http://www.aikenstandard.com/world/ World News from The Aiken Standard en-us WorldNewsTheAikenStandardhttp://feedburner.google.com http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/053012-ap-Pope-breaks-silence-over-Vatileaks-scandal--4034562
VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI broke his silence Wednesday over the leaked documents scandal that has convulsed the Vatican, saying he was saddened by the betrayal but grateful to those aides who work faithfully and in silence to help him do his job.

Benedict made his first direct comments on the scandal in off-the-cuff remarks at the end of his weekly general audience. He lashed out at some of the media reports about the scandal, saying the "exaggerated" and "gratuitous" rumors had offered a false image of the Holy See.

The Italian media have been in a frenzy ever since the pope's butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested last week after Vatican investigators discovered papal documents in his Vatican City apartment. He remains in detention and has pledged to cooperate fully with the investigation.

Rumors have been flying in the press about possible cardinals implicated in the probe, pending resignations and details of the investigation that even Gabriele's lawyers say they haven't heard. The Vatican spokesman has spent much of his daily briefings in recent days shooting down the various reports.

The scandal represents one of the greatest breaches of trust and security for the Holy See in recent memory given that a significant number of documents from the pope's own desk were leaked to an investigative journalist. The Vatican has denounced the leaks as criminal and immoral and has opened a three-pronged investigation to get to the bottom of who was responsible.

"The events of recent days about the Curia and my collaborators have brought sadness in my heart," Benedict said at the end of his audience. But he added: "I want to renew my trust in and encouragement of my closest collaborators and all those who every day, with loyalty and a spirit of sacrifice and in silence, help me fulfill my ministry."

Few people think Gabriele worked alone, and his promise to cooperate with the investigation has fueled speculation that other might be arrested soon.

The motivations for the leaks remain unclear: Some commentators say they appear designed to discredit Benedict's No. 2, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Others say they're aimed at undermining the Vatican's efforts to become more financially transparent. Still others say they aim to show the 85-year-old Benedict's weakness in running the church.

The scandal is playing out in a remarkable way, due in great part to the uniqueness of the institution in which it's occurring and the players involved.

Gabriele is an employee of the Holy See, a citizen and resident of the Vatican city state. He is being held by Vatican police who have accused him of stealing the pope's personal papers in a terrible breach of trust. His lawyers are Italian legal professionals, but they are communicating to the media via the Vatican spokesman -- a conflict of interest that the Rev. Federico Lombardi has acknowledged but tried to downplay by saying he was merely offering a service to release information to the media.

Lombardi refers to Gabriele as "Paolo" and has repeatedly expressed sadness for what has happened. At the same time, though, the Vatican undersecretary of state, Archbishop Angelo Becciu, lashed out at what he called an unprecedented, "brutal" attack on the pope that the leaks represent.

In an interview Tuesday with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Becciu said the stolen papers didn't just concern matters of internal church governance but represented the thoughts of people who in writing to the pope believed they were essentially speaking before God.

"It's not just that the pope's papers were stolen, but that people who turned to him as the vicar of Christ have had their consciences violated," Becciu was quoted as saying.

The scandal broke in January when Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi revealed letters from a former top Vatican administrator who begged the pope not to transfer him for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions of euros (dollars) in higher contract prices. The prelate, Monsignor Carlo Maria Vigano, is now the Vatican's U.S. ambassador.

The scandal widened over the following months with documents leaked to Italian journalists that laid bare power struggles inside the Vatican over its efforts to show greater financial transparency and comply with international norms to fight money laundering. There was even a leak of a memo claiming that Benedict would die this year.

The crisis reached a peak last weekend, when Nuzzi published an entire book based on a trove of new documentation, including personal correspondence to and from the pope and his private secretary, much of which paints Bertone in a negative light.

The Vatican has warned of legal action for those who stole, received and disseminated the documents. Nuzzi, who in 2009 published a book on leaked documents from the Vatican bank, has justified the publication as an act of transparency and says there's not a word against the pope or the church in the book.

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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

]]> Wed, 30 May 2012 10:42:35 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/053012-ap-Pope-breaks-silence-over-Vatileaks-scandal--4034562 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/V5115-AP-EU-Italy-Quake-13thLd-Writehru-05-29-1144
SAN FELICE SUL PANARO, Italy -- Workers at the small machinery company had just returned for their first shift following Italy's powerful and deadly quake earlier this month when another one struck Tuesday morning, collapsing the roof.

At least three employees at the factory - two immigrants and an Italian engineer checking the building's stability - were among those killed in the second deadly quake in nine days to strike a region of Italy that hadn't considered itself particularly quake prone.

By late Tuesday, the death toll stood at 17, with several people still missing, including a worker at the machinery factory in the small town of San Felice Sul Panoro. Some 200 people also were injured in the 5.8 magnitude quake north of Bologna in Emilia Romagna, one of Italy's more productive regions, agriculturally and industrially.

Factories, barns and churches fell, dealing a second blow to a region where thousands remained homeless from the May 20 temblor, much stronger in intensity, at 6.0 magnitude.

The two quakes struck one of the most productive regions in Italy at a particularly crucial moment, as the country faces enormous pressure to grow its economy to stave off the continent's debt crisis. Italy's economic growth has been stagnant for at least a decade, and the national economy is forecast to contract by 1.2 percent this year.

The area encompassing the cities of Modena, Mantua and Bologna is prized for its super car production, churning out Ferraris, Maseratis and Lamborghinis; its world-famous Parmesan cheese, and less well-known but critical to the economy: machinery companies.

Like the May 20 quake, many of the dead in Tuesday's temblor were workers inside huge warehouses, many of them prefabricated, that house factories. Inspectors have been determining which are safe to re-enter, but economic pressure has sped up renewed production - perhaps prematurely.

Seven people were killed in the May 20 quake.

In both, the dead were largely and disproportionately workers killed by collapsing factories and warehouses.

Co-workers of Mohamed Azeris, a Moroccan immigrant and father of two who died in the just-reopened factory, claim he was forced back to work as a shift supervisor or faced losing his job. A local union representative had demanded an investigation.

"Another earthquake - unfortunately during the day - that means people were inside working, so I think that an investigation will need to be opened here to check who cleared as safe these companies to understand who's responsible for this," Erminio Veronesi told The Associated Press.

At another factory closer to the epicenter in the city of Medolla, rescue crews searched for three workers who did not turn up at roll call after the quake and were presumed dead.

Premier Mario Monti, tapped to steer the country from financial ruin in November, pledged that the government would quickly provide help to the area ''that is so special, so important and so productive for Italy."

The Coldiretti farm lobby said damage to the agricultural industry, including Parmesan makers whose aging wheels of cheese already suffered in the first quake, had risen to (euro) 500 million ($626 million) with the second hit. The Modena Chamber of Commerce estimated that the first quake alone had cost businesses (euro) 1.5 million, with no fresh estimates immediately available.

Ferrari, Maserati and Lamborghini, all centered around Modena, reported no damage, and said workers were evacuated and then allowed to go home to check on their homes and families. Lamborghini planned to keep production halted on Wednesday.

The quake was felt from Piedmont in northwestern Italy to Venice in the northeast and as far north as Austria. Dozens of aftershocks hit the area, some registering more than 5.0 in magnitude.

The temblor terrified many of the thousands of people who have been living in tents or cars since the May 20 quake and created a whole new wave of homeless.

''I was shaving and I ran out very fast, half dressed," a resident of Sant'Agostino, one of the towns devastated in the quake earlier this month, told AP Television News.

Tuesday's quake struck just after 9 a.m. with an epicenter 25 miles northwest of Bologna, according to the U.S. Geological Survey - just several miles away from where the 6.0-magnitude quake that killed seven people on May 20 was centered.

In the town of Mirandola, near the epicenter, the church of San Francesco crumbled, leaving only its facade standing. The main cathedral also collapsed. Sant'Agostino's town hall, so damaged in the May 20 quake that it looked as if it had been bombed, virtually fell apart when the latest deadly temblor struck.

Labor Minister Elsa Fornero suggested the destruction to buildings was out of proportion, considering the magnitude of the quake. ''It is natural that the earth shakes. But it is not natural that buildings collapse," Fornero said told lawmakers in Parliament's lower Chamber of Deputies.

The May 20 quake was described by Italian emergency officials as the worst to hit the region since the 1300s. In addition to the deaths, it knocked down a clock tower and other centuries-old buildings. Its epicenter was about 22 miles north of Bologna.

It's not clear why two large quakes have occurred this month, said Jessica Turner, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. The basic driver of the activity is the same kind of geological shifting that produced the Alps, she said.

Prior to May 20, the last earthquake in the region with magnitude that large was in 1501.

Residents had just been taking tentative steps toward resuming normal life when the second quake struck. In Sant'Agostino, a daycare center had just reopened. In the town of Concordia, the mayor had scheduled a town meeting Tuesday evening to discuss the aftermath of the first quake. Instead, Mayor Carlo Marchini confirmed the death of one person struck by falling debris in the town's historic center.

Italy's soccer match against Luxembourg, a warm-up for the Euro 2012 championships, was canceled. The game had been scheduled to be played Tuesday in Parma, just 40 miles west of the quake. ]]> Wed, 30 May 2012 00:32:05 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/V5115-AP-EU-Italy-Quake-13thLd-Writehru-05-29-1144 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052912-ap-Curtains-open-wide-in-Myanmar-a-crack-in-North-Korea--4031764
For decades, they have been two of the world's most reclusive nations.

Myanmar, run by a cabal of generals, squelched any attempt at democratic change and kept the country's most popular figure under strict house arrest for years.

North Korea, run by the same family as a Stalinist dictatorship since the 1940s, simply sealed itself off. Outsiders were rarely allowed to visit, tourists were long unknown and the only way ordinary people could escape the country's extreme poverty and political repression was to steal across the border into China.

But in very different ways, the two nations have opened themselves up over the past year or so, allowing the world to peer behind the political curtains they had so laboriously erected.

Both now have foreign journalists arriving in unprecedented numbers (though the visits are tightly restricted in North Korea). Both have had observers predicting momentous changes. Both governments have insisted -- repeatedly -- that they are working to improve the lives of their citizens.

But how much change has there been? That's more complicated.

The question is debated relentlessly in Myanmar, asked by everyone from wealthy businessmen with military connections to pro-democracy political activists. Though skeptics abound, "hope" has become the country's political watchword.

But for observers of North Korea, the answer is far more definitive, and far less optimistic.

"None," said Andrei Lankov, a scholar on the North at Seoul's Kookmin University, when asked if he had seen signs of significant change since the December death of longtime ruler Kim Jong Il, and the rise to power of his young son. In his opinion: "The young dictator is still controlled and surrounded by the old guard, the same people who for many years formulated and executed his father's polices, so it is too early to expect any noticeable change."

Less than two years ago, though, similar talk was common in Yangon, Myanmar's capital, when a November 2010 national election was widely dismissed as a political sham stage-managed by the generals. Only in recent months has that pessimism begun to lift.

"We are now seeing some changes we didn't expect," said Yin Sein, a 59-year old high school teacher in Yangon.

First, hundreds of political prisoners were freed -- more than 650 in the past year. Then, in April, the opposition party led by Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory in historic by-elections. Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner who had spent more than 15 years under house arrest, now sits in Parliament.

Today, little feels repressive about Myanmar. Unlike Pyongyang, a funereal town which basically shuts down at nightfall, Yangon has long been a city of neighborhood bars, sprawling markets and storefront restaurants with plastic tables on the sidewalk.

Now, with the end of military rule, even protests have come into the open, as people test their newfound freedoms.

Every night this past week, 100 people or so have gathered at the Sule Pagoda, a major Buddhist shrine in central Yangon, to vent their anger about the rolling electrical blackouts that plague the city. Hundreds more people come simply to watch.

Two years ago, such a protest almost certainly would have been met with tear gas, baton-wielding policemen and trips to jail. Today, the police watch calmly from a distance, and after a few hours they politely ask everyone to leave.

But things are seldom clear in Myanmar, once known as Burma. The generals, some of whom grew immensely rich during decades of military rule, still wield great power over Myanmar's politics. Old laws remain in place that would enable them -- if they felt threatened, or believed democratization was moving too quickly -- to once again seize complete power.

Myanmar has become a country of political contradictions, a place where local officials no longer stage middle-of-the-night checks to look for unregistered visitors in private homes, but where many people register their guests with the authorities anyway. The laws requiring registration, after all, are still on the books.

It's a country where restrictions have been lifted on long-oppressed political parties, but where many people are still too afraid to talk about politics on the telephone.

