World's Latest News

Saudi princess tried to leave hotel without paying

2012-06-02T11:17:00.003-07:00

A Saudi princess was caught trying to leave the Shangri-La hotel in Paris without settling a six million euro ($7.4 million) bill for her rooms, police said Saturday, confirming a report in the daily Le Parisien. Maha al-Sudani, the former wife of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Nayef ben Abdel Aziz, tried to walk out on 3:30 am Thursday without paying for her suite and those of her 60-strong entourage, prompting staff to call in police, Le Parisien reported. The Saudi Arabian ambassador was also contacted during the incident, added Le Parisien, which noted that Sudani enjoys diplomatic immunity. When contacted by AFP, the luxury hotel's director Alain Borgers said that that are "no problems" with its clients and "no unpaid bills" at the moment. The princess has already had previous run-ins over unpaid bills. In 2009, fashion chain Key Largo went to court to obtain 89,000 euros owed by the princess.

Egypt's Mubarak sentenced to life in prison

2012-06-02T11:15:00.000-07:00

CAIRO (AP) — Hosni Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison Saturday for failing to stop the killing of protesters during the uprising that forced him from power last year. The ousted president and his sons were acquitted of corruption in a mixed verdict that swiftly provoked a new wave of anger on Egypt's streets.

By dusk, thousands filled Cairo's central Tahrir Square, the heart of last year's uprising, in a demonstration called by revolutionary groups and the powerful Muslim Brotherhood to vent anger over the acquittals.
After the sentencing, the 84-year old Mubarak suffered a "health crisis" on a helicopter flight to a Cairo prison hospital, according to security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. One state media report said it was a heart attack, but that could not immediately be confirmed.
The officials said Mubarak cried in protest and resisted leaving the helicopter that took him to a prison hospital for the first time since he was detained in April 2011. They said the former leader insisted he be flown to the military hospital on the outskirts of Cairo where he was held during the trial. Mubarak finally left the chopper and moved to the Torah prison hospital more than two hours after the helicopter landed there.
Earlier, Mubarak sat stone-faced and frowning in the courtroom's metal defendants' cage while judge Ahmed Rifaat read out the conviction and sentence against him, showing no emotion with his eyes concealed by dark sunglasses. His sons Gamal and Alaa looked nervous but also did not react to either the conviction of their father or their own acquittals.
Rifaat opened the session with an indictment of Mubarak's regime that expressed deep sympathy for the uprising 15 months ago.
"The people released a collective sigh of relief after a nightmare that did not, as is customary, last for a night, but for almost 30 black, black, black years — darkness that resembled a winter night," he said.
"They did not seek a luxurious life or to sit atop the world, but asked their politicians, rulers who sat on the throne of opulence, wealth and power to give them bread and clear water to satisfy their hunger and quench their thirst and to be in a home that shelters their families and the sons of the nation far from the rotten slums," he said. "They were chanting 'peaceful, peaceful' with their mouths while their stomachs were empty and their strength was failing. ... They screamed ... 'rescue us and pull us from the torture of poverty and humiliation.'"
One of the uprising's key pro-democracy groups, April 6, rejected the verdict, saying Rifaat at once paid homage to the protesters and ignored the grief of the families of those killed by acquitting the top police commanders.
"We will continue to cleanse Egypt from corruption," the group said.
Mubarak and his former Interior Minister Habib el-Adly, who was in charge of the police and other security forces at the time of the uprising, were convicted of failing to act to stop the killings during the opening days of the revolt, when the bulk of protesters died. El-Adly also received a life sentence.
Mubarak and his two sons were acquitted of corruption charges, along with a family friend who is on the run.
The charges related to killing protesters carried a possible death sentence that the judge chose not to impose, opting instead to send Mubarak to prison for the rest of his life.
But the case against Mubarak, his sons, ex-security chief and six of his top aides was very limited in scope, focusing only on the first few days of the uprising and one narrow corruption case.
It did not go a long way to satisfy demands of the uprising for a full accountability of wrongdoing under Mubarak's three-decade rule when he enforced authoritarian rule with a loyal and brutal police force and a coterie of businessmen linked to the regime who amassed wealth while tens of millions lived in abject poverty.
Six top police aides on trial in the same case were acquitted, absolving the only other representatives of Mubarak's hated security forces aside from el-Adly. It was a stark reminder that though the head has been removed — el-Adly — the body of the security forces is largely untouched. There has been no genuine reform or purge and many of the senior security officials in charge during the uprising and the Mubarak regime continue to go to work every day at their old jobs. In many ways, the old system remains in place.
The military has not shown a will for vigorously prosecuting the old regime. And that is something that neither of the two candidates in this month's presidential runoff vote may have the political will or the muscle to change.
"Justice was not served," said Ramadan Ahmed, whose son was killed on Jan. 28 last year. "This is a sham," he said outside the courthouse, a lecture hall in a police academy that once bore Mubarak's name.
U.S.-based Human Rights Watch called the verdict a "landmark conviction" but criticized the prosecution for failing to fully investigate the case.
"It sends a powerful message to Egypt's future leaders that they are not above the law," HRW said. "These convictions set an important precedent since just over a year ago, seeing Mubarak as a defendant in a criminal court would have been unthinkable," said Joe Stork, the group's spokesman.
Angered by the acquittals, lawyers for the victims' families broke out chanting inside the courtroom as soon as Rifaat finished reading the verdict.
"The people want to cleanse the judiciary," they chanted. Some raised banners that read: "God's verdict is execution."
Rifaat criticized the prosecution's case, saying it lacked evidence and that there was nothing in what has been presented to the court that proved that the protesters were killed by the police. Because those who pulled the trigger have not been arrested, he added, he could not convict any of the top police officers of complicity in the killing of the protesters.
The question of who ordered the killings of protesters was left unanswered.
The prosecution had complained during the trial that it did not receive any help from the Interior Ministry in its preparation for the case and, in some cases, prosecutors were met with obstruction.
Maha Youssef, a legal expert from the Nadim Center in Cairo, said the judge's verdict should be the basis of a successful appeal to throw out the convictions.
"It's a completely politicized verdict that is meant to calm the masses. The essence of a ruling by a criminal court judge is not in the papers of the case but in his own personal conviction as someone who lives among the people and know what goes on in his society."
Outside the courtroom on the outskirts of Cairo, there was jubilation initially when the conviction was announced, with one man falling to his knees and prostrating himself in prayer on the pavement and others dancing, pumping fists in the air and shooting off fireworks.
But that scene soon descended into tensions and scuffles, as thousands of riot police in helmets and shields held the restive, mostly anti-Mubarak crowd back behind a cordon protecting the court.
Protests also erupted in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria on Egypt's northern coast. They chanted slogans denouncing the trial as "theatrical" and against the ruling generals who took over for Mubarak, led by his former defense minister. "Execute them, execute them!" chanted the protesters in Alexandria. Similar protests broke out in the city of Suez, which was a hotbed of the uprising, and other cities.
Mubarak and his sons — one-time heir apparent Gamal and wealthy businessman Alaa — were acquitted on corruption charges, with the judge citing a 10-year statute of limitations that had lapsed since the alleged crimes were committed.
Just days before the verdict was made public, the state prosecutor leveled new charges of insider trading against the two sons. It now appears that these charges may have been an attempt to head off new public outrage once the acquittals of the Mubarak sons were made public.
The sons have been serving time in Torah prison in Cairo, the same prison where Mubarak was flown after the sentencing. Mubarak's wife Suzanne is reported to be living in Cairo.
It has appeared all along that prosecutions since Mubarak's fall targeting relatively few high level officials and their cronies have been motivated largely by a desire to appease public anger expressed in massive street protests that continued long after Mubarak's ouster.
Scores of policemen charged with killing protesters have either been acquitted or received light sentences, angering relatives of the victims and the pro-democracy youth groups behind the uprising.
There is no officially sanctioned process of truth and reconciliation under way to account for the entirety of the regime's abuses because the military rulers would never sanction such an inquiry.
And taking on corruption in Egypt is difficult, due largely to the entrenched power of the military which by some analysts' accounts controls 20-40 percent of the economy.
Still Egypt today is greatly changed since Mubarak's rule. There have been democratic elections for both parliament and president. And the hard-won freedoms of speech, assembly and protest are defended vigorously by the public.
Thousands of riot police and policemen riding horses had cordoned off the complex where the court is located to prevent protesters and relatives of those slain during the uprising from getting too close. Hundreds stood outside, waving Egyptian flags and chanting slogans demanding "retribution." Some spread Mubarak's picture on the asphalt and walked over it.
Mubarak's verdict came just days after presidential elections have been boiled down to a June 16-17 contest between Mubarak's last prime minister, one-time protege Ahmed Shafiq, and Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist Islamist group that Mubarak persecuted for most of his years in power.
In a statement posted on his Facebook page, Shafiq said he could not comment on court rulings, but added that the Mubarak trial has shown that no one was above the law in today's Egypt and that no one could recreate the old regime.
The acquittal of the six police officers, he added, did not mean that he approved of their "tactics."
In contrast, a spokesman for Morsi said the verdicts were "shocking" and vowed retribution.
"The blood of our martyrs will not go in vain. We will work as Egyptians for the sake of a just retribution and the retrial of those who committed crimes against this nation," said the spokesman, Ahmed Abdel-Atti.
> ___
Associated Press correspondent Aya Batrawy contributed to this report from Cairo.

Blasts rock Tripoli as battle rages in west Libya

2011-08-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

TRIPOLI (AFP) - Strong explosions rocked Tripoli Friday as fighting between rebels and Moamer Kadhafi's forces raged on multiple fronts in western Libya and the Red Cross warned the humanitarian situation is worsening.

The International Organisation for Migration said meanwhile thousands of migrants are seeking to leave Tripoli.

"There are already thousands of Egyptians who are ready for evacuation now, and what we are hearing is that every day that there are more and more requests," spokeswoman of the inter-governmental agency Jemini Pandya told reporters in Geneva.

A slew of explosions were heard around 1:00 am (2300 GMT) in the heart of the seaside capital where Kadhafi's residential complex is located, as well as in several areas in the west of the city.

NATO in its latest operational update said its warplanes had on Thursday destroyed four military facilities and a surface to air missile in the vicinity of Tripoli.

With the rebels pushing closer Tripoli, vowing to take it before the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan ends late August, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini urged the population of the capital to rise up against Kadhafi.

"We hope the people of Tripoli, who unfortunately are already fleeing, understand the regime has harmed its own people and will therefore join a process of political change to cut off room for manoeuvre for Kadhafi's regime," Frattini said in Rome.

The rebels meanwhile said they had early Friday launched a fresh assault on Zliten, 150 kilometres (93 miles) east of Tripoli, and after a fight lasting just hours had pushed into the centre of the town.

The offensive was launched around 07:30 am (0530 GMT) and "at 1:00 pm our information indicates that the rebel troops entered the city centre," the Information Centre For Misrata Military Council said in a statement.

"The battle began with an artillery bombardment on the positions of Kadhafi's forces, followed by a swift movement forward by rebels," the statement said.

"Kadhafi forces have used tanks to try unsuccessfully to repel the rebels. There are dead and injured rebels," it added. A total of "1,230 rebel fighters took part in the attack."

Earlier, the insurgents said they had advanced "to the south of Zliten" in an area called Sir Leslie, forcing Kadhafi loyalists to pull back.

"Between 40 and 50 Kadhafi forces were killed" in the fighting, while some 12 African mercenaries were captured, the statement said, adding that 40 insurgents were wounded, 10 of them seriously.

Rebels have been seeking to sever Tripoli's supply lines from Tunisia to the west and to Kadhafi's hometown of Sirte in the east in a move they hope will cut off the capital, prompt defections and spark an uprising inside Tripoli.

Fighting was also raging in the western town of Zawiyah, a key source of fuel supplies to the capital, and the last major barrier before the rebels can think about advancing on Tripoli.

The opposition forces said Thursday they had seized the refinery in the town but Libyan Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi hotly disputed the claim, saying the refinery was "without doubt" still in loyalists' hands.

An AFP correspondent in Zawiyah, 40 kilometres west of Tripoli, said fighting was taking place in many parts of the town on Friday and it was impossible to determine who was in control.

Kadhafi snipers were staked out on rooftops as the battles raged, with buildings and streets in the town centre showing signs of massive damage from the warfare.

Zawiyah's refinery, the only one in western Libya, is vital to the Kadhafi regime, as it supplies fuel to Tripoli.

NATO said it had on Thursday destroyed a command and control node, two armed vehicles and five tanks near Zawiyah.

Further west, another rebel commander, Colonel Ahmed Omar Bani, said that rebels were pushing toward the Tunisian border -- an apparent bid to further strangle what limited supply lines remain for Kadhafi's regime.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said the intensified fighting has seen a "rapid deterioration in the humanitarian situation" in several Libyan towns.

"The ICRC is deeply concerned about the increasing number of casualties and about allegations of health-care facilities being misused by weapon bearers," the organisation said in a statement.

"We are hearing about hospitals being attacked or used for military purposes," it said.

"On Tuesday, in (eastern oil town) Brega, our delegates saw several ambulances hit by bullets," said Georges Comninos, head of the ICRC delegation in Tripoli.

"This is seriously compromising the delivery of health care to the wounded and sick."

The statement listed Brega as well as the western towns of Zawiyah, Garyan, and Sabratha, near the rebel-held city of Misrata, where it said conditions were worsening for civilians.

Fresh Syria demos as pressure piles on Assad

2011-08-19T06:32:00.000-07:00

DAMASCUS (AFP) - Syria's security forces killed at least three protesters as tens of thousands swarmed the streets after Friday prayers, activists said, piling pressure on President Bashar al-Assad after Western leaders demanded he step down.

Russia and Turkey meanwhile dismissed growing calls for Assad to quit, which were led on Thursday by US President Barack Obama, offering the embattled Syrian leader rare support even as he faced tougher international sanctions.

On the political front, a group of "revolutionary blocs" formed a coalition vowing to bring down the regime and paid tribute to more than 2,000 civilians killed in crackdown on protesters since the uprising began mid-March.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people were killed and 16 others wounded in the southern province of Daraa, epicentre of the anti-regime protests that erupted March 15.

One person was killed in the town of Inkhil and two others died in Al-Herak, a suburb of Daraa city, when security forces opened fire to break up anti-regime protests, said the Observatory.

But the official SANA news agency gave a different version of events, saying a policeman and a civilian were killed in Ghabagheb, in Daraa, by "armed men" and six security force members wounded.

Around 20,000 people also flooded the streets of Al-Khalidiyeh, a neighbourhood of the central city of Homs, where protesters demanded the fall of the regime, the Observatory said, adding there were huge demonstrations elsewhere in the city.

