News

Portugal strike to hit public services, transport

2011-11-24T01:24:00.000-08:00

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Portugal is bracing for a broad shutdown of public services Thursday as trade unions stage a general strike against austerity measures adopted in return for a €78 billion ($104 billion) international bailout.

The 24-hour walkout comes amid increasing hardship as Portugal, one of western Europe's frailest economies, sheds jobs and sinks deeper into recession.

Travelers faced severe disruption. More than 470 international flights could be canceled, while some 1 million commuters had to make their way to work without regular bus or train services. The Lisbon subway was to close all day.

Government offices, school classes, mail deliveries, trash collection and other public services were also likely to be severely disrupted, authorities said.

Portugal is locked into a three-year program of debt-reduction measures in return for the financial rescue package from its European partners and the International Monetary Fund. The center-right coalition government, which has an overall majority in Parliament, and the opposition center-left Socialist Party gave their blessing to the bailout conditions in May.

Failure to abide by the bailout terms could hold up the bailout payments.

But as in Greece and Ireland, other eurozone countries that needed a financial lifeline, falling living standards have stoked outrage at the austerity measures. Unemployment is up to 12.4 percent and prospects for an improvement are grim as a double-dip recession is forecast to worsen next year.

Next year, the Portuguese people will pay more sales tax, income tax, corporate tax and property tax to help settle the country's debts. At the same time, their welfare entitlements are being curtailed.

The government next year is scrapping public employees' Christmas and vacation bonuses — each roughly equivalent to a month's pay — after cutting their regular monthly pay this year. The government also wants a legal change that would let private companies demand that employees work an extra 30 minutes a day without overtime pay.

Portugal's two largest trade unions, representing more than 1 million mostly blue-collar workers, are holding 34 marches across the country.

One of them, the General Confederation of Portuguese Workers, accused the government of implementing a "scorched-earth policy."

"We have to stand up for the interests of the country, the workers and the people, and look after our future and our development, not the interests of speculators and usurers," it said.

Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho on Wednesday defended the right to strike but added "it's important to find a way out of the crisis through hard work."

Though trade unions called for a general strike, few private companies are expected to close. Even so, they face disruption.

A huge Volkswagen car plant south of Lisbon, which accounts for 10 percent of Portuguese exports, decided to shut down production for the day because of problems facing its suppliers.

m.sakhelashvili

Supercommittee failure complicates election year

2011-11-23T21:51:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (AP) — The failure of Congress' deficit-reduction supercommittee adds a new dimension to the 2012 political contests, drawing political battle lines around broad tax increases and massive spending cuts that now are scheduled to begin automatically in 2013.

President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger will be forced to debate alternatives for reducing deficits, made all the more urgent by the looming consequences of congressional inaction. The dividing lines already are sharply drawn, with Obama supporting deficit reduction that includes a mix of spending cuts and tax increases on the wealthy, while Republicans have declared themselves averse to tax hikes.

An election that has been shaping up as a referendum on Obama's stewardship of the economy now will require the candidates to offer competing forward-looking deficit-reduction plans to avoid cuts and tax hikes that neither side wants to see materialize.

For Obama, that is a more favorable place to be, drawing contrasts with his opponent and arguing for higher taxes on the rich rather than defending his oversight of an economy that could still be suffering from high unemployment and slow growth next November.

Beginning in 2013, the federal government faces two oncoming trains. When the supercommittee was unable to find agreement by Wednesday, it triggered spending cuts of $1.2 trillion starting in January 2013 and extending over 10 years. Half of the cuts would come from defense spending, the other from education, agriculture and environmental programs, and, to a lesser extent, Medicare.

At the same time, tax cuts adopted during the presidency of George W. Bush will expire at the end of 2012, meaning an increase for every taxpayer.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has said the cuts would "tear a seam in the nation's defense."

Meanwhile, the tax increases would hit a still-fragile economy, endangering a recovery and raising prospects of another recession.

But while neither side wants those outcomes, Washington's recent history of tackling fiscal problems shows Congress does not act unless faced with a dire deadline. It extended Bush-era tax cuts in 2010 just days before they expired, it avoided a government shutdown by hours and it put off a debt crisis this summer in the face of a government default.

"The next big event, barring some movement from Congress, may just well be the 2012 election," said Kevin Madden, a former senior House leadership aide and an outside adviser to Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. "Then we look to either a new president and a new Congress, or the same president and the same Congress to restart it all."

Election years do not lend themselves to big legislative initiatives. Lawmakers are too busy seeking re-election to take potentially controversial stances that could cost them votes. Moreover, congressional leaders may well want to see how the elections affect Washington's balance of power before undertaking changes that require compromises.

An angry public could demand swift action. But even if Congress were to attempt to find common ground next year, the legislative maneuvering would unfold in the midst of the presidential contest, and White House aides acknowledge that it can't avoid becoming a part of the political debate.

They repeatedly point out that each of the eight Republican candidates have refused to endorse any deficit-reduction plan that contains any tax increases and that they reiterated that position en masse during a recent presidential debate.

"The very men and woman who would occupy the Oval Office stood up on a stage and all raised their hand and said they would not accept a deal that had as its foundation $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in revenue," White House spokesman Jay Carney said this week.

While Republicans have criticized Obama for not engaging directly in the supercommittee negotiations, his hands-off approach was calculated, coming in the aftermath of his own failed attempts to strike a deficit deal with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. In a gridlocked Congress, Obama is more likely to lose if he gets deeply involved.

The detachment allows him to set a clear dividing line for voters, one in which he can cast Republicans as protecting the rich. It's a stance that for now has political appeal. A number of recent public opinion polls show that up to two-thirds of Americans support raising taxes on individuals earning more than $1 million, and about half favor raising taxes on families earning at least $250,000 a year.

Even if some Republicans were disposed to negotiate a new deficit-reduction plan, Obama's sharpening of the lines between the parties could drive them away.

"If the president has decided that he is now in full campaign mode, that's going to make things very difficult in terms of finding common ground," said David Winston, a GOP strategist who advises House Republican leaders.

Eager to maintain pressure on Congress, Obama this week issued a veto threat against any efforts to change the automatic spending cuts triggered by the supercommittee's inaction.

Aides said Obama did not prefer those cuts, but he made it clear that the threat of such cuts was essential to get Congress to act.

"There will be no easy off-ramps on this one," Obama said Monday. "We need to keep the pressure up to compromise, not turn off the pressure. The only way these spending cuts will not take place is if Congress gets back to work and agrees on a balanced plan to reduce the deficit by at least $1.2 trillion."

Republicans pounced on the veto threat, portraying Obama as indifferent to deep Pentagon reductions.

Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, said he found the veto threat "reprehensible." He added: "If Leon Panetta is an honorable man, he should resign in protest."