"We are not sure what is underneath this veneer of change and how sustainable these changes are," Yin Sein said.

Even Suu Kyi warns against the dangers of undue optimism.

"We are at a point in history when there is a possibility for transition, but I do not think we can take it for granted that this transition will come about," she told reporters recently.

"I sometimes feel that people are too optimistic about the scene in Burma," she told a conference in Washington D.C., speaking on a video link.

But if the people of Myanmar have learned the art of pessimism through decades of military rule, the people of North Korea have learned they shouldn't even contemplate change -- at least not publicly.

North Koreans have spent years in prison for questioning the legitimacy of the Kim family: Founding ruler Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il and now his grandson Kim Jong Un. If many observers and foreign governments had hoped that Kim Jong Il's death would pave the way for political reform, there has been little sign of change.

"If such change is to happen (and this is a big if), it will take place only after Kim Jong Un's people assume ... some independent power -- that is, in a couple of years at the fastest," Lankov said in an email.

In many ways, North Korea can appear frozen in time, with one family in power for more than 60 years, and its dreary, poverty-battered cities decorated with Soviet-style propaganda posters.

So any change can seem momentous, from the dozens of journalists allowed into North Korea in April to cover the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, to the growth of its tourism industry. Some observers saw sparks of change when North Korea publicly admitted the April failure of a rocket launch it said was intended to carry a satellite into space (though much of the world insists the launch was cover for testing long-range missile technology). In January, The Associated Press opened its newest bureau in Pyongyang.

The vast majority of those outsiders, though, normally glimpse only the lives of everyday North Koreans through the windows of their tour buses. For the most part, they see only what the Pyongyang government wants them to see, whether massive rallies in support of Kim Jong Un or huge monuments that glorify his father and grandfather.

In Myanmar, journalists now travel easily across much of the country, talking to anyone from top officials to poor farmers to opposition leaders. Not so in North Korea. Visitors rarely see the cities that have almost no electricity, or the homes of people struggling with immense poverty. They rarely leave Pyongyang -- North Korea's showcase capital -- and certainly meet no political prisoners.

And while some people in Myanmar are afraid to talk politics on the telephone, few people in North Korea even have access to international phone lines.

But if there have been few signs of internal change in North Korea, there are signs that people there can now increasingly see the outside world.

While North Korea's government-controlled media allow little but praise for the Kim family, the spread of technology -- from inexpensive DVD players to cheap, handheld radios -- means there are now many ways for North Koreans to get around their government's media roadblocks.

Most North Koreans have no access to the Internet, but they can increasingly buy DVDs smuggled in from China. Those DVDs show everything from South Korean soap operas to recordings of foreign news broadcasts.

"In 2012, North Koreans can get more outside information, through more types of media, from more sources, than ever before," according to a recent report commissioned by the U.S. State Department and conducted by a consulting group, InterMedia. "Despite the incredibly low starting point, important changes in the information environment in North Korean society are under way."

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Sullivan has reported from both North Korea and Myanmar. Associated Press writer Aye Aye Win in Yangon and Todd Pitman in Bangkok contributed to this report.

]]> Tue, 29 May 2012 10:00:09 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052912-ap-Curtains-open-wide-in-Myanmar-a-crack-in-North-Korea--4031764 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052912-ap-10-reported-dead-in-Italy-5-point-8-magnitude-quake--4031984
MIRANDOLA, Italy — A powerful earthquake killed at least 15 people as it rocked a swath of northern Italy on Tuesday. Factories and churches collapsed, dealing another blow to a region where thousands are still homeless after a stronger quake just nine days ago.

The 5.8 magnitude quake added to the misery being felt in the Emilia Romagna region of towns north of Bologna, one of Italy's most agriculturally and industrial protective areas.

The quake hit just after 9:00 a.m. with an epicenter 40 kilometers (25 miles) northwest of Bologna, according to the U.S. Geological Survey — just a handful of (miles) kilometers away from where the deadly May 20 quake was centered.

The quake was felt from Piedmont in northwestern Italy to Venice in the northeast and as far north as Austria. It was followed by many aftershocks, some registering more than 5.0 in magnitude.

While Tuesday's quake was about 100 times less intense than the 6.0 temblor on May 20, its death toll was more than twice the earlier quake's toll of seven. In both, the dead included workers killed by collapsing factories and warehouses.

Civil Protection agency officials said at least 15 people were killed, about 100 were injured and there was no precise number of the missing. Emergency crews were trying to sift through the twisted steel and broken stone, looking for victims.

In the town of Mirandola, near the epicenter, the church of San Francis crumbled, leaving only its facade standing. The main cathedral also collapsed.

The 9 a.m. temblor terrified many of the thousands of residents who have been living in tents or cars since the May 20 quake and added thousands more homeless into the area.

"I was shaving and I ran out very fast, half dressed," a resident of Sant'Agostino, one of the towns devastated in the quake earlier this month, told AP Television News on Tuesday.

Sant'Agostino's town hall, so damaged in the May 20 quake that it looked as if it had been bombed, virtually collapsed when the latest deadly temblor struck.

In a hastily called news conference, Premier Mario Monti pledged the government will do "all that it must and all that is possible in the briefest period to guarantee the resumption of normal life in this area that is so special, so important and so productive for Italy."

The region around Bologna is among the country's most productive. Italy is desperately in need of its industries, for the country is in the midst of another recession and struggling to tame its massive debt as the European debt crisis worsens.

Many victims of the new quake, like the one nine days ago, were at work in huge warehouses that collapsed, including one dead inside a machinery factory in Mirandola.

The mayor of San Felice sul Panaro told Sky News 24 that there were fatalities in his town, where Italian media said a tower had collapsed.

Tall buildings and schools were evacuated as far away as Milan as a precaution before people were allowed to re-enter. Train lines connecting Bologna with other northern cities were halted while authorities checked for any damage.

When the quake hit, Monti was meeting with emergency officials in Rome to discuss the impact of the earlier quake, which struck in the middle of the night and left at least 7,000 homeless.

The May 20 quake was described by Italian emergency officials as the worst to hit the region since the 1300s. In addition to the deaths, it knocked down a clock tower and other centuries-old buildings and caused millions in losses to a region known for making Parmesan cheese. Its epicenter was about 35 kilometers (22 miles) north of Bologna.

Residents had just been taking tentative steps toward resuming normal life when the second quake struck. In the town of Sant'Agostino, a daycare center had just reopened.

In the town of Concordia, the mayor had scheduled a town meeting Tuesday evening to discuss the aftermath of the first quake. Instead, mayor Carlo Marchini confirmed the death of one person struck by falling debris in the town's historic center.

Italy's friendly soccer match against Luxembourg, a warm-up match for the Euro 2012 championships, was canceled. The game was due to be played Tuesday in Parma, just 40 miles (60 kilometers) west of the quake.

___

Barry reported from Milan. ]]> Tue, 29 May 2012 09:18:58 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052912-ap-10-reported-dead-in-Italy-5-point-8-magnitude-quake--4031984 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/V5121-AP-ML-Iraq-UnspentAid-1stLd-Writethru-05-27-1493--4029267
BAQOUBA, Iraq -- Outside the crumbling elementary school, goats feed on trash strewn across the front yard. Inside, the ceiling is rotting, toilets don't work and students scrunch hip-to-hip behind narrow desks.

Millions of dollars in international aid to build and repair Iraq's dilapidated schools have for years gone unspent. Now, Iraq's government risks losing the funding as the World Bank weighs whether some of it would be better used elsewhere.

The dilemma is one that echoes across the international aid community - whether to continue financing a government with vast oil resources and a $100 billion annual budget or divert the assistance to needier nations. It also reflects growing frustration over the bureaucratic hurdles and contracting problems that have kept the money from being used.

The spending delays have left buildings like the scruffy al-Min elementary school in the former insurgent stronghold of Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, in limbo. It's one of thousands of schools across Iraq that desperately need money for repair.

"The building looks like a prison, not a school," said headmaster Abdul-Karim Mohammed Sabti. "This is not an appropriate atmosphere for learning."

The education aid is a slice of $1.3 billion in grants and loans the World Bank and its donor nations have given Iraq since 2004 to fund efforts ranging from labor and welfare programs to providing emergency health services and protecting the environment. Initially, the money was intended to help rebuild the country after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein. But the bank maintained the assistance as it became clear the country desperately needed help as it faced years of violence.

More than one-third of the overall assistance - about $469 million - has yet to be spent and the World Bank must decide soon whether to extend a deadline for several of the programs to close by the end of June, or face losing grants to rebuild schools.

"When we talk with the government, when we talk to the primary stakeholders in the country, we try to explain to them that it is a pity that this money is just sitting where it is and it is not being utilized," said Marie-Helene Bricknell, the World Bank's special representative for Iraq.

Some of the money may have to be given back and distributed to the world's poorest counties if Iraq continues to sit on it, she said.

"It may difficult for us to argue (to keep) it if Africa needs the money, or if there is another food crisis in the world," Bricknell said. "Given the austerity around the world, it may be very difficult."

But World Bank officials in Baghdad also acknowledged the Iraqi government faced tremendous hurdles in trying to carry out the projects. There was no parliament when the first tranche of funding was provided, and the government was barely functional in the years the nation teetered on the brink in civil war.

The projects have picked up since Iraq's new government was seated in late 2010, but bureaucracy and contracting problems have stunted progress.

The World Bank is the latest foreign donor to be frustrated by Iraq's lax use of reconstruction aid. Billions of U.S. taxpayer funds have been wasted on projects to rebuild Iraq since the 2003 invasion. Auditors and prosecutors say much of the money has been siphoned away in corrupt contracts.

U.S. funding for Iraq is also dropping dramatically following the departure of American troops in December. Congress is considering cutting aid to Iraq by 77 percent and slashing what was initially touted as a $1 billion program for Iraqi police that was to be the centerpiece if the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad's efforts to continue training security forces.

In 2005, the World Bank began giving Iraq an additional $508 million in special loans that have little to no interest to try to speed up the development projects. The loans are normally given to the world's poorest countries, nearly half of which are in Africa.

Iraq is not considered a low-income country by the World Bank and normally would not be eligible for the funds. But an exception was made as Iraq struggled to recover from upheaval. A quarter of Iraq's population of 31 million lives in poverty, and 15 percent are unemployed, according to U.S. data compiled by the Central Intelligence Agency between 2008 and 2010.

Iraqi schools provide a stark example of the problem. Less than half of the $204 million earmarked for education programs has been spent.

Baghdad has asked for more time to spend about $16 million that's left from grants issued in October 2004 to rebuild schools. The Bank has signaled it may extend the June 30 deadline for the grant by another year.

With the roughly $44 million that's been spent so far, Iraq's education ministry has built 37 new schools nationwide and upgraded 133 old ones. Thirteen more schools are under construction and are expected to be completed by June 2013. Another 30 schools were built in Iraq's southern marshlands between 2006 and 2009 under a different World Bank program that cost $5.2 million.

All the 37 new schools were finished over the last 18 months, said senior Education Ministry official Saad Ibrahim Abdul Rahim, who is the agency's head liaison to the World Bank. He blamed the yearslong delay on bureaucratic snarls, a slow cash-flow to contractors and a lack of available land in populated areas upon which to build.

But last year, the ministry won approval from the prime minister's cabinet to build schools on land that belonged to other government agencies, and progress was made.

More than 6 million students attend Iraq's 15,000 public schools. Rahim said at least 5,000 more schools are needed to ease severe overcrowding.

Another $100 million was given to Iraq as an emergency education loan to ease crowding and update the curriculum in Iraq's schools. The project began in November 2005. Since then, the government has spent only $11 million and has three times asked for the loan to be extended in order to keep the money. It currently expires in June 2013.

There was initial optimism when the World Bank reconstruction program in Iraq began in 2004, but that vanished as the country spiraled into a cycle of violence with sectarian fighting and an insurgency that killed tens of thousands of people.

"After the collapse of the Saddam regime, there was a strong feeling that Iraq was going to grow and build a lot of projects," Rahim said. "But a year later there was a lot of sectarian conflict, and a lot of problems that caused a huge delay to all of the projects, in all of the ministries, for the reconstruction of Iraq."

Rahim was confident the deadlines would be met as violence ebbs and Iraq edges toward stability.

The Education Ministry spent $6.9 million of the loan funding last year - more than six times of what it spent in 2010. By comparison, the ministry spent $19,800 from the loan fund in 2008.

"We are on track now and the project is going ahead, and there are no huge challenges or any big obstacles to slow or detail it," Rahim said.