It also reported that pro-regime militias known as 'shabiha' pounced on worshippers are they emerged from a mosque in the coastal city of Latakia to disperse them.

Gunfire rattled Kadam neighbourhood in the Damascus, while soldiers and security forces conducted arrests in another city hotspot, Qabun, to prevent protests from spilling into the streets after the weekly Muslim prayers.

In Hajar al-Aswad neighbourhood of Damascus demonstrators defied Assad, openly chanting "the people want the fall of the president" and other slogans in support of the cities of Hama and Deir Ezzor which saw brutal crackdowns.

Outside the capital security forces fired teargas grenades and live rounds to break up a demonstration in Daraya without causing any casualties, the Observatory said adding that gunfire was also heard in Kisweh.

In Deir Ezzor, a strategic eastern oil hub, security forces opened fire to prevent rallies from being held and ringed several mosques, the Observatory added.

The shootings came a day after Assad told UN chief Ban Ki-moon that his security forces have ended operations against civilians.

Facebook group The Syrian Revolution 2011, one of the drivers of the protests, said Friday's rallies were being held under the slogan, "Friday of the beginnings of victory."

The civilian death toll from the security force crackdown on the protests has now passed 2,000, UN under secretary general B. Lynn Pascoe told the UN Security Council on Thursday.

Frustrated that international calls for a halt to the bloodletting were being snubbed by Damascus, US President Barack Obama on Thursday called for Assad to quit for the first time since the protests broke out.

"We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside," Obama said.

His call was quickly echoed by the leaders of Britain, France and Germany while Spain followed suit on Friday.

But Russia and Turkey disagreed.

"We do not support such calls," Russia's Interfax news agency reported, citing a foreign ministry source who added that Assad's regime must be "given time to implement all the reform processes which have been announced."

A government official in Ankara agreed and told AFP a call for Assad's ouster must come from the Syrian people themselves.

"First and foremost the people of Syria must tell Assad to go. This has not been heard in the streets of Syria," the official said. "The Syrian opposition is not united and we haven't seen yet a collective call from Syrians to tell Assad to go, like in Egypt and Libya."

The opposition, admitting the lack of unity, announced Friday the creation of the so-called Syrian Revolution General Commission comprising 44 "revolution blocs" due to "the dire need to unite the field, media and political efforts" of the pro-democracy movement.

The long-term aim of the coalition is also to build "a democratic and civil state of institutions that grants freedom, equality, dignity and respect of human rights to all citizens," the coalition said in a statement.

Meanwhile the United Nations said that a much-delayed humanitarian mission would go to Syria this weekend after the Security Council was briefed on a shoot-to-kill policy against protesters, stadium executions and children feared killed in Syrian government custody.

A Russian delegation was also due to visit Syria for talks with Assad and members of the opposition, senator Aslambek Aslakhanov told Interfax news agency.

Will Thailand's New Leader Hurt or Heal a Divided Nation?

2011-07-04T07:12:00.000-07:00

With barely more than a month under her belt as a professional politician, Yingluck Shinawatra stood poised Monday to become Thailand's first woman prime minister after her Pheu Thai party scored a resounding victory in Sunday's national elections.
Riding a well-oiled political machine and benefiting from the popularity of her brother, Thaksin Shinawatra, who was deposed as prime minister in a 2006 military coup, Yingluck and her party won an apparent majority in parliament according to unofficial election returns. But even with an experienced team behind her, can a novice prime minister succeed where several veterans have failed and end the political strife that has torn Thailand apart for nearly seven years?
"There is a lot more hard work to do... to make reconciliation possible," Yingluck told a press conference after incumbent Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva conceded on Sunday evening. Abhisit, once regarded as Thailand's brightest up-and-coming political star, resigned as Democrat Party leader on Monday. The hardest issue of all - and one that is central to reconciliation efforts - will be a possible amnesty Yingluck initially proposed for anyone charged or convicted of "political crimes" since the 2006 coup. A blanket amnesty would cover anti-Thaksin 'Yellow Shirt' protesters who took over Bangkok's airport in 2008, and pro-Thaksin 'Red Shirt' protesters whose two-month demonstration in central Bangkok last year ended in a confrontation with the army that resulted in 92 deaths and buildings being burned. Most contentiously, an amnesty would include her brother Thaksin who was convicted of corruption and fled Thailand in 2008 rather than serve a two-year prison sentence. A court later seized nearly $2 billion of his assets.
After initially promising the amnesty in the early days of her campaign, Yingluck backtracked when opponents claimed her candidacy was solely intended to whitewash her brother's convictions and return his money. Despite Thaksin's resilient popularity with large sections of the electorate, he remains the most divisive figure in Thai political history. A substantial minority who believes he is corrupt and autocratic is bitterly opposed to his return. When Thaksin or the parties he controlled have been in power, Yellow Shirts have staged disruptive demonstrations. When Thaksin's opponents have held the premiership, Red Shirts have responded in kind. The conflict has made Thailand nearly ungovernable during the past several years. Yingluck's platform has centered on reconciliation.
Seeking to defuse the issue of her amnesty promise, Yingluck later said a neutral panel would be established to look into the matter, and insisted her party would serve everyone - not just her brother. Thaksin, living in self-imposed exile in Dubai, told Thai PBS television after learning of his youngest sister's victory "conditions must be right. If my return will be part of the problem, I will not rush back."
The military will also be key to creating stability in the nation. Although different commanders than those who deposed Thaksin are now in charge, their antipathy for the former Prime Minister is well known, and the country buzzed with rumors of another coup in the days leading up the election. Nonetheless, outgoing Minister of Defense Gen. Prawit Wongsuwan told reporters Monday that the top generals accepted the election results. And with Yingluck's Pheu Thai party snaring 265 seats in the 500-seat parliament, and already engaged in talks with smaller parties to join a coalition and bolster that majority, the generals have no room to engineer any backroom deals to block Pheu Thai's path to power.
Yingluck's stunningly rapid rise to Thailand's top job may owe a great deal to her brother, but the public also responded to the 44-year-old mother of one as an individual. "For a broad swathe of the population, her sunny, youthful disposition offers a refreshing alternative for voters bored with the masculine godfather caricatures that have dominated national politics for decades,'' said a Bangkok Post editorial on Monday. Although Abhisit doesn't fit the godfather description, his role in the political battles of recent years undercut his appeal to the many Thais who expressed that they were tired of political conflicts. By contrast, newcomer Yingluck carried none of the "personal bruises and scars" of political life, said Hasan Basar of Bangkok Public Relations.
The coalition that originally supported Abhisit has also splintered since his election. The Yellow Shirts abandoned him over his unwillingness to go to war with neighboring Cambodia over a tiny patch of disputed land and a temple on the nations' border. They urged followers to register a protest vote for no candidate - allowed on the ballot - and more than 800,000 did. Some Thais whose chief complaint is corruption, and in the past favored the Democrat Party, instead voted for former massage parlor magnate Chuwit Kamolviset. After being arrested over a land dispute in 2005, Chuwit began telling the press and the public about all the bribes he had paid to police commanders over the years and successfully transformed himself into an anti-corruption campaigner. Chuwit's party won nearly one million votes.
Abhisit took office just as the world economic crisis hit at the end of 2008. Despite extending relief to low-income earners and overseeing the strongest GDP growth in 15 years at 7.8% in 2010, many voters cited the poor economy as a reason for voting for Pheu Thai. Abhisit's relief and stimulus programs were being phased out with recovery, and at the same time, food and fuel prices have soared to record levels.
In her speech Sunday night, Yingluck said, "I would like to reiterate that we are ready to deliver on all of the policies that we have announced." Some of those promises, however, will be unachievable, such as her oft-stated pledge that in four years, no Thai person will be poor. Other promises include free tablet computers for one million schoolchildren, and paying farmers $500 per tonne of rice - a move that some experts have said would threaten to further exacerbate food price inflation.
Still, Yingluck's success or failure as a Prime Minister will rest less on her policies than on whether or not she can keep a still sharply divided Thailand stable and at peace with itself.

Angry Mladic removed from U.N. war crimes court

2011-07-04T07:02:00.000-07:00

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Guards at the U.N. war crimes tribunal removed Ratko Mladic from the courtroom on Monday after the former Bosnian Serb army chief harangued the judge as he read out the charges and entered a not guilty plea on Mladic's behalf.

Having threatened to boycott his second hearing since being tracked down and extradited from Serbia to The Hague in May, Mladic did in fact appear but spent several minutes demanding new legal representation and seeking a delay in filing his plea. He also complained of cold after being told not to wear his cap.
Judge Alphons Ourie rejected the request for a postponement but said the tribunal would check whether the lawyers he wanted, a Serbian and a Russian, would at subsequent hearings be allowed to replace the court-appointed attorney acting for Mladic.
When Ourie moved on to rule that, in the absence of a plea, the court would enter one for Mladic after reading out the charges, the 69-year-old former career soldier shouted: "No, no, no! Don't read it to me, not a single word."
As Ourie pressed on, warning Mladic that he would be removed if he interrupted again, he stated the first charge as genocide.
"No, no, I'm not going to listen to this without my lawyer," Mladic shouted as he removed his translation. "You are no court.
"Who are you? You're not allowing me to breathe."
The judge adjourned the hearing, screening it off from public view, before resuming some minutes later with an empty dock to read the remaining charges, formally entering a not guilty plea after each one. There are 11 charges in all.
Mladic is accused over the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica -- Europe's worst massacre since World War Two.
He was represented by court-appointed lawyer Aleksandar Aleksic, who asked for the plea hearing to be delayed and for himself to leave if Mladic did not want him there. Mladic has requested for Belgrade-based military lawyer Milos Saljic and Russian jurist Alexander Mezyaev to represent him. The court is still verifying their qualifications and eligibility.
Arrested on May 26 after 16 years on the run, Mladic had rejected the charges against him as "obnoxious" and "monstrous" when he was formally charged at the war crimes court on June 3.
"IMPOSSIBLE CONDITIONS"
At the start of the hearing, judge Orie repeatedly asked Mladic to stop interacting with the public gallery, where families of Srebrenica victims were seated to Mladic's right.
"I hear better on my left ear," Mladic replied, suggesting he was only turning his head to the judge to hear him better.
Sitting without the cap he had worn at this first hearing, Mladic, who has said he was "gravely ill," barked at the judge and complained he was "an old man."
"I have to wear a cap because I am too old, and I am cold. One side of my body is not functioning," he said, possibly referring to the after-effects of a stroke. "I want to communicate with you in a humane way. You are trying to impose impossible conditions on me -- a lawyer I don't want."
Mladic is accused over a campaign to seize territory for Serbs after Bosnia, following Croatia, broke away from the Yugoslav federation in the 1990s as the Balkan state broke up during five years of war that killed at least 130,000 people.
Hague prosecutor Serge Brammertz has said Mladic used his power to commit atrocities and must answer for it, but Serb nationalists say Mladic defended the nation and did no worse than Croat or Bosnian Muslim army commanders.
Several hundred survivors of the Bosnian war had gathered in Sarajevo on Monday to urge the court to not allow Mladic to mock it and to pursue a fair and swift trial.
"The survivors' accounts tell enough about the scope of his crimes and the court should not allow him to turn the courtroom into a theater," said Satko Mujagic, a war prisoner at Bosnia's Omarska detention camp where up to 900 Muslims were killed by the Bosnian Serb forces.
Court spokeswoman Nerma Jelacic said that now that a plea had been entered into record for Mladic, pre-trial status hearings would be held roughly every three months.
A trial is unlikely to begin until next year at the earliest. Mladic's civilian chief, Radovan Karadzic, arrested in 2008, has been on trial at The Hague since October 2009.
Mladic is widely regarded as the last of the major figures in the Balkan blood-letting of the 1990s to be brought to face justice. The Russian lawyer Mezyaev whom he has asked to represent him also advised former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, who died in prison at The Hague in 2006, five years after being extradited, with his trial still unfinished.
(Additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)

France debates Strauss-Kahn return to politics

2011-07-04T07:00:00.001-07:00

PARIS (AP) — From sidewalk cafes to political party headquarters, France was consumed Monday by the question of whether the sudden weakening of the sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn would revive his hopes of running for president.

The country was split on whether it wanted him back in public life: two polls showed an almost even division between those who thought he should return, and those who believed his political career was over.
The former International Monetary Fund chief's re-entry to politics would be a tectonic shift in a campaign already shaken by his May 14 arrest on charges of attacking a New York hotel maid. The Socialist had been widely seen as the leading contender in the 2012 election, leading polls in the months before his arrest.
With the alleged victim's credibility now undercut by prosecutors and Strauss-Kahn free on bail, French politicians and pundits appear to almost uniformly assume that the charges against him will be dropped in coming weeks.
For many, the question is now whether a man paraded in handcuffs before photographers outside a Harlem police station a month and a half ago will try to run against widely unpopular conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy and become leader of the world's fifth-largest economy.
"DSK Back?" the left-leaning daily Liberation asked on its front page Monday, describing Strauss-Kahn's release from house arrest as having turned the Socialist primary race upside down for the second time in as many months.
"Dominique Strauss-Kahn will express his intentions when he wants to," Socialist Party leader Martine Aubry told France-2 television.
The charges still stand against Strauss-Kahn, who has relinquished his passport to authorities in New York. Another court hearing would be needed for him to get it back. His next appearance is scheduled for July 18, five days after the deadline for candidates to register in the Socialist Party primary.
As a result, much of the debate about Strauss-Kahn's political future centers on whether the Socialists would push back the primary deadline.
"Let's acknowledge that if Strauss-Kahn decides to come back as a candidate on our side, no one will try to oppose him using some calendar," said Aubry, who declared her candidacy only after Strauss-Kahn's arrest.
The Socialist Party's spokesman appeared to disagree, an indication of the confusion and disagreement within the party about betting the opposition's chances of defeating Sarkozy on a man seen by some as a martyr of American injustice and by others as an out-of-touch jet-setter with a history of crude behavior toward women.
"We can't base the (political) calendar, which involves millions of French people, on the American judicial calendar," party spokesman Benoit Hamon said Monday.
Hamon left open the possibility, however, that Strauss-Kahn could become a candidate even after the official deadline, an act that would presumably require an extraordinary effort by Strauss-Kahn to get his divided party to bend its own rules.
"If ever Dominique Strauss-Kahn, beyond July 13th, says that he would like to enroll in this calendar, which doesn't seem the most likely, we are reasonable people, we will discuss with him under what conditions he could do so," Hamon said.
A poll released Monday found that 51 percent of French people found that Strauss-Kahn no longer had a political future, versus 42 percent who thought he did.
The telephone poll of 956 adults selected as a demographically representative sample was conducted July 1 and 2 by the Ipsos Public Affairs institute for the magazine Le Point. No margin of error was provided.
Another poll out Sunday conducted by Harris Interactive poll for the newspaper Le Parisien showed 49 percent of those surveyed saying 'yes' to the question "Without prejudging his innocence or guilt, do you want DSK to come back to the French political scene one day?"
Forty-five percent said 'no' and six percent didn't answer the question. The agency asked a demographically representative group of 1,000 people 18 years old and older to fill out the July 1-2 online survey. No margin of error was provided.
Sarkozy's conservative allies have maintained virtually complete silence on Strauss-Kahn's arrest. But on Monday, some appeared to be returning to the normal tenor of a political campaign.
Sarkozy has been assailed from the left for what some call his bling-bling image and tax policies that critics say favor the rich, in a country proud of its social welfare system and revolutionary past.
Strauss-Kahn had come under some criticism before his arrest for appearing in a friend's Porsche and for reports he wore highly expensive tailored suits.
After his arrest, he lived under house arrest in a $50,000 (euro34,500)-a-month town house in Manhattan's trendy TriBeCa neighborhood.
"Between his luxury tastes and other subjects, Dominique Strauss-Kahn has not offered a very positive image recently," Sports Minister Chantal Jouanno, a Sarkozy ally, said on Europe-1 radio.
___
Angela Charlton contributed to this report.