But Democrats, and Obama in particular, don't feel as vulnerable on defense as the party once was. Aides point to foreign policy advances, the killing of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders, and the drawdown of forces from Iraq and Afghanistan as evidence that Obama has credibility on military issues.

But Carney this week also said that if critics worry about maintaining defense spending levels, "There is an easy way out here, which is be willing to ask the wealthiest Americans to pay a little bit more in order to achieve this comprehensive and balanced deficit-reduction plan."

Macy's NYC parade getting into monkey business

2011-11-23T21:49:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK (AP) — There'll be some monkeying around at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade when Paul Frank's sock puppet-inspired simian Julius makes its debut as a 41-foot-tall balloon in front of millions of spectators Thursday.

Sporting a jetpack, Julius joins 14 other giant balloons, including fellow newcomer B., a freakish creation from filmmaker Tim Burton. Video game character Sonic the Hedgehog returns after an 18-year absence.

The helium heavies were inflated Wednesday across the street from the western side of Central Park. Thousands of people, many families with children in tow, were drawn to the spectacle of the balloons lying as if asleep on the streets, held down by weighted nets.

Standing in front of the famed Snoopy balloon, lying on its side, 8-year-old Emilio Rios said he was glad that there was something to keep the helium giant from getting away.

"Otherwise, it would float up to space, and aliens would see it," he said. "They would be the ones with the parade."

Nine-year-old Lindsay Ravetz said she loved seeing all the characters.

"It's just, like, cool," she said.

It was cool even for many of the adults. Leslie McCarthy, who said she's over 60, has been attending the parade since she was a little girl. And the excitement of seeing the big balloons hasn't worn off.

"I used to think this parade was put on for me," the Brooklyn resident said.

Besides the popular giant helium balloons, Macy's parade also is expected to feature more than 40 other balloon creations, 27 floats, 800 clowns and 1,600 cheerleaders. Organizers say Mary J. Blige, Cee Lo Green, Avril Lavigne and the Muppets of Sesame Street will participate, some taking the stage at the end of the route in Herald Square and others performing on floats.

About 3.5 million people are expected to crowd the Manhattan parade route on Thursday, while an additional 50 million watch from home.

National Weather Service meteorologist Tim Morrin said a storm was expected to speed away by Thursday morning, leaving mostly sunny skies and 10 mph winds, well below city guidelines for grounding balloons.

Parade spokeswoman Holly Thomas said officials were monitoring the weather.

"The flight of our giant character balloons is based on real conditions about an hour before the parade begins and not advance forecasts," she said in an email. "There is no indication in any current weather models that the flight of these balloons will be affected."

The parade begins at 77th Street and heads south on Central Park West to Seventh Avenue, before moving to Sixth Avenue and ending at Macy's Herald Square.

The parade got its start in 1924 and included live animals such as camels, goats and elephants. It was not until 1927 that the live animals were replaced by giant helium balloons. The parade was suspended from 1942 to 1944 because rubber and helium were needed for World War II.

Since the beginning, the balloons have been based on popular cultural characters and holiday themes. Returning favorites this year include Buzz Lightyear, Clumsy Smurf, SpongeBob SquarePants and Kermit the Frog.

Also making their first appearances at this year's parade are a pair of bike-powered balloons, one featuring a bulldog character and an elf balloon designed by Queens resident Keith Lapinig, who won a nationwide contest.

All the balloons are created at Macy's Parade Studio, and each undergoes testing for flight patterns, aerodynamics, buoyancy and lift.

Yemen president of 33 years to quit amid uprising

2011-11-23T13:19:00.000-08:00

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Yemen's authoritarian President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed Wednesday to step down amid a fierce uprising to oust him after 33 years in power. The U.S. and its powerful Gulf allies pressed for the deal, concerned that a security collapse in the impoverished Arab nation was allowing an active al-Qaida franchise to gain a firmer foothold.

Saleh is the fourth Arab leader toppled in the wave of Arab Spring uprisings this year, after longtime dictators fell in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. The deal gives Saleh immunity from prosecution — contradicting a key demand of Yemen's opposition protesters.

Seated beside Saudi King Abdullah in the Saudi capital Riyadh, Saleh signed the U.S.-backed deal hammered out by his country's powerful Gulf Arab neighbors to transfer power within 30 days to his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. That will be followed by early presidential elections within 90 days.

He was dressed smartly in a dark business suit with a matching striped tie and handkerchief, and he smiled as he signed the deal, then clapped his hands a few times. He then spoke for a few minutes to members of the Saudi royal families and international diplomats, promising his ruling party "will be cooperative" in working with a new unity government.

"This disagreement for the last 10 months has had a big impact on Yemen in the realms of culture, development, politics, which led to a threat to national unity and destroyed what has been built in past years," he said.

Protesters camped out in a public square near Sanaa's university immediately rejected the deal, chanting, "No immunity for the killer." They vowed to continued their protests.

Saleh has clung to power despite the daily mass protests calling for his ouster and a June assassination attempt that left him badly wounded and forced him to travel to Saudi Arabia for more than three months of hospital treatment. He was burned over much of his body and had shards of wood embedded in his chest by the explosion that ripped through his palace mosque as he prayed.

Shortly before Saleh inked the agreement, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the president told him he will travel to New York for medical treatment after signing it. He didn't say when Saleh planned to arrive in New York, nor what treatment he would be seeking.

Since February, tens of thousands of Yemenis have protested in cities and towns across the nation, calling for democracy and the fall of Saleh's regime. The uprising has led to a security collapse, with armed tribesmen battling security forces in different regions and al-Qaida-linked militants stepping up operations in the country's restive south.

For months, the U.S. and other world powers pressured Saleh to agree to the power transfer proposal by the Gulf Cooperation Council, and he agreed then backed down several times before. All the while, the uprising raged, security and the economy deteriorated. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula grew more bold, even seizing some territory.

Even before the uprising began, Yemen was the poorest country in the Middle East, fractured and unstable with a government that had weak authority at best outside the capital Sanaa.

Security is particularly bad in southern Yemen, where al-Qaida militants — from one of the world's most active branches of the terror network — have taken control of entire towns, using the turmoil to strengthen their position.

The nation of some 25 million people is of strategic value to the United States and its Gulf Arab allies, particularly Saudi Arabia. It sits close to the major Gulf oil fields and overlooks key shipping lanes in the Red and Arabian seas.

Saleh addressed the country's troubles without mentioning the demands of protesters who have filled squares across Yemen calling for his ouster, often facing deadly crackdowns from his security forces.

He also struck out at those who strove to topple him, calling the protests the protests a "coup" and the bombing of his palace mosque that seriously wounded him in June "a scandal."

Saleh said his ruling party will be "among the principal participants" in the proposed national unity government that is to be formed between his party and opposition parties, who also signed the deal.

Protests leaders have rejected the Gulf proposal from the beginning, saying it ignores their principle demands, which include instituting democratic reforms and putting Saleh on trial. They say the opposition political parties that signed the deal are compromised by their long association with Saleh's government.

