 11, 2005. "I know you have a very full plate but I thought you oughta see this about Y2K," wrote another, January 7, 1999. The archive shows Bush received many condolences on September 11, 2001.

Here's the catch: Bush not only published every email, he published every email address—and many personal names, physical addresses and personal phone numbers, that people include in their email footers. The archive contains thousands upon thousands of personal identifying details about Floridians. Granted, the most recent emails are more than seven years old, so many of the addresses and phone numbers may have changed.

But it remains to be seen what fallout, if any, those whose information is contained in the release will experience as a result.

Former HSBC chairman Stephen Green’s should appear in front of the Public Accounts Committee to answer questions on the conduct of the bank’s Swiss subsidiary while he was in charge, according to British opposition politicians.

A cache of leaked documents revealed that Europe’s biggest bank had colluded with rich clients to help them hide undeclared accounts, sparking a global call to action in the U.S., Belgium, France, Argentina and Switzerland.

In reaction to the leak, British MPs on the Public Accounts Committee have launched an “urgent” inquiry into the bank’s conduct. A spokesperson for committee chair Margaret Hodge MP said that “witnesses to appear at the hearing are yet to be confirmed”.

Lord Green, who was granted a peerage and served as Conservative trade minister between 2011 and 2013 has so far refused to comment on any issues relating to HSBC or the leaks.

Labour MP Jim Sheridan argues that Green should “absolutely” be pulled in front of the committee to give evidence on allegations that the HSBC subsidiary, which he headed, was complicit in tax avoidance.

Fellow Labour MP John Mann also called for Green to stand before the committee as it was “unacceptable” that he is refusing to comment on the bank’s conduct on his watch.

“Lord Green should appear before the Treasury Select Committee and explain why the bank he was in charge of was involved in systematic tax avoidance,” Mann asserted. “His policy of not commenting on his time as head of HSBC is simply acceptable as he has serious questions to answer.”

Sheridan also expressed anger that the taxpayer was paying for Green’s peerage and asserted that it should be reviewed in light of the revelations.

“Given what’s happened, in terms of the situation with HSBC, I think his peerage has to be called into question,” said Sheridan. “If there is any misappropriation of funds, fraud or encouraging others to indulge in fraud then I think the government has to look very, very seriously at the kind of people they want in the House of Lords.”

“It’s a rage that taxpayers are paying for this person’s peerage and if there’s any doubt whatsoever about his background then the government has to deal with it,” he added.

“The Public Accounts Committee should have the authority to pull in whoever they think is appropriate to answer the questions that need to be answered for the general public.”

Lord Green, who “knew perfectly well” what was happening on his watch according to whistleblower Herve Falciani, joined the House of Lords in 2010 as a trade minister for David Cameron’s newly-elected Conservative coalition government.

In 2012, infamous RBS banker Fred Goodwin was stripped of his knighthood which was awarded for “services to banking” after consideration by the secretive Honours Forfeiture Committee because of how his actions contributed to the near-collapse of the bank.

Lord Green acted as HSBC’s chief executive before becoming the chairman of the bank from May 2006 to December 2010.

Lord Green was not reachable for comment.

The UK is the only country in western Europe that still enforces a blanket ban on prisoners voting in elections, a law which the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has now ruled breaches inmates’ human rights four separate times.

Sean Humber, the lawyer representing over half of the 1,015 prisoners who were fighting for their right to vote in the most recent case, attacked the government for “taking an almost perverse pleasure in ignoring successive court judgments”.

However, Humber did concede that he was“pleased the court has confirmed that the UK government breached our client’s human rights by having a blanket ban that prevented all convicted prisoners from voting in the May 2010 general election.”

Juliet Lyon, the director of the Prison Reform Trust, says that MPs in Britain need to change their focus. “Politicians should feel sick about sky high reconviction rates, not about enabling prisoners to be good citizens.”

“For 10 years the UK government has wasted public money blocking the original judgment,” she said, referring to the first time the UK ignored the ECHR recommended the law be amended.

Lyons also highlighted the difference between Britain’s position on the matter and the majority of the rest of Europe: “It’s difficult to understand why [we uphold this law], when we are out of step with almost all of the Council of Europe countries, when prison governors, prison inspectors and bishops to prisons support voting.”

Today’s judgement reconfirms previous court rulings which have stated that the UK government

are in breach of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights - the right to a free election - by not allowing inmates to vote.