Petraeus marks July 4 with troops in Afghanistan

2011-07-04T06:58:00.000-07:00

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — A member of the NATO-led international force fighting in Afghanistan went missing in the country's restive south and a search is under way, the NATO command said Monday.

The command did not identify the nationality of the missing service member.
Only one soldier from the NATO-led force is believed in captivity. Bowe Bergdahl, a 25-year-old Army sergeant from Hailey, Idaho, was taken prisoner June 30, 2009, in Afghanistan. He is believed held in Pakistan.
Also Monday, the outgoing U.S. commander in Afghanistan marked his last Fourth of July in uniform by speaking to American troops during a re-enlistment ceremony in the south of the country.
Gen. David Petraeus, who was recently confirmed as the next director of the CIA, told the 235 troops re-enlisting in Kandahar province that they have achieved progress on the battlefield but that "much work remains" to be done in Afghanistan.
"You raised your right hand and said 'Send me,' and today you raised your right hand again and said 'Send me again, if needed,'" he told the soldiers on America's 235th birthday.
"I cannot say how impressive your action is," he said. "It is the most meaningful display of patriotism possible."
Petraeus will be replaced by U.S. Marine Lt. Gen. John Allen even as 33,000 U.S. troops begin to withdraw from Afghanistan, the start of President Barack Obama's promised withdrawal of all combat troops by 2014.
Later Monday, Petraeus is to speak at another re-enlistment ceremony at Bagram Air Field, just north of Kabul.
Meanwhile, NATO said a service member was killed Monday in a bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan. The death brings the number of NATO fatalities in Afghanistan this year to 271, three of them this month.
On Sunday, three U.S. Senators visiting Afghanistan criticized the pace of withdrawal and expressed concerns that it may leave NATO with too few troops to deal a decisive blow to the insurgency.
"I believe that the planned drawdown is an unnecessary risk," John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, said Sunday. McCain arrived in Afghanistan with Sens. Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham. McCain lost to Obama in the 2008 presidential race.
Also on Sunday, five Afghan police officers were killed in a four-hour gun battle between Afghan security forces and NATO troops, and insurgents in the Bala Buluk district of Farah province in western Afghanistan.

Will Obama be forced to back gay marriage?

2011-06-24T11:47:00.003-07:00

New York – The president is feeling the heat to quit tiptoeing around same-sex marriage — even as he faces a tough re-election battle

For years, President Obama has officially backed civil partnerships for same-sex couples, but not gay marriage — though he famously said last fall that his views are "evolving." The extent of that evolution was put to the test Thursday night at a gay and lesbian gala fundraiser for Obama in New York state, which may be on the verge of legalizing gay marriage. Though event attendees put pressure on the president to endorse same-sex marriage, Obama maintained his "studious ambivalence," insisting that states should decide the question. With the gay community getting impatient, will Obama have to pick sides before November 2012?

Hopefully, Obama will come around: The New York City fundraiser made one thing clear — Obama "hasn't evolved on marriage," says Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog. That means the gay community has to keep up the pressure, for our good and Obama's. "The president is already behind the curve of public opinion on [gay] marriage, particularly with young voters," and with any luck, he'll soon realize that coming out for gay matrimony is now "good politics" as well as good policy.
"Confirmed: President Obama hasn't evolved on marriage"

There are good political reasons for Obama's hesitance: Obama's "devolution" on gay marriage is "totally maddening," says Dan Savage at Seattle's The Stranger. But his reluctance is understandable. "There's the electoral college to think about," and while most Americans now back gay marriage, that's not true in key swing states that Obama must keep in his column to win re-election. The gay community should still press him — but if Obama backs same-sex marriage and loses to a Republican in 2012, gay-rights advocates may shoulder the blame, fair or not.
"AC 360: Obama's devolution on marriage equality"

Obama is "irrelevant" to the debate: Gay marriage proponents are already winning, and we don't need Obama to be our "savior," says Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Beast. Besides, he's already done what he can at the federal level: Ending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," giving same-sex benefits to federal workers, and abandoning the Defense of Marriage Act. The real action is at the state level now, and if Obama won't lead, he also "will not stand in our way."
"Obama to fake changing mind"

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House votes against defunding Libyan war

2011-06-24T11:44:00.003-07:00

WASHINGTON – The House has turned back a Republican-led effort to cut off money for military hostilities in the Libyan war.

The vote was 238-180. It came after the House had overwhelmingly rejected a largely symbolic measure to give President Barack Obama the authority to continue U.S. involvement in the military operation against Moammar Gadhafi's forces.
The funding measure would have barred drone attacks and airstrikes but allowed the United States to continue actions in support of NATO.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
The House on Friday overwhelmingly rejected a measure giving President Barack Obama the authority to continue the U.S. military operation against Libya, a major repudiation of the commander in chief.

[ For complete coverage of politics and policy, go to Yahoo! Politics ]

The vote was 295-123, with Obama losing the support of 70 of his Democrats one day after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made a last-minute plea for the mission.
While the congressional action has no immediate effect on American involvement in the NATO-led mission, it was an embarrassment to a sitting president and certain to have reverberations in Tripoli and NATO capitals.
The vote marked the first time since 1999 that either House has voted against a president's authority to carry out a military operation. The last time was to limit President Bill Clinton's authority to use ground forces in Kosovo.
The House planned a second vote on legislation to cut off money for the military hostilities in the operation.
House Republican leaders pushed for the vote, with rank-and-file members saying the president broke the law by failing to seek congressional approval for the 3-month-old war.
Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said he supported the president's authority as commander in chief. "But when the president chooses to challenge the powers of the Congress, I as speaker of the House will defend the constitutional authority of the legislature," he said.
Some Democrats accused the GOP of playing politics with national security. They said the vote would send the wrong message to Gadhafi.
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the vote would essentially "stop the mission in Libya and empower Moammar Gadhafi."
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, White House spokesman Jay Carney expressed disappointment.
"We think now is not the time to send the kind of mixed message that it sends when we're working with our allies to achieve the goals that we believe that are widely shared in Congress: protecting civilians in Libya, enforcing a no-fly zone, enforcing an arms embargo and further putting pressure on Gadhafi," Carney said. "The writing's on the wall for Colonel Gadhafi and now is not the time to let up."
Carney also dismissed the action as just one House vote.
The defeated resolution mirrors a Senate measure sponsored by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and John McCain, R-Ariz., that Obama has indicated he would welcome. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will consider the resolution on Tuesday.
The second vote to eliminate money for the Libya operation would make an exception for search and rescue efforts, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, aerial refueling and operational planning to continue the NATO effort in Libya. That measure has no chance in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
House Republicans and Democrats are furious with Obama for failing to seek congressional authorization as required under the War Powers Resolution. The 1973 law, often ignored by Republican and Democratic presidents, says the commander in chief must seek congressional consent for military actions within 60 days. That deadline has long passed.
Obama stirred congressional unrest last week when he told lawmakers he didn't need authorization because the operation was not full-blown hostilities. NATO commands the Libya operation, but the United States still plays a significant support role that includes aerial refueling of warplanes and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance work as well as drone attacks and bombings.
A New York Times report that said Obama overruled some of his legal advisers further incensed members of Congress.
In a last-ditch effort Thursday, Clinton met with rank-and-file Democrats to explain the mission and discuss the implications if the House votes to cut off funds. The administration requested the closed-door meeting.
Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., said Clinton apologized for not coming to Congress earlier. But he said she warned about the implications of a House vote to cut off money.
"The secretary expressed her deep concern that you're probably not on the right track when Gadhafi supports your efforts," Walz said.
Rep. Howard Berman of California, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said such a vote "ensures the failure of the whole mission."
Earlier this week Clinton said lawmakers were free to raise questions, but she asked, "Are you on Gadhafi's side, or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been bringing them support?"
In the Senate, backers of a resolution to authorize the operation wondered whether the administration had waited too long to address the concerns of House members.
"It's way late," said McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee. "This is one of the reasons why they're having this veritable uprising in the House, because of a lack of communication. And then the icing on the cake was probably for them when he (Obama) said that we're not engaged in hostilities. That obviously is foolishness."
He added, however, "That is not a reason to pass a resolution that would encourage Moammar Gadhafi to stay in power."
Earlier this month, the House voted 268-145 to rebuke Obama for failing to provide a "compelling rationale" for the Libyan mission and for launching U.S. military forces without congressional approval.

21-year-old Californian wins Miss USA crown

2011-06-20T00:49:00.001-07:00

LAS VEGAS – A 21-year-old auburn-haired California model won the Miss USA crown Sunday night and will represent the nation in this year's Miss Universe pageant.

Alyssa Campanella of Los Angeles topped a field of 51 beauty queens to take the title at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. She strutted across the stage in a blue bikini with white polka dots and a dark turquoise Sherri Hill evening gown with beading on its top.
She also answered a question about legalizing marijuana by saying she didn't think it should be fully legalized as a solution to help ailing economies.
Campanella told reporters in a news conference after the pageant that the win validated her decision to quickly move to Los Angeles from New Jersey after losing an apartment.
"The downs happen for a reason," she said. "The path that I'm on now is the path that's been meant to be."
Campanella, a former Miss Teen USA runner-up from 2007, when she represented New Jersey, said she has been competing in pageants since she was 15 because of her mom.
"I was going through a tough time in high school and she thought it'd be a great way for me to meet other girls throughout the state," she said. "It's Mom's fault."
Originally from Manalapan, N.J., Campanella began modeling at age 16, graduated from high school a year early and received a scholarship to the New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts, according to her personal website.
Campanella, a history buff who says in her Twitter bio that she was "born in the wrong time period," said she thought the marijuana question posed to her from "Real Housewives of New Jersey" housewife Caroline Manzo was fair, given that she represents California.
"Well, I understand why that question would be asked, especially with today's economy, but I also understand that medical marijuana is very important to help those who need it medically," she said during the pageant.
"I'm not sure if it should be legalized, if it would really affect, with the drug war," she said. "I mean, it's abused today, unfortunately, so that's the only reason why I would kind of be a little bit against it, but medically it's OK."
Marijuana has been legal for medical use in California for about 15 years.
Miss Tennessee Ashley Durham was the first runner-up, while contestants from Alabama and Texas placed third and fourth.
Campanella, a natural blonde, said she dyed her hair six years ago for a part in a play, for a "fiery" character with whom she found she had traits in common.
"It's really brought out the true Alyssa Campanella, I feel, and that's why I really enjoy being a redhead," she said.
Campanella replaces Miss USA 2010 Rima Fakih. The 25-year-old from Michigan teared up as she walked across the stage for a final goodbye.
The pageant had three competitions: swimsuit, evening gown and interview question.
The contestants were whittled to 16 after the show's opening number, in which the beauty queens introduced themselves one-by-one. The top 16 were picked by preliminary judges through competitions and interviews during the week before the telecast. Celebrity judges picked the top eight after the swimsuit competition and the top four after the evening gown portion.
Durham appeared to stumble as she answered a question from celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito about whether the First Amendment should protect burning religious books, as it protects burning the flag.
"I know that some people view it as a freedom of speech, however, burning the American flag is not patriotic at all," Durham said. "No American citizen should do that, and you should also respect other religions. I'm a Christian and a faithful person. I would personally not appreciate someone burning the Bible, and that's just a line you do not cross."
Miss Kentucky Kia Ben-et Hampton won Miss Congeniality USA, while Miss Arizona Brittany Dawn Brannon won Miss Photogenic USA.
The Miss Universe pageant is scheduled for Sept. 12 from Sao Paolo, Brazil. Last year's winner was Mexico's Jimena Navarrete.
___
Oskar Garcia can be reached at http://twitter.com/oskargarcia.

Assad to address Syria as his troops block refugees

2011-06-20T00:43:00.001-07:00

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is to address the nation Monday as his forces sweep through the northwestern border region with Turkey blocking refugees fleeing a military crackdown on protests against his autocratic rule.

The operation along the border follows the biggest protests in four months of anti-Assad unrest Friday which a violent clampdown has failed to quash. Security forces shot dead up to 19 protesters Friday, rights groups said.
Assad's will address "current circumstances," the state news agency said, his first speech since April 16 and only his third since protests began in the southern Hauran Plain on March 18..
Syria's ambassador to Washington said in a newspaper interview his government differentiates between the legitimate demands of protesters and those of armed gangs and said Assad will deal with "all these issues in his speech."
More than 10,000 Syrian refugees have already crossed into Turkey and Turkish officials say another 10,000 are sheltering close to the border just inside Syria in the olive groves and rich farmland around the town of Jisr al-Shughour.
But Syrian human rights campaigner Ammar al-Qurabi said the army was now stopping those still inside Syria from leaving.
"The Syrian army has spread around the border area to prevent frightened residents from fleeing across the border to Turkey," he told Reuters. Qurabi also accused pro-government forces of attacking people trying to aid the refugees as they fled.
The violence so close to its border challenges Turkey's foreign policy of "zero problems with neighbors" that has seen it befriend the Middle East's autocratic rulers while presenting itself as a champion of democracy.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkey has pledged to keep his borders open to refugees and has called the Syrian government crackdown "savagery," but beyond words, it is not clear whether Ankara's rapprochement with Damascus has earned Turkey any influence with Assad to halt the violence.
REFUGEES "FEAR GETTING SHOT"
Syrian troops and gunmen loyal to Assad seized the town of Bdama, only 2 km (1.2 miles) from Turkey Saturday, burning houses and arresting dozens, witnesses said.
"There are roadblocks everywhere in Bdama to prevent people from fleeing but villagers are finding other routes through valleys to escape to the Turkish border," said Omar, a farmer from Bdama who managed to reach the border area.
"We received no bread today. There was one bakery operating in Bdama but it has been forced to shut. The 'shabbiha' (Assad's gunmen) are shooting randomly," one refugee, a carpenter who gave his name as Hammoud, told Reuters by telephone.
"One man in Bdama was injured today and we managed to smuggle him to hospital in Turkey. But many fear getting shot if they attempt to cross the border," the refugee added.
Faced with troops firing live ammunition, Syrian protesters have taken to venting their anger against Assad at night.
Demonstrations erupted overnight in the cities of Hama, Homs, Latakia, Deir al-Zor, the town of Madaya near the Lebanese border, several suburbs of the capital Damascus and in Albu Kamal on the border with Iraq, witnesses and activists said.
Authorities blame the violence on armed groups and Islamists, backed by foreign powers. Syria has barred most international journalists from entering the country, making it difficult to verify accounts from activists and officials.
Syrian rights groups say at least 1,300 civilians have been killed and 10,000 people detained since March.
The Syrian Observatory for human rights has said more than 300 soldiers and police have also been killed. Other rights campaigners said dozens of security personnel had been killed by loyalist troops for refusing to shoot at unarmed civilians.
Even so, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev practically ruled out supporting a U.N. resolution condemning Syria's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
In an interview published in the Financial Times Monday, Medvedev criticised the way Western countries had interpreted U.N. resolution 1973 on Libya which he said turned it into "a scrap of paper to cover up a pointless military operation."
"I would not like a Syrian resolution to be pulled off in a similar manner," he added.
(Writing by Jon Hemming; Editing by Robert Birsel)

AP IMPACT: US nuke regulators weaken safety rules

2011-06-20T00:42:00.000-07:00

LACEY TOWNSHIP, N.J. – Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation's aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.

Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews.
The result? Rising fears that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety — and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize the future of nuclear power in the United States.
Examples abound. When valves leaked, more leakage was allowed — up to 20 times the original limit. When rampant cracking caused radioactive leaks from steam generator tubing, an easier test of the tubes was devised, so plants could meet standards.
Failed cables. Busted seals. Broken nozzles, clogged screens, cracked concrete, dented containers, corroded metals and rusty underground pipes — all of these and thousands of other problems linked to aging were uncovered in the AP's yearlong investigation. And all of them could escalate dangers in the event of an accident.
Yet despite the many problems linked to aging, not a single official body in government or industry has studied the overall frequency and potential impact on safety of such breakdowns in recent years, even as the NRC has extended the licenses of dozens of reactors.
Industry and government officials defend their actions, and insist that no chances are being taken. But the AP investigation found that with billions of dollars and 19 percent of America's electricity supply at stake, a cozy relationship prevails between the industry and its regulator, the NRC.
Records show a recurring pattern: Reactor parts or systems fall out of compliance with the rules. Studies are conducted by the industry and government, and all agree that existing standards are "unnecessarily conservative."
Regulations are loosened, and the reactors are back in compliance.
"That's what they say for everything, whether that's the case or not," said Demetrios Basdekas, an engineer retired from the NRC. "Every time you turn around, they say `We have all this built-in conservatism.'"
The ongoing crisis at the stricken, decades-old Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility in Japan has focused attention on the safety of plants elsewhere in the world; it prompted the NRC to look at U.S. reactors, and a report is due in July.
But the factor of aging goes far beyond the issues posed by the disaster at Fukushima.
Commercial nuclear reactors in the United States were designed and licensed for 40 years. When the first ones were being built in the 1960s and 1970s, it was expected that they would be replaced with improved models long before those licenses expired.
But that never happened. The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, massive cost overruns, crushing debt and high interest rates ended new construction proposals for several decades.
Instead, 66 of the 104 operating units have been relicensed for 20 more years, mostly with scant public attention. Renewal applications are under review for 16 other reactors.
By the standards in place when they were built, these reactors are old and getting older. As of today, 82 reactors are more than 25 years old.
The AP found proof that aging reactors have been allowed to run less safely to prolong operations. As equipment has approached or violated safety limits, regulators and reactor operators have loosened or bent the rules.
Last year, the NRC weakened the safety margin for acceptable radiation damage to reactor vessels — for a second time. The standard is based on a measurement known as a reactor vessel's "reference temperature," which predicts when it will become dangerously brittle and vulnerable to failure. Over the years, many plants have violated or come close to violating the standard.
As a result, the minimum standard was relaxed first by raising the reference temperature 50 percent, and then 78 percent above the original — even though a broken vessel could spill its radioactive contents into the environment.
"We've seen the pattern," said nuclear safety scientist Dana Powers, who works for Sandia National Laboratories and also sits on an NRC advisory committee. "They're ... trying to get more and more out of these plants."
___
SHARPENING THE PENCIL
The AP collected and analyzed government and industry documents — including some never-before released. The examination looked at both types of reactor designs: pressurized water units that keep radioactivity confined to the reactor building and the less common boiling water types like those at Fukushima, which send radioactive water away from the reactor to drive electricity-generating turbines.
Tens of thousands of pages of government and industry studies were examined, along with test results, inspection reports and regulatory policy statements filed over four decades. Interviews were conducted with scores of managers, regulators, engineers, scientists, whistleblowers, activists, and residents living near the reactors, which are located at 65 sites, mostly in the East and Midwest.
AP reporting teams toured some of the oldest reactors — the unit here at Oyster Creek, near the Atlantic coast 50 miles east of Philadelphia, and two units at Indian Point, 25 miles north of New York City along the Hudson River.
Called "Oyster Creak" by some critics because of its aging problems, this boiling water reactor began running in 1969 and ranks as the country's oldest operating commercial nuclear power plant. Its license was extended in 2009 until 2029, though utility officials announced in December that they'll shut the reactor 10 years earlier rather than build state-ordered cooling towers. Applications to extend the lives of pressurized water units 2 and 3 at Indian Point, each more than 36 years old, are under review by the NRC.
Unprompted, several nuclear engineers and former regulators used nearly identical terminology to describe how industry and government research has frequently justified loosening safety standards to keep aging reactors within operating rules. They call the approach "sharpening the pencil" or "pencil engineering" — the fudging of calculations and assumptions to yield answers that enable plants with deteriorating conditions to remain in compliance.
"Many utilities are doing that sort of thing," said engineer Richard T. Lahey Jr., who used to design nuclear safety systems for General Electric Co., which makes boiling water reactors. "I think we need nuclear power, but we can't compromise on safety. I think the vulnerability is on these older plants."
Added Paul Blanch, an engineer who left the industry over safety issues but later returned to work on solving them: "It's a philosophical position that (federal regulators) take that's driven by the industry and by the economics: What do we need to do to let those plants continue to operate? They somehow sharpen their pencil to either modify their interpretation of the regulations, or they modify their assumptions in the risk assessment."
In public pronouncements, industry and government say aging is well under control. "I see an effort on the part of this agency to always make sure that we're doing the right things for safety. I'm not sure that I see a pattern of staff simply doing things because there's an interest to reduce requirements — that's certainly not the case," NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko said in an interview at agency headquarters in Rockville, Md.
Neil Wilmshurst, director of plant technology for the industry's Electric Power Research Institute, acknowledged that the industry and NRC often collaborate on research that supports rule changes. But he maintained that there's "no kind of misplaced alliance ... to get the right answer."
Yet agency staff, plant operators, and consultants paint a different picture in little-known reports, where evidence of industry-wide problems is striking:
_The AP reviewed 226 preliminary notifications — alerts on emerging safety problems — issued by the NRC since 2005. Wear and tear in the form of clogged lines, cracked parts, leaky seals, rust and other deterioration contributed to at least 26 alerts over the past six years. Other notifications lack detail, but aging also was a probable factor in 113 additional alerts. That would constitute up to 62 percent in all. For example, the 39-year-old Palisades reactor in Michigan shut Jan. 22 when an electrical cable failed, a fuse blew, and a valve stuck shut, expelling steam with low levels of radioactive tritium into the air outside. And a one-inch crack in a valve weld aborted a restart in February at the LaSalle site west of Chicago.
_One 2008 NRC report blamed 70 percent of potentially serious safety problems on "degraded conditions." Some involve human factors, but many stem from equipment wear, including cracked nozzles, loose paint, electrical problems, or offline cooling components.
_Confronted with worn parts that need maintenance, the industry has repeatedly requested — and regulators have often allowed — inspections and repairs to be delayed for months until scheduled refueling outages. Again and again, problems worsened before they were fixed. Postponed inspections inside a steam generator at Indian Point allowed tubing to burst, leading to a radioactive release in 2000. Two years later, cracking was allowed to grow so bad in nozzles on the reactor vessel at the Davis-Besse plant near Toledo, Ohio, that it came within two months of a possible breach, the NRC acknowledged in a report. A hole in the vessel could release radiation into the environment, yet inspections failed to catch the same problem on the replacement vessel head until more nozzles were found to be cracked last year.
___
TIME CRUMBLES THINGS
Nuclear plants are fundamentally no more immune to the incremental abuses of time than our cars or homes: Metals grow weak and rusty, concrete crumbles, paint peels, crud accumulates. Big components like 17-story-tall concrete containment buildings or 800-ton reactor vessels are all but impossible to replace. Smaller parts and systems can be swapped, but still pose risks as a result of weak maintenance and lax regulation or hard-to-predict failures. Even when things are fixed or replaced, the same parts or others nearby often fail later.
Even mundane deterioration at a reactor can carry harsh consequences.
For example, peeling paint and debris can be swept toward pumps that circulate cooling water in a reactor accident. A properly functioning containment building is needed to create air pressure that helps clear those pumps. The fact is, a containment building could fail in a severe accident. Yet the NRC has allowed operators to make safety calculations that assume containment buildings will hold.
In a 2009 letter, Mario V. Bonaca, then-chairman of the NRC's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, warned that this approach represents "a decrease in the safety margin" and makes a fuel-melting accident more likely. At Fukushima, hydrogen explosions blew apart two of six containment buildings, allowing radiation to escape from overheated fuel in storage pools.
Many photos in NRC archives — some released in response to AP requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act — show rust accumulated in a thick crust or paint peeling in long sheets on untended equipment at nuclear plants. Other breakdowns can't be observed or predicted, even with sophisticated analytic methods — especially for buried, hidden or hard-to-reach parts.
Industry and government reports are packed with troubling evidence of unrelenting wear — and repeated regulatory compromises.
Four areas stand out:
BRITTLE VESSELS: For years, operators have rearranged fuel rods to limit gradual radiation damage to the steel vessels protecting the core and to keep them strong enough to meet safety standards.
It hasn't worked well enough.
Even with last year's weakening of the safety margins, engineers and metal scientists say some plants may be forced to close over these concerns before their licenses run out — unless, of course, new compromises with regulations are made. But the stakes are high: A vessel damaged by radiation becomes brittle and prone to cracking in certain accidents at pressurized water reactors, potentially releasing its radioactive contents into the environment.
LEAKY VALVES: Operators have repeatedly violated leakage standards for valves designed to bottle up radioactive steam in the event of earthquakes and other accidents at boiling water reactors.
Many plants have found they could not adhere to the general standard allowing each of these parts — known as main steam isolation valves — to leak at a rate of no more than 11.5 cubic feet per hour. In 1999, the NRC decided to permit individual plants to seek amendments of up to 200 cubic feet per hour for all four steam valves combined.
But plants keep violating even those higher limits. For example, in 2007, Hatch Unit 2, in Baxley, Ga., reported combined leakage of 574 cubic feet per hour.
CRACKED TUBING: The industry has long known of cracking in steel alloy tubing originally used in the steam generators of pressurized water reactors. Ruptures were rampant in these tubes containing radioactive coolant; in 1993 alone, there were seven. Even today, as many as 18 reactors are still running on old generators.
Problems can arise even in a newer metal alloy, according to a report of a 2008 industry-government workshop.
CORRODED PIPING: Nuclear operators have failed to stop an epidemic of leaks in pipes and other underground equipment in damp settings. The country's nuclear sites have suffered more than 400 accidental radioactive leaks during their history, the activist Union of Concerned Scientists reported in September.
Plant operators have been drilling monitoring wells and patching hidden or buried piping and other equipment for several years to control an escalating outbreak.
Here, too, they have failed. Between 2000 and 2009, the annual number of leaks from underground piping shot up fivefold, according to an internal industry document obtained and analyzed by the AP.
___
CONCERNS OF LONG STANDING
Even as they reassured the public, regulators have been worrying about aging reactors since at least the 1980s, when the first ones were entering only their second decade of operation. A 1984 report for the NRC blamed wear, corrosion, crud and fatigue for more than a third of 3,098 failures of parts or systems within the first 12 years of industry operations; the authors believed the number was actually much higher.
A decade later, in 1994, the NRC reported to Congress that the critical shrouds lining reactor cores were cracked at a minimum of 11 units, including five with extensive damage. The NRC ordered more aggressive maintenance, but an agency report last year said cracking of internal core components — spurred by radiation — remains "a major concern" in boiling water reactors.
A 1995 study by Oak Ridge National Laboratory covering a seven-year period found that aging contributed to 19 percent of scenarios that could have ended in severe accidents.
In 2001, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which does not oppose nuclear power, told Congress that aging problems had shut reactors eight times within 13 months.
And an NRC presentation for an international workshop that same year warned of escalating wear at reactor buildings meant to bottle up radiation during accidents. A total of 66 cases of damage were cited in the presentation, with corrosion reported at a quarter of all containment buildings. In at least two cases — at the two-reactor North Anna site 40 miles northwest of Richmond, Va., and the two-unit Brunswick facility near Wilmington, N.C. — steel containment liners designed to shield the public had rusted through.
And in 2009, a one-third-inch hole was discovered in a liner at Beaver Valley Unit 1 in Shippingport, Pa.
Long-standing, unresolved problems persist with electrical cables, too.
In a 1993 report labeled "official use only," an NRC staffer warned that electrical parts throughout plants were subject to dangerous age-related breakdowns unforeseen by the agency. Almost a fifth of cables failed in testing that simulated the effects of 40 years of wear. The report warned that as a result, reactor core damage could occur much more often than expected.
Fifteen years later, the problem appeared to have worsened. An NRC report warned in 2008 that rising numbers of electrical cables are failing with age, prompting temporary shutdowns and degrading safety. Agency staff tallied 269 known failures over the life of the industry.
Two industry-funded reports obtained by the AP said that managers and regulators have worried increasingly about the reliability of sometimes wet, hard-to-reach underground cables over the past five-to-10 years. One of the reports last year acknowledged many electrical-related aging failures at plants around the country.
"Multiple cable circuits may fail when called on to perform functions affecting safety," the report warned.
___
EATEN AWAY FROM WITHIN
Few aging problems have been more challenging than chemical corrosion from within.
In one of the industry's worst accidents, a corroded pipe burst at Virginia's Surry 2 reactor in 1986 and showered workers with scalding steam, killing four.
In summer 2001, the NRC was confronted with a new problem: Corrosive chemicals were cracking nozzles on reactors. But the NRC let operators delay inspections to coincide with scheduled outages. Inspection finally took place in February 2002 at the Davis-Besse unit in Ohio.
What workers found shocked the industry.
They discovered extensive cracking and a place where acidic boron had spurted from the reactor and eaten a gouge as big as a football. When the problem was found, just a fraction of an inch of inner lining remained. An NRC analysis determined that the vessel head could have burst within two months — what former NRC Commissioner Peter Bradford has called a "near rupture" which could have released large amounts of radiation into the environment.
In 2001-3 alone, at least 10 plants developed these cracks, according to an NRC analysis.
Industry defenders blame human failings at Davis-Besse. Owner FirstEnergy Corp. paid a $28 million fine, and courts convicted two plant employees of hiding the deterioration. NRC spokesman Scott Burnell declared that the agency "learned from the incident and improved resident inspector training and knowledge-sharing to ensure that such a situation is never repeated."
Yet on the same March day last year that Burnell's comments were released, Davis-Besse workers again found dried boron on the nozzles of a replacement vessel head, indicating more leaks. Inspecting further, they again found cracks in 24 of 69 nozzles.
"We were not expecting this issue," said plant spokesman Todd Schneider.
In August, the operator applied for a 20-year license extension. Under pressure from the NRC, the company has agreed to replace the replacement head in October.
As far back as the 1990s, the industry and NRC also were well aware that the steel-alloy tubing in many steam generators was subject to chemical corrosion. It could crack over time, releasing radioactive gases that can bypass the containment building. If too much spurts out, there may be too little water to cool down the reactor, prompting a core melt.
In 1993, NRC personnel reported seven outright ruptures inside the generators, several forced outages per year, and some complete replacements. Personnel at the Catawba plant near Charlotte, N.C., found more than 8,000 corroded tubes — more than half its total.
For plants with their original generators, "there is no end in sight to the steam generator tube degradation problems," a top agency manager declared. NRC staffers warned: "Crack depth is difficult to measure reliably and the crack growth rate is difficult to determine."
Yet no broad order was issued for shutdowns to inspect generators.
Instead, the staff began to talk to operators about how to deal with the standard that no cracks could go deeper than 40 percent through the tube wall.
In 1995, the NRC staff put out alternative criteria that let reactors keep running if they could reach positive results with remote checks known as "eddy-currents tests." The new test standard gave more breathing room to reactors.
According to a 2001 report by the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, the staff "acknowledged that there would be some possibility that cracks of objectionable depth might be overlooked and left in the steam generator for an additional operating cycle." The alternative, the report said, would be to repair or remove potentially many tubes from service.
NRC engineer Joe Hopenfeld, who had worked previously in the industry, challenged this approach at the time from within the agency. He warned that multiple ruptures in corroded tubing could release radiation. The NRC said radiation would be confined.
Hopenfeld now says this conclusion wasn't based on solid analysis but "wishful thinking" and research meant to reach a certain conclusion — another instance of "sharpening the pencil."
"It was a hard problem to solve, and they did not want to say it was a problem, because if they really said it was a problem, they would have to shut down a lot of reactors."
___
AGE IS NO ISSUE, SAYS INDUSTRY
With financial pressures mounting in the 1990s to extend the life of aging reactors, new NRC calculations using something called the "Master Curve" put questionable reactor vessels back into the safe zone.
A 1999 NRC review of the Master Curve, used to analyze metal toughness, noted that energy deregulation had put financial pressure on nuclear plants. It went on: "So utility executives are considering new operational scenarios, some of which were unheard of as little as five years ago: extending the licensed life of the plant beyond 40 years." As a result, it said, the industry and the NRC were considering "refinements" of embrittlement calculations "with an eye to reducing known over-conservatisms."
Asked about references to economic pressures, NRC spokesman Burnell said motivations are irrelevant if a technology works.
Former NRC commissioner Peter Lyons said, "There certainly is plenty of research ... to support a relaxation of the conservativisms that had been built in before. I don't see that as decreasing safety. I see that as an appropriate standard."
Though some parts are too big and too expensive to replace, industry defenders also point out that many others are routinely replaced over the years.
Tony Pietrangelo, chief nuclear officer of the industry's Nuclear Energy Institute, acknowledges that you'd expect to see a growing failure rate at some point — "if we didn't replace and do consistent maintenance."
In a sense, then, supporters of aging nukes say an old reactor is essentially a collection of new parts.
"When a plant gets to be 40 years old, about the only thing that's 40 years old is the ink on the license," said NRC chief spokesman Eliot Brenner. "Most, if not all of the major components, will have been changed out."
Oyster Creek spokesman David Benson said the reactor "is as safe today as when it was built."
Yet plant officials have been trying to arrest rust on its 100-foot-high, radiation-blocking steel drywell for decades. The problem was declared solved long ago, but a rust patch was found again in late 2008. Benson said the new rust was only the size of a dime, but acknowledged there was "some indication of water getting in."
In an effort to meet safety standards, aging reactors have been forced to come up with backfit on top of backfit.
As Ivan Selin, a retired NRC chairman, put it: "It's as if we were all driving Model T's today and trying to bring them up to current mileage standards."
For example, the state of New Jersey — not the NRC — had ordered Oyster Creek to build cooling towers to protect sea life in nearby Barnegat Bay. Owner Exelon Corp. said that would cost about $750 million and force it to close the reactor — 20-year license extension notwithstanding. Even with the announcement to close in 2019, Oyster Creek will have been in operation for 50 years.
Many of the safety changes have been justified by something called "risk-informed" analysis, which the industry has employed widely since the 1990s: Regulators set aside a strict check list applied to all systems and focus instead on features deemed to carry the highest risk.
But one flaw of risk-informed analysis is that it doesn't explicitly account for age. An older reactor is not viewed as inherently more unpredictable than a younger one. Ed Lyman, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, says risk-informed analysis has usually served "to weaken regulations, rather than strengthen them."
Even without the right research, the NRC has long reserved legal wiggle room to enforce procedures, rules and standards as it sees fit. A 2008 position paper by the industry group EPRI said the approach has brought "a more tractable enforcement process and a significant reduction in the number of cited violations."
But some safety experts call it "tombstone regulation," implying that problems fester until something goes very wrong. "Until there are tombstones, they don't regulate," said Blanch, the longtime industry engineer who became a whistleblower.
Barry Bendar, a database administrator who lives one mile from Oyster Creek, said representatives of Exelon were asked at a public meeting in 2009 if the plant had a specific life span.
"Their answer was, `No, we can fix it, we can replace, we can patch,'" said Bendar. "To me, everything reaches an end of its life span."
___
The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate(at)ap.org