Sanaa protest organizer Walid al-Ammari said the deal "does not serve the interests of Yemen."

"We will continue to protest in the streets and public squares until we achieve all the goals that we set to achieve," he said.

The plan Saleh agreed to calls for a two-year transition period in which a national unity government will amend the constitution, work to restore security and hold a national dialogue on the country's future.

The unarmed protesters have held their ground with remarkable resilience, flocking to the streets of Sanaa and other Yemeni cities and towns to demand reforms and braving a violent crackdown by government forces that has killed hundreds.

Their uprising has at times been hijacked by Yemen's two traditional powers — the tribes and the military — further deepening the country's turmoil. Breakaway military units and tribal fighters have been battling in Sanaa with troops loyal to Saleh in fighting that has escalated in recent months.

m. sakhelashvili

Turkish PM apologizes over 1930s killings of Kurds

2011-11-23T07:39:00.000-08:00

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey's prime minister apologized Wednesday for the first time for the killings of nearly 14,000 people in a bombing and strafing campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion in the 1930s.

The apology by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was no big change of heart but a political tactic to tarnish the reputation of the opposition party, which was in power at that time. Still, comes at a tense time for relations between Turkey and its minority Kurds, and it sparked calls for Turkey to face another dark chapter of its history, the mass killings of Armenians in 1915.

Erdogan's government is currently fighting against autonomy-seeking Kurdish rebels and despite efforts to seek peace, says it is determined to crush the rebels if they don't lay down their arms.

The fighting has killed tens of thousands since it began in 1984, but it is only the latest of several uprisings by Kurds in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast.

Erdogan on Wednesday offered his apology for the killings of 13,806 people in the southeastern town of Dersim — now known as Tunceli — between 1936 and 1939. The apology came after a war of words between Erdogan and the leader of the main opposition party.

An opposition lawmaker, Huseyin Aygun, from the Republican People's Party said a dozen of his relatives were killed in Dersim and added that details about the suppression of the rebellion needed to become known.

Erdogan's apology appeared aimed at embarrassing opposition party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, whose party was in power at the time of the rebellion. Kilicdaroglu's family is also rooted in Tunceli.

"Am I going to apologize or are you?" Erdogan asked Kilicdaroglu in a televised speech. "If there is need for an apology on behalf of the state, if there is such a practice in the books, I would apologize and I am apologizing."

Some ruling party lawmakers called for a probe into the Dersim slayings, where troops of Turkey's newly founded republic brutally crushed Kurdish clans that rejected central authority.

"Instead of looking for a culprit, we must chose to face history," government legislator Mustafa Elitas said.

Mustafa Armagan, a historian and researcher, told state-run TRT television on Wednesday that the military's campaign in Dersim was followed by forced migrations and massacres as well as policies of assimilation.

The prime minister also said one of the main obstacles to Turkey's becoming "one of the world's most powerful states is that it can't face up to its past, history, taboos and fears."

Turkey is also under pressure to acknowledge other dark pages in its history, including the mass killings of Armenians in 1915, a special wealth tax imposed on Jews in the 1940s and attacks on its Greek minority in 1955.

The killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians and their forced migration under the Ottoman Empire has been the main barrier to Turkey's reconciliation with Armenia. Armenians have long fought to persuade other governments to call the killings a genocide. Turkey rejects the term genocide, contending the figures are inflated and saying there were many deaths on both sides as the Ottoman Empire collapsed during World War I.

Despite the calls for search for truth over the Dersim incidents, Erdogan's government has said it would only halt its current military drive if the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK disarm. However, the government has left the door open for future talks.

Turkey has long realized that it can't end the Kurdish rebel war through military measures alone, and the government has granted more cultural rights to the Kurdish minority such as broadcasts in the once-banned Kurdish language on state television.

But the rebels and Kurdish activists insist on autonomy and Kurdish education in schools, which Turkey fears could divide the country along ethnic lines.
m. sakhelashvili

Sen. John Thune endorses Mitt Romney

2011-11-23T07:37:00.000-08:00

South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune, who flirted with the idea of running for president earlier this year, announced Wednesday that he will endorse former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for president and will co-chair the campaign's National Advisory Council.

"Mitt Romney has shown throughout his life in the private sector, as leader of the Olympics, as governor, and in this campaign that he will not back down from difficult challenges," Thune said in a statement. "His plans to revitalize the private sector and restore our country's fiscal health are drawn from his 25-year career as a conservative businessman."

Thune will join Romney on the campaign trail in Des Moines, Iowa later today.

Medvedev: Russia may target missile defense sites

2011-11-23T06:07:00.000-08:00

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia will deploy new missiles aimed at U.S. missile defense sites in Europe if Washington goes ahead with the planned shield despite Russia's concerns, President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday.

Russia will station missiles in its westernmost Kaliningrad region and other areas if Russia and NATO fail to reach a deal on the U.S.-led missile defense plans, he said in a tough statement that seemed to be aimed at rallying domestic support.

Russia considers the plans for missile shields in Europe, including in Romania and Poland, to be a threat to its nuclear forces, but the Obama administration insists they are meant to fend off a potential threat from Iran.

Moscow has agreed to consider NATO's proposal last fall to cooperate on the missile shield, but the talks have been deadlocked over how the system should operate. Russia has insisted that the system should be run jointly, which NATO has rejected.

Medvedev also warned that Moscow may opt out of the New START arms control deal with the United States and halt other arms control talks if the U.S. proceeds. The Americans had hoped that the treaty would stimulate progress further ambitious arms control efforts, but such talks have stalled over tension on the missile plans.

"The United States and its NATO partners as of now aren't going to take our concerns about the European missile defense into account," a stern Medvedev said, adding that if the alliance continues to "stonewall" Russia it will take retaliatory action.

The U.S. plan calls for placing land- and sea-based radars and interceptors in European locations over the next decade and upgrading them over time.

Medvedev warned that Russia will deploy short-range Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, a Baltic Sea exclave bordering Poland, and place weapons in other areas in Russia's west and south to target U.S. missile defense sites.

Medvedev added that prospective Russian strategic nuclear missiles will be fitted with systems that would allow them to penetrate prospective missile defenses.

He and other Russian leaders have made similar threats in the past, and the latest statement appears to be aimed at domestic audience ahead of Dec. 4 parliamentary elections.

Medvedev, who is set to step down to allow Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reclaim the presidency in March's elections, leads the ruling United Russia party list in the parliamentary vote.

A sterm warning to the U.S. and NATO issued by Medvedev seems to be directed at rallying nationalist votes in the polls.

m. sakhelashvili

New NASA Rover to Look Deep into Mars' Past

2011-11-22T10:45:00.000-08:00

NASA's Curiosity rover will launch on Saturday (Nov. 26) toward a frigid and dry Mars, but the robot will likely spend much of its time staring deep into the Red Planet's warmer, wetter past, scientists say.