Overall, Iraq had spent nearly $839 million of the $1.3 billion in World Bank grants and loans as of March 31, the latest data available. That money has helped create cell phone networks, improve drinking water for 600,000 people, rebuild and restock hospital emergency rooms, and train dozens of doctors and nurses across Iraq, according to the World Bank.

It has also paid for several studies to strengthen Iraq's government, reduce poverty and provide forecasts for the oil and gas industry through 2030 - and any spinoff businesses that can create jobs and generate money.

And it has put 80 million textbooks in the hands of students whose numbers are growing every day. Half of Iraq's population is under 18, according to the United Nations, forcing schools to teach classes in morning and afternoon shifts to accommodate all the students.

In Iraq's northeast Diyala province alone, 381,000 students are enrolled in schools, said local education director Jaafar Moween al-Zarkushy.

Of 870 schools in Diyala, 65 were destroyed in sectarian fighting since 2003, al-Zarkushy said. Another 110 schools are about to collapse, and 17 more have been deemed inadequate because they are made out of mud.

"All students need a place to go to be taught," al-Zarkushy said forlornly. "The signs are not encouraging."

---

Associated Press Writer Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report. Follow Lara Jakes on Twitter at www.twitter.com/larajakesAP

]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 23:56:03 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/V5121-AP-ML-Iraq-UnspentAid-1stLd-Writethru-05-27-1493--4029267 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/V5105-AP-Iran-Nuclear-3rdLd-Writethru-05-27-0548--4029230
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's nuclear chief said Sunday there are no reasons at the moment for his country to halt production of uranium enriched to 20 percent, a key demand of world powers, and Iran is planning two new reactors.

The West is concerned that the 20-percent enrichment could quickly be turned into nuclear weapons-grade material. Iran insists its nuclear development program is for peaceful purposes.

The nuclear chief, Fereidoun Abbasi, was quoted by the semiofficial ISNA news agency as saying that Iran will continue the higher enrichment level for a medical research reactor that produces isotopes for treatment of about 1 million cancer patients in Iran.

"There is no reason for us to back down on 20 percent-level enrichment, because we produce only as much 20 percent material as we need," Abbasi said. "Not more, not less."

Abbasi said Iran is planning to build at least two new nuclear power plants next to an existing facility that became operational with Russia's help last year.

Abbasi was quoted by state TV as saying Sunday that Iran is in the very early stages of planning the new 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plants and that it may begin construction within a year or two.

He also said Iran has not yet been convinced to allow the U.N. nuclear agency access to a military complex to probe suspicions that in 2003, Tehran secretly tested explosives needed to set off a nuclear bomb. The suspected blasts would have taken place inside a pressure chamber.

Abbasi's statement about enrichment echoed Iran's objections last week at a meeting with world powers in Baghdad to a proposal to suspend 20 percent enrichment in exchange for a U.S.-supported package that would include supplying Iran with radioactive material and civilian plane spare parts.

Iran seeks to have Western oil embargo and banking sanctions eased before considering suspension of 20 percent enrichment.

The six powers - the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany - fear the higher-enriched uranium could be quickly boosted to weapons-grade material of 95 percent.

U.S. officials have said Washington will not ease its insistence that Iran must fully halt uranium enrichment, but speculation is increasing that the priorities have shifted to block the 20 percent enrichment level while possibly allowing Iran to maintain lower-level nuclear fuel production, at least for now.

Abbasi said a visit by IAEA to Parchin military site, southeast of Tehran, will not come any time soon.

"We haven't been convinced yet (to allow an IAEA visit to Parchin). No reasons and documents have been presented to enable us to arrange a visit to Parchin, which is a military site," he was quoted by ISNA as saying.

Iran has never said whether the alleged chamber existed, describing Parchin as a conventional military site, not a nuclear facility.

Iran previously said IAEA inspectors would be allowed to visit Parchin, but first there would have to be agreement between the two sides on guidelines for the inspection.

]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 23:56:00 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/V5105-AP-Iran-Nuclear-3rdLd-Writethru-05-27-0548--4029230 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052312-ap-iran-offered-new-plans-to-ease-nuclear-concerns--4020159
BAGHDAD -- Diplomats from six world powers offered Iran new proposals Wednesday to ease international concerns about its nuclear program, but appeared to reject Tehran's appeals to ease economic sanctions to help move along talks.

The proposal by the U.S. and its negotiation partners focused on Iran's highest-level uranium enrichment -- at 20 percent -- which many world leaders fear could be quickly turned into warhead-grade material. Other details of the plan were not immediately disclosed.

But the proposal may meet a swift refusal from Iran. Its envoys seek agreements to lessen, or at least delay, sanctions that have targeted Iran's critical oil exports and cut off the country from lucrative European markets.

"We hope the package that we put on the table is attractive to them so they will react positively," Mike Mann, spokesman for the head of the European Union delegation that is leading the talks, told reporters. "It's up to them to react."

Mann would not discuss whether the 20 percent level enrichment represented a red line that could again scuttle the negotiations, which had only restarted last month after collapsing in early 2011.

The high-enriched uranium is far above the level needed for energy-producing reactors, but is used in medical research. Iran claims its nuclear program is only for electricity and medical applications.

Tehran has tentatively agreed to allow U.N. inspectors to restart probes into a military base with suspected links to nuclear arms-related tests. Mann expressed cautious optimism about the still-unsigned deal with the International Atomic Energy Agency, but said it would have little bearing on Wednesday's talks.

Despite the new proposals, no breakthrough accords are expected in the talks in Iraq's capital, suggesting that all sides are still shaping their strategies and the negotiation process is likely to be long.

That could allow U.S. and European allies to significantly tone down threats of military action. But it would likely bring objections from Israel, which claims that Iran is only trying to buy time to keep its nuclear fuel labs in full operation.

Mann suggested that any rollback in sanctions was unlikely in the Baghdad talks. He said some of the most painful sanctions -- including a European Union ban on Iranian oil imports beginning July 1 -- are a "matter of the law and they will come into force when they come into force."

The Obama administration has been vague about its immediate goals, with officials saying the talks will gauge Iran's seriousness and explore elements of a possible agreement. A Western diplomat in Baghdad said the talks will focus on "confidence-building measures" that Iran's nuclear program is only being used for peaceful purposes.

"This approach includes concrete step-by-step, reciprocal measures aimed at near-term action," the Western diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the delicate process more candidly.

Washington has shown little willingness to bargain, despite the tentative IAEA agreement to inspect the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran. That's where the U.N. believes Iran ran explosive tests in 2003 needed to set off a nuclear charge. Tehran says Parchin is not a nuclear site.

Iran's top officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have repeated said that Iran does not seek nuclear arms and have called such weapons against Islamic principles.

During a visit to western Iran on Wednesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad evoked Khamenei's belief that "production and use of weapons of mass destruction is forbidden" by Islam.

"There is no room for these weapons in Iran's defense doctrine," he said at a gathering to commemorate victims of Iraqi chemical weapons during the 1980-88 war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

He claimed a "WMD-free world is honest and wish of the Islamic republic."

Iranian analyst Hassan Abedini, who is being briefed by Iran's delegation, said Tehran expects the U.S and other world powers to offer some concessions in return for the tentative agreement with the U.N.'s nuclear agency.

"Now the ball is in the (world powers') court to reciprocate it," Abedini said Wednesday.

He said Iran is demanding "a give-and-take approach," to the negotiations.

The Baghdad talks, involving the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany, could offer a test of how much the U.S. and allies are willing to bend from demands for Iran to halt all uranium enrichment and instead concentrate on just stopping the highest-grade production.

Iran is sticking to its right to enrich uranium as a signatory of U.N. nuclear treaties. The West and others fear the level of enrichment Iran is doing can be turned quickly into weapons-grade uranium.

At the heart of the debate are sanctions the West has placed on Iran to force it to the bargaining table -- particularly on a European Union decision to cut all crude oil imports from Iran that are set to take effect July 1. The 27-nation EU accounts for just 18 percent of Iran's total oil exports.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Senate backed proposals for further sanctions on Iran, including requiring companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges to disclose any Iran-related business. U.S. and European measures already have targeted Iran's oil exports -- its chief revenue source -- and effectively blocked the country from international banking networks.

Oil fell to a seven-month low near $91 a barrel Wednesday in Asia on hopes of progress in the talks.

------

Associated Press writers Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 03:38:31 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052312-ap-iran-offered-new-plans-to-ease-nuclear-concerns--4020159 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/V5150-AP-EU-Vatican-Scandal-4thLd-Writethru-05-26-1225
VATICAN CITY -- An already sordid scandal over leaked Vatican documents took a Hollywood-like turn Saturday with confirmation that the pope's own butler had been arrested after documents he had no business having were found in his Vatican City apartment.

The detention of butler Paolo Gabriele, one of the few members of the papal household, capped one of the most convulsive weeks in recent Vatican history and threw the Holy See into chaos as it enters a critical phase in its efforts to show the world it's serious about complying with international norms on financial transparency.

The tumult began with the publication last weekend of a book of leaked Vatican documents detailing power struggles, political intrigue and corruption in the highest levels of Catholic Church governance. It peaked with the inglorious ouster on Thursday of the president of the Vatican bank. And it concluded with confirmation Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI's own butler was the alleged mole feeding documents to Italian journalists in an apparent bid to discredit the pontiff's No. 2.

"If you wrote this in fiction, you wouldn't believe it," said Carl Anderson, a member of the board of the Vatican bank which contributed to the tumult with its no-confidence vote in its president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. "No editor would let you put it in a novel."

Gabriele, the pope's personal butler since 2006, has often been seen by Benedict's side in public, riding in the front seat of the pope's open-air jeep during Wednesday general audiences or shielding the pontiff from the rain. In private, he is a member of the small papal household that also includes the pontiff's private secretaries.

Lombardi said Gabriele's detention marked a sad development for all Vatican staff. "Everyone knows him in the Vatican, and there's certainly surprise and pain, and great affection for his beloved family," the spokesman said.

The "Vatileaks" scandal has seriously embarrassed the Vatican at a time when it is trying to show the world financial community that it has turned a page and shed its reputation as a scandal plagued tax haven.

Vatican documents leaked to the press in recent months have undermined that effort, alleging corruption in Vatican finance as well as internal bickering over the Holy See's efforts to comply with international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing.

The Vatican in July will learn if it has complied with the financial transparency criteria of a Council of Europe committee, Moneyval - a key step in its efforts to get on the so-called "white list" of countries that share financial information to fight tax evasion.

Anderson acknowledged that the events of the last week certainly haven't cast the Holy See in the best light. And he said the bank's board appreciated that the ouster of its president just weeks before the expected Moneyval decision could give the committee pause.

"The board considered that concern and decided that all things considered it was best to take the action at this time," Anderson said. "These steps were taken to increase the IOR's position vis-a-vis Moneyval."

The Vatileaks scandal began in January when Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi broadcast letters from the former No. 2 Vatican administrator to the pope in which he begged not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions of euros in higher contract prices. The prelate, Monsignor Carlo Maria Vigano, is now the Vatican's U.S. ambassador.

Nuzzi, author of "Vatican SpA," a 2009 volume laying out shady dealings of the Vatican bank based on leaked documents, last weekend published "His Holiness," which presented a trove of other documents including personal correspondence to the pope and his secretary - many of them painting Benedicts No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in a negative light.

Nuzzi has said he was offered the documents by multiple Vatican sources and insisted he didn't pay a cent (euro) to any of them.

Gabriele was in Vatican custody and unavailable for comment. No known motive has come to light as to why Gabriele, if he is found to be the key mole, might have passed on the documents. Nuzzi declined to comment Saturday on whether Gabriele was among his sources.

Bertone, 77, has been blamed for a series of gaffes and management problems that have plagued Benedict's papacy and, according to the leaked documents, generated a not inconsiderable amount of ill will directed at him from other Vatican officials.

"For some time and in various parts of the church, criticism even by the faithful has been growing about the lack of coordination and confusion that reign at its center," Cardinal Paolo Sardi, the former No. 2 official in the Vatican secretariat of state, wrote to the pope in 2009, according to the letter cited in "His Holiness."

Anderson, who heads the Knights of Columbus, a major U.S. lay Catholic organization, said he was certain the Holy See would weather the storm and that the Vatican bank, at least, could move forward under a new leader with solid banking credentials as well as a desire to show off the bank's transparency.

