Human Rights Watch says its in-depth report details Israeli attacks on three U.N.-run schools.
'Violation of the laws of war'

Dozens of Fijian U.N. peacekeepers, released by al Qaeda-linked group Nusra Front in Syria, arrived in Israeli-held territory on the Golan Heights on Thursday, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.

"We opened the border and they entered," the Israeli military spokeswoman said, without giving numbers.

A Reuters witness said after the peacekeepers crossed over they were driven away in a convoy of U.N. minibuses.

Some 45 Fijian soldiers were taken hostage two weeks ago when Islamist militant groups including Nusra attacked them in the volatile frontier area between Syria and Israel.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed their release and, according to a spokesman, demanded that all parties in the area respect the U.N. force's "mandate, freedom of movement and the safety and security of its personnel."

Nusra initially said it held the peacekeepers because they were aiding soldiers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Later, sources close to Nusra said it demanded the removal of the group from the West's terrorist list.

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This undated image attached in a statement released on Saturday, Aug. 30, 2014 on the Hanin Network …

The Nusra group on Wednesday posted a video on its Twitter and YouTube accounts in which the hostages said they expected to be freed soon.

A U.N. source earlier told Reuters the militants had insisted on such a video as a condition of the peacekeepers' release.

"We are all safe and alive, and we thank Jabhat al-Nusra for keeping us safe and keeping us alive. I'd like to assure you that we have not been harmed in any way," one hostage, who was not identified, said in the footage.

"We understand that with the limited resources that they have, they have provided the best for us and we truly appreciate it and we thank them. We are thankful that Jabhat al-Nusra has kept its word and that we will be going home."

NO RANSOM

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Two members of the Nusra Front speak in front of U.N. peacekeepers in an unknown location, in this s …

A UN spokesman said in New York on Thursday no ransom had been requested for the Fijian peacekeepers and none was paid. He said the UN mission in the region remained viable and would continue to fulfill its mandate.

Fijian Prime Minister Voreqe "Frank" Bainimarama said the released men were heroes and pledged his commitment to providing peacekeepers to the region and elsewhere.

"It is a noble mission that we will continue to perform whenever we are called on by the United Nations," Bainimarama said in a videotaped statement, adding that the men were in a UN compound.

"They are all healthy, they are in high spirits and they will soon be in contact with their families and loved ones here in Fiji," he said.

Since independence from Britain in 1970, Fiji has sent more soldiers on U.N. peacekeeping missions than any other nation, on a per capita basis, providing it with much-needed hard currency and enhancing its global standing.

Syria's three-year-old civil war reached the frontier with Israeli-controlled territory last month when Islamist fighters overran a crossing point in the line that has separated Israelis from Syrians in the Golan Heights since a 1973 war. The fighters then turned on the U.N. blue helmets, part of a peacekeeping force that has patrolled the ceasefire line for 40 years. After the Fijians were captured, more than 70 Filipinos spent two days besieged at two locations before reaching safety.

Qatar, one country in the Middle East thought by the United States to have influence with the Islamist militant group, said Fiji had formally requested its assistance in freeing the hostages.

U.S. officials have said that Qatar played a critical role in persuading the Nusra Front to free American journalist Peter Theo Curtis last month, whom the front had been holding hostage since 2012.

(Reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Dubai and Mariam Karouny in Beirut and Matt Siegel, Swati Pandey and Lincoln Feast in Sydney; editing by Andrew Roche, Bernard Orr)

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MoneyWatch: Yahoo lost lawsuit over NSA surveillance; Pre-orders begin for new iPhones

U.S. authorities threatened to fine Yahoo $250,000 a day if it failed to comply with a secret surveillance program requiring it to hand over user data in the name of national security, court documents showed Thursday.

The documents, made public in a rare unsealing by a secretive court panel, "underscore how we had to fight every step of the way to challenge the US government's surveillance efforts," Yahoo general counsel Ron Bell said in a blog post that will again raise privacy concerns.

The documents shed new light on the PRISM snooping program revealed in leaked files from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The program allowed US intelligence services to sweep up massive amounts of data from major Internet firms including Yahoo and Google. Officials have said the deeply contentious program ended in 2011.

The 1,500 pages of documents were ordered released by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in the case dating from 2007, according to Bell, who said that in 2007, the US government "amended a key law to demand user information from online services."

"We refused to comply with what we viewed as unconstitutional and overbroad surveillance and challenged the US government's authority," he said.

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Aerial photograph of the National Reconnaissance, 2013. The NRO is in charge of developing, deployin …

Yahoo's court challenge failed and it was forced to hand over the US user data.

"At one point, the US government threatened the imposition of $250,000 in fines per day if we refused to comply," Bell revealed.

Since the Snowden leaks, Yahoo and others have been seeking to make public these court documents to show they were forced to comply with government requests and made numerous attempts to fight these efforts, rather than simply acquiescing to them, as some critics say.

The opening of these court dockers to the public "is extremely rare," Bell said, adding that the company was in the process of making the 1,500 pages publicly available online.

"We consider this an important win for transparency and hope that these records help promote informed discussion about the relationship between privacy, due process, and intelligence gathering," Bell added.

But he said that "despite the declassification and release, portions of the documents remain sealed and classified to this day, unknown even to our team."

- 'Not reasonable' -

The redacted court records, seen by AFP, showed Yahoo challenged the government on constitutional grounds, saying the surveillance program violated protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

Yahoo said in one brief that the government's requests were "unconstitutional because they permitted warrantless surveillance of US persons' private communications without prior judicial review, and were not reasonable."

The company argued that the program was not merely monitoring overseas targets but some in the United States "with no knowledge that their Internet communications are being retrieved."

Yahoo said the process was "similar to what is done in criminal cases" and would require monitoring from the company's headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

"The US Supreme Court has never sanctioned warrantless surveillance of US citizens," Yahoo said in another brief.

A document dated May 14, 2008 said Yahoo began complying with the government order two days earlier, on May 12, on "priority user accounts for which the government wanted surveillance."

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U.S. threatened Yahoo with big fine over user data

Officials said the company would have to pay $250K a day unless it shared user data for secret surveillance.
Court documents released