Curiosity, also known as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), aims to assess whether Mars is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life. The $2.5-billion rover will work hard to reconstruct and investigate ancient environments, because Martian life likely had a better shot at gaining a foothold long ago, researchers said.

"We've learned that Mars is a dynamic planet," Michael Meyer, lead scientist for NASA's Mars exploration program, told reporters today (Nov. 21). "We've learned that it has a history where it was warm and wet at the same time that life started here on Earth."

A changing Mars

Most scientists hunting for signs of life beyond Earth have focused on wet environments, because life on our planet is reliant on water. By this measure, modern Mars would seem a poor candidate, because its surface is mostly cold and dry today (although water ice does lurk beneath the red dirt).

But this was not always so. Many ancient riverbeds snake around the Red Planet's surface, and most scientists think they were carved by liquid water in the distant past. [7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars]

Various Mars orbiters and rovers have also spotted lots of clays on Mars, suggesting that water once persisted on the surface for extended periods of time.

"Clay minerals form from long-term chemical interaction of water with rock," said Bethany Ehlmann of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Caltech in Pasadena, Calif.

This wet period petered out around 3 billion years ago, and Mars became the dry, dusty planet we see today. The MSL team hopes Curiosity can help them understand more about this dramatic transition.

Going to Gale Crater

Curiosity is about the size of a Mini Cooper and weighs 1 ton — five times more than each of its Mars rover predecessors, the golf-cart-size twins Spirit and Opportunity.

The huge rover will use 10 different science instruments to search for organics — the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it — and characterize the Red Planet environment and how it has changed over time.

Curiosity is slated to touch down at a 90-mile-wide (150 kilometers) crater called Gale in August 2012. Clays and sulfates, which also betray past water activity, are plentiful at Gale, and a mysterious 3-mile-high (5 km) mountain rises from the crater's center.

The mountain is composed of sedimentary rock, meaning it grew from sediment deposited over billions of years. So Gale should be a great place to investigate Mars' past and present habitability, as well as the transition from wet to dry that occurred so long ago, researchers said.

"In one location, we can drive the rover through all these successive different environments and sample these various periods in the history of Mars," said MSL project scientist John Grotzinger of Caltech.

While Curiosity is tackling the Martian-life issue, MSL is not a life-detection mission. So even if microbial Martians are squirming about in the soils of Gale Crater, the rover is not likely to detect them.

"It can look at organics and characterize them, and make you more interested in Mars and what secrets it might hold," Meyer said. "But unless you're extremely lucky, it's not going to tell you whether or not you found evidence of life."

US to stop providing Russia data on Europe forces

2011-11-22T10:42:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States said Tuesday it will stop providing data to Russia on non-nuclear military forces in Europe, a sign the Obama administration is growing frustrated at the pace of arms control negotiations with Moscow.

The move follows failed talks aimed at reviving a treaty that governs the number and position of troops and conventional weapons that are stationed in Europe.

In 2007, Russia suspended its observance of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. But the United States and allies had continued to meet the treaty's obligations by providing Russia with data on their forces.

The United States decided to halt that cooperation because the talks with Russia had dragged on too long. European allies, who are also signatories to the CFE treaty, were also expected to stop sharing data with Russia.

In a statement, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the United States is prepared to resume data exchange with Russia, if Moscow meets itstreaty obligations.

Nuland later said that she hoped the move would spur Russia, four years after suspension of the pact.

"We think it's important to take some countermeasures vis-a-vis Russia and maybe this will crystalize the mind in terms of our ability to get back to the table," she said.

The Obama administration has made improving relations with Russia a priority and has seen some success, including the ratification of a major new nuclear arms control treaty that came into force this year.

The administration had hoped that treaty, known as New Start, would stimulate progress on a more ambitious arms control agenda with Russia. But talks have stalled amid tensions over U.S. missile defense plans in Europe.

The suspension of data exchange is mostly symbolic because the United States and its allies will continue to provide the same information to other signatories of the treaty, including Russia's allies, like Belarus, which could pass it back to Russia.

The treaty, which was signed in 1990, limits the number of tanks, aircraft and other heavy non-nuclear weapons that could be deployed west of the Ural Mountains — the edge of European Russia. A new revised version was signed in 1999, but NATO countries declined to ratify it.

The West had insisted that Russia must honor a promise to pull out its troops from Georgia and the breakaway region of Trans-Dniester in Moldova before they would ratify the new version.

Russia has said the original treaty became obsolete after several former Soviet republics and satellite nations joined NATO. Former President Vladimir Putin, who now serves as a powerful prime minister, has said that the CFE treaty limited the nation's ability to respond to threats on its own territory

Tornado still takes heavy toll on Joplin, six months later

2011-11-22T10:39:00.001-08:00

JOPLIN, Mo (Reuters) - New houses, stores and office buildings are popping up from a tornado's ruins, but Rachael Lasley can only see the emptiness.

"I've lived my whole life here and it's not like Joplin anymore," Lasley, 36, said as she shielded her face from a cold wind whipping around a trailer park that is her temporary home. "My childhood memories are gone -- my elementary school, the playground, restaurants."

Joplin, Missouri on Tuesday observes the sixth-month anniversary of the EF-5 tornado May 22 that killed 161 people and destroyed some 900 buildings. The city is sponsoring a memorial service to honor victims and thank hundreds of volunteers who helped clean up the city.

While many in Joplin strike an upbeat tone about recovery, people who lost homes and loved ones still struggle mightily with their emotions and the upheaval in their lives.

Thousands of residents take part in state-sponsored counseling programs, including about one-third of the 7,700 public school students, officials said.

Stresses caused by the tornado, such as cramped or shared living space and financial hardships, have contributed to a 30 percent jump in cases of domestic violence and child abuse since the tornado, compared to a year ago, social service agencies report.

The mental health community is reaching out with billboards that read "Don't Let One Disaster Lead to Another."

Many families have moved multiple times since the tornado.

Christina Lackey, her husband and two small children stayed in a relative's living room, then a hotel and now rent a house outside town while their house is rebuilt. But they worry that ongoing construction delays will prevent them from moving before insurance stops covering their rent in March.

"It's real frustrating because it's going to take so long to get our lives put back together," Lackey said.

She said their 3 1/2 year old daughter still has scary memories of the tornado. On the 4th of July, for instance, fireworks "freaked her out," Lackey said.

Lisa Orem, director of special services for Joplin schools, said even children who did not lose a home in the tornado are shaken by the loss of places they knew so well.

Dannielle Robertson copes with the loss of her home and her mother, Vicki Robertson, 66, who died when the tornado slammed into her duplex. Robertson lives in what residents call "FEMAville," a barracks-like modular home park in a flat, open space in the northern part of Joplin. Homes were built by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The park has been the scene of several meth lab busts and violent crimes, Robertson said. She is trying to move but rental property is scarce and rent is rising out of the price range of a lot of people, she said.