Obama visits Puerto Rico with eye on 2012 election

2011-06-17T03:26:00.003-07:00

MIAMI – President Barack Obama is making a rare presidential visit to Puerto Rico, the U.S. island territory, with a firm eye on Puerto Ricans back on the mainland who could help him win at least one key state during his re-election campaign next year.
About 4.6 million Puerto Ricans live on the mainland, boosting a fast-growing Hispanic population that is becoming increasingly important in American politics.
The first official visit to the island by a president in 50 years caps a two-day trip that took Obama to two crucial political battlegrounds — North Carolina and Florida — as he solidified his political outreach and defended his economic record against sweeping attacks from potential Republican foes.
Addressing donors at three Miami fundraisers Monday evening, Obama hit a recurrent theme: "Big changes don't happen overnight" and, "The reason we're here today is because our work is not done."
By venturing into Puerto Rico, Obama is courting a population that is concentrated in the New York region but that also has established a foothold in Florida, where about 841,000 Puerto Ricans live, according to the 2010 census. Puerto Ricans living on the island can only vote in presidential primaries.

While there, Obama will make brief remarks upon arrival in San Juan, meet with the island's Republican governor, Luis Fortuno, and attend another fundraiser.
About 20 pro-independence demonstrators kept an all-night vigil at a colonial fort in San Juan to protest Obama's visit. They want the release of three Puerto Rican nationalists imprisoned in the U.S.
By setting foot on the island, Obama inevitably also steps into the decades-old debate over its status as a territory. Fortuno supports statehood. Others prefer the existing status, while a small but vocal minority in Puerto Rico favors independence. Island residents have voted consistently to maintain ties to the U.S.
While administration officials said the visit gives Obama a chance to interact with Puerto Ricans, he was only spending about five hours on the island.
Obama has stayed neutral on the status question and supports a referendum to resolve it. In an interview with The Associated Press, Fortuno said he intends for the question to be put to the island's voters before his term ends in December 2012.
That schedule follows a timetable proposed by a presidential task force. If the island's political leaders can't agree on a process, however, the president and Congress could then weigh in with legislation setting down requirements on how to resolve Puerto Rico's status.
The recession hit Puerto Rico harder than the mainland, with unemployment rising to nearly 17 percent. It had dropped to 16.2 percent in April.
Fortuno said the economy is the biggest issue among islanders. And because they are U.S. citizens, immigration is not as potent a political subject as it is with other Hispanic groups.
Still, he said, "Many issues cut across the different subgroups within the Hispanic community."
The governor said he welcomed the attention his island is getting and credited a growing regard among politicians for the Hispanic vote.
"There is a heightened level of awareness about the importance of the Latino vote that hadn't existed for a while," he said.
He noted that both Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton courted the island during their intense contest for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the Republican candidates would do the same next year," he said.

FDA wants more sunscreen protections

2011-06-17T03:26:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON – Federal regulators will require sunscreen manufacturers to test their products' effectiveness against sun rays that pose the greatest risk of skin cancer. Under new rules published Tuesday, they also will have to follow stricter guidelines when describing how well their products block ultraviolet B rays.

The Food and Drug Administration announced new regulations Tuesday designed to enhance effectiveness of sunscreens and make them easier to use.
Sunscreens that don't protect against both ultraviolet A and B rays and have a sun protection factor, SPF, of at least 15 will have to carry warning label: "This product has been shown only to help prevent sunburn, not skin cancer or early skin aging."
Currently, the FDA only requires testing for ultraviolet B rays that cause sunburn. That's what the familiar SPF measure is based on.
But the new regulations require testing for the more dangerous ultraviolet A rays, which can penetrate glass and are most commonly linked to wrinkles and skin cancer.
FDA will also prohibit sunscreen marketing claims like "waterproof" and "sweatproof," which the agency said "are exaggerations of performance."
Products that protect against UVA and UVB will be labeled "broad spectrum." In an effort to clear up the confusing mix of numbers, acronyms and symbols on sunscreen labels, the FDA says manufacturers must phase out a four-star system currently used by some companies to rate UVA protection.
The FDA rules will also standardize the older SPF protection rankings for UVB rays. Only sunscreens with an SPF of 15 or higher can claim to lower the risk of cancer. The FDA is also capping the highest SPF value at 50, unless companies can provide results of further testing that support a higher number. Some products on the market claim to offer SPF protection of a 100 or higher.
The SPF figure indicates the amount of sun exposure needed to cause sunburn on sunscreen-protected skin compared with unprotected skin. For example, a SPF rating of 30 means it would take the person 30 times longer to burn wearing sunscreen than with exposed skin.
FDA announced its intent to draft sunscreen rules in 1978 and published them in 1999. The agency then put the plan on indefinite hold until it could address issues concerning both UVA and UVB protection.
The delay in FDA regulations means many companies have already adopted the some of the language. For example, all Coppertone products from Merck & Co.'s Schering-Plough unit and Neutrogena Sunblock from Johnson & Johnson already boast "broad spectrum UVA and UVB protection."
Most dermatologists recommend a broad spectrum, water-resistant sunscreen of SPF 30 or higher every two hours while outside.
Last year an estimated 68,130 people in the U.S. were diagnosed with melanoma — the most dangerous form of skin cancer — and an estimated 8,700 died, according to the National Cancer Institute. Nearly $2 billion is spent treating the disease each year.

Syrian tanks, troops extend reach in border areas

2011-06-17T03:25:00.001-07:00

BOYNUYOGUN, Turkey – Syrian tanks pushed toward more towns and villages near the Turkish and Iraqi borders on Tuesday, expanding the crackdown against a 12-week uprising to the north and east as more Syrians flee their homes.

Syrian President Bashar Assad appears to have abandoned all pretense of offering reform, sending tanks, helicopter gunships and only his most loyal forces into population centers to crush dissent.
Anti-government activists reported tanks in the northern market town of Maaret al-Numan and in smaller villages near Jisr al-Shughour, a town stormed Sunday by Syrian elite forces backed by helicopters.
Human rights activist Mustafa Osso said tanks were also moving in the large eastern province of Deir el-Zour, which borders Iraq. The Syrian government claimed to have thwarted cross-border weapons smuggling in that area.
The growing military campaign has sent some 8,000 Syrians fleeing for the lives to neighboring Turkey, where they offer a grim picture of what they left behind.
Troops "damage homes and buildings, kill even animals, set trees and farmlands on fire," said Mohammad Hesnawi, 26, who fled Jisr al-Shughour. He accused pro-government militias known as "shabiha" of atrocities there.
Turkish authorities were giving priority to women and children fleeing the border village of al-Hasaniya, where people "are eating fruit out of the trees, including apples and cherries," since there's not enough food for all, Hesnawi said.
Only sketchy reports are emerging from the embattled northern area, since foreign journalists have been expelled from Syria.
Some analysts have said Assad is trying to keep the opposition from establishing a base, as happened in Libya, where the rebels trying to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi took over the coastal city of Benghazi. Assad initially had promised mild reforms, but his gestures have been rejected by the thousands who have staged protests across Syria, who say they won't stop until he leaves power, ending his family's 40-year ruling dynasty.
It's a scenario that also played out in Tunisia and Egypt, where popular demands increased almost daily until people accepted nothing less than the regime's end.
In the past week, as the government appeared to be on the verge of losing control of major swaths of the country, it abandoned most pretenses at reform.
The brutal crackdown on the uprising, the most serious threat to the Assad family's power, has altered a view held by many in Syria and abroad of Assad as a reformer at heart, one constrained by members of his late father's old guard who were fighting change, especially privileged members of the Assads' minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
After inheriting power 11 years ago from his father, the late Hafez al-Assad, the president cultivated the image of a modernizer in a stagnant dictatorship. But he has had to juggle many factors in the Syrian political landscape: its sizable minority populations; a majority Sunni population drawn in part to Muslim fundamentalism; an influential military, and alliances with such external Shiite forces as Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah.
Most of the major military operations have been carried out in border areas, including Jisr al-Shughour, the southern city of Daraa, near the border with Jordan, and the central province of Homs, bordering Lebanon.
Activists say more than 1,400 Syrians have died and some 10,000 have been detained in the government crackdown since the popular uprising began in mid-March.
Turkey's prime minister, opening his borders to those fleeing the government onslaught, has accused Assad's regime of "savagery," but also said he would reach out to the Syrian leader to help solve the crisis.
Turkey and Syria once nearly went to war, but the two countries have cultivated warm relations in recent years, lifting travel visa requirements for their citizens and promoting business ties.
They share a 520-mile (850-kilometer) border. Refugees and relatives on both sides appeared to be crossing unimpeded around the village of Guvecci.
In an apparent anticipation of more refugees, workers of the Turkish Red Crescent, the equivalent of the Red Cross, began building a fourth tent camp Monday near the border.
____
Mroue reported from Beirut.
____
Follow Bassem Mroue at http://twitter.com/bmroue

Analysis: Grading the New Hampshire debate

2011-06-17T03:21:00.001-07:00

Mitt Romney
Style: A much different presence, deliberately, than in the 2008 debates - less awkward, coldfishy, and show-offy, with a sharper viewpoint and a more natural and leaderlike sensibility.
Avoided the fusty, musty old-fashioned language he habitually employs. Announced Bruins 4-0 hockey lead with more charm than he usually demonstrates in public. Substance: Missed a chance to further distinguish himself from his rivals by failing to offer solutions along with his critique of Obama's policies. Did not explain with any specificity how he would better handle the economy than the president. The worst point: Twisted himself in a bit of a rhetorical pretzel trying to explain his past statements about the Detroit auto bailout. Also: There was distracting perspiration on upper lip from the get go, and he looked unusually tired - if still movie-idol handsome. The best point: Calmly and clearly handled RomneyCare versus ObamaCare. For the foreseeable future: asked and answered. The main thing: Took a page from Hillary Clinton's 2007 playbook by agreeing with his Republican competitors whenever he could and pivoting to attack the other party's incumbent president. The best news of the night for his supporters: rivals took a pass on invitations to go after him on health care and abortion flip-flopping. Leaves St. Anselm even stronger than he entered. Grade: A- Candidate grades are based on both performance and success in using the debate to improve their standing in the nomination contest.