"I hope this will be the beginning of a new chapter for the IOR and part of that chapter will be restoring the public image of the IOR," he told AP. "I think we have a good story to tell." ]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 00:31:14 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/V5150-AP-EU-Vatican-Scandal-4thLd-Writethru-05-26-1225 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1001-BC-ML-Egypt-Elections-12thLd-05-25-0692--4026203
CAIRO (AP) -- Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is calling on losing presidential candidates and political groups to take part in a dialogue aimed at "salvaging the nation" ahead of a tight presidential runoff between the group's candidate and a former regime official.

Preliminary results indicate Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi will face off against Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister of ousted President Hosni Mubarak, in a June 16-17 runoff vote.

Senior Brotherhood official Essam el-Erian said Friday that Morsi is calling on other presidential candidates, national personalities and groups that supported last year's uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak to consult on how to "save the nation and the revolution."

The call is an attempt by the Brotherhood to broaden their support ahead of what is expected to be a difficult runoff against Shafiq.

]]> Fri, 25 May 2012 21:34:41 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1001-BC-ML-Egypt-Elections-12thLd-05-25-0692--4026203 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a0921-BC-AS-Afghanistan-5thLd-Writethru-05-25-1276--4025912
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- French President Francois Hollande for the first time provided details of his plan to pull France's combat troops out of Afghanistan by the end of the year, saying Friday he would leave around 1,400 soldiers behind to help with training and logistics.

The new French leader, making good on one of the major foreign-policy promises of his campaign, confirmed in a one-day visit to Afghanistan that all of France's 2,000 combat troops would be brought home by the end of this year - putting France on a fast-track exit timetable that sparked consternation among some allies at a NATO summit in Chicago early this week.

Hollande's comments marked the first time that he had put an exact figure on the French deployment after the combat troops leave, suggesting that logistical necessities for France as well as its support for Afghanistan's hoped-for transition to peace will go well beyond the year-end target.

"The time for Afghan sovereignty has come," Hollande said during a meeting with French troops at a base in Kapisa province's Nijrab district. "The terrorist threat that targeted our territory, while it hasn't totally disappeared, is in part lessened."

Hollande, who took office last week, said that after more than a decade in Afghanistan, French combat troops had carried out their mission and it was time for them to leave in an early pullout coordinated with the United States and other allies. He said some trainers would remain to help Afghanistan's nascent security forces. NATO has set a pullout date of 2014, when Afghan troops are to take over security control.

The French leader met with troops and discussed plans with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to withdraw French combat troops two years faster than NATO's 2014 pullout schedule. Hollande's visit was not announced ahead of time for security reasons.

France now has 3,400 troops and 150 gendarmes in Afghanistan. Under Hollande's plan, some would stay behind to help send military equipment back to France, and others would help train the Afghan army and police. He did not provide a breakdown for the roles of the 1,400 soldiers who will remain past 2012 or how long they would stay.

"We won't have any more combat forces in Afghanistan after Dec. 31, 2012. I say specifically combat forces," Hollande said during a function at the French Embassy. "We will still have a military force that will be dedicated to the training of Afghan army officers - that will also be present at the hospital, the airport and also will allow the Afghans to have a police force that is the most effective possible."

Hollande insisted France was not abandoning Afghanistan.

"This is a continuation, and there will be further engagement - but in a different form," he said, such as in cultural and economic matters. "We want France to have a presence in Afghanistan differently from how it did in the past."

France has troops in the capital Kabul, in the Surobi district and Kapisa province to the east, and at Kandahar air base in the south - where it has three fighter jets. A French military spokesman, Col. Thierry Burkhard, said most of the 2,000 who will leave will be those in Kapisa and Surobi. He said "hundreds" of trainers would remain, and soldiers conducting pullout logistics will leave bit by bit along with the withdrawing troops.

Hollande warned of possible problems in the pullout. "We will have to take every precaution. We must limit as much as possible our losses, make sure that there is no risk for our soldiers," he said.

Hollande said French equipment would be taken out by ground routes, but he did not say which ones. Pakistan closed overland supply routes to Afghanistan for NATO after a U.S. attack on the Pakistani side of the border killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November. The decision has forced NATO to use a more costly route running through the north.

Reflecting increasing French disillusionment with the war, Hollande's conservative predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, had pledged to withdraw all troops by the end of 2013. Tension over Hollande's pledge to end France's combat mission a year earlier than that dominated the NATO summit, unleashing fears of a domino effect of other allies withdrawing early. France is one of the top troop contributors.

Hollande's campaign platform had first indicated that all French troops would be out of Afghanistan by then end of 2012, but in the late stages of the race he softened that to specify only combat troops. Guy Teissier, a lawmaker from Sarkozy's party who heads the defense commission of the National Assembly, pointed to a "contradiction" between Hollande's campaign rhetoric and his withdrawal plan after his election.

Teissier also said the quick pullout would expose French troops. "Once the combat troops are gone, who's going to protect the 1,000-odd soldiers responsible for bringing home the equipment we've left behind?" he said on BFM Television. "It's a very big risk for our soldiers ... It leads me to believe that Francois Hollande doesn't understand defense matters and world geopolitics."

"France gave its word to a commitment of the (NATO-led) coalition, and taking it back weakens it," he added.

President Barack Obama last year decided to pull out 33,000 U.S. combat troops by September. Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said this week that on Sept. 30 there will be 68,000 U.S. and about 40,000 other coalition forces in Afghanistan - compared to more than 130,000 last year.

The coalition has started handing over security control to Afghan army and police in areas home to 75 percent of the population, with a goal of putting them in the lead for all the country by mid-2013. NATO and other foreign forces would then be in a support role for the 352,000-strong Afghan National Security Forces.

Kapisa, where French forces are based, is one of the areas now being transferred to Afghan control. Ashraf Ghani, head of a commission overseeing the transition, said earlier this month that "the risks in Kapisa are containable and within our capability."

---

Keaten reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Mirwais Khan in Kandahar, and Angela Charlton and Sarah DiLorenzo in Paris, contributed to this report.

]]> Fri, 25 May 2012 21:34:36 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a0921-BC-AS-Afghanistan-5thLd-Writethru-05-25-1276--4025912 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a0877-BC-LT-Mexico-Elections--05-25-1568--4025767
MEXICO CITY -- Shortly after sunrise last month in the border city of Nuevo Laredo, police found 14 butchered bodies in a van outside city hall, a salvo in a seesawing battle of horrors between Mexico's two most powerful drug cartels.

Soon after, nine people were hanged from a bridge in Nuevo Laredo. Fourteen heads were left in coolers outside city hall. Eighteen mutilated bodies were dumped by a scenic lake in western Mexico. The decapitated bodies of 49 people were dumped outside a small town 75 miles from the U.S. border.

The man who appears likely to become Mexico's next president says he can ease the waves of violence consuming the country by changing the focus of its six-year offensive against organized crime.

Mexico's current administration has targeted the top ranks of the country's drug cartels, deploying thousands of troops to capture crime kingpins and seize their drugs and weapons, often in close coordination with the United States. It is not uncommon for President Felipe Calderon's administration to boast of its success in arresting many of the country's most-wanted men.

Enrique Pena Nieto, who has a double-digit lead five weeks before the July 1 election, says his top security priority will not be arresting the leaders of the organizations that move hundreds of millions of dollars of narcotics each year into the United States. Instead, he and his advisers say, they will focus the government's resources on reducing homicide, kidnapping and extortion - the crimes that do the most damage to the greatest number of Mexicans - by flooding police and troops into towns and cities with the highest rates of violent crime.

"This doesn't mean that we don't pay attention to other crimes, or that we don't fight drug trafficking, but the central theme at this time is diminishing violence in the country," Pena Nieto told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Pena Nieto's campaign said drug cartels could still be attacked, particularly if they carry out murders, kidnappings and extortion, but arresting their leaders will no longer be the focus of government efforts.

"Each administration chooses its operational objectives, and the objective per se is not the extradition or capture of big bosses, or the burning of seized drugs," Pena Nieto's campaign coordinator, Luis Videgaray, told the AP.

Some observers say that a strategy to reduce violence above all else could mean that drug dealers who conduct their businesses discreetly will be quietly left alone.

"I think that it's very clear that he's moving in the direction of concentrating the resources that the federal state has (toward) fighting crime and violence that affect people in Mexico ... as opposed to concentrating the resources on combating drug trafficking," said Former Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda. "If you have scarce resources and you're focusing them on A, you're not focusing them on B."

Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party, known by its Spanish initials as the PRI, ruled Mexico for 70 years until it lost the presidency in 2000, and high-ranking party figures and their relatives were often accused of striking deals with cartels in exchange for political protection. Violence was far lower, in large part because cartels maintained uncontested control of smuggling routes in many parts of the country.

Opponents have been quick to say that Pena Nieto will go back to the old PRI model of cutting a deal with cartels.

"They've shown themselves to be absolutely tolerant of organized crime," said Josefina Vazquez Mota told Spanish newspaper El Pais in a recent interview. Vazquez Mota is running on the presidential ticket for the National Action Party.

With Mexicans expressing strong support in polls for a militarized confrontation with crime, Pena Nieto is promising continuity in key aspects of Mexico's U.S.-backed drug war.

He has rejected legalization, called for more cooperation with Washington and praised Calderon's decision to confront the cartels shortly after taking office. On the campaign trail, Pena Nieto has been emphasizing his plans to maintain or increase the military presence in violence-torn cities like Monterrey and Veracruz. He has pledged an increase in the number of federal police officers from 36,000 to 50,000, and is also proposing a new semi-military police force composed of former soldiers and marines under civilian command that would be deployed to the towns and cities suffering from the highest violence and weakest policing.

But those pledges imply a subtle but potentially important change.

Pena Nieto's new approach "would not stop fighting the drug cartels but it would shift from targeting the heads of the cartels," campaign spokesman Diego Gomez said. "What Calderon has been doing is just targeting a few main cartels and splitting them up and what you have is chaos."

All three major Mexican presidential candidates have been criticized for vagueness of their proposals on conducting the war against crime, and many observers have remarked upon the absence of debate about the direction of the country's security policy.

Vazquez Mota has been vocally supportive of her party's current policy, pledging to expand the federal police to 150,000, a roughly four-fold increase over current numbers. Fellow backers of the current U.S. Mexican strategy argue that the attack on cartels is showing results, with crime groups weakened by Calderon's six-year offensive, and preliminary and unofficial statistics showing signs of violent crimes beginning to wane in some parts of the country.

Leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has placed more emphasis on withdrawing back the military from the streets, fighting corruption among government officials and reducing crime by reducing social inequality.

A change in approach would align Pena Nieto with a new strain of thinking in public-policy circles in Mexico and the United States that calls for making violence the overwhelming focus of law-enforcement activity in the drug war, deemphasizing narcotics trafficking and other crimes.

"I and other people have been advocating for a strategy that focuses on reduction in violence," said Eric Olson, who oversees studies of U.S.-Mexico security cooperation and research on organized crime and drug trafficking at the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.

Olson acknowledged that the focus on violence could mean relenting in operations against cartels that use less violence than their rivals, but he called that a necessary and temporary letup in order to get a handle on Mexico's biggest problem, the violence that is terrorizing the population and undermining the legitimacy of the state.

"Crime will always exist. The question is can you make it less harmful and get it out of people's lives as much as possible," he said. "It's not a de facto negotiation with them. It's a question of what comes first."

]]> Fri, 25 May 2012 21:31:15 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a0877-BC-LT-Mexico-Elections--05-25-1568--4025767 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052512-ap-Priest-apologizes-for-unholy-language-on-Facebook--4025092
LONDON -- A British priest has apologized for some unholy language on his Facebook page, his bishop says.

Canon Paul Shackerley, Vicar of the Minster Church of St. George in Doncaster in northern England, raised eyebrows by using the f--- word and remarking that "alas, I have religion tomorrow" in some Saturday evening postings.

Peter Burrows, the bishop of Doncaster, met with Shackerley on Friday and later said the priest regretted the inappropriate language and had removed it.

"Whilst meant in a jocular sense, he recognizes that some of the language was unfitting. He has apologized unreservedly," Burrows said in a statement posted on the diocesan website. "I have received Paul's letter of apology and have been assured that this will not happen again."

Stories of priestly waywardness are a favorite subject of British newspapers, and the comments drew attention far and wide. With facial piercings and one piercing in his tongue, Shackerley cuts an unconventional figure.

Church officials were alerted to his Facebook comments by an anonymous letter.

In the first of his Saturday night musings, Shackerley said: "I think I will put my feet up. I've done f--- all today other than jazz lesson and visit a friend. I hear the fizz of tonic in my gin beckoning.

"Alas, I have religion tomorrow. At least I'm not preaching this week."