Only recently, Robertson said, has she been able to drive through once-familiar parts of Joplin without crying. "To see those vast miles of empty space, it's so sad," she said.

Even new buildings are reminders of that awful day. Michael Madl lost a friend, Charlie Gaudsmith, 21, when the tornado tore through Wal-Mart while he was shopping. The new Wal-Mart opened earlier this month.

"I'd like to go there, but emotionally I don't think I could," Robertson said. He has found strength since the tornado by volunteering much of his time helping pack donated supplies for victims.

One of the most wrenching deaths that day occurred when the tornado pulled 18-year-old Will Norton out of the sunroof of his destroyed SUV two blocks from his home. His father, Mark Norton, was in the passenger seat but survived.

The Nortons were returning from high school graduation ceremonies when the tornado hit. Will Norton is talked about often, said a friend, Emma Cox. He was a popular kid, but never into cliques, she said.

"He had a Halloween party and invited everybody," Cox said.

Mark Norton said he has taken solace in the kind things people have said about Will, including one woman who said her introverted son decided to be more outgoing and involved in his first year of college because of Will's death.

"He realized life can be short and you can't waste years," Norton said.

The memorial service Tuesday is planned in Cunningham Park, where 161 trees will eventually be planted in memory of each tornado victim. Relatives of all victims have been invited to the service.

Robertson said the tree for each victim will be a symbol of renewal.

"It's part of the rebuilding of Joplin," she said. "A tree will be standing. That's important."

(Writing and reporting by Kevin Murphy; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Greg McCune)

Wall Street flat on debt worries; Fed minutes on tap

2011-11-22T10:38:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were little changed in a choppy session on Tuesday as markets reacted to headlines about Europe'sdebt crisis and digested data showing the U.S. economy grew more slowly than previously thought.

The U.S. economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the third quarter, down from the government's prior estimate of 2.5 percent one month ago.

Stocks rebounded from earlier lows after the International Monetary Fund said it strengthened lending tools and introduced a six-month liquidity line, throwing help to countries at risk from the euro zone crisis.

The Federal Open Market Committee releases minutes from its November 1-2 meeting at 2 p.m. (1900 GMT).

Worries about debt problems in the United States and Europe pushed the benchmark S&P 500 down more than 5 percent over the past week.

"Maybe some things are calming down in Europe. That was the reason for yesterday's selloff. It may be people kind of reassessing their reaction to Europe news and just coming back to basically the U.S. numbers having been pretty decent for about a month now," said Peter Jankovskis, co-chief investment officer at OakBrook Investments LLC in Lisle, Illinois.

"A lot will depend on the FOMC minutes that come out later today."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> dropped 2.27 points, or 0.02 percent, to 11,545.04. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.SPX> gained 1.23 points, or 0.10 percent, to 1,194.21. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> added 4.03 points, or 0.16 percent, to 2,527.17.

Spain's short-term borrowing costs hit a 14-year high on Tuesday as political uncertainty about a solution to the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis punished another vulnerable southern European country.

Late Monday, the two leaders of a special U.S. congressional committee said the panel failed to reach a deal on reducing government deficits. Investors are worried the stalemate will make it more difficult to pass extensions of measures like payroll tax cuts that could help stimulate the economy.

The S&P has fallen through a key support level at 1,200 but again managed to hold near 1,187, seen as the next technical support, representing the 61.8 percent retracement of the 2011 high to low.

Hewlett-Packard Co dropped 3.3 percent to $25.97 as the worst performer on the Dow after the computer and printer maker gave a 2012 profit outlook that was below consensus late Monday.

Trading volume is likely to be thin this week as global uncertainties and the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday keep many investors on the sidelines.

Campbell Soup Co reported first-quarter earnings that beat expectations while sales were slightly below consensus, sending the stock down 4.5 percent to $32.11.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Korean Lawmakers Survive Tear Gas to Pass Bill

2011-11-22T10:37:00.003-08:00

SEOUL - South Korea’s parliament ratified a long-stalled, free-trade agreement with the United States today amid brawling and shouting by some members opposing the pact, including a lawmaker who threw a tear gas canister at the speaker’s podium.

After an evacuation of hundreds, the controversial deal passed 151-7, with most opposition members absent. The ruling Grand National Party (GNP) had called a surprise parliamentary session in order to push it through, taking advantage of its majority status.

Kim Sun-Dong, a member of the minority Democratic Labor Party who set off the canister, repeatedly shouted “No to FTA (Free Trade Agreement)!” and “GNP, aren’t you afraid of history and the people,” as security guards wrestled him out of the floor. Legislators coughed and wiped tears as they rammed the free-trade deal through.

Sledge hammers, water hoses and electric saws were among the items used by opposition members to protest in the past, but this is the first in history tear gas was detonated.

The deal is expected to boost South Korean exports of automobile-related parts, electronics, and textiles, according to economists. But agriculture, fisheries, and chemicals are among the industries facing future disadvantage.

It is the biggest U.S. trade pact since the 1994 North America Free Trade Agreement and was approved by the U.S. Congress last month.

Seoyoung Cho and Sooyun Yum contributed to this article.

NBA players move legal fight to Minnesota

2011-11-22T10:37:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (AP) — After filing two separate antitrust lawsuits against the league in different states, NBA players are consolidating their efforts and have turned to the courts in Minnesota as their chosen venue.

A group of named plaintiffs including Carmelo Anthony, Steve Nash and Kevin Durant filed an amended federal lawsuit against the league in Minnesota on Monday, hoping the courts there will be as favorable to them as they have been to NFL players in the past.

The locked-out players filed class-action antitrust suits against the league last Tuesday in California and Minnesota. The California complaint was withdrawn Monday.

"The likelihood was we'd get a faster result in Minnesota than California," players' lawyer David Boies said. "I think the result would be the same."

NBA owners locked out the players July 1, and the labor strife between the two sides has forced games to be canceled through Dec. 15.

"This is consistent with Mr. Boies' inappropriate shopping for a forum that he can only hope will be friendlier to his baseless legal claims," Rick Buchanan, NBA executive vice president and general counsel, said in a statement.

Federal court in Minnesota was the venue for all NFL labor disputes that reached the courts for the past two decades. The NFL players enjoyed several victories over the owners there, most recently when U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson issued a temporary injunction this summer that lifted the NFL's owner-imposed lockout. That decision was stayed and eventually overturned on appeal by the 8th Circuit in St. Louis.

Boies insisted the only reason to pick Minnesota was to speed up the process. The first case management conference in California had been scheduled for March 9, although the sides could have requested the date to be moved up. Boies expected a hearing in Minnesota next month.

"The docket is less congested there," he said. "They have a good track record of handling these kind of cases very promptly."

