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A 95-year-old former Nazi collaborator who served in the notorious SS as a labour camp guard in World War Two has arrived in Germany after a long deportation battle in the US. Jakiw Palij has been stateless since a federal judge revoked his US citizenship in 2003. For years Germany refused to accept him as he never had German nationality. After arriving in Düsseldorf he was being taken to a care home for the elderly, German reports say. The US ambassador in Berlin, Richard Grenell, praised Germany's new government and President Donald Trump's "crucial leadership" in resolving the case. Who is Jakiw Palij? Authorities believed he was the last Nazi collaborator still living in the US, and his residence in the Queens area of New York City attracted protests from residents. Palij is said to have been born in an area of Poland that is now in Ukraine. In 1943 he went to the Trawniki SS training camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. Trawniki was notorious because it trained thousands of civilians from the area who went on to become active as death camp guards at Sobibor, Treblinka and Belzec. Its most notorious camp guard was John Demjanjuk, who was convicted by a German court of being an accessory to 28,000 murders at Sobibor. He too was deported by the US, in 2009. Jews were sent to the camps as part of Operation Reinhard, the Nazi plan to murder more than two million Jews in occupied Poland Trawniki also housed a forced labour camp where more than 6,000 Jews were murdered on a single day - 3 November 1943. A White House statement said Palij served as an armed guard and had played an "indispensable role" in ensuring Jews were killed. He arrived in the US in 1949 and was given citizenship in 1957. Although a US court ruled he had assisted in the persecution of prisoners, he was not found personally responsible for deaths. His deportation was ordered in 2004 after a judge said he had falsified his immigration application. Palij himself has denied collaborating with the Nazis. He told the New York Times in 2003 that he had never set foot in a camp and only agreed to work as a guard because he believed the Nazis would kill his family if he refused. Why did deportation take so long? US authorities were unable to persuade Germany, Ukraine or Poland to take him in. He never had German citizenship and originated from an area of Poland that is now Ukraine. The US ambassador said a change of heart came with the advent of Chancellor Angela Merkel's new cabinet earlier this year. Mr Grenell said on social media that President Trump had also played an important role in securing the deportation. Why did deportation take so long? US authorities were unable to persuade Germany, Ukraine or Poland to take him in. He never had German citizenship and originated from an area of Poland that is now Ukraine. The US ambassador said a change of heart came with the advent of Chancellor Angela Merkel's new cabinet earlier this year. Mr Grenell said on social media that President Trump had also played an important role in securing the deportation.

Chinese police have arrested 26 people suspected of stealing relics from an ancient burial site. The gang allegedly seized almost 650 objects, including gold and silver cutlery and jewellery, from the Dulan Tombs, which lie on the ancient Silk Road in northwest China. The stolen items date back to the 7th Century, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security said in a statement. The suspects allegedly tried to sell them for about $11m (£7.8m). The objects were said to have been illegally excavated from the tombs, located in the north-western province of Qinghai. Silk, gold, silver, bronze ware and other items have been unearthed at the tombs, of which there are more than 2,000, since 1982. Experts believe that many of the items are of huge historical value as they show cultural exchanges and interactions between East and West during the early Tang Dynasty (618-907). Following the arrests, police will increase their crackdown on cultural relics crimes to better protect the country's cultural heritage, the Chinese government said.