And oh dear! "Sin is such fun," he said.

It was perhaps less alarming than Shackerley's comment about a photo of himself with a snowman.

"Forgive my sin of frivolity. Sin is such fun! But I haven't been having an inappropriate relationship with Snowy, who can longer be called a 'snowman' in the name of political correctness," Shackerley wrote.

The chatty priest also ruminated last month about the dangers of sites such as Facebook.

"I have known employees (to) receive disciplinary and dismissal notices for inappropriate postings," he wrote.

]]> Fri, 25 May 2012 11:47:13 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052512-ap-Priest-apologizes-for-unholy-language-on-Facebook--4025092 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052512-ap-Everest-climber-skips-summit-and-rescues-friend--4025001
ISTANBUL -- An Israeli who rescued a distressed climber on Mount Everest instead of pushing onward to the summit said Friday that the man he helped, an American of Turkish origin, is like a brother to him.

Nadav Ben-Yehuda, who was climbing with a Sherpa guide, came across Aydin Irmak near the summit last weekend. In that chaotic period, four climbers died on their way down from the summit amid a traffic jam of more than 200 people who were rushing to reach the world's highest peak as the weather deteriorated.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Ben-Yehuda, 24, appeared proud that Irmak, 46, had made it to the summit, noting that he is one of a small number of "Turkish" climbers to reach the top. Irmak left Turkey for New York more than two decades ago, but remains proud of his Turkish heritage. The friendship stands in contrast to the political tension between Turkey and Israel, which were once firm allies.

"Aydin, wake up! Wake up!" Ben-Yehuda recalled saying when he found his friend in the darkness. The American, he said, had been returning from the summit but collapsed in the extreme conditions, without an oxygen supply, a flashlight and a rucksack. Ben-Yehuda, who developed a friendship with Irmak before the climb, had delayed his own ascent by a day in hopes of avoiding the bottleneck of climbers heading for the top.

There have been periodic tales of people bypassing stricken climbers as they seek to fulfill a lifelong dream and reach the summit of Everest, but Ben-Yehuda said his decision to abandon his goal of reaching the top and help Irmak was "automatic," even though it took him several minutes to recognize his pale, gaunt friend.

"I just told myself, 'This is crazy.' It just blew my mind," Ben-Yehuda said. "I didn't realize he was up there the whole time. Everybody thought he had already descended."

The Israeli carried Irmak for hours to a camp at lower elevation. Both suffered frostbite and some of their fingers were at risk of amputation. Ben-Yehuda lost 20 kilograms (44 pounds) in his time on the mountain, and Irmak lost 12 kilograms (26 pounds), said Hanan Goder, Israel's ambassador in Nepal. Goder had dinner with the pair after their ordeal.

"They really have to recover mentally and physically," Goder said. "They call each other, 'my brother.' After the event that they had together, their souls are really linked together now."

The ambassador said the rescue was a "humanitarian" tale that highlighted the friendship between Israelis and Turks at a personal level, despite the deteriorating relationship between their governments. One of the key events in that downward, diplomatic spiral was an Israeli raid in 2010 on a Turkish aid ship that was trying to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of eight Turkish activists and a Turkish-American.

The Jerusalem Post, which reported that Ben-Yehuda would have been the youngest Israeli to reach Everest's summit, spoke to Irmak by telephone during the dinner that Goder hosted.

"I don't know what the hell is going on between the two countries," the newspaper quoted Irmak as saying. "I don't care about that. I talked to his (Ben-Yehuda's) family today and I told them you have another family in Turkey and America."

Ben-Yehuda, who spoke to the AP just before leaving Nepal for urgent medical treatment in Israel, said he could not say with certainty how he would have reacted if he had come across a stricken climber he did not know. Oxygen is in such short supply and the conditions are so harsh, he said, that people on the mountain develop a kind of tunnel vision.

"You just think about breathing, about walking, about climbing," he said. According to Ben-Yehuda, the fundamental questions going through the mind of a climber heading for the peak are: "Are you going to make it?" and "When is the right time to turn back?"

And once a climber begins the descent, the all-embracing question becomes: "How fast can I go down?"

Ben-Yehuda said his military training in Israel helped shape his reflexive decision to rescue Irmak. "You never leave a friend in the field," he said.

. ]]> Fri, 25 May 2012 11:14:04 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052512-ap-Everest-climber-skips-summit-and-rescues-friend--4025001 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052512-ap-Climber-73-finally-felt-old-at-summit-of-Everest--4025134
Tamae Watanabe, 73, beat her own age record for an Everest climb by a woman set 10 years ago. She also recovered from an accident in 2005 when she broke her back and feared she could never climb again.

"It was much more difficult for me this time. I felt I was weaker and had less power. This time it was certainly different, I felt that I had gotten old," Watanabe told reporters Friday on return to the Nepalese capital Katmandu from the mountain.

She reached the summit from the Tibetan side May 19, at the age of 73 years and 180 days.

That same day, more than 200 climbers set out for the summit on the busier southern route in Nepal. Four died, apparently from altitude sickness and exhaustion, on one of the deadliest days on the mountain.

Watanabe said what surprised her, compared to her earlier climb, was the effects of warmer temperature on the mountain.

"There was a glacial lake formed near the base camp from the melting ice which our cooks could fetch water from," she said adding she is now encouraged to do campaign against global warming.

She now wants to help younger female climbers back in Japan to take up climbing high mountains.

The oldest Everest climber is 76-year-old Min Bahadur Sherchan of Nepal, who ascended in 2008. ]]> Fri, 25 May 2012 11:11:00 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052512-ap-Climber-73-finally-felt-old-at-summit-of-Everest--4025134 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1158-BC-ML-Egypt-Election-12thLd-Writethru-05-24-1431
CAIRO (AP) -- The Muslim Brotherhood said Thursday that its candidate was leading in exit polls from Egypt's landmark presidential election, as official counting began after two days of voting to choose a successor to ousted leader Hosni Mubarak.

In stations around the country, workers cracked open ballot boxes and started the count after polls closed Thursday night, in Egypt's first truly competitive presidential election. There are five prominent candidates in a field of 13, but none is expected to win outright in the first round. A run-off between the two leading contenders would be held June 16-17.

A Brotherhood spokesman said the group's candidate, Mohammed Morsi, was the leader in exit polls conducted by Brotherhood campaign workers nationwide. Morsi's spokesman, Murad Mohammed Ali, declined to give specific percentages.

"The Egyptian people always amaze us," said Ali. "This is above our expectations."

The reliability of the Brotherhood's polls could not be confirmed. Regional television channels, citing their own exit polls, also placed Morsi as the top finisher, with rivals Ahmed Shafiq and Hamdeen Sabahi vying for second post.

Shafiq, a former air force commander, was Mubarak's last prime minister and was himself forced from his post by protests soon after his former boss. Opponents brand him as a "feloul" or "remnant" of the old, autocratic regime, but he has drawn support from Egyptians who crave stability or fear Islamists.

Sabahi is a leftist who had been a dark horse but gained steadily in opinion polls over the past week, attracting Egyptians who want neither an Islamist or a former regime figure.

The Brotherhood is hoping that a victory in the presidential race will seal its political rise since its longtime opponent Mubarak was ousted on Feb. 11, 2011 in a wave of protests. The group won just under half the seats in parliament in elections held late last year, establishing it as the biggest political bloc.

But it had troubles in the presidential campaign. Its first choice for candidate, deputy leader Khairat el-Shater, was disqualified because of a Mubarak-era conviction. Morsi was the Brotherhood's second-choice and was seen as less charismatic.

He also faced competition for religious voters from Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, a moderate Islamist who split from the Brotherhood last year and has also drawn liberals with his more inclusive vision.

One of the prominent secular candidates, former Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, made an emotional appeal three hours before voting ended, urging supporters to get to the polls. The last-minute call suggested his exit polls were not going his way.

Earlier, Moussa gave a surprise interview to Al-Arabiya television, calling on Shafiq -- his main rival for the secular vote -- to drop out of the race. Rattled with his hair unkempt, Moussa launched a scathing attack on Shafiq, saying that if elected Shafiq would "recreate" the Mubarak regime.

Both Shafiq and the Brotherhood's Morsi have repeatedly spoken of the dangers, real or imaginary, of the other becoming president. Morsi has said there would be massive street protests if a "feloul" -- a remnant of the Mubarak regime -- wins, arguing it could only be the result of rigging.

Shafiq, on his part, has said it would be "unacceptable" if an Islamist takes the presidential office, echoing the rhetoric of Mubarak, his longtime mentor who devoted much of his 29-year rule to fighting Islamists. Still, Shafiq's campaign has said it would accept the election's result.

If a run-off is held, the final result would be announced on June 21. The generals who took over from the 84-year-old Mubarak have promised to hand over power by July, but many fear that they would try to retain significant powers after a new president is in office.

]]> Fri, 25 May 2012 00:31:08 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1158-BC-ML-Egypt-Election-12thLd-Writethru-05-24-1431 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052412-ap-Suspected-pirate-attack-foiled-on-US-cargo-ship--4022852
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Iran and an American-led naval coalition each said Thursday they responded to a distress call by a U.S.-flagged cargo ship that came under fire from gunmen in the Gulf of Oman a day earlier.

Armed guards aboard the 488-foot (148-meter) Maersk Texas thwarted the attack northeast of the Emirati port of Fujairah, Danish shipper A.P. Moller-Maersk said. The attack happened not far from the tense waters of the Strait of Hormuz, a key transit point for a fifth of the world's oil.

The Copenhagen-headquartered company said armed attackers in "multiple pirate skiffs" raced straight toward the ship around noon Wednesday despite clear warning signals from the Texas. Guards on board fired warning shots, but the suspected pirates opened fire, prompting ship guards to shoot back at them, according to the shipping line.

No one on the Texas was injured in the incident, and the ship continued on its voyage to the U.S., Maersk said.

Iranian news agencies reported that the suspected pirates fled when Iran's navy intervened after responding to an emergency call from the American ship.

Lt. Cdr. Mark Hankey, a spokesman for the Bahrain-based Combined Maritime Forces, was unable to confirm Iran's role in the incident. He also cast doubt on whether the event was an act of piracy at all.

"The full facts of the event have yet to be fully ascertained. Piracy has to be judged according to a number of factors. It is not clear from the information available to date whether this was a piracy event," Hankey said.

Somali pirates have been increasing their range, but attacks near the Strait of Hormuz remain relatively rare.

Hankey declined to say who the attackers might have been if not pirates, though he noted that fishermen and smugglers frequent the area. He did not suggest that the Iranian military, which operates a fleet of small, fast attack craft, might be involved.

The Combined Maritime Forces is a naval partnership including more than two dozen nations that operates in and around the Middle East. It is commanded by a U.S. Navy admiral.

An Australian ship assigned to the multinational force, the HMAS Melbourne, picked up a distress call from the American ship, Hankey said. It dispatched a helicopter to monitor the situation and set a course to assist.

Iran's official IRNA news agency and semiofficial Mehr news service reported that the Islamic Republic's navy helped thwart the attack. IRNA said an Iranian naval vessel picked up a distress call from the ship, and because of the navy's "vigilance and timely reaction ... the pirates fled the scene."

While he was not aware of Iranian aid to the Texas, Hankey said such assistance would not necessarily be out of the ordinary.

"If you hear of a vessel in distress, you do your best to assist" on the high seas, he said. "If the Iranians responded to a mayday call, then that's perfectly normal activity. ... That's what this whole mayday call is about."

American ships have occasionally come to the aid of Iranian merchant vessels in similar circumstances.

------

Associated Press writers Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran contributed reporting.

]]> Thu, 24 May 2012 11:40:01 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052412-ap-Suspected-pirate-attack-foiled-on-US-cargo-ship--4022852 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052412-ap-South-African-president-opens-case-against-artist--4022851
JOHANNESBURG -- A lawyer for South Africa's president broke down in tears Thursday as he tried to convince three judges that the display of a portrait that depicts the president's genitals is unlawful.

The three South Gauteng High Court judges called a recess after the emotional display. After a break of more than two hours, judges and lawyers agreed to resume at a date to be decided later.

President Jacob Zuma is asking the High Court to issue an order that display of the now-defaced painting violates his constitutional right to dignity. The gallery and the artist counter that freedom of expression, also protected by the constitution, is at stake.

Two men had walked into the Goodman Gallery Tuesday and defaced the portrait with paint, saying later they were acting to defend Zuma. The gallery then removed the painting and closed indefinitely. Still, the case is being closely watched because it raises important constitutional issues in a new democracy.