(See what you missed while not watching the New Hampshire GOP debate.)

Michelle Bachmann
Style: Appeared polished, serene and in-command. Smoothly used the names of audience questioners in her responses. Went for soundbite applause lines more often than her rivals, with a pretty high success rate, while still coming off more serious and credible than her usual caricature. Shed the wacky-eyed look she has evinced on cable news in the past. Substance: Offered up more promises of repeal than ideas of her own. Seemed confused about 10th Amendment, saying she would let states make their own decisions about gay marriage, then stating that she supported a constitutional amendment defining marriage. The worst point: Seemed gimmicky and process-focused when she ignored the first question to announce with a self-conscious flourish that she had just filed the paperwork to become an official candidate. The best point: Used her status as a sitting member of Congress to brag on her forceful efforts to reverse Obama policies. The main thing: Seems to have taken advice from her new blue-chip advisers about how to modulate her performance to expand her appeal beyond her current core supporters. Her overall presentation and rhetoric will play even better before partisan audiences in South Carolina and Iowa. Grade: B Candidate grades are based on both performance and success in using the debate to improve their standing in the nomination contest.

(See more on Bachmann.)

Tim Pawlenty
Style: Shied clumsily away from direct confrontation on Romney's Massachusetts health care plan. Overcame some visible anxiety to appear tough, resolute, and confident when talking about Obama's record. Stressed his blue-collar roots without sounding forced. At times seemed overly grim when discussing the current state of the country. Substance: Bragged about his pro-life record without heeding the intricacies of general election politics. Neglected to hammer hard on the economy and explain his new economic blueprint. The worst point: Nervously addressed moderator John King instead of the audience during the first response. The best point: Delivered a strong, heart-felt answer on the Founders' conception of the separation of church and state. The main thing: He started out a bit tentative and never fully seized the stage in a presidential manner. But with a strong heart and steady head, he showed some of the potential necessary to become the Romney alternative if the time comes. Grade: B Candidate grades are based on both performance and success in using the debate to improve their standing in the nomination contest.

Ron Paul
Style: The same every time: direct, intense, a bit hard to follow. Substance: Stayed on his limited government message. His years of experience in Congress showed through - he knows the minutiae of every area of federal policy. The worst point: Occasionally went on one of his fast-talking, House-floor style rants - all trees and no forest. The best point: A model of consistency and true confidence. When judged by his own rules and expectations, he pretty much always wins these debates. The main thing: The only one to present a consistent worldview with passion and experience, but did little to expand his following to the kind of mainstream voters he needs to have a real chance - and lacked some of the freshness and verve he had four years ago. Grade: C+ Candidate grades are based on both performance and success in using the debate to improve their standing in the nomination contest.

Herman Cain
Style: To some, authoritative, booming, and confident, to others, bumptious and ineffective. Those just seeing him for the first time might have been surprised by his apparent lack of political heft. Substance: Boldly called for personal savings accounts for Social Security, but dodged on raising the retirement age. The worst point: His explanation of his early support for TARP clanked. Also: Risked mainstream support when maladroitly restating recent comments about having Muslims in his government. The best point: As the only non-politician on the stage, played his business executive experience card at every turn. The main thing: Did nothing to slow down his recent rise in the polls, but did nothing to accelerate it either. Grade: C Candidate grades are based on both performance and success in using the debate to improve their standing in the nomination contest.

Newt Gingrich
Style: Started strong, hammering on the "Obama depression." But soon was lecturing the audience in the didactic manner that inspires some and turns off others. Failed to present a clear overarching view of where he thinks America needs to go. Substance: Showed off his expertise on health care, but failed to live up to his press clippings as the smartest person on the stage. The worst point: Seemed mired in the issues and attitudes of the '90s, when he was Speaker. The best point: Big and bold on immigration in a way that could win over conservatives and/but still lead to a bipartisan solution. The main thing: Gingrich was exactly what Chris Matthews predicted he might be - not a candidate, but a pundit who wandered onto the wrong stage. Grade: C- Candidate grades are based on both performance and success in using the debate to improve their standing in the nomination contest.

(See a TIME video with Gingrich.)

Rick Santorum
Style: At times, a little shrill and sometimes even whiny, but occasionally pleasantly normal. Substance: Talked about his work on welfare reform in the '90s. Offered a passionate defense of the Ryan House budget. The worst point: Showed zero personality when asked a softball question about his Leno / Conan preference. The best point: Got adequate time to present himself as he truly is to the audience. The main thing: Not strong enough to stand out against some of his more fiery rivals, and too backward looking towards his years in Congress. Grade: C- Candidate grades are based on both performance and success in using the debate to improve their standing in the nomination contest.

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Syria's army seizes back restive town after mutiny

2011-06-13T00:19:00.000-07:00

BEIRUT – Elite Syrian troops backed by helicopters and tanks regained control Sunday of a town where police and soldiers joined forces with the protesters they were ordered to shoot — a decisive assault from a government prepared for an all-out battle to keep power.

Troops led by the president's brother shelled Jisr al-Shughour as the gunships hovered overhead, paving the way for scores of tanks and armored personnel carriers to roll in from two directions. By early afternoon, the sounds of battle faded. The army was in control.
Sunday's developments, and actions by opponents of the Syrian government, marked a major departure from what had been a largely peaceful protest movement. Among them: the discovery of a mass grave filled with uniformed bodies and the increasing willingness of mutineers and outgunned residents to fight back.
President Basher Assad's response in Jisr al-Shughour, the first town to spin out of government control since the uprising began in mid-March, mirrored his father's 1980 assault there. It was a clear message to anyone contemplating defiance.
Syrians who were among thousands to flee for the nearby Turkish border said about 60 mutineers were defending the town alongside some 200 unarmed residents. Their fate was unknown late Sunday, but the government reported three deaths in the fighting — one of its own soldiers and two unidentified men whose bodies were shown to reporters.
"The Syrian army is fighting itself," said Muhieddine Lathkani, a London-based Syrian writer and intellectual. "The army's response was strong because they did not want the mutiny to become larger."
Neighboring Turkey, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) away, has given sanctuary to more than 5,000 fleeing Syrians, nearly all of them in the past few days from Idlib province. Turkey's prime minister has accused the Assad regime of "savagery."
Arab governments, which were unusually supportive of NATO intervention in Libya, have been silent in the face of Syria's crackdown, fearing that the alternative to Assad would be chaos. The country has an explosive sectarian mix and is seen as a regional powerhouse with influence on events in neighboring Israel, Lebanon, Iraq.
Fridays in Syria have become a familiar cycle of protest and government crackdown, one that appeared likely to continue on June 3 in Jisr al-Shughour and elsewhere. Instead, residents say, police and soldiers turned on their commanders, and control of the town slipped out of government hands.
Troops on Sunday removed 10 uniformed bodies from a mass grave in front of the Military Police building. At least four of the bodies were beheaded or struck on the head with an ax, according to an Associated Press reporter who was invited to accompany the Syrian forces. The building was burned and there were bloodstains in some rooms, which bolstered the reports of the mutiny.
Elite forces led by Assad's younger brother, Maher, were ordered to the northern province of Idlib, a possible sign that the military no longer fully trusted its conscripts. The government, which has expelled foreign journalists and keeps tight control over information, unexpectedly invited a few reporters to join the unit, including one from The Associated Press.
"The situation is very bad," said Abdu, a Syrian who sneaked into the Turkish village of Guvecci, where he came to get bread for his family who had fled and were camped just inside Syria. "We want democracy, we want freedom. We are not afraid of anything anymore."
But he would not give his full name. Syrians who speak against the government face retribution and arrest, and few who express anti-government views allow themselves to be identified.
In Washington, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham raised the possibility of an international force like the one in Libya.
"But it's going to take regional and international cooperation to get there. But if you really care about the Syrian people, preventing them from being slaughtered, you need to put on the table all options, including a model like we have in Libya," Graham, a Republican representing South Carolina, told CBS' "Face the Nation."
Speaking in Colombia, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said he has talked with President Assad several times and urged him to take "decisive actions to listen to the people and to take necessary measures to reflect the will of the people."
"I'm deeply concerned and saddened that so many people have been killed in the course of peaceful demonstrations," he told reporters late Saturday, adding that he urged Assad to let a humanitarian team into Syria to deliver assistance.
The government's assault of Jisr al-Shughour was the most serious since the uprising against Assad's regime began in mid-March. Assad has made some concessions, but thousands of people demonstrating against his rule — inspired by protests in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere — say they will not stop until he leaves power.
Syria's government has said 500 members of the security forces have died, including 120 last week in Jisr al-Shughour. More than 1,400 Syrians have died and some 10,000 have been detained in the government crackdown since mid-March, activists say.
Backed by helicopter gunships and tanks, army units moved in after dismantling explosives planted on roads and bridges leading to Jisr al-Shughour, Syria's state-run news agency SANA said, reporting "heavy" clashes." Residents who fled to Turkey said thousands of young men and the mutinous forces had armed themselves and planted dynamite at the town entrances.
By late afternoon, two hours of sporadic explosions and cracks of gunfire had ended. The streets were empty. The roads were marked by burned tires and cement barriers erected by residents to slow the advance.
A resident who fled on Sunday said the army shelled Jisr al-Shughour, then tanks and other heavy armor rolled in from two directions. As the troops advanced, he said, they fought about 60 army defectors, whose fate was unknown. He said about 200 unarmed men who were guarding the town are believed to have been either killed or detained.
Syrian state television said one soldier died, and journalists taken to the National Hospital saw at two other bodies. Troops said they were gunmen, killed in the fighting.
Some Turks in the border village of Guvecci said Syrians on the other side of the frontier were calling them with reports that "smoke was rising from Jisr al-Shughour."
Residents who emerged from their homes Sunday said they were suffering before the troops came. They spoke in the presence of military officers and government officials accompanying the journalists, and it was not clear whether they expressed their views freely.
"Gunmen were intimidating us. They told us 'the army is coming to kill you and you have to flee the area,'" said Zeina Salloum, 37, after coming out of her home to welcome the advancing troops.
Syria-based human rights activist Mustafa Osso said the advancing troops fought hundreds of army defectors from the area. "This is the biggest and most dangerous wave of defections" since an uprising against Assad's regime began in mid-March, Osso said.
Lathkani, the London-based Syrian, said more troops could defect in rural areas after seeing that it took nearly a week for the army to bring reinforcements to Idlib.
"The army's attack will backfire," said Lathkani.
The province has a history of hostility to the regime. Idlib's Muslim Brotherhood population rose up against Assad's father, the late president Hafez Assad, in the late 1970s. Jisr al-Shughour itself came under heavy government bombardment in 1980, with a reported 70 people killed. Residents say the numbers were much higher.
The events proved a prelude to a 1982 three-week bombing campaign against the city of Hama that crushed a Sunni uprising there, killing 10,000 to 25,000 people, according to Amnesty International estimates.
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Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Jisr al-Shughour and Selcan Hacaoglu in Altinozu, Turkey, contributed to this report.
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Follow Bassem Mroue at http://twitter.com/bmroue

2011-06-08T06:10:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON – Consumers are caught in the middle of a fight between financial institutions and merchants as the Senate approaches a showdown vote over whether to block the Federal Reserve from capping fees that stores pay banks every time a shopper swipes a debit card.