India's army is stepping up efforts to rescue thousands of people stranded by flooding across India's southern Kerala state that has killed 324 people. Hundreds of troops, and dozens of boats and helicopters are helping to evacuate people from what officials say is the worst flooding there in a century. Many people are still believed to be trapped on rooftops of flooded homes. Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier flew over the worst-hit sites and met state officials to discuss the crisis. Weeks of heavy monsoon rains triggered landslides and floods, with more forecast and a red alert in place. Strong winds are also predicted for Saturday and Sunday. Across India close to 1,000 people have been killed in the current rainy season, which began in June, officials say. How bad is it in Kerala? Kerala's chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, says the flooding is the worst the state has seen in 100 years. He told reporters that more than 223,000 people were now living in more than 1,500 emergency relief camps set up in the area. There are also fears that many people remain stuck on trees and rooftops - NDTV says the number is in the thousands, but other news sites puts the figure in the hundreds. According to The Times of India, at least 10,000 people are stranded in one village alone after all surrounding roads were submerged. People who are stuck without electricity and supplies have been resorting to social media to appeal for help and say they have been unable to contact rescue services. Parts of Kerala's commercial capital, Cochin, are also under water, snarling up roads and leaving railways across the state impassable. What is being done? Hundreds of troops backed by military helicopters are involved in a huge rescue effort. "We are deploying more boats and the army to ramp up rescue operations," state government official PH Kurian told AFP news agency. The Times of India said 51 navy vessels and 23 military helicopters had been deployed. Helicopters have airlifted emergency supplies to many areas and a special train that carries drinking water has been sent to the state. Prime Minister Modi flew to Cochin early on Saturday where he chaired a meeting of officials, before conducting an aerial survey of the worst affected areas. The international airport there is closed because of flooding on the runway. Anil Vasudevan, the head of the Kerala health disaster response wing, has said they are prepared to help victims and are planning for the risk of water-borne diseases when the flooding recedes. Why is the situation so bad? It is normal for Kerala to get some of the country's highest rainfall during monsoon season, but the India Meteorological Department said it had been hit with 37% more than usual because of a spell of low pressure over the region. Many fear the situation may get worse as further downpours are forecast over the weekend. Environmental scientists are also blaming deforestation, especially the failure to protect ecologically fragile mountain ranges in the area, local media report. Mr Vijayan, the region's chief minister, has said the situation in Kerala has been made worse by neighbouring governments. Earlier this week, he and his counterpart in Tamil Nadu had a public spat over the release of water from a dam. Kerala has 41 rivers flowing into the Arabian Sea, and 80 of its dams are now said to be open after being overwhelmed. "Almost all dams are now opened. Most of our water treatment plants are submerged. Motors are damaged," Mr Vjayan said. 'Neck-deep water' BBC Tamil's Pramila Krishnan spoke to people who had escaped the flooding in Cochin. Krishna Jayan, 58, said she was at home sleeping when her friend woke her up. "I opened the door and water gushed in," she said. "When we stepped into the street, we were neck-deep in water." She said locals had tied ropes along the streets to help people walk through the water, allowing her and her friend to reach a bus to escape.

Intel's newly-minted graphics group has set up a new twitter account (Intel Graphics), and in a bit of marketing glory, the first tweet features a video revealing a shadowy new discrete GPU that should arrive in 2020. The shadowy GPU, which has a faint hue of blue, makes an appearance. Aside from the single-slot design, the image doesn't give us much to go on. Lest we forget, the video also reminds us that Intel "lights up quintillions of pixels across the planet every day," which is a true statement based on the fact that, courtesy of its integrated graphics chips in its CPUs, Intel is the world's largest GPU producer. Now the company is bringing that experience to the discrete GPU market, and yes, that means it is bringing gaming-focused GPUs to market. Translating that experience in integrated graphics to its new lineup of discrete GPUs isn't going to be an easy task: the last successful entry into the GPU space occurred 25 years ago. But Intel has an IP war chest (at one point it owned more graphics patents than the other vendors combined) and has been on a full court press recruiting the right talent for the task. Famed graphics architect Raja Koduri recently abdicated his leading role at AMD's Radeon Technology Group to join Team Blue's newly-formed Core and Visual Computing Group. The new group is working to bring Arctic Sound (the rumored GPU codename) to market by 2020, but it also takes a few other ingredients beyond "just" the hardware to make real waves in the graphics market. Intel also has to beef up its driver group, which is notorious for slow graphics driver releases. In a sign of things to come, Intel has increased the cadence of driver releases lately, with a heavy focus on zero-day releases. Koduri has also taken to Twitter recently to profess the importance of software to the graphics ecosystem, so we know the company is headed in the right direction on that front. Remember, market-leader Nvidia employs more software engineers than hardware engineers, so success in this area is key. And then it takes marketing magic like we see with Intel's first tweet from the graphics group. Hype fuels GPU releases, look no further than the noise generated by Nvidia's impending launch as proof, and Intel brought in hypemaster Chris Hook from AMD to head up the company's graphics marketing. Hook is Intel's first dedicated marketer for graphics, and it appears he's getting started early. It'll take a while to see the culmination of these efforts, but Intel's 2020 target date means the new graphics cards should come packing its oft-delayed 10nm process. That means the GPU could be exceedingly competitive against AMD and Nvidia's offerings, even in 2020. Intel's past two failings at discrete GPUs, which includes Larrabee, still hang thick in the air. But the company's entrance into the discrete GPU arena has the potential to upend the established AMD and Nvidia duopoly. Jensen Huang doesn't seem to feel particularly threatened, and AMD has been silent on the matter. The hardware and software will tell the story, but we'll have to wait until 2020 to see the end result.