Thursday's hearing was broadcast live on national television. Leaders of the ruling African National Congress were present, as were several of the 70-year-old Zuma's children, who have joined their father in the legal challenge. Outside the courthouse, hundreds of Zuma supporters danced and sang.

As arguments began, the judges closely questioned Zuma's lawyer Gcina Malindi on points of law, race, art and the limits of their ability to control publication on the Internet.

Malindi argued that the court should take into account not just the opinions of a "super class" of art experts, but how the painting was likely to be seen by the country's black majority, denied education under apartheid. Malindi, who is black, said that many blacks still lived in poverty after the end of apartheid in 1994. He then sobbed. His colleagues rushed to put their arms around his shoulders.

ANC spokesman Jackson Mthembu described Malindi as a leading member of the ANC who had been tortured for his anti-apartheid activities.

"That's why this is emotional," Mthembu said.

The painting by Brett Murray went on display at the Goodman, one of the country's leading galleries, early this month and came to the ANC's attention a week later, after local media reported it had been sold to an anonymous buyer.

"The portrayal has ridiculed and caused me humiliation and indignity," Zuma contended in an affidavit filed Tuesday with the court.

In a style reminiscent of Andy Warhol's brightly colored Marilyn Monroe portraits or Soviet-era propaganda posters, "The Spear" depicts Zuma in a suit, looking off into the distance. What could be a codpiece accentuates his genitals, though some observers say the painting depicts genitals.

Zuma, 70, has been married six times -- he currently has four wives, as his Zulu culture allows. He has 21 children, and acknowledged in 2010 that he fathered a child that year with a woman who was not among his wives.

The painting is part of an exhibition of Murray's sculptures and paintings called "Hail to the Thief II." The ANC denounced the show as an "abuse of freedom of artistic expression."

]]> Thu, 24 May 2012 11:36:54 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052412-ap-South-African-president-opens-case-against-artist--4022851 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a0959-BC-AS-Pakistan-6thLd-Writethru-05-23-1329
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- A doctor who helped the CIA hunt down Osama bin Laden was convicted Wednesday of conspiring against the state and sentenced to 33 years in prison, adding new strains to an already deeply troubled relationship between the U.S. and Pakistan.

U.S. officials had urged Pakistan to release the doctor, who ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify the al-Qaida leader's presence at the compound in the town of Abbottabad where U.S. commandos killed him in May 2011 in a unilateral raid.

The lengthy sentence for Dr. Shakil Afridi will be taken as another sign of Pakistan's defiance of American wishes. It could give more fuel to critics in the United States that Pakistan - which has yet to arrest anyone for helping shelter bin Laden - should no longer be treated as an ally.

The verdict came days after a NATO summit in Chicago that was overshadowed by tensions between the two countries that are threatening American hopes of an orderly end to the war in Afghanistan and withdrawal of its combat troops by 2014.

Islamabad was invited in expectation it would reopen supply lines for NATO and U.S. troops to Afghanistan it has blocked for nearly six months to protest U.S. airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani troops on the Afghan border. But it did not reopen the routes, and instead repeated demands for an apology from Washington for the airstrikes.

Pakistan's treatment of Afridi since his arrest following the bin Laden raid has in many ways symbolized the gulf between Washington and Islamabad.

In the United States and other Western nations, Afridi was viewed as a hero who had helped eliminate the world's most-wanted man. But Pakistan army and spy chiefs were outraged by the raid, which led to international suspicion that they had been harboring the al-Qaida chief. In their eyes, Afridi was a traitor who had collaborated with a foreign spy agency in an illegal operation on its soil.

Afridi, in his 50s, was detained sometime after the raid, but the start of his trial was never publicized.

He was tried under the Frontier Crimes Regulations, or FCR -- the set of laws that govern Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal region. Human rights organizations have criticized the FCR for not providing suspects the right to legal representation, to present material evidence, or to cross-examine witnesses. Verdicts are handled by a government official in consultation with a council of elders.

Afridi was tried in the Khyber tribal region, where he was raised. In addition to the prison term, he was ordered to pay a fine of about $3,500 and is subject to an additional 3 1/2 years in prison if he does not, according to Nasir Khan, a government official in Khyber.

Afridi can appeal the verdict within two months, said Iqbal Khan, another Khyber government official.

An official with Pakistan's main Inter-Services Intelligence agency said the decision was in Pakistan's "national interest," and he dismissed earlier appeals by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other American officials that Afridi should be released. The official did not give his name because the ISI doesn't allow its operatives to be identified in the media.

Asked in Washington to comment, Pentagon press secretary George Little declined to talk about the specific case, but added: "Anyone who supported the United States in finding Osama bin Laden was not working against Pakistan. They were working against al-Qaida."

Afridi was working for local health authorities in northwest Pakistan when he began working for the CIA. Nurses working for him reportedly knocked on the door of the compound in Abbottabad, but were not successful in obtaining a sample from the house to confirm bin Laden was living there.

After the raid, the Pakistan army kicked out U.S. military trainers and limited counterterrorism cooperation with the CIA. But relations got even worse in November when the U.S. killed the Pakistani border guards, an attack that Washington said was an accident but the Pakistani army insisted was deliberate.

Pakistan retaliated by closing the NATO supply routes and kicking the U.S. out of a base used by American drones. Before the attack, the U.S and other NATO countries fighting in Afghanistan shipped about 30 percent of their nonlethal supplies through Pakistan. Since then, the coalition has used far more expensive routes through Russia and Central Asia.

The U.S. has pressed Pakistan to reopen the supply line, but negotiations have been hampered by Washington's refusal to apologize for the attack and stop drone strikes in the country as demanded by Pakistan's parliament.

The latest drone strike took place Wednesday, when two missiles hit a compound in Datta Khel Kalai village in the North Waziristan tribal area, killing four suspected militants, said Pakistani intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give their names to the media.

Despite the tensions, most analysts believe the U.S. cannot afford to turn its back on Pakistan entirely.

Pakistan is seen as vital to negotiating a peace deal with the Afghan Taliban and their allies, given the country's historical ties with the militants. Many in the Pakistani government realize it needs to repair relations with the U.S., partly to receive more than a billion dollars in American aid.

Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general who is now a defense analyst, said the ISI likely preferred to see Afridi tried under the FCR because it was easier to get a prosecution than in a regular court. He said the verdict may reflect Pakistani annoyance at perceived ill-treatment at the Chicago meeting, but that improved relations could see him released.

"If things go well with the U.S., it's very likely that he will be pardoned," he said.

------

Brummitt reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Rebeccan Santana in Islamabad, Pauline Jelinek in Washington and Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan contributed to this report.

]]> Thu, 24 May 2012 00:31:08 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a0959-BC-AS-Pakistan-6thLd-Writethru-05-23-1329 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1028-BC-ML-Egypt-Election-15thLd-Writethru-05-23-2333
CAIRO (AP) -- After a lifetime of being told who will rule them, Egyptians dove enthusiastically into the uncertainty of the Arab world's first competitive presidential election Wednesday. Up to the last minute, voters wrestled with a polarizing choice between secularists rooted in Hosni Mubarak's old autocracy and Islamists hoping to enfuse the state with religion.

The choices in the race raised worries among many whether real democracy will emerge in Egypt. And the final result, likely to come only after a runoff next month, will only open a new chapter of political struggle.

But in the lines at the polls, voters were palpably excited at the chance to decide their country's path in the vote, which is the fruit of last year's stunning popular revolt that overthew Mubarak after 29 years in power. For the past 60 years, Egypt's presidents running unchallenged have largely been re-affirmed in yes-or-no referendums that few bothered to vote in.

Mohammed Salah, 26, emerged grinning from a poll station, fresh from casting his ballot. "Before, they used to take care of that for me," he said. "Today, I am choosing for myself."

Medhat Ibrahim, 58, who suffers from cancer, had tears in his eyes. "I might die in a matter of months, so I came for my children, so they can live," he said, waiting to vote in a poor Cairo district. "We want to live better, like human beings."

Adding to the drama, this election is up in the air. The reliability of polls is unsure, and four of the 13 candidates candidates have bounced around the top spots, leaving no clear single front-runner. None is likely to win outright in Wednesday and Thursday's balloting, so the top two vote-getters enter a run-off June 16-17, with the victor announced June 21.

The two secular front-runners are both veterans of Mubarak's regime -- former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and former foreign minister Amr Moussa.

The main Islamist contenders are Mohammed Morsi of the powerful Muslim Brotherhood and Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, a moderate Islamist whose inclusive platform has won him the support of some liberals, leftists and minority Christians.

The debate went right up to the doorsteps of schools around the country where polls were set up.

Some voters backed Mubarak-era veterans, believing they can bring stability after months of rising crime, a crumbling economy and bloody riots. Others were horrified by the thought, believing the "feloul" -- or "remnants" of the regime -- will keep Egypt locked in dictatorship and thwart democracy.

Islamists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, saw their chance to lead a country where they were repressed for decades and to implement their version of Islamic law. Their critics recoiled, fearing theocracy.

Some saw an alternative to both in a leftist candidate, Hamdeen Sabahi, who has claimed the mantle of Egypt's first president, the populist Gamal Abdel-Nasser.

An Islamist victory, particularly by Morsi, will likely mean a greater emphasis on religion in government. His Muslim Brotherhood, which already dominates parliament, says it won't mimic Saudi Arabia and force women to wear veils or implement harsh punishments like amputations. But it says it does want to implement a more moderate version of Islamic law, which liberals fear will mean limitations on many rights.

Many of the candidates have called for amendments in Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which remains deeply unpopular. None is likely to dump it, but a victory by any of the Islamist or leftist candidates in the race could mean strained ties with Israel and a stronger stance in support of the Palestinians in the peace process.

The candidates from the Mubarak's regime -- and, ironically, the Brotherhood, which has already held multiple talks with U.S. officials -- are most likely to maintain the alliance with the United States.

A looming question is whether either side will accept victory by the other. Islamists have warned of new protests if Shafiq wins, which they say can only happen by fraud. Many are convinced the ruling military wants a victory by Shafiq, a former air force commander.

"Over my dead body will Shafiq or Moussa win. Why not just bring back Mubarak?" said Saleh Zeinhom, a merchant backing Abolfotoh. "I'm certain we'll have a bloodbath after the elections cause the military council won't hand power to anyone but Shafiq."

Shafiq was met by several dozen protesters screaming "down with the feloul" as he arrived to vote in an upscale neighborhood east of Cairo. Some protesters showed their contempt by holding up their shoes in his direction.

Shafiq, who was Mubarak's last prime minister until he too was forced out of his post by protests, has been openly disparaging of the pro-democracy youth groups who led the anti-Mubarak uprising. Critics view him as too close to the generals who took over from Mubarak and whose own reputation is tainted by human rights abuses and authoritarian tendencies.

But with his strongman image, he has appealed to Egyptians who crave stability and fear Islamists.

"The country is going under. We need a president that implements justice and brings back security. Bottom line," said Essam el-Khatib, a government employee voting in the Cairo suburb of Maadi.

Nearby another man, Sayed Attiya, shouted, "What Shafiq? We didn't have a revolution to bring back Shafiq!"

The Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, faced a backlash of its own.

The group was the biggest winner in parliament elections late last year, winning nearly half the seats. But it disillusioned some by seeming too power hungry, demanding to be allowed to form a government and trying to dominate a panel created to draft a new constitution. The panel was scrapped and the process of writing the vital new charter is on hold as politicians struggle over forming a new one.

The image it has cultivated as an advocate of tolerance and piety was damaged by its campaign to discredit Abolfotoh, who quit the Brotherhood to run for president, and its edict that it is a sin to vote for anyone not advocating implementation of Islamic Shariah law.

Outside a polling station in the village of Ikhsas, outside Cairo, a group of neighbors got into a friendly but frank debate.

"I voted Brotherhood for parliament but I find they are inflexible in their opinions and want to take everything. I can't now find them in the country's top job," Bassem Saber, a 31-year-old accountant dressed in the traditional local robes, told the circle of men. He now backs Abolfotoh.

Khaled el-Zeini, a Brotherhood backer, said people were being unfair.

Fares Kamel, a local trader, interjected with a shout against the Brothers, "We loved them and wanted them but we realized they are all about monopolizing power."

But the group has a powerful electoral machine.

In the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Brotherhood vans ferried women supporters to the polls in the poor neighborhood of Abu Suleiman, one of the group's strongholds. The women, in headscarves or covered head to toe in black robes and veils that hid their faces, filed into the station.