In both 2004 and 2005 the ECHR ruled that this was unlawful, but although the Labour government ordered consultations on the law at the time, no legislative changes were made.

In 2010 when the Conservative party formed a coalition government following the general election, UK prime minister David Cameron told MPs: "No one should be under any doubt - prisoners are not getting the vote under this government.”

In contrast to Britain, the Republic of Ireland lifted their ban in 2006 following what Fíona Ní Chinnéide from the Irish Penal Reform Trust called a “remarkable lack of opposition” in the Irish parliament.

Dr Cormac Behan, who had carried out extensive research on the franchisement of prisoners in Ireland, says opening up voting rights to prisoners sends a symbolic message of inclusion rather than exclusion. “If we are trying to promote prison as a method of rehabilitation then to send a signal which is about inclusion is important and voting is both symbolic and real in relation to this.”

Today’s decision by the ECHR follows a UK High Court ruling in December 2014 which declared that a ban on books being sent to prisoners was unlawful. The UK Justice Secretary Chris Grayling had introduced the policy in November 2013, but was ordered to change it following widespread condemnation protesters including children’s novelist Philip Pullman and Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy.

The Ministry of Justice have not yet responded to Newsweek’s request for a comment. 

The European Union is aiming to clinch an interim debt deal with Greece at a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Monday, with "low expectations" for a breakthrough at meetings of ministers and EU leaders this week.

Euro zone finance ministers, collectively known as the Eurogroup, meet on Wednesday and next Monday and EU leaders at a summit, or European Council, this Thursday.

"These are the next steps but for the time being we have low expectations that any final agreement will be tomorrow or at the European Council," a Commission spokeswoman told a news conference.

An EU official later said the target now was to clinch an interim deal by Monday's scheduled meeting of the Eurogroup in Brussels.

"This would give time for any ratification required by national parliaments before the current EU bailout deal expires on February 28," the official said, although cautioned against setting "any fake deadlines".

Greece is seeking a new debt agreement with the euro zone that will allow it to shake off much of the austerity imposed since 2010 by international lenders. The existing package expires at the end of February.

"Of course very intense contacts are ongoing between the (Commission) President, (Greek) Prime Minister Tsipras and all other players involved in the euro zone.... But up to this point all these contacts have not been very fruitful," the Commission spokeswoman said.

Jewish groups in Germany sharply criticized a new government commission on anti-Semitism on Tuesday, saying the lack of a single Jewish member on the panel was scandalous and pledging to set up a rival body.

Germany's interior ministry set up a group of experts last year to help fight anti-Semitism and boost Jewish life in Germany amid concern that hostility toward Jews was growing, due partly to Muslim radicals responding to Israeli policies.

Although other European countries, such as Britain and France, are also worried by increasing anti-Semitism, it is a particularly sensitive subject in Germany, even 70 years after the end of the Holocaust. "It is an unrivalled scandal (that no one among the experts has a Jewish background)," said Julius H. Schoeps, founding director of the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European-Jewish Studies in Potsdam.

"German lawmakers and the Interior Minister must ask themselves why ... clearly no value is placed on experts from Jewish organizations and communities," he added in a statement.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC), Moses Mendelssohn Center and Amadeu Antonio Foundation will therefore set up their own commission on anti-Semitism in Germany, they said.

The independent group of experts appointed by the interior ministry last year consists of eight people, mainly academics, who are due to submit a report in two years time that will form the basis of discussion in the German parliament.

No one at the Interior Ministry was immediately available to comment.

"At a time when Jewish institutions need more protection after numerous terror attacks and anti-Semitic views are rife in schools and in society, we need more instruments and .. an ongoing debate on the topic," said Deidre Berger, director of the AJC Berlin Ramer Institute for German-Jewish Relations.

Just two weeks ago, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany had an eternal responsibility to fight anti-Semitism and racism.

Members of the commission, which first convened on Jan. 19, include Werner Bergmann, sociology professor at Berlin Technical University's Center for Research on Anti-Semitism, and Patrick Siegele, director of the Anne Frank Center in Berlin.

A single line in Samsung’s voice-recognizing SmartTV privacy policy sent the media into a frenzy over the past few days. It read:“Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.”

But the voice of the virtual mob, concerned that their lives were becoming something out of George Orwell’s 1984, grew so loud that Samsung has issued an update.