Donald Trump has revoked the security clearance of ex-CIA chief John Brennan, denying the US president's critic any access to sensitive information. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced the decision by reading a statement from Mr Trump. The statement cited Mr Brennan's "erratic conduct and behaviour". In response, Mr Brennan tweeted that the move was part of President Trump's broader effort to "suppress freedom of speech and punish critics". "It should gravely worry all Americans, including intelligence professionals, about the cost of speaking out. "My principles are worth far more than clearances. I will not relent." Mr Brennan earlier said Mr Trump's performance at a briefing after July's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki had been "nothing short of treasonous". And last year, Mr Brennan said an investigation into possible collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russia during the US presidential elections in 2016 had been "well-founded". President Trump has repeatedly denied the claim, calling it "witch hunt". Later on Wednesday in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mr Trump said he would have revoked Mr Brennan's clearance last week but it was "too hectic". "As the head of the executive branch and commander-in-chief, I have a unique constitutional responsibility to protect the nation's classified information, including by controlling access to it. "I have decided to revoke the security clearance of John Brennan, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. "Historically, former heads of intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been allowed to retain access to classified information after their government service so that they can consult with their successors, regarding matters about which they may have special insights and as a professional courtesy. "Neither of these justifications supports Mr Brennan's continued access to classified information." The statement added that Mr Trump was also reviewing access to classified information for former FBI chief James Comey, whom he fired last year, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, former National Security Agency director Michael Hayden and former attorney general Sally Yates, among others In response to Mr Brennan losing his clearance, Mr Comey said in a statement: "Once again this president is sending a message that he will punish people who disagree with him and reward those who praise him." He added that "security clearances should not be used as pawns in a petty political game to distract voters from even bigger problems". Mr Comey also said the president "lies to the American people every day, encourages racism, is a misogynist, and always puts his own interests" first. James Clapper said the Watergate scandal "pales in comparison" to the Russia collusion inquiry dogging the Trump presidency. In a naked jab at the Trump administration, Michael Hayden tweeted a photo in June of a Nazi death camp with the caption: "Other governments have separated mothers and children." Concerted effort to change the subject Analysis by BBC's North America editor Jon Sopel John Brennan has been an outspoken critic of the president. He called Donald Trump treasonous over his meeting with the Russian leader in Helsinki; he's called him imbecilic; and a danger to the US. Now Donald Trump has had his revenge, revoking the former CIA chief's security clearance - and threatening a number of other national intelligence officials - all of whom have one thing in common: they've also been critical of the president. But in justifying this move there's been no suggestion that Mr Brennan either leaked classified material or sought to make money from it. Instead the White House statement spoke of Mr Brennan's "erratic behaviour", "wild outbursts" and "frenzied commentary". The decision by the president was apparently taken without consulting his director of national intelligence, Dan Coats. And the move has brought criticism. Former Secretary of State John Kerry said the president was behaving like the ruler of a banana republic. Others have said Mr Trump is trying to shut up critics. The timing is also noteworthy. The White House has been buffeted for days by claims from a disaffected former adviser to the president. Closing arguments in the trial of Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, are also being heard. The White House briefing where this was announced hadn't been scheduled. It looks like a concerted effort to change the subject.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country will boycott US economic products, after Washington imposed punitive sanctions on Ankara. "If [the US] has the iPhone, there's Samsung on the other side," Mr Erdogan said, referring to Apple and its South Korean competitor. The US doubled tariffs last week over Turkey's refusal to extradite a US pastor who is imprisoned there. Turkey's weakened currency, the lira, plunged by a full 20% in response. President Erdogan said Turkey was taking measures to stabilise the economy, and should not "give in to the enemy" by investing in foreign currencies. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is visiting Ankara, branded the US sanctions an illegitimate policy at a news conference on Tuesday. He accused the US of seeking an unfair competitive advantage in global trade. What's happening to Turkey's currency? Since January, the Turkish lira has lost more than 34% of its value against the dollar, pushing up the price of everyday items. Mr Erdogan has presided over soaring inflation and borrowing levels, but insists the lira's plight is the result of a "campaign" led by foreign powers. Is Turkey heading for an economic crisis? In a televised speech on Friday, he called on Turkish citizens to exchange foreign currency and gold for lira, calling it an "economic war". Now it appears there may be a small respite for the flailing currency, which has gained slightly in value after days of dramatic falls. Turkey's central bank has promised to provide banks with liquidity. The country's finance minister - who is also Mr Erdogan's son-in-law - will seek to reassure around 1,000 international investors in a teleconference scheduled for Thursday. The BBC Turkey correspondent Mark Lowen says Mr Erdogan's boycott could stoke tensions with the US further - and Turks are waiting nervously for Mr Trump's response. Why all this fuss over a pastor? President Erdogan has accused the US of trying to "bring Turkey to its knees through threats over a pastor". But the US insists Andrew Brunson, a long-time Turkish resident who ran the tiny Izmir Resurrection Church, is "a victim of unfair and unjust detention". An evangelical from North Carolina, he has been held in Turkey for nearly two years over alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party and the Gulenist movement, which Turkey blames for a failed coup in 2016. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said the US had seen "no evidence that Pastor Brunson has done anything wrong". Mr Brunson has denied charges of espionage, but faces up to 35 years in jail if found guilty. What's the impact internationally? The ruckus between Turkey and the US has impacted on other countries' currencies, including the Indian rupee, as investors fear the lira's wobbles could spread to developing nations. India's government urged people not to panic on Tuesday after the rupee slid to an all-time low against the dollar. Russia, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Mexico have also seen their currencies fall over the last week.