The owners had already filed a lawsuit of their own in the Southern District of New York, a venue that has issued several NBA-friendly rulings over the years, and could file a motion to have the Minnesota case moved there.

After the two sides were unable to reach an accord, the players disbanded the union last week. That set the stage for the increasingly bitter labor dispute to move from the negotiating table to the courtroom, which could jeopardize the entire 2011-12 season.

Disbanding the union allowed the players to file an antitrust lawsuit against the league, a move the NFL players also used. Chauncey Billups, Rajon Rondo, Caron Butler, Baron Davis, Ben Gordon, Kawhi Leonard, Leon Powe, Anthony Randolph, Sebastian Telfair, Anthony Tolliver and Derrick Williams are the other named plaintiffs in the Minnesota lawsuit. The consolidated complaint added some players not in either of the original two, including Nash.

"Although the NBPA made concession after concession, including concessions that would cost its members more than one billion dollars over a six-year period, the NBA essentially refused to negotiate its basic 2007 demands, refusing to back off its demand for large salary reductions and harsh player restraints," the lawsuit alleges.

The NBA must submit its response by Dec. 5. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz.

Boies said that if there had been time to talk to all the players and lawyers initially, only one lawsuit would have been filed in the first place.

"It was a desire to get things moving. It was not a competition," he said of the two suits. "This was not anything in which people were going different directions."

The courts would have consolidated the suits anyway, so doing it now saves time. And with the first month and a half of the season already canceled, time is of the essence.

Boies repeated that the players' side would prefer to reach a settlement instead of taking the litigation to its conclusion. But there was no indication that either side would be contacting the other anytime soon.

"In the face of somebody saying, 'I don't want to talk to you. We've got an offer — take it or leave it. This is an ultimatum. We're going to make no more proposals,' and somebody saying, 'This is baseless; it ought to go away,'" Boies said, "that's a waste of time to make a telephone call."

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AP Sports Writer Jon Krawczynski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.

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Follow Rachel Cohen at http://twitter.com/RachelCohenAP.

Int'l court prosecutor in Libya for trial talks

2011-11-22T10:36:00.003-08:00

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — The International Criminal Court's prosecutor was in Tripoli for talks Tuesday with Libyan authorities about their plans to put on trial Moammar Gadhafi's son and one-time heir apparent Seif al-Islam Gadhafi.

Revolutionary fighters captured Seif al-Islam Saturday in southern Libya, and he is being held by fighters in the mountain town of Zintan, southwest of the capital. A local spokesman for Libya's new leadership says former intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi also was captured over the weekend and is being held in the southern city of Sabha.

The ICC indicted the two men along with Gadhafi in June for unleashing a campaign of murder and torture to suppress the uprising against the Gadhafi regime that broke out in mid-February. Libya's new leaders have said they will try Seif al-Islam at home and not hand him over to the Hague court.

The court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said in a statement Tuesday before his arrival in Tripoli that Seif al-Islam and al-Senoussi "must face justice."

Rights groups have called on Libya to hand both men over for trial in The Hague, and Moreno-Ocampo stressed that even if Libyans want to try the two men in Libya they must still cooperate with the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.

Libya is obliged by a Security Council resolution to work with the court, but that does not necessarily preclude a trial in Libya. If the National Transitional Council can convince judges in The Hague that the country has a functioning legal system that will give Seif al-Islam and al-Senoussi a fair trial on substantially the same charges as Moreno-Ocampo filed, then the ICC could declare Moreno-Ocampo's case inadmissible and turn it over to Libya.

"I will talk to the national authorities and seek information about proposed national proceedings in order to assist us in analyzing the admissibility of the case against Seif Gadhafi and Abdullah al-Senoussi and to understand their plans moving ahead," Moreno-Ocampo said in a statement. "Their arrest is a crucial step in bringing to justice those most responsible for crimes committed in Libya."

The country's new leaders have not yet established a functioning court system, and have been struggling to put together a new transitional government since Gadhafi's fall. Later Tuesday, interim prime minister Abdurrahim el-Keib was expected to announce the members of his new Cabinet.

Seif al-Islam, who was once the face of reform in Libya and who led his father's drive to emerge from pariah status over the last decade, was captured Saturday by fighters from the small western mountain town of Zintan who had tracked him to the desert in the south of the country. He was then flown to Zintan, 85 miles (150 kilometers) southwest of Tripoli, where he remains in a secret location.

In new video footage taken the day of his capture and obtained by The Associated Press, Seif al-Islam warns his captors that Libya's regions that united to oust Gadhafi will turn against each other "in a couple of months or maximum one year," suggesting the country will descend into infighting.

There have been signs in recent months of growing tensions among Libya's powerful regions, and even after Gadhafi's fall in August and after his capture and killing in October, the country's numerous and sometime competing revolutionary factions have refused to disarm, raising fears of new violence and instability. The regions, backed by bands of armed fighters, are able to act autonomously, even on issues of the highest national interest.

In the video, revolutionary fighters stand around Seif al-Islam, who is seated in a green chair. Three of his fingers are heavily bandaged, and he occasionally winces from the pain.

UC Davis students put up new encampment

2011-11-22T10:36:00.001-08:00

DAVIS, Calif. (AP) — Students have again put up tents near the site where University of California, Davis police used pepper spray on seated protesters in a conflict that has sparked outrage and calls for the school chancellor's resignation.

The encampment was again erected Monday, hours after the campus police chief was put on administrative leave and the chancellor was shouted down at a demonstration while trying to apologize for the incident that happened at a protest held Friday in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Two officers also were placed on administrative leave after the students were sprayed.

University spokeswoman Claudia Morain said the school was monitoring the protest and did not say whether the students would be allowed to camp overnight. She said the school will take action "step by step" to balance campus security with people's right to protest.

Chancellor Linda Katehi made a brief appearance, facing students, faculty and community members chanting slogans and pressing for her to step down.

"I'm here to apologize. I feel horrible for what happened Friday," Katehi told the crowd. "If you think you don't want to be students of the university we had on Friday, I'm just telling you, I don't want to be the chancellor of the university we had on Friday."

She asked the assembly to work with her as she strives to earn the trust of the campus. Then, as the demonstrators yelled at her to step down, staff members escorted Katehi away to a car.

University officials and campus police have been the target of angry reprisals since widely circulated videos showed riot police dousing pepper spray on a row of students while they were sitting passively on the ground with their arms linked.

Meanwhile, demonstrators at the University of California, Berkeley, pledged to sleep overnight at Sproul Plaza, though they did not plan to set up tents. A heat lamp was set up in the plaza, and student protesters called the demonstration a "pajama party" rather than an encampment.

University of California President Mark G. Yudof called the chancellors of all 10 campuses and reminded them of the right to protest peacefully.

"We cannot let this happen again," he said, according to a statement from the president's office.