The policy now names the third party that currently has access to voice commands when the voice-recognition feature is activated. The policy still points out that customers are given the option to activate or deactivate the voice-recognition feature at any time.

Previously, the policy read:

“If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service that converts speech to text or to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you.”

Today, Samsung issued an update (changes in bold):

“If you enable Voice Recognition, you can interact with your Smart TV using your voice. To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some interactive voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service provider (currently, Nuance Communications, Inc.) that converts your interactive voice commands to text and to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you."

The policy goes on to explain that voice commands and the associated texts are used to “evaluate and improve the features” and that Samsung will only collect voice commands “when you make a specific search request to the Smart TV” when the microphone is activated.  

Newsweek reached out to Nuance Communications, Inc., the third party accessing customers’ voice commands, but it did not respond by time of publishing. 

There could be serious repercussions if Greece fails to reach an agreement on their debt with the eurozone, and turns to Russia instead, experts have warned.

The Greek defence minister Panos Kammenos today said his country may be forced to carry out a “plan B” if a new bailout deal can’t be negotiated with the rest of the eurozone.

Kammenos, who is a member of the Independent Greeks, the right-wing party who formed a coalition with left-wing Syriza after they failed to secure a majority in January’s elections, warned that: "Plan B is to get funding from another source. It could be the United States at best, it could be Russia, it could be China or other countries."

The newly formed Greek coalition government are attempting to negotiate a new deal with the eurozone on their debt obligations. However, while eurozone finance ministers meet in Brussels on Wednesday for another round of negotiations, the Greek foreign minister Nikolaos Kotzias will meet the Russian foreign minister in Moscow.

Dr Jonathan Eyal from defence and security think tank the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) called Kammenos’ statement an “unbecoming threat from a NATO member state.”

He told Newsweek: “It’s another reminder that the Greeks have never offered the kind of solidarity to Europe that Europe has shown to Greece.”

“It’s very obvious the Russians have an opportunity to subsidise a country that can stop a consensus that is required to keep up sanctions on Russia. It’s very grave indeed. The repercussions of this could be quite serious depending on what Greece do in return.”

These comments come just a day after reports of a proposed Russian base in Cyprus and Dr Eyal says today’s developments “fall into a pattern of threats which coincide with what’s been happening in Cyprus.”

Members of the new Greek government have had developed good relations with Russia since coming to power. As well as objecting to calls for further sanctions against the country over the Ukraine conflict, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras reportedly accused Kiev of harbouring “neo-Nazi” elements while on a trip to Moscow before he was elected.

However, Dr Eyal says the prospect of Russia establishing a military presence in Greece is unlikely. “It’s possible although it’s a farfetched. If you were to see Russian bases in NATO territory it would obviously raise serious concerns.”

“The Russians are not exactly flushed with cash. If the Russians were to be there it would take some time before they are in a position to something.”

Greece’s current programme of loans ends on the 28th February. 

A number of Milan politicians have come out in favour of creating a red light district in the city this week. Politicians from across the political spectrum, including the ruling Democratic Party (PD), Forza Italia, right-wing Northern League and the Left Ecology Freedom party, have voiced their approval of the plans in Italy’s financial heart.

Prostitution is currently legal in Italy, but unregulated. However it is illegal to own a brothel, pimp, or live on the earnings of a woman in prostitution.

Carlo Monguzzi from the ruling Democratic Party (PD), wrote on his Facebook page that a red light district is the “only solution” to tackle the violence and exploitation which sex workes currently face due to the lack of regulation. “Having a red light district in Milan is a good idea… We must help the women reduced to slavery and forced into prostitution, who are beaten to death if they don’t do it.”

Mirko Mazzali, leader of the Left Ecology Freedom Party (SEL), agreed, saying: "The conditions for sex workers in Italy are very dramatic. There is exploitation and very bad hygienic conditions. This idea would prevent sex workers from being trafficked, which is a very bad probelm in Italy because of intense traffic from eastern Europe and North Africa. 

"Sex work is big business for criminals. The district must not become a ghetto and there must be psychologists and medical support to help sex workers."

This cross-party support follows a decision made in Rome last week to introduce a red light district zone in the Eur business area south of the city, from April. Police will be ordered to impose fines of up to €500 on prostitutes caught working outside this area, and it will also be supervised by health and social workers to help in the battle against pimps and traffickers.

According to a parliamentary survey there are over 70,000 prostitutes in Italy, who have an estimated nine million clients, creating an annual total turnover of €5 billion.