The vote, scheduled for Wednesday, is the climax of a long, expensive lobbying battle between two industries that lawmakers hate to cross because of their influence back home and their campaign contributions.
"Those are folks who have a lot of presence in all our states," said Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., who added he was undecided. He said, "This is one of those where people have friends on both sides."
At stake is whether to slash the $16 billion the Fed says merchants pay banks and credit card companies for the 38 billion times consumers use debit cards annually. The Fed says the fees currently average about 44 cents per swipe, which under a proposal the central bank unveiled last year would be capped at 12 cents per transaction.
Last year's financial overhaul law ordered the Fed to issue a rule that will take effect on July 21. The Senate vote will be on an effort to delay the regulations for a year and order the Fed and three other agencies to study whether the proposal is fair — and rewrite it if at least two agencies decide it is not.
Each side was claiming to have consumers' interests at heart. Merchants said today's fees, typically 1 percent to 2 percent of the purchase, push their prices higher and make it tougher to hire new workers. Banks say the Fed proposal discounts overhead costs like preventing fraud and argue that slicing the fee would force them to find other sources of revenue such as raising their charges for checking accounts.
The fight over so-called interchange fees for debit cards crosses party lines. While No. 2 Senate Democratic leader Richard Durbin of Illinois is the chief supporter of the Fed's proposal, the main foes are Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Bob Corker, R-Tenn.
The provision requiring the Fed to set fair debit card fees was included in last year's financial overhaul law by a 64-33 Senate vote and was written by Durbin. There was no separate House vote on the issue. President Barack Obama signed the overall law after Congress passed it over solid Republican opposition.
Durbin, using Senate procedures, is forcing Tester and Corker to gather support from 60 of the 100 senators to win. Though aides and lobbyists on both sides say Tester could be close to prevailing, they concede it will be tough to defeat the veteran Durbin, who wields considerable influence as a party leader.
Even so, Durbin faced some challenges. Six senators — including five Democrats — who voted for his amendment last year are no longer in the Senate. And at least two senators who supported him a year ago — Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho — are backing Tester's effort to delay the Fed rules.
As debate began Tuesday, Durbin recalled the $700 billion bailout passed in late 2008 as the financial industry teetered on the brink of catastrophe — followed by the widely unpopular bonuses that many financial firms awarded executives. He said the largest banks were "fighting viciously" to block the Fed rule because they have the most to lose.
"Are we going to be shaken down a second time?" he asked. "That's what this debate is all about."
Tester, a first-term senator facing re-election next year in a GOP-leaning state, said he was not championing big banks.
"No one needs to shed a tear for them," he said on the Senate floor.
Instead, he said he was on the side of small banks and credit unions that dot his rural state, which he said could vanish if their revenues collapse.
"Fewer banking options in rural America is a death knell for rural America," Tester said. "But that is where we are headed."
"To call this a Wall Street bailout is beyond demagoguery," Corker told reporters.
Financial institutions and merchants spend millions of dollars a year lobbying on Capitol Hill, and their attempts to sway the vote are far from over.
A radio ad in Montana, sponsored by the National Retail Federation and the Montana Retail Association, took direct aim at Tester.
"He's helping the big banks delay debit card swipe fee reform," the announcer says. "Sen. Tester says he's for the consumer, but Tester lets the big banks swipe our money."
Ads from the other side make similar claims. In one radio commercial that ran recently in Idaho, an announcer says of the Fed proposal, "This government regulation will hurt our local community banks and credit unions and could force you to pick up the tab for giant retailers," a reference to the big-box retail behemoths that banks and credit unions say would be the biggest beneficiaries if the fees are reduced.
Underscoring the unlikely coalitions the battle was spawning, Tester's proposal was being supported by the conservative Americans for Tax Reform on the ground that the Fed proposal would impose price controls. Supporting Durbin was the Armed Forces Marketing Council, whose members operate exchanges on military bases and which argued that the fees hurt military families.

Obama administration to appeal healthcare ruling

2011-06-08T06:06:00.000-07:00

ATLANTA (Reuters) – Lawyers for President Barack Obama will on Wednesday seek to stave off the biggest legal challenge yet to healthcare reform, his signature domestic policy achievement.

The administration will present oral arguments as it appeals a ruling by a Florida judge who declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional, backing claims by 26 U.S. states that are seeking repeal.
A three-judge panel at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta will hear oral arguments by both sides. While a Virginia appeals court heard a similar case in May, this case is significant because of the number of states backing it.
No ruling is expected for months and legal experts expect an appeal to the Supreme Court, regardless of which side wins.
The law aims to increase access to healthcare and slow the growth in costs. The White House views it as a cornerstone of Obama's presidency. Republicans say it will send costs soaring and represents intrusive government power especially because it mandates all individuals to buy health insurance.
They plan to make their campaign for repeal a pillar of efforts to defeat Obama at presidential elections in 2012.
"Opponents of reform claim that the law's individual responsibility provision exceeds Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce because it penalizes 'inactivity.' They are wrong," the White House said on its blog on Tuesday.
"Individuals who choose to go without health insurance are actively making an economic decision that affects all of us," it said of the provision to fine Americans who do not buy insurance, which comes into effect in 2014.
The 2010 law also allows young people to remain on their parents' health insurance into their twenties and prevents insurers from denying coverage for preexisting medical conditions.
Florida District Judge Roger Vinson ruled in January the entire law "must be declared void" because its requirement to buy insurance is unconstitutional, but put the ruling on hold pending appeal.
"The nation needs healthcare reform that's pursued constitutionally and in a way that does not harm our economy and our taxpayers," Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement.
Chief Judge Joel Dubina, Judge Frank Hull and Judge Stanley Marcus will hear the appeal. Analysts will watch their questions closely for clues as to how they might rule.
Dubina was appointed by President George H. W. Bush, a Republican, while the other two were appointed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.
Senior administration lawyer Neal Katyal will argue for the government, while former Solicitor General Paul Clement will present Florida's case.
The case is State of Florida et al v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services et al. Its number is 11-11021.
(Editing by Eric Walsh)

Exit of wounded Yemeni leader sets off celebration

2011-06-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

SANAA, Yemen – The departure of Yemen's battle-wounded president for treatment in Saudi Arabia set off wild street celebrations Sunday in the capital where crowds danced, sang and slaughtered cows in hopes that this spelled a victorious end to a more than three-month campaign to push their leader from power.

Behind the festive atmosphere, many feared Ali Abdullah Saleh, a masterful political survivor who has held power for nearly 33 years, will yet return — or leave the country in ruins if he can't. Hanging in the balance was a country that even before the latest tumult was beset by deep poverty, malnutrition, tribal conflict and violence by an active al-Qaida franchise with international reach.
Saleh, who was taken overnight to a military hospital in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, underwent successful surgery on his chest to remove jagged pieces of wood that splintered from a mosque pulpit when his compound was hit by rockets on Friday, said medical officials and a Yemeni diplomat. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to release the information.
The stunning rocket attack, which the government first blamed on tribal fighters who in recent weeks turned against the president and later on al-Qaida, killed 11 bodyguards and seriously injured five senior officials worshipping just alongside Saleh.
While Saleh is away, Vice President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi is acting as temporary head of state, said the deputy information minister, Abdu al-Janadi. The minister said the president would return to assume his duties after his treatment, though experts on Yemeni affairs questioned whether a return is possible in the face of so much opposition.
"Saleh will come back. Saleh is in good health, and he may give up the authority one day but it has to be in a constitutional way," al-Janadi said. "Calm has returned. Coups have failed. ... We are not in Libya, and Saleh is not calling for civil war."
His sudden departure raised many questions, including whether his Saudi hosts would bless his return. The Saudis have backed Saleh and cooperated over the years in confronting al-Qaida and other threats, but they are now among those pressing him to give up power as part of a negotiated deal. Saudi Arabia has watched with concern the anti-government protests that have spread to other neighboring countries like Bahrain and is eager to contain the unrest on its doorstep.
The president's absence raised the specter of an even more violent power struggle between the armed tribesmen who have joined the opposition and loyalist military forces under the command of Saleh's son and other close relatives. Street battles between the sides have already pushed the political crisis to the brink of civil war.
In an attempt to cool the situation, the vice president offered through mediators to pull government forces back from the neighborhood of the capital where they've battled fighters loyal to Sheik Sadeq al-Ahmar, who heads Yemen's most powerful tribal confederation, the Hashid.
Al-Ahmar said in a statement he agreed to the deal, which requires his forces to leave the streets and government ministries they seized starting Monday.
In the streets of the capital, Sanaa, joyful crowds celebrated what they hoped would be Saleh's permanent exit.
Crowds danced, sang and slaughtered a few cows in what demonstrators have dubbed Change Square, the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement since mid-February calling for Saleh to step down immediately. Some uniformed soldiers joined those dancing and singing patriotic songs and were hoisted on the shoulders of the crowd. Many in the jubilant crowd waved Yemeni flags, joyfully whistling and flashing the "V" for victory signs.
"Who would have believed that this people could have removed the tyrant?" said 30-year-old teacher Moufid al-Mutairi.
Women in black veils joined demonstrators carrying banners that hailed Saleh's departure. One read: "The oppressor is gone, but the people stay."
But there were also fears that the president would attempt a comeback or try to transfer power to his son Ahmed, who heads the Republican Guard and remains in Yemen. Some worried Saleh and his allies could even try to leave the country in ruins if they feel there is no way to stay in power.
"Saleh is never true to his word," said al-Mutairi, the teacher. "If the medical reports are true that his wounds are light, then he will for sure return. Our challenge now is to remove the rest of the regime."
"If he returns, it will be a disaster."
Yemen's unrest began as a peaceful protest movement that the government at times used brutal force to try to suppress, killing at least 166 people, according to Human Rights Watch. It transformed in the past two weeks into armed conflict after the president's forces attacked the home of a key tribal leader and one-time ally who threw his support behind the uprising. The fighting turned the streets of the capital into a war zone.
Other forces aligned against Saleh at the same time. There were high-level defections within his military, and Islamist fighters took over at least one town in the south in the past two weeks.
In Taiz, Yemen's second-largest city, dozens of gunmen attacked the presidential palace on Sunday, killing four soldiers in an attempt to storm the compound, according to military officials and witnesses. They said one of the attackers was also killed in the violence. The attackers belong to a group set up recently to avenge the killing of anti-regime protesters at the hands of Saleh's security forces.
Elsewhere in the south, gunman ambushed a military convoy, killing nine soldiers, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Saleh has been under intense pressure to step down from his powerful Gulf neighbors, who control a large share of the world's oil resources, and from longtime ally Washington. They all fear Yemen could be headed toward a failed state that will become a fertile ground for al-Qaida's most active franchise to operate and launch attacks abroad.
In a display of the kind of political maneuvering that has helped keep Saleh in power through numerous perils, he agreed three times to a U.S.-backed Gulf Arab proposal for ending the crisis only to back out at the last minute.
Now, Saleh's injuries and his treatment abroad provide him with what could turn out to be a face-saving solution to exit power.
"This is exactly what needed to happen," said Christopher Boucek, a Yemen expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "He needed to leave in order to get past this political deadlock that has been cursing Yemen for the past few months."
Rick Nelson, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said there is no chance of Saleh returning to Yemen and it's unlikely anyone linked to him can maintain power and control.
"I can't see any remnant of the saleh government staying in place after this," Nelson said.
The fact that powerful members of Saleh's family have remained behind in Sanaa suggests vigorous attempts to hold power will be made.
Significantly, military officials said Hadi, the vice president, met late Saturday night in Sanaa with several members of Saleh's family, including his son and one-time heir apparent Ahmed, who commands the powerful Republican Guard. Others who attended the meeting included two of the president's nephews and two half brothers. All four head well-equipped and highly trained units that constitute the president's main power base in the military.
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Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb and Ben Hubbard in Cairo, Bradley Klapper in Washington and Abdullah al-Shihri in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.

Europe: Obama tends to old allies, new challenges

2011-05-22T05:41:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON – Weaving together strands of pomp, policy and summitry, President Barack Obama's weeklong European tour is all about tending to old friends in the Western alliance and securing their help with daunting challenges, from the political upheaval in the Mideast and North Africa to the protracted war in Afghanistan.

Obama's eighth trip to Europe as president, with a quick-moving itinerary that dips into four countries in six days, unfolds against the backdrop of the NATO-led bombing campaign in Libya and stubborn economic weakness on both sides of the Atlantic.
A priority for the president and his allies will be to more clearly define the West's role in promoting stability and democracy in the Arab world without being overly meddlesome and within tight financial limitations.
Obama, who departs late Sunday, will visit Ireland, England, France and Poland. Each is weathering an economic downturn that has forced European nations to adopt strict austerity measures. The U.S. has pushed its national debt to the limit, and Obama and congressional Republicans are in contentious talks about how steeply to cut spending.
But never mind all that, at least for a moment.
A highlight of Obama's opening stop in Ireland will be a feel-good pilgrimage to the hamlet of Moneygall, where America's first black president will explore his Irish — yes, Irish — roots, and most likely raise a pint.
It turns out that Falmouth Kearney, who immigrated to the United States in 1850 at the age of 19, is the great great great grandfather of Obama on his white, Kansas-born mother's side. Obama, whose father was born in Kenya, will connect in Moneygall with distant relatives from the Irish branch of his family tree.
Michael Collins, the Irish ambassador to the United States, says the president's visit will be "a golden moment" for a country that's been on the economic ropes after its boom time. The visit is sure to play well at home for Obama — make that O'bama — as he heads into re-election season after being pushed to great lengths simply to prove he was born on U.S. soil.
After his day in Ireland, Obama spends two in England, where he and first lady Michelle Obama will be treated to all the pomp and pageantry that the monarchy can muster for the president's first European state visit. The Obamas even get a Buckingham Palace sleepover.
Though the United States and Britain remain the closest of allies, the relationship has been strained by recent events, including last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico triggered by the explosion of an oil rig owned by British-based BP. Britain's unilateral announcement of a timetable for withdrawal of its 10,000 troops from Afghanistan also rankled the United States.
Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the private Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Obama's stop in Britain could help "put the `special' back into the U.S.-U.K. special relationship."
Obama on Wednesday will become the first American president to speak to members of Parliament from the historic Palace of Westminster. European leaders are eager to see how president frames the U.S.-European partnership at a time when Obama has prodded Western allies to shoulder greater responsibility in areas such as Afghanistan and Libya. A NATO-led mission is working to protect civilians and assist the rebel fighters trying to oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Former Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell, a member of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, said British politicians would be listening keenly to what Obama had to say about Afghanistan when he addresses both houses of Parliament on Wednesday.
"The death of Osama bin Laden can only encourage those with the ear of the president to proceed more quickly with the draw-down of American forces in Afghanistan," Campbell said. "MPs and peers alike will be listening closely to what he says about America's intentions for Afghanistan."
In private, Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron will plunge into the details of a host of international challenges on which the U.S. and Britain have worked together: Afghanistan, Libya, counterterrorism, the global economy and more.
Both leaders then scoot to a French summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, where the president hopes to build on momentum from his speech days ago about how best to promote stability and democracy in the Middle East. Obama has called on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund to present the G-8 with an ambitious plan to help Egypt and Tunisia, in particular, recover from the disruptions caused by their democratic revolutions and prepare for elections later this year.
The U.S. and its allies don't want those elections to occur against a backdrop of economic chaos that could increase support for extremists. But there's no expectation of a big aid measure emerging from the G-8. Rather, the countries in the region will present their plans for democratization and stabilizing their economies, and the G-8 will consider ways to help.
Although not on the official agenda, the G-8 leaders are sure to be talking about future leadership of the IMF now that former chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has resigned after being arrested on attempted rape charges in New York. European leaders are anxious to put another European in that position while emerging economies would like to see a process that is open to someone from the developing world. U.S. officials have said they favor an open process, without being more specific.
Obama's visit to Europe comes a little more than a month before the U.S. is scheduled to start its gradual troop withdrawal in Afghanistan. The president has said the initial drawdown will be significant, but it's unclear how many specific answers he'll have for European leaders. Britain and France, in particular, are looking for details on the U.S. withdrawal timetable for signs of how NATO will move from combat missions to a training role by the end of 2014.
The Afghan mission is deeply unpopular in many European countries, and political pressure has led some leaders to set timetables for their withdrawal. The British are planning to draw down 400 of their nearly 10,000 troops this year, with all British troops out by the end of 2014. France, which has 4,000 troops in Afghanistan, has said it is considering speeding up its withdrawal now that al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is dead.
During his two-day stay in Deauville, France, Obama will take time for one-on-one meetings on the side of the G-8 with several world leaders, including Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
The U.S.-Russia relationship, though much improved since the Bush administration, remains complex.
Medvedev has spoken out strongly in recent weeks against U.S. plans to plant missile interceptors in Romania as part of a U.S. shield over Europe, saying that could threaten Russia. He's warned that Washington's failure to cooperate with Russia on the missile shield could lead to a new arms race, and also threatened to pull out of the New START nuclear treaty with the U.S. if Russia feels at risk.
Obama's meeting with Kan would be his first with the Japanese prime minister since the March tsunami and earthquake that triggered a nuclear crisis in Japan. The U.S. has sent military and humanitarian assistance to Japan, as well as nuclear experts, to help the country recover from the disaster.
Obama's visit to Poland is emblematic of a growing front in the administration's engagement in Europe, as the U.S. expands its economic and security relationship with Central European nations.
Robert Kupiecki, Poland's ambassador to the United States, says Central Europe's experiences in moving toward democracy offer many lessons that are "directly applicable" in the Middle East and North Africa, and that Poles and others in the region are anxious to help the democratic movement spread. Lech Walesa, the former Polish president who founded the Solidarity freedom movement, has visited Tunisia, and Walesa will meet with Obama in Poland to talk about the experience.
Obama can point to Poland, with its stable government and growing economy, as a benefactor of democracy's virtues.