On Sunday, Katehi called on the Yolo County district attorney's office to investigate the police department's use of force.

With no uniformed officers in attendance, students who were pepper-sprayed opened Monday's protest, saying they now feel unsafe on campus.

Mechanical engineering student David Buscho, 22, of San Rafael, described being paralyzed with fear as he felt the spray sting "like hot glass."

"I had my arms around my girlfriend. I just kissed her on the forehead and then he sprayed us," he said. "Immediately we were blinded. ... He just sprayed us again and again and we were completely powerless to do anything."

Nine students hit by pepper spray were treated at the scene, two were taken to hospitals and later released, university officials said. Ten people were arrested.

Meanwhile, UC Davis police Chief Annette Spicuzza and two officers have been placed on administrative leave.

Before the assembly broke up, the crowd voted to hold a campus-wide strike Nov. 28 to coincide with a meeting of the University of California governing board.

The UC Davis faculty association has called for Katehi's resignation, saying there had been a "gross failure of leadership."

Yudof said Sunday that he was "appalled" by images of protesters being doused with pepper spray and plans an assessment of law enforcement procedures on all 10 campuses.

Katehi, speaking Monday morning on KQED Radio, said she had not authorized officers to use pepper spray and called it a "horrific incident." She said she takes full responsibility but will not step down.

"They were not supposed to use force; it was never called for," she said. "They were not supposed to limit the students from having the rally, from congregating to express their anger and frustration."

She has said she plans to appoint a task force of students, staff and faculty to investigate the incident and report back to her within 30 days.

South Africa's assembly passes 'state secrets' law

2011-11-22T10:34:00.000-08:00

Johannesburg (CNN) -- South Africa's National Assembly passed legislation Tuesday that critics say is a threat to journalistic freedom and anti-corruption efforts.
Members of parliament passed the Protection of State Information bill by a vote of 229-107, with two abstentions. The bill now moves to the National Council of Provinces for approval, and many groups are already preparing to challenge its constitutionality in the country's courts.
Protesters dressed in black gathered in several cities ahead of the vote, while newspaper headlines screamed "Black day for press freedom" and the media declared the day "Black Tuesday" -- a reference to what was known as "Black Wednesday" in 1977, when the country's apartheid government banned two newspapers and several anti-apartheid groups.
The law makes obtaining, leaking or communicating classified state information punishable by a prison sentence of up to 25 years. It also allows all federal and local officials to classify any document as secret. Without a public interest defense clause in the legislation, some worry it will criminalize investigative journalism.
"In its current form, the bill represents an attack on the principles of open democracy that are deeply embedded in our Constitution and our national life," an editorial in The Star newspaper reads.
In a statement after the vote, ANC spokesman Keith Khoza said the bill has "nothing to do with the muzzling of the media and the right to free expression."
"There has been strong opposition (to the measure) as it does not contain a public interest clause, but if it had been included, it would have nullified the whole act," Khoza said. "If people want access to information legitimately then they can access it through the Access of Information Act."
That act, Khoza said, is not nullified by the state secrets bill.
"If one can demonstrate it is in the public interest and that it will not affect of the function of the state then that information can be accessed," he explained.
"This bill is important to the country. It provides for the classification of confidential information by the security arm of the state. We believe that any country reserves the right to keep state information classified and peoples' information classified, especially information regarded as confidential," Khoza said.
Nobel laureates Desmond Tutu and Nadine Gordimer are among the bill's most prominent critics. Gordimer, an anti-apartheid activist and personal friend of former President Nelson Mandela, has accused the ruling African National Congress (ANC) of taking South Africa beyond apartheid.
"People have fought and died to gain the opportunity for a better life, which is ruined and dirtied by corruption," she said.
Amnesty International, in a statement before the measure passed the National Assembly, said it would consider journalists and whistleblowers arrested under the law as "prisoners of conscience."
"This fatally flawed bill, which is totally at odds with the South African constitution, takes us right back to the apartheid-era restrictions on free speech," said Noel Kututwa, Amnesty International's deputy director for Africa, in a statement Monday.
Speaking to CNN days ahead of the vote, former finance minister and current National Planning Minister Trevor Manuel defended the law.
"There isn't a single country in the world that runs its business without secrets. I can't understand why there is an expectation in the minds of some people in the media for South Africa to behave like silly clowns. We have the responsibility to govern this country and don't ask us to give up that responsibility," he said.
Critics say there's a good deal of corruption in South Africa. Recently two ministers were fired and the country's police chief was suspended, accused of misappropriating millions of dollars. Their actions were exposed by the media.
"A public interest clause is crucial in ensuring that the bill does not become an instrument to suppress information that may reveal wrongdoing," the Star Newspaper's editorial said.
And in what has been called a preview of what's to come under the law, presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj has pressed charges against two investigative journalists working for the weekly paper the Mail & Guardian. The newspaper claims to have uncovered evidence that Maharaj illegally benefited from the country's multi-billion dollar arms procurement contract, but says it couldn't publish that information after Maharaj threatened legal action against the paper for allegedly obtaining the information illegally. The Mail & Guardian printed the story with a "censored" banner across the front page and blackened out details it says are proof of wrong-doing.
In 2009, the ANC disbanded an elite investigative unit that probed various politicians for corruption, including President Jacob Zuma. While Zuma's case was dropped, the country's former police chief, Jackie Selebi, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for corruption. He is appealing his sentence.

Mitt Romney’s first 2012 TV ad about economy ripped by Democrats, Team Obama as ‘misleading’ Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/mitt-romney-2012-tv-ad-economy-ripped-democrats-team-obama-misleading-article-1.981253#ixzz1eSbqx7u0

2011-11-22T10:32:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney has yet to win a single GOP primary vote yet, but he's already launching his general election attack on President Obama, with a vicious -- and some say deceitful -- new ad.

The 60-second spot - Romney's first of the 2012 presidential campaign-shows Obama during a stop in New Hampshire in 2008 as ominous music plays in the background.

The text "he promised he would fix the economy," and "he failed" then appear on the screen.

At one point, Obama is heard saying "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

Although it sounds Obama is talking about his chances of winning in 2012, the then-Senator was actually quoting an aide from Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008.

Obama's reelection campaign spokesman Ben Labolt described the ad to Huffington Post as "a deceitful and dishonest attack."

The Democratic National Committee also ripped the ad — airing in New Hampshire starting Tuesday — as misleading.

Team Romney argues the quote was used intentionally and acknowledged in an email to supporters that it was Obama's rival who used it.

"Three years ago, candidate Barack Obama mocked his opponent's campaign for saying, 'If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose,' " said Romney communications director Gail Gitcho.

"Now, the tables have turned. ... President Obama and his team don't want to talk about the economy and have tried to distract voters from his abysmal economic record."

The attribution, however, is not disclosed in the TV spot.

The video release comes the same day Obama makes a pit stop in the Granite State. He's expected to urge Congress to extend payroll tax cuts.