"I want to give the Brotherhood a chance to rule," said Aida Ibrahim, a veteran Brotherhood member who was helping voters find their station. "If it doesn't work, they will be held accountable," she said.

Some Brotherhood supporters cited the group's years of providing charity to the poor -- including reduced-price meat, and free medical care.

"Whoever fills the tummy gets the vote," said Naima Badawi, a housewife sitting on her doorstep watching voters in Abu Sir, one of the many farming villages near the Pyramids being sucked into Cairo's urban sprawl.

There were only a few reports of overt violations of election rules Wednesday, mainly concerning candidates' backers campaigning near polling stations. Three international monitoring organizations, including the U.S.'s Carter Center, were observing the vote. Former President Jimmy Carter, the center's head, visited a polling station in the ancient Cairo district of Sayeda Aisha.

The election's winner will face a monumental task. The economy has been sliding as the key tourism industry dried up -- though it starting to inch back up. Crime has increased. Labor strikes have proliferated.

And the political turmoil is far from over. The generals who took over from Mubarak have promised to hand authority to the election winner by the end of June. But many fear it will try to maintain a considerable amount of political say. The fundamentals of Mubarak's police state remain in place, including the powerful security forces.

"We will have an elected president but the military is still here and the old regime is not dismantled," said Ahmed Maher, a prominent activist from the group April 6, a key architect of last year's 18-day uprising against Mubarak.

"The pressure will continue," he said. "People have finally woken up. Whoever the next president is, we won't leave him alone."

------

Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb, Maggie Michael and Matt Ford in Cairo and Aya Batrawy in Alexandria, Egypt, contributed to this report.

]]> Thu, 24 May 2012 00:31:02 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1028-BC-ML-Egypt-Election-15thLd-Writethru-05-23-2333 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052312-ap-Peru-agency-says-cause-of-dolphin-deaths-unsolved--4020178
Tuesday's final report by the Sea Institute ruled out viral and bacterial infections, human intervention, pesticides or heavy metals as causes for the deaths, which were first noticed on Feb. 7 and continued through mid-April. It speculated that biotoxins, algae blooms, or an unknown emerging disease could be to blame.

The Peruvian environmental group Orca, which first alerted the public to the deaths, insists that seismic testing used in oil exploration was likely the cause..

But the Institute said that experts found no evidence any of the deaths were a result of seismic soundings, which involve shooting compressed air at the sea floor: There were no signs of internal hemorrhages or brain lesions that would be compatible with damage from such tests. But it said it did notice damage to some plankton where the soundings were done.

Orca contested those findings in its own report on Tuesday, saying it had independently confirmed hemorrhages and middle-ear infections as well as the presence of air bubbles in internal organs and severe lung damage.

Several leading Peruvian scientists complained that the government agency was late in gathering samples, making it harder to determine the cause of death because the tissue tested was so badly decomposed.

The Sea institute based its findings on autopsies of just two dead dolphins, which were collected in mid-April, while Orca said it gathered the first of the samples it tested on Feb. 12.

Seismic testing in the area was conducted between Feb. 7 and April 8 by Houston-based BPZ Energy.

The Institute report said the testing occurred 50 to 80 miles (80 to 130 kilometers) off shore and that the equipment used was calibrated in those waters between Jan. 31 and Feb. 7.

It said testing also ruled out morbillivirus, a type of distemper that some government officials had suggested as a likely cause long before kits arrived from the United States to check for it.

]]> Wed, 23 May 2012 10:47:35 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052312-ap-Peru-agency-says-cause-of-dolphin-deaths-unsolved--4020178 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052312-ap-Egyptians-vote-in-first-free-presidential-election--4020212
CAIRO -- More than 15 months after autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak's ouster, Egyptians streamed to polling stations Wednesday to freely choose a president for the first time in generations. Waiting hours in line, some debated to the last minute over their vote in a historic election pitting old regime figures against ascending Islamists.

A sense of amazement at having a choice pervaded the crowds in line, along with fervent expectation over where a new leader will take a country that has been in turmoil ever since its ruler for nearly 30 years was toppled by mass protests.

Some backed Mubarak-era veterans, believing they can bring stability after months of rising crime, a crumbling economy and bloody riots. Others were horrified by the thought, believing the "feloul" -- or "remnants" of the regime -- will keep Egypt locked in dictatorship and thwart democracy.

Islamists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, saw their chance to lead a country where they were repressed for decades and to implement their version of Islamic law. Their critics recoiled, fearing theocracy.

"You can't tell me, 'Vote for this or else you're a sinner!"' Wael Ramadan argued with another man in line at a polling station in the impoverished Cairo neighborhood of Basateen. "We never said that," protested the man. "Yes, you did," Ramadan shot back.

"The revolution changed a lot. Good things and bad things," Ramadan, a 40-year-old employee at a mobile phone company, said afterward. "The good thing is all this freedom. We are here and putting up with the trouble of waiting in line for electing a president. My vote matters. It is now a right ... Now we want a president that has a vision."

A field of 13 candidates is running in the voting Wednesday and Thursday. The two-day first run is not expected to produce an outright winner, so a runoff between the two top vote-getters will be held June 16-17. The winner will be announced June 21. Around 50 million people are eligible to vote.

An Islamist victory will likely mean a greater emphasis on religion in government. The Muslim Brotherhood, which already dominates parliament, says it won't mimic Saudi Arabia and force women to wear veils or implement harsh punishments like amputations. But it says it does want to implement a more moderate version of Islamic law, which liberals fear will mean limitations on many rights.

Many of the candidates have called for amendments in Egypt's 1979 peace treaty with Israel, which remains deeply unpopular. None is likely to dump it, but a victory by any of the Islamist or leftist candidates in the race could mean strained ties with Israel and a stronger stance in support of the Palestinians in the peace process. The candidates from the Mubarak's regime -- and, ironically, the Brotherhood, which has already held multiple talks with U.S. officials -- are most likely to maintain the alliance with the United States.

The real election battle is between four front-runners.

The main Islamist contenders are Mohammed Morsi of the powerful Brotherhood and Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, a moderate Islamist whose inclusive platform has won him the support of some liberals, leftists and minority Christians.

The two secular front-runners are both veterans of Mubarak's regime -- former prime minister Ahmed Shafiq and former foreign minister Amr Moussa.

The winner will face a monumental task. The economy has been sliding as the key tourism industry dried up -- though it starting to inch back up. Crime has increased. Labor strikes have proliferated.

"May God help the new president," said Zaki Mohammed, a teacher in his 40s as he waited to vote in a district close to the Giza Pyramids. "There will be 82 million pairs of eyes watching him."

And the political turmoil is far from over. The military, which took power after Mubarak's fall on Feb. 11, 2011, has promised to hand over authority to the election winner by the end of June. But many fear it will try to maintain a considerable amount of political say. The fundamentals of Mubarak's police state remain in place -- including the powerful security forces. The generals have said they have no preferred candidate, but they are widely thought to be favoring Shafiq, a former air force commander.

"We will have an elected president but the military is still here and the old regime is not dismantled," said Ahmed Maher, a prominent activist from the group April 6, a key architect of last year's 18-day uprising that toppled Mubarak.

"But the pressure will continue. We won't sleep. People have finally woken up. Whoever the next president is, we won't leave him alone," he said outside a polling center in Cairo.

Moreover, the country must still write a new constitution. That was supposed to be done already, but was delayed after Islamists tried to dominate the constitution-writing panel, prompting a backlash that scuttled the process for the moment.

The Muslim Brotherhood is hoping a Morsi victory in the presidency will cap their political rise, after parliament elections last year gave them nearly half of the legislature's seats.

In the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, microbuses run by the Brotherhood ferried women supporters to the polls in the poor neighborhood of Abu Suleiman, one of the group's strongholds. The women, in conservative headscarves or covered head to toe in black robes and veils that hid their faces, filed into the station.

"I want to give the Brotherhood a chance to rule," said Aida Ibrahim, a veteran Brotherhood member who was helping voters find their station. "If it doesn't work, they will be held accountable," she said.

Some Brotherhood supporters cited the group's years of providing charity to the poor -- including reduced-price meat, and free medical care. "Whoever fills the tummy gets the vote," said Naima Badawi, a housewife sitting on her doorstep watching voters in Abu Sir, one of the many farming villages near the Pyramids being sucked into Cairo's urban sprawl.

But some who backed the Brotherhood in the parliament election late last year have since been turned off. "They failed," said Mohammed Ali, in the neighboring Talbiya district. He's gone clear the other direction for this vote: "I am feloul" -- pro-Mubarak "remnant," he said. "I don't care. I want a man who is a politician and statesman."

The secular young democracy activists who launched the anti-Mubarak uprising have been at a loss, with no solid candidate reflecting their views.

In Cairo, 27-year-old Ali Ragab said he was voting for a leftist candidate, Hamdeen Sabahi -- because the poor "should get a voice," but he admitted Sabahi didn't stand much of a chance.

He said his father and all his father's friends were backing Shafiq "because they think he's a military man who will bring back security. I'm afraid Shafiq would mean another Mubarak for 30 more years."

For most of his 29-year rule, Mubarak -- like his predecessors -- ran unopposed in yes-or-no referendums. Rampant fraud guaranteed ruling party victories in parliamentary elections. Even when, in 2005, Mubarak let challengers oppose him in elections, he ended up not only trouncing his liberal rival but jailing him.

The election comes less than two weeks before a court is due to issue its verdict on Mubarak, 84, who has been on trial on charges of complicity in the killing of some 900 protesters during the uprising against his rule. He also faced corruption charges, along with his two sons, one-time heir apparent Gamal and wealthy businessman Alaa.

The feeling of being able to make a choice was overwhelming for some.

"I might die in a matter of months, so I came for my children, so they can live," a tearful Medhat Ibrahim, 58, who suffers from cancer, said as he waited to vote in a poor district south of Cairo. "We want to live better, like human beings."

More than four hours after the polls opened, there have been no reports of major violence or irregularities. Before dawn, a policeman in a police car parked outside a polling center in northern Cairo was killed by a stray bullet when a nearby argument over a taxi fare turned into a gunfight, according to security officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Policemen assigned to the protection of the center exchanged fire with the men, wounding and capturing one of them.

"You know, there is no such thing as a perfect election," U.S. Congressman David Dreier, of California, said while touring a polling center in Cairo's upscale Zamalek district. "But I'm convinced that there is a great degree of sincerity on the part of those that are putting this together."

------

Associated Press writer Aya Batrawy contributed to this report from Alexandria, Egypt.

]]> Wed, 23 May 2012 10:29:02 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/052312-ap-Egyptians-vote-in-first-free-presidential-election--4020212 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1171-BC-CN-Canada-StudentPro-2ndLd-Writethru-05-22-0866
MONTREAL -- Thousands of students marched through the streets of Montreal on Tuesday to mark 100 days since the movement against higher tuition fees began. The protest comes after Quebec's provincial government passed emergency legislation to end Canada's most sustained student demonstrations ever.

Protesters carrying red banners and signs, the color demonstrations, walked in unison chanting "our streets!"

Since the law was passed Friday, nightly protests have often turned violent, resulting in some 300 arrests Sunday alone.

Police have yet to fully enforce the new law, which calls for protests of over 50 people to provide a detailed agenda. Student groups have vowed to challenge the legislation in court. Rights groups say the new law limits protesters' ability to express themselves democratically.

On the eve of Tuesday's protest, the most militant of three major student groups said it would defy the new law and call for protests and strikes to continue throughout the summer, a busy period of outdoor festivals in Montreal which draws in millions of dollars in tourist revenue.

"Thousands of people have come to demonstrate with us, not only against the rise in tuition rates but with the intention to signal their disapproval of the special law," student leader Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois said. "The gesture made by tens of thousands is one of massive and collective civil disobedience."

Since the protests started in February, unions, separatists and anarchists have joined the movement, as well as some celebrities.

Montreal indie rockers Arcade Fire wore the movement's iconic red squares during an appearance with Mick Jagger on "Saturday Night Live."

Activist and filmmaker Michael Moore also gave his support to the students, sending tweets in French and English.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest has refused to roll back the tuition hikes of $254 per year over seven years. Quebec has the lowest tuition rates in Canada, and they would remain among the country's lowest after the increases.

The conflict has caused considerable social upheaval in the French-speaking province known for having more contentious protests than elsewhere in Canada.

Retiree Claude Gravel, 61, said she was against the law seeking to calm down tensions after 100 days of protests.

"I'm all for a few months of peace and quiet, but not at this price," he said.

She said the tuition hikes would make educating her college student son hard on the family's limited finances.