Maria Spilabotte, a Democratic Party senator who presented a bill last May aimed at regulating the sex trade in the country, has argued that workers should be given rights and pay taxes. She believes this will also help combat human trafficking.

However, Elena Perlino, an Italian photographer who embarked on a long-term project focusing on sex trafficking from Nigeria to Italy, is dubious about these schemes. “The risk, talking about this topic, is to believe that prostitution and trafficking are the same thing. Many eastern European, African and Asiatic women we meet on the street are just sexual slaves, victims of a well organized criminal network.”

She continued: “The debt women need to pay back to their exploiters to be in Europe can reach thousand of euros. Life for those women is really tough. They are prostitutes, but that is not a free choice. To create a red light district can remove the women from our eyes, but it is not a real solution to the phenomenon of thousand of women trafficked every year to Italy.”

In a Newsweek investigation published last week, sex workers described the dangers they currently face in Italy, with many of them preferring to cross the border into Switzerland where prostitution is regulated and there are safer spaces to work. One sex worker, Carly said: “In Italy streets are dangerous, you do it in the car and you never know what may happen. Italians are lewd because prostitution in our country is still a taboo.”

She went on to describe how in Chiasso, an Italian-speaking area of Switzerland, there is even a special section of the police who sex workers can call if they are in danger. Prostitutes can also get official work permits, pay taxes and receive free health checks.

However, some anti-prostitution groups reject Italy’s movements towards regulated prostitution zones entirely. A message from the Italian group Resistenza Femminista, posted on the Facebook page of the Alliance of Women for the Abolition of Prostitution, read: "We say NO to this unbearable violation of human rights. NO to the hypocrisy of our politicians who are protecting their rights to buy women's bodies.

“We stand up for the rights of all the sexually exploited women and girls to be helped to exit prostitution (job, education, healthcare and the possibility of living in our country if they are immigrant women) instead of being trapped in a ghetto as second class women who can be beaten, raped and killed without any consequences for pimps.”

Jan Macleod who works at the Women’s Support Project, considered the debate from a UK perspective. “I’m sure it’s been done with the best intentions,” she said of the plans for Milan. “But we are very against the approach of tolerance zones in the UK. It has short term benefits, but overall it does cause women physical and psychological damage. Managing that harm is offensive, actually.

“We would advocate the decriminalisation of women for selling sex. Prostitution is not a victimless crime, and can result in assault, abductions and gang rapes. If you make it an offence to buy sex, you send out a message to males that it’s not something society condones,” she concluded. 

Hungary’s radical nationalist party Jobbik has ordered one of their newly elected local councillors to spend three days living with a Roma member of the party.

The ruling came after it emerged that Jobbik member Janos Kotel had made racist comments between 2011 and 2013, and had also said he wished to buy weapons to kill members of the Roma community, Associated Press reported.

The party’s president Gabor Vona yesterday told press he rejected Kotel’s comments, calling them “unacceptable”, and had ordered Kotel to spend three days living with a Roma member of Jobbik to atone for his comments.

Kotel was a member of an unarmed citizen’s militia at the time, when Hungary’s new constitution was the subject of public debate and there were heightened tensions concerning the future of civil liberties in the country, the rights of ethnic minority groups and the ruling Fidesz party’s increasingly conservative ideology.

During this period Kotel allegedly posted comments on social media about procuring weapons to “kill gypsies”. Hungary’s large Roma population was estimated to be over 300,000 by the national census agency in 2011.

According to Hungarian publication 444, Vona says that Kotel’s comments may have been made at a time when “tensions and emotions were high”, but concedes “this is no excuse”.

The publication links this move to Kotel’s victory at the municipal by-election in Mezotur last Sunday where he triumphed “smoothly” over the candidate of the ruling Fidesz party - Pete Lajos. However turnout for it was relatively low with only around 25% of the city voting.

Jobbik have become one of Hungary’s biggest parties, winning 20% of the vote in the 2014 parliamentary election, despite its members often making derogatory comments about the Roma and other Hungarian ethnic minorities, most notably the Jews, whom party members have referred to as “a national security risk”.

The lynchings of black Americans in the South after the Civil War were much more widespread than previously thought, according to a new report published Tuesday by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI).

The report looks at the 3,959 victims of what the group call “racial terror lynchings” in the South, compiled after visiting 160 sites across the region and five years of research, The New York Timesreports.  