Romney also ran ads ripping Obama in several New Hampshire newspapers on Tuesday, writing "I will be blunt. Your policies have failed."

Egypt Military Pledges Faster Handover to Civilian Rule

2011-11-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

CAIRO — The ruling military council agreed on Tuesday to speed up the transition to civilian rule in a deal made with Islamist groups but which seemed unlikely to satisfy the demands of liberal parties and the more than 100,000 protesters who gathered in the center of the capital to demand an immediate transfer of power.

The agreement came after the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces met with representatives of theMuslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups in a session that was boycotted by most other political parties. The deal called for a new constitution and a presidential election no later than next June, as well as a new civilian cabinet to be led by a technocrat prime minister rather than a politician.

Under the agreement, the first round of elections for a national assembly would go ahead as scheduled on Monday, a major goal of the Brotherhood, which stands to win a large share of the seats. But it would also leave the civilian government reporting to the military — effectively a continuation of what amounts to martial law in civilian clothes — until next June.

With the police crackdown galvanizing anger at what protesters see as the military council’s increasingly open play for long-term political power, it was unclear whether any credible civilian leader would take the job of prime minister if the government remained subordinate to the military.

“No one is going to accept another civilian government micromanaged” by the military commanders, said Hossam Bahgat, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

Referring to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces by its initials, Islam Lotfy, a onetime leader of the Muslim Brotherhood youth movement, said: “The people will not be happy if the SCAF just give them some painkillers.” Mr. Lotfy was among the instigators of the revolution; he was later expelled from the Brotherhood for starting a more centrist breakaway political party with other young Brothers.

“It may be the solution will be the SCAF delegating responsibilities to a new cabinet with full authority to manage the country,” he said.

Protesters in Tahrir Square in central Cairo battled with the police in nearby streets for the fourth straight day, braving an increasingly lethal crackdown in what seemed to be a leaderless expression of rage. The brutal treatment of the protesters prompted the resignation of the first civilian cabinet, which the military council accepted on Tuesday.

Each day the crowds have grown at the epicenter of Egyptian resistance — first to the former president, Hosni Mubarak, ousted in February and now to the military commanders who replaced him — and the violence has mounted as well.

Intense skirmishes continued on the main avenue leading to the Interior Ministry. Though the security forces could have reached the square from other streets and the protesters could have attacked the Interior Ministry from other directions as well, each side continued to hammer the other — protesters with rocks, the security forces with tear gas that wafted back through the square — along the same charred and pockmarked block.

Many of the protesters wore green face masks, of the type used by medics, to try to filter tear gas fired by security forces in the ebb and flow of the fighting along streets littered with debris. Both sides sought to reinforce makeshift barricades.

A reporter for Al Jazeera held up a spent tear-gas canister to a camera and said its markings said it was manufactured in the United States. But the words were not easily legible to viewers.

By midday, the crowd in Tahrir Square had swelled to many tens of thousands — far larger than at the same time on previous days.

A new banner across the center of the square declared, “This land is owned by the Egyptian people.” Tents and a field clinic to treat injured protesters were being set up nearby.

The fighting on Tuesday came as criticism of the military spread beyond Egypt’s borders. In a statement, Amnesty International said the ruling commanders had “been responsible for a catalog of abuses which in some cases exceeds the record of Hosni Mubarak.”

The military had been seen as the linchpin of the political transition after the enforced departure of Mr. Mubarak.

It was the institution Islamists hoped would steer the country to early elections that they were poised to dominate. Liberals regarded it as a hedge against Islamist power. And the Obama administration considered it a partner that it hoped would help secure American interests.

But the violent crackdown and the resignation of the civilian cabinet were blows to the tenuous legitimacy of the ruling military council.

Reeling from the swift collapse of the military’s authority, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamist group, urged protesters to show restraint or risk delaying the elections.

Many activists, though, were talking about renewed signs of divisions inside the Muslim Brotherhood.

Reopening a split that emerged at the start of the revolution in January, many of the younger members of the group were said to be coming to the square in defiance of their elders’ orders to stay home in order to avoid upsetting the elections.

“Just like in January, I think the older leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood will eventually follow as well,” said Mr. Bahgat of the Personal Rights Initiative.

Referring to the same quandary, Mr. Lotfy, the onetime leader of the Brotherhood youth. said young Brotherhood followers “will have to take our own decision between what the organization wants and what our conscience tells us to do.”

But other Islamists, some more conservative and others more moderate, joined secular parties in calling for the protest Tuesday to demand that the military hand power to a civilian authority.

In the report by Amnesty International, drawn up before the paroxysm of violence began in Cairo and other cities on Saturday, Philip Luther, an Amnesty official, said military rulers had “continued the tradition of repressive rule” which the anti-Mubarak protests had sought to end.

“Those who have challenged or criticized the military council — like demonstrators, journalists, bloggers, striking workers — have been ruthlessly suppressed, in an attempt at silencing their voices,” he said. Mr. Luther said the human rights “balance sheet” of the military rulers showed that “the aims and aspirations” of the anti-Mubarak protests had been crushed.

“The brutal and heavy-handed response to protests in the last few days bears all the hallmarks of the Mubarak era,” he said.

Victoria Nuland, a spokeswoman for the State Department, called the violence “deplorable” and urged that elections take place on schedule.

The Health Ministry said at least 23 people had died in the four days of violent clashes, and several doctors treating patients at a field clinic and nearby hospital said several had been killed by live ammunition, contrary to denials by the Interior Ministry. More than 1,500 people have been seriously injured in the clashes, the Health Ministry said. Two more people died in protest at Ismailiyah on the Suez Canal on Monday, news reports said.

Though all the political leaders called for elections to begin on schedule next week, a growing number acknowledged privately that the violence was likely to force their delay — potentially adding to the unrest. And even as the political leaders unified around the demands, new divisions emerged among them over how the military might begin to hand over power.

Some liberal groups, led by the former diplomat and presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei, called for the military council to give up power immediately to a civilian “government of national rescue.” Other liberals said they sought only the replacement of the current cabinet with a new civilian team with more power to make decisions independently of the council.

Mr. Hamzawy, the founder of a new liberal party and a parliamentary candidate well positioned for a seat from an upscale district of Cairo, said in another Twitter message that he still favored holding elections before picking a new national unity government that would continue to govern under the military council, but called for replacing the current prime minister, Essam Sharaf.

“I’m still convinced that elections are the way to transfer power and I changed my position along with others to demand Sharaf’s dismissal after yesterday’s statement,” he said.

In the square, some protesters worried about who might succeed the military council and its leader, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, even as they chanted for his ouster.

“People don’t want military rule, and they won’t leave here until the field marshal goes too,” said Omar Tareq, 18, a university student from the province of Qalyoubeya. “But I don’t really know what happens if he does. Who will take hold of the country?”