]]> Wed, 23 May 2012 00:31:42 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1171-BC-CN-Canada-StudentPro-2ndLd-Writethru-05-22-0866 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1080-BC-Iran-Nuclear-10thLd-Writethru-05-22-1394
BAGHDAD -- Iran made the first move Tuesday in attempts to gain an edge in nuclear talks with the United States and other world powers: It agreed in principle to allow U.N. inspectors to restart probes into a military site suspected of harboring tests related to atomic weapons.

The tentative accord - announced as envoys headed to the Iraqi capital for negotiations - is likely to be used by Iran as added leverage to seek concessions from the West on sanctions. But U.S. officials have shown no willingness to shift into bargaining mode so quickly, setting the stage for possible tense moments after talks set for Wednesday resume in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

Still, Iran's move raises the pressure on the West for some reciprocal gestures to keep dialogue on track and further highlights Tehran's apparent aims of opening a long give-and-take process over its nuclear ambitions.

A major breakthrough in the impasse was not expected in Baghdad, with officials and experts saying both sides will seek to demonstrate enough progress to keep the process moving forward.

That could cool down worries in international markets over possible military action, but reinforce the suspicions of Israeli leaders who claim Iran seeks only to buy time to keep up its production of nuclear fuel.

Iran's envoys, meanwhile, promoted the Baghdad round as an opportunity to set aside past obstacles.

"That is the basis for the beginning of a new cooperation," said Saeed Jalili, the top Iranian nuclear negotiator, who arrived in Baghdad late Monday. "We hope that the talks in Baghdad will be a kind of dialogue that will give shape to such cooperation."

Iran's ambassador to Iraq, Hasan Danaeifar, said the Baghdad talks could be historic.

"Should the talks set a start for a serious, constructive settlement of the issues, it could be a historic meeting for all sides," the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.

A senior Western diplomat in Baghdad said sanctions on Iran's oil exports, set to take effect July 1, likely pushed Tehran to the bargaining table.

"I don't think the Iranians are coming to these talks because they suddenly changed their minds about anything. They are coming to these talks because sanctions are beginning to bite," the diplomat said in an interview this week with The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations candidly.

In Iranian terms, that means offering some possible accommodations - such as opening to greater U.N. inspections - but sticking to its right to enrich uranium as a signatory of U.N. nuclear treaties. The Baghdad talks, involving the five permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany, could offer a test of how much the U.S. and allies are willing to bend from demands for Iran to halt to all enrichment and instead concentrate on just stopping the highest-grade production.

The West and others fear the 20 percent-level enrichment can be turned quickly into weapons-grade of over 90 percent.

Iran has repeatedly denied it seeks nuclear arms and says its reactors are only for power and medical research.

On Tuesday, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that Iranian scientists had inserted a domestically made fuel rod, which contains pellets of 20 percent enriched uranium, into the core of a research nuclear reactor in Tehran.

The advance would be another step in achieving proficiency in the entire nuclear fuel cycle. Iran said in January that it had produced the first nuclear fuel rod, and that it had to find a way to make them because Western sanctions prohibit their purchase from foreign markets.

Western claims about a clandestine atomic weapons program have often cited Iran's Parchin military facility, where the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency believes Iran in 2003 ran explosive tests needed to set off a nuclear charge. Iran describes Parchin as a conventional military site.

The agency's chief, Yukiya Amano, returned to Vienna on Tuesday from a one-day trip to Tehran and said an agreement is within reach to give inspectors "access to sites, scientists and documents it seeks to restart its probe."

He noted that some differences still exist but claimed they "will not be an obstacle to reach agreement." He gave no details on the unsettled points or when the pact could be signed.

Amano's remarks brought a measured response from Washington and allies.

White House press secretary Jay Carney called the announcement a "step forward" and "a step in the right direction." But he stressed that the administration will "make judgments about Iran's behavior based on actions, not just promises or agreements."

"We judge and will judge Iran by its actions," Carney said, adding that "we're not at the stage of negotiating what Iran would get in return for fulfillment of its obligations."

In Germany, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said the apparent inspection pact was an "overdue step in the right direction."

But he added: "The aim is to make progress not just atmospherically but also on substance."

Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, dismissed it as a "deception of progress" to stave off international pressure.

"It looks like the Iranians are trying to reach a technical agreement that will create a deception of progress in talks in order to reduce the pressure ahead of talks tomorrow in Baghdad and postpone harshening of sanctions," Barak said, according to a statement from his office.

On Monday, the U.S. Senate backed proposals for further sanctions on Iran, including requiring companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges to disclose any Iran-related business. U.S. and European measures already have targeted Iran's oil exports - its chief revenue source - and effectively blocked the country from international banking networks.

Even before the meetings begin in Baghdad, expectations were kept in check.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said they will "not produce a miracle."

"But everybody is looking for some tangible steps on the basis of reciprocity," Zebari told AP in an interview.

Zebari said there is consensus in Iran for the first time to reach a diplomatic deal.

Mahdi Mohtashami, an analyst and former Iranian foreign ministry official, said "the two sides should begin with small steps, not big demands, if they are to make any progress."

The U.S. has been vague about its immediate goals, with officials saying the talks will gauge Iran's seriousness and explore elements of a possible agreement.

President Barack Obama opposes a near-term military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. He has pressed Israel to give diplomacy and sanctions time to work while insisting that military options are available should talks fail. Republicans have criticized Obama for holding talks with Iran at all. ]]> Wed, 23 May 2012 00:30:38 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1080-BC-Iran-Nuclear-10thLd-Writethru-05-22-1394 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a0922-BC-EU-Britain-Obit-Robi-7thLd-Writethru-05-21-2143
Robin Gibb

Member of the Bee Gees

LONDON (AP) SEmD With his carefully tended hair, tight trousers and perfect harmonies, Robin Gibb, along with his brothers Maurice and Barry, defined the disco era. As part of the Bee Gees - short for the Brothers Gibb - they created dance floor classics like "Stayin Alive," ''Jive Talkin'," and "Night Fever" that can still get crowds onto a dance floor.

The catchy songs, with their falsetto vocals and relentless beat, are familiar pop culture mainstays. There are more than 6,000 cover versions of the Bee Gees hits, and they are still heard on dance floors and at wedding receptions, birthday parties, and other festive occasions.

Robin Gibb, 62, died Sunday "following his long battle with cancer and intestinal surgery," his family announced in a statement released by Gibb's representative Doug Wright.

Gibb was the second disco-era star to die this week. Donna Summer - who earned the Queen of Disco title by singing "Last Dance" and "I Feel Love" - died of cancer in Florida on Thursday.

The Bee Gees, born in England but raised in Australia, began their career in the musically rich 1960s but it was their soundtrack for the 1977 movie "Saturday Night Fever" that sealed their success. The album's signature sound - some called it "blue-eyed soul" - remains instantly recognizable more than 40 years after its release.

The album remains a turning point in popular music history, ending the hard rock era and ushering in a time when dance music ruled supreme. It became one of the fastest-selling albums of all time with its innovative fusion of harmony and pulsing beats. The movie launched the career of a young John Travolta whose snake-hipped moves to the sounds of "You Should Be Dancing" established his reputation as a dancer and forever linked his image to that of the Bee Gees.

Recording Academy president Neil Portnow predicted that fans will dance to "Stayin' Alive" and other songs Bee Gees songs for generations to come.

"Robin has had an indelible impact on music," he said.

Despite financial success, Robin Gibb and his brothers endured repeated tragedies. Maurice died suddenly of intestinal and cardiac problems in 2003. Their younger brother Andy Gibb, who also enjoyed considerable chart success as a solo artist, had died in 1988 just after turning 30. He suffered from an inflamed heart muscle attributed to a severe viral infection.

Robin Gibb himself took care of his health and, at the time of his death, was a vegan who did not drink alcohol.

Gibb was for decades a familiar figure on the pop stage, starting out in the 1960s when the Bee Gees were seen as talented Beatles copycats. They sounded so much like the Beatles at first that there were strong rumors that the Bee Gees' singles were really the Beatles performing under another name.

Many late-'60s bands were quickly forgotten, but the Bee Gees transformed themselves into an enduring A-List powerhouse with the almost unbelievable, and certainly unexpected, success of the song "Stayin' Alive" and others from the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack that accompanied the movie.

With this second wind, the Bee Gees sold more than 200 million records and had a long string of successful singles, making their way into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

"Saturday Night Fever" - actually a compilation album featuring the Bee Gees but including songs by other performers - represented the pinnacle of Gibb's career, but he enjoyed more than 40 years of prominence as a Bee Gee, as a solo artist, and as a songwriter and producer for other artists.

The Bee Gees consisted of Barry Gibb, the eldest, and twins Robin Gibb and Maurice Gibb. Their three-part harmonies became their musical signature, particularly in the disco phase, when Barry's matchless falsetto often dominated, and they were renowned for their wide-ranging songwriting and producing skills.

The Gibbs were born in England on the Isle of Man, an island in the Irish Sea, but moved to Australia with their parents in 1958 when they were still quite young and began their musical career there. They had been born into a musical family, with a father who was a drummer and bandleader and a mother who liked to sing.

After several hits in Australia, their career started to really take off when they returned to England in 1967 and linked up with promoter Robert Stigwood.

After several hits and successful albums, Robin Gibb left the group in 1969 after a series of disagreements, some focusing on whether he or Barry should be lead vocalist. He released some successful solo material - most notably "Saved by the Bell" - before rejoining his brothers in 1970 and scoring a major hit with "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart."

The Gibbs then suffered some slack years - searching for a style that could sustain them in the post-Beatles era - and Barry Gibb started experimenting with falsetto vocals, first on backup, and then in the lead position.

The brothers were at a low point when they went into a French studio to try to come up with some songs for the "Saturday Night Fever" soundtrack at the urging of Stigwood.

The success of those tunes - closely linked to the popularity of the movie, and the power of the disco movement - changed their lives forever, giving them a string of number one hits.

After several years of chart success, the Gibbs spent much of the 1980s writing songs and producing records for other artists, working closely with top talents such as Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross and Dolly Parton. They also continued touring and releasing their own records.

Gibb also released more solo albums, including "Secret Agent," during this period.

The band continued in the 1990s, gaining recognition for their body of work with induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Then came Maurice's sudden death in 2003. The surviving brothers announced that the name Bee Gees would be retired with Maurice Gibb's death, although Robin and Barry did collaborate on projects and Robin Gibb continued his solo career and extensive touring despite mounting health problems.

He had to cancel several engagements in 2011, including one with British Prime Minister David Cameron, and he showed an alarming weight loss on his rare public appearances. He was hospitalized briefly in 2011 with what doctors said was an inflamed colon and had surgery for intestinal problems in March, 2012.

One of his final projects was "The Titanic Requiem," a classical work he co-wrote with his son RJ, that the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra premiered in April to mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

Robin Gibb remained emotionally attached to the Isle of Man, keeping a house there as well as homes in rural Oxfordshire, England, and Miami.

He also became involved with numerous charities and worked to establish a permanent memorial to the veterans of Britain's World War II Bomber Command and recorded songs honoring British veterans.

Gibb is survived by his second wife, Dwina, and four children, as well as his older brother, fellow Bee Gee Barry Gibb, and his sister Lesley Evans, who lives in Australia.

]]> Tue, 22 May 2012 00:31:36 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a0922-BC-EU-Britain-Obit-Robi-7thLd-Writethru-05-21-2143 http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1025-BC-EU-France-Cannes-Pol-2ndLd-Writethru-05-21-0564
CANNES, France -- Roman Polanski returned to the Cannes Film Festival, where he presented a short film sponsored by Prada.

Before a screening of a restored version of his 1979 film "Tess," starring Nastassja Kinski, the Polish director showed the short, titled "A Therapy."

It stars Ben Kingsley and Helena Bonham Carter, and was created as a high-quality commercial for Prada.

That was a relative disappointment for festival-goers who had been teased that Polanski would preview a new film.

The festival earlier screened the documentary "Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir," which features conversations between Polanski and his friend Andrew Braunsberg about his U.S. arrest in 1977 for unlawful sex with an underage girl and his subsequent flight to France before sentencing.

Polanski, who currently lives in Paris, was in 2009 arrested in Switzerland to be extradited to the United States. The Swiss eventually rejected the request.

Polanski won the Cannes' Palme d'Or in 2002 for "The Pianist."

]]> Tue, 22 May 2012 00:31:26 GMT World News http://www.aikenstandard.com/story/a1025-BC-EU-France-Cannes-Pol-2ndLd-Writethru-05-21-0564