Researchers at EJI, a Montgomery, Alabama-based nonprofit, discovered 700 more lynchings than historians previously thought took place between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950.

“Lynchings in the American South were not isolated hate crimes committed by rogue vigilantes. Lynching was targeted racial violence at the core of a systematic campaign of terror perpetrated in furtherance of an unjust social order,” the report states.

Some states were more notorious than others, but across the South people remained silent when it came to addressing or discussing lynching, the report says. EJI found that fear of interracial sex led to lynchings, which were often a response to “casual social transgressions,” like insulting a white person, swearing or allegations involving a violent crime. Lynchings were also a catalyst for the migration of millions of black Americans from the South to the North.

Nearly a quarter of all lynchings were based on charges of sexual assault, but often an accusation of rape, or the simple act of knocking on a white woman’s door, would suffice. Keith Bowen was lynched in Aberdeen, Mississippi, for “allegedly [trying] to enter a room where three white women were sitting,” according to the report.

While Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana all had the highest rates of statewide lynchings per 100,000 people, Georgia, with 586 victims, and Mississippi, with 576, had the highest number of lynchings overall. Phillips County in Arkansas had 243 lynching victims, more than the entire state of Virginia.

Most of the victims were lynched without being accused of a crime, and many were killed after demanding their basic rights.

The report also finds that the violence of lynchings didn’t end with the act of hanging. In many cases, large crowds would gather at the lynching, the press would show up, and food (such as deviled eggs and lemonade) and souvenirs (including the victim’s body parts) would be sold. Burning and further mutilation of the bodies would then occur.

In 2013, the EJI placed three public markers in Montgomery, as most lynching victims were killed at sites now devoid of any identification. The group now plans to select more lynching sites to publicly mark and memorialize, which it hopes will “end the silence and inaction” and help with the recovery process.

Since 2013, New York state has been the lone holdout against allowing mixed martial arts (MMA) competitions such as those organized by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the most successful of the companies promoting the sport.

The company, which helped build the popularity of MMA worldwide, has long been at the forefront of a feud over legalizing the sport in New York, a major market. The state Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, refused to put to the question to a vote.

Now, however the UFC has renewed hope that the sport could punch and kick its way into New York. On January 22, Silver was arrested on charges of corruption linked to payments he allegedly received in exchange for reduced real estate taxes, and soon afterward he resigned as speaker.

“We are optimistic that in 2015 New York will join the 49 other states and most countries around the world in legalizing and regulating the fastest growing sport in the world,” a UFC spokesman told Newsweek. “Just as the state Senate has passed this bill for the last five years with overwhelming bipartisan support, we know that there is overwhelming bipartisan support for the bill in the Assembly. We are very hopeful that this is finally the year.”

MMA fighting has been banned in New York since 1997, and it has remained so in large part because Silver blocked it. His stance is seen to be closely tied to that of an organization that is entirely unrelated to New York: the Las Vegas Culinary Union Local 226.

In April 2013, The Wall Street Journaldetermined that the union has had a long-standing issue with Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, the co-owners of the UFC, and that Silver had aligned with the union. Kevin Iole at Yahoo Sports even accused Silver of doing the union’s “bidding.” Silver has not commented on the matter, and the union hung up on a reporter calling for comment.

The Fertittas found themselves and their multimillion-dollar MMA company at odds with the union and Silver because of an entirely separate business: their casinos. The Fertittas own Station Casinos, a business that is not unionized, much to the frustration of the union in Las Vegas.

The Fertittas’ refusal to work with Local 226 at their casinos may have led the union to align with Silver, who “does not personally approve of MMA,” to ensure the sport couldn’t enter New York. Later in 2013, Silver publicly claimed “there simply has not been enough support in the Democrat conference to bring it to a vote.” But the UFC believed it would have received 120 of 150 votes in favor of legalization.

The UFC has long been frustrated with Silver’s actions regarding MMA. Dana White, president of the UFC, has been particularly vocal:

Hey I have a question for everyone, who looks stupid on this map? pic.twitter.com/NuwyonuEXb

— Dana White (@danawhite) June 6, 2013

If MMA does gain legal status, organizers believe New York state could host as many as 50 fights a year, including headliners at New York City’s Madison Square Garden and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. Backers estimate that legalized MMA fighting could bring over $23 million a year to the state’s economy, as well as create hundreds of jobs.