US space agency Nasa has launched its mission to send a satellite closer to the Sun than any before. The Parker Solar Probe rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The probe is set to become the fastest-moving manmade object in history. Its data promises to crack longstanding mysteries about the Sun's behaviour. It is the first space craft to be named after a living person - astrophysicist Eugene Parker, 91, who first described solar wind in 1958. "Wow, here we go! We're in for some learning over the next several years," he said after watching the lift-off from the scene. The University of Chicago professor said he had been biting his nails in anticipation. The Delta-IV Heavy rocket - which was carrying the probe - launched at 03:31 local time (07:31 GMT). It came after a failed attempt the previous day, when a last-minute alarm caused the agency to miss its 65-minute weather window. Just under an hour after the launch, Nasa confirmed that the spacecraft had successfully separated and the probe had been released into space. it will zip past Venus in six weeks and make a first rendezvous with the Sun a further six weeks after that Over the course of seven years, Parker will make 24 loops around our star to study the physics of the corona, the place where much of the important activity that affects the Earth seems to originate. The probe will dip inside this tenuous atmosphere, sampling conditions, and getting to just 6.16 million km (3.83 million miles) from the Sun's broiling "surface". "I realise that might not sound that close, but imagine the Sun and the Earth were a metre apart. Parker Solar Probe would be just 4cm away from the Sun," explained Dr Nicky Fox, the British-born project scientist who is affiliated to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. "We'll also be the fastest human-made object ever, travelling around the Sun at speeds of up to 690,000km/h (430,000mph) - New York to Tokyo in under a minute!" she told BBC News.

How far can you go when cutting costs, while still appealing to budget-conscious enthusiasts? Intel's B360 chipset, a couple steps down from the Z370 flagship, walks that line well in terms of features. It nixes overclocking and multi-card graphics support, but adds integrated USB 3.1 Gen2 abilities while--in theory at least--making for more-affordable motherboards. The ASRock Fatal1ty B360 Gaming K4 we're looking at here, however, falls flat primarily because of pricing. For just $5 more, the ASRock Fatal1ty H370 Performance offers better connectivity and more PCIe bandwidth for graphics and speedy NVMe storage. And for this B360 board's $115 asking price, you can even find a few alternatives with the flagship Z370 chipset, giving you all the features that B360 takes away. The B360 Gaming K4 uses the same circuit board as the company's H370 Performance motherboard. Shared features start with the I/O panel’s two USB 2.0 and single PS/2 ports, three graphics outputs (VGA, DisplayPort and HMDI) for the CPU’s integrated GPU, two USB 3.1 Gen1 (5Gb/s) ports, Type A and Type-C USB 3.1 Gen2 ports (10Gb/s), a network port wired to Intel’s i219 Gigabit Ethernet hardware, five analog audio jacks fed by Realtek’s ALC1220 codec and a digital optical audio output. Panning out we see an M.2 storage slot behind the top PCIe x1 slot, an M.2 Key-E slot (typically used for Wi-Fi/Bluetooth) behind the second PCIe x1 slot, and another storage slot near the front edge of the board that points towards the bottom two PCIe x1 slots. Sharing starts here, as the second PCIe x1 slot steals a lane from the Key-E slot, which disables its PCIe mode without impacting CNVi availability. The bottom two x1 slots steal lanes from the four-pathway slot above them, kicking it down to x2 mode. The lower M.2 storage slot has only two lanes to start, and steals one of its HSIO (Intel’s flexible High-Speed I/O) pathways from a SATA port, disabling that port while leaving the other five enabled. The shared circuit board answers any HSIO resource exclusions not fully addressed in our H370 Performance review, since the only things we see missing from the B360 Gaming K4 are two of the second M.2 slot’s PCIe pathways and the second USB 3.0 front-panel header. Missing features that we can’t see so easily are attributed to the change in chipset, as the B360 loses RAID mode, and the second M.2 slot isn't addressed by Intel RST. Starting from the top and center of the picture above and going counterclockwise, there's a 5-pin header for addressing a four-lane Thunderbolt add-in card (not included), one of the four PCIe x1 slots, which is open-ended to receive longer (x4, etc) cards, the front-panel HD-Audio cable header, a TPM header, a legacy Serial Communications port, a 4-pin fan header, Addressable and standard RGB light strip headers, two dual-port USB 2.0 headers, two more 4-pin fan headers, a PC (Beep Code) speaker and 3-pin Power-LED header, a standard Intel power/reset/activity LED header. Moving up the front edge are the second M.2 storage connector, six SATA ports, and the corner of the board’s dual-port SATA 3.0 header. Four of the motherboard’s five fan headers are switchable between pulse width modulation and voltage-based RPM control, and the same four feature 2.0 amp capacity (boosted from 1A on the PWM-only CPU fan header). The B360 Gaming K4 has only two SATA ports, which makes sense in the era of M.2 SSDs, but might not work for some builders who are attempting to transfer multiple drives from an older system. An I/O shield, driver disc and printed documentation make up the board's modest in-box accessories.

Hundreds of Muslims in western China are engaged in a standoff with authorities to prevent their mosque from being demolished. Officials said the newly completed Weizhou Grand Mosque in Ningxia had not been given proper building permits. But worshippers refused to back down - one resident said they "won't let the government touch the mosque". China is home to some 23 million Muslims, and Islam has been prominent in Ningxia province for centuries. But rights groups say there is increasing official hostility towards Muslims in China, and foreign religious influences in particular. The mosque, which has several soaring minarets and domes, is built in a Middle Eastern style. How did the protests begin? Officials had on 3 August posted a notice that the mosque would be "forcibly demolished" as it had not been granted the necessary planning and construction permits. The notice was shared online among the ethnic Hui Muslim community, according to Reuters news agency. Many questioned why authorities did not stop construction of the mosque, which took two years to complete, if it had not been granted relevant permits, according to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post newspaper. Protests were held outside the mosque on Thursday and continued into Friday, say the reports. Pictures circulating on Chinese social media showed large crowds gathering outside the large white building. One resident said talks between the Hui community and the government had reached an impasse. "We're just in a stand-off," the resident, who withheld his name, told the Post. "The public won't let the government touch the mosque, but the government is not backing down." It remains unclear if the original plan to begin the demolition on Friday will go ahead, or if a compromise has been reached. An official from the local county's Islamic Association said that the mosque would not be demolished entirely. He told Reuters the government only wanted the structure "renovated to reduce its scale". There has been no comment so far in Chinese state media on the case. Can you freely practise religion in China? In theory, China's constitution guarantees religious freedom, but in practice, religious activities still remain tightly controlled by the government. Christian churches for example, have in the past been forced to remove crosses from their roofs, after the government said the symbol broke planning rules. In recent years, the atheist Chinese Communist Party has become particularly wary of foreign religious influences and authorities have embarked on a campaign to "sinicise religion" - ie make it more Chinese. As part of that, they have targeted unofficial "house churches" connected to overseas missions where millions of Chinese Christians worship. While Hui Muslims have largely been well-integrated and left mostly free to practise their religion, they have watched as Uighur Muslims in western Xinjiang province have faced growing government pressure. Rights groups say citizens in Xinjiang are subject to increasingly intrusive methods of government surveillance and control, with many punished for "extremist" behaviour like wearing veils in public places, or refusing to watch public radio and TV programmes. Thousands of Uighurs are also believed to have been forcibly sent to "education camps". According to Human Rights Watch, detainees are forced to renounce their ethnic and religious identities. But the current move to demolish the Ningxia mosque is indication that the government is now looking to extend control over other Muslim ethnic minorities, says rights group Amnesty International. Earlier this year, in neighbouring Gansu province, children under 16 in the region of Linxia were banned from religious activities, in a move that alarmed Hui imams. "It's clear that the Chinese government's hostility towards Muslims in China is not only limited to Uighurs," researcher Patrick Poon told the BBC. "Hui Muslims are generally considered less vulnerable to crackdowns, but this incident proves that the government is determined to use a holistic and heavy-handed approach towards all Muslim ethnic minorities in China."