Netanyahu at White House after Obama challenge

2011-05-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON – Indicating no progress toward peace, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat alongside President Barack Obama on Friday and declared that Israel would not withdraw to 1967 borders to help make way for an adjacent Palestinian state. Obama had called on Israel to be willing to do just that a day earlier.

The Israeli leader said he would make some concessions but Israel would not go back to the lines from decades earlier because they would be "indefensible."
For his part, Obama said that there were differences of formulations and language but that such disputes are going to happen "between friends."
The president never mentioned the 1967 borders as the two men talked with reporters. The leaders spoke after a lengthy meeting in the Oval Office, amid tense times.
Obama said in his speech on Thursday that the United States supports creation of a Palestinian state based on the border lines that existed before the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel forces occupied east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza — along with mutually agreed-to land swaps that could accommodate existing Israeli settlements. The comment on 1967 borders drew angry criticism in Israel, and Netanyahu made clear after meeting with Obama that the idea was unacceptable.

"We cannot go back to those indefensible lines," said Netanyahu. The prime minister made no mention of Obama's stipulation that there would be land swaps — an omission that seemed to present Obama's proposal as more onerous.
Both Obama and Netanyahu said they shared a desire to get to peace and downplayed disagreements. "We may have differences here and there," Netanyahu said.
But there was no sign of resolution of the many barriers that stand between Israel and the Palestinians, more now than last September when Obama brought the two parties together to call for a peace deal within a year — a deadline that now looks unattainable.
Netanyahu said his nation could not negotiate with a newly constituted Palestinian unity government that includes the radical Hamas movement, which refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist. He said that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had to choose between continuing the deal with Hamas and making peace with Israel.
Obama agreed that Hamas "is not a partner for a significant realistic peace process" and said Palestinians would have to resolve that issue among themselves.
Yet both Obama and Netanyahu emphasized a need to make some kind of progress, against all obstacles, as changes sweep the Arab world.
"History will not give the Jewish people another chance," Netanyahu said.
Another major stumbling block is how to resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees. Palestinians demands a "right of return" of large numbers of refugees and descendants to Israel, but Israeli leaders say this would dilute the Jewish presence in Israel so that it would no longer be the Jewish state that Netanyahu demands and Obama supports.
"That's not going to happen," Netanyahu said. He said Palestinians need to recognize that, and also said that Israel would not budge on its need for troops on the border with Jordan.
Palestinians reacted angrily.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Netanyahu's comments were tantamount to a "total rejection of the Obama vision and speech."
"Without Mr. Netanyahu committing to two states on the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed swaps, he is not a partner to the peace process, and, I think, when President Obama gave him a choice between dictation and negotiations, he chose dictation, and when he gave him a choice between settlements and peace, he chose settlements."
"I don't think we can talk about a peace process with a man who says the 1967 lines are an illusion," Erekat said.
Indeed, the comments from Netanyahu and Obama, after a longer-than-scheduled meeting that lasted over an hour-and-a-half, sounded more like a recitation of the many barriers to peace than an explanation of why there should be any reason for optimism.
The two leaders did not take questions from the press, and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was unable in a subsequent briefing to point to any concrete signs of progress.
That left the way forward as cloudy as ever. Netanyahu is to address the U.S. Congress on Tuesday to press Israel's position.
International pressure is growing on both Netanyahu and Obama to answer the demands of the Palestinian people as revolts sweeping the Arab world crest against Israel itself. Palestinian protesters marched on the Jewish state's borders this week, and at least 15 people were killed.
Netanyahu was informed shortly before Obama's speech of its contents by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to U.S. officials. Netanyahu sought in vain to get the border language removed from the speech, the officials said, and was incensed when he was told it was staying in. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive diplomatic exchange.
Obama's stance on the 1967 borders was not a major policy change, since the U.S — along with the international community and even past Israeli governments — previously had agreed to building on the 1967 lines.
But it was the first time he'd explicitly endorsed those borders as a starting point, while also embracing land swaps, and was viewed by Israelis as a concession to Palestinian demands.
In the face of Israeli anger, Carney argued Friday that Obama's articulation of the 1967 borders didn't amount to a new position.
Obama Thursday repudiated the Palestinians' pursuit of unilateral statehood through the United Nations, but it was unclear whether his statement on the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiations would be sufficient to persuade the Palestinians to drop their quest for U.N. recognition.
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Associated Press writers Ben Feller and Matt Lee in Washington, Amy Teibel traveling with Netanyahu, Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Karin Laub in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.

Police seek evidence of sex attack from IMF chief

2011-05-16T09:39:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK – The head of the International Monetary Fund was examined for evidence that could incriminate him in the alleged sexual assault of a hotel maid, charges that stunned the global financial world and upended French presidential politics.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a married father of four whose reputation with women earned him the nickname "the great seducer," faced arraignment Monday on charges of attempted rape and criminal sexual contact in the alleged attack on a maid who went into his penthouse suite at a hotel near Times Square to clean it.
Strauss-Kahn was taken into custody on Saturday and spent more than 24 hours inside a Harlem precinct, where police say the maid identified him from a lineup, then headed to a hospital for a "forensic examination" requested by prosecutors to obtain more evidence in the case, defense lawyer William Taylor said. He was taken to a Manhattan court early Monday.
Another defense attorney, Benjamin Brafman, said the IMF managing director "intends to vigorously defend these charges and he denies any wrongdoing."
In France on Monday, a lawyer for a woman who claims she was sexually assaulted by Strauss-Kahn nine years ago said she now wants to file a legal complaint against the IMF head.
Lawyer David Koubbi told RTL radio Monday that his client, Tristane Banon, did not file suit earlier due to pressure over the alleged 2002 assault. He said she was dissuaded by her own mother, a regional Socialist official.
Koubbi told RTL he is likely to file suit for Banon now because "she knows she'll be heard and she knows she'll be taken seriously."
A member of France's Socialist party, Strauss-Kahn was widely considered the strongest potential challenger next year to President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose political fortunes have been flagging.
French viewers were shocked Monday by the images of the handcuffed Strauss-Kahn escorted and ducking stone-faced into a police car. In France, public figures are usually shielded from view in such circumstances.
Fellow Socialists increasingly defended Strauss-Kahn, citing contradictions in the investigation, and pledged to stick to the campaign calendar.
"His close friends cannot believe that he is guilty," said Socialist politician and friend Jean Christophe Cambadelis.
Environment Minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet lamented the shadow the incident could cast on all of France.
"I'm very surprised to see at what speed in France we rush to political conclusions about a subject that is a serious one. He is accused of very serious acts. We are hardly speaking at all of the alleged victim," she said Monday on Canal-Plus television. In addition to the hotel maid, Koscuisko-Morizet said there is another "clear victim, which is France."
Strauss-Kahn, 62, was nabbed less than four hours after the alleged assault, plucked from first class on a Paris-bound Air France flight that was just about to leave the gate at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
He was alone when he checked into the luxury Sofitel hotel, not far from Times Square, on Friday afternoon, police said. It wasn't clear why he was in New York. The IMF is based in Washington, and he had been due in Germany on Sunday to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The 32-year-old maid told authorities that when she entered his spacious, $3,000-a-night suite early Saturday afternoon, she thought it was unoccupied. Instead, Strauss-Kahn emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her down a hallway and pulled her into a bedroom, where he sexually assaulted her, New York Police Department spokesman Paul J. Browne said.
The woman told police she fought him off, but then he dragged her into the bathroom, where he forced her to perform oral sex on him and tried to remove her underwear. The woman was able to break free again, escaped the room and told hotel staff what had happened, authorities said.
Strauss-Kahn was gone by the time detectives arrived moments later. He left his cellphone behind. "It looked like he got out of there in a hurry," Browne said.
The NYPD discovered he was at JFK and contacted officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport. Port Authority police officers arrested him.
The maid was taken by police to a hospital and was treated for minor injuries. Stacy Royal, a spokeswoman for Sofitel, said the hotel's staff was cooperating in the investigation and that the maid "has been a satisfactory employee of the hotel for the past three years."
Strauss-Kahn was arrested on charges of a criminal sex act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment. Authorities were looking for any forensic evidence and DNA.
His wife, Anne Sinclair, defended him in a statement to French news agency AFP.
"I do not believe for one second the accusations brought against my husband. I have no doubt his innocence will be established," said Sinclair, a New York-born journalist who hosted a popular weekly TV news broadcast in France in the 1980s and '90s.
The arrest could throw the long-divided Socialists back into disarray about who they could present as Sarkozy's opponent. Even some of his adversaries were stunned.
"It's totally hallucinating. If it is true, this would be a historic moment, but in the negative sense, for French political life," said Dominique Paille, a political rival to Strauss-Kahn on the center right, on BFM television. Still, he urged, "I hope that everyone respects the presumption of innocence. I cannot manage to believe this affair."
Candidates need to announce their intentions this summer to run in fall primary elections.
"If he's cleared, he could return — but if he is let off only after four or five months, he won't be able to run" because the campaign will be too far along, said Jerome Fourquet of the IFOP polling agency.
"I think his political career is over," Philippe Martinat, who wrote a book called "DSK-Sarkozy: The Duel," told The Associated Press. "Behind him he has other affairs ... I don't see very well how he can pick himself back up."
The chief of Sarkozy's conservative party, Jean-Francois Cope, said he told the president that he asked fellow party members to "proceed with caution and restraint" in their comments, and Sarkozy supported the idea.
"I was, like all Frenchmen, very disturbed by the news, very disturbed by the images that I saw," including of Strauss-Kahn handcuffed in New York.
"There is the principle of presumed innocent," he said.
Strauss-Kahn is known as DSK in France, but media there also have dubbed him "the great seducer." His reputation as a charmer of women has not hurt his career in France, where politicians' private lives traditionally come under less scrutiny than in the United States.
In 2008, Strauss-Kahn was briefly investigated over whether he had an improper relationship with a subordinate female employee. The IMF board found his actions "reflected a serious error of judgment" yet deemed the relationship consensual.
But attempted rape charges are far more serious than extramarital flings and could do far more damage to his reputation in France and abroad.
"It's sure that a future president already mired in judicial problems is not well seen by the French," said Patricia Bous, a lab researcher in Paris' Left Bank on Monday.
"It's obvious that this is someone a lot of people were counting on, and because of this all of the cards are being reshuffled. So I don't know what's going to happen, but for me there is a presumption of innocence and we await the proof so we'll see," said university employee Hubert Javaux, also in the Left Bank.
European newspapers all put Strauss-Kahn on their front pages Monday morning, with grim headlines and photos. "DSK Out" read the banner headline on the left-leaning Liberation. "The Doors of the Elysee Are Closing for DSK" read that in Belgium's Le Soir.
The New York allegations come amid French media reports about Strauss-Kahn's lifestyle, including luxury cars and suits, that some have dubbed a smear campaign. Some French raised suspicions about the sexual assault case as well.
"Perhaps this affair will unravel very quickly, if we learn that there is in the end no serious charge and that what was said by this woman was not true, and we all wish for this," former Socialist Party boss Francois Hollande said on Canal-Plus television. "To commit an act of such seriousness, this does not resemble the man I know."
A former economics professor, Strauss-Kahn served as French industry minister and finance minister in the 1990s, and is credited with preparing France for the adoption of the euro by taming its deficit.
He took over as head of the IMF in November 2007. The 187-nation lending agency provides help in the form of emergency loans for countries facing severe financial problems.
Sarkozy, who did not comment publicly Sunday, had championed Strauss-Kahn to run the IMF. Political strategists saw it as a way for Sarkozy to get a potential challenger far from the French limelight.
Caroline Atkinson, an IMF spokeswoman, issued a statement Sunday that said the agency would have no comment on the New York case. She referred all inquiries to Strauss-Kahn's personal lawyer and said the "IMF remains fully functioning and operational."
The fund's executive board was expected to be briefed on developments related to Strauss-Kahn on Sunday, but the meeting was postponed. John Lipsky, the IMF's first deputy managing director, would lead the organization in an acting capacity in Strauss-Kahn's absence.
Strauss-Kahn was supposed to be meeting in Berlin on Sunday with Merkel about increasing aid to Greece, and then join EU finance ministers in Brussels on Monday and Tuesday. The IMF is responsible for one-third of Greece's existing loan package, and his expected presence at these meetings underlined the gravity of the Greek crisis.
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Associated Press writers Elaine Ganley and Jeffrey Schaeffer in Paris, Colleen Long, Cristian Salazar and Verena Dobnik in New York and Martin Crutsinger in Washington contributed to this report.

Full face transplant patient makes 1st appearance

2011-05-14T06:12:00.000-07:00

BOSTON – The nation's first full face transplant recipient said the first thing his young daughter told him when she saw him after the operation was "Daddy, you're so handsome."

Dallas Wiens, sporting a goatee and dark sunglasses, joined surgeons Monday at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston in his first public appearance since the 15-hour procedure in March.
"It feels natural," said the 25-year-old Fort Worth, Texas, man, who received a new nose, lips, skin, muscle and nerves from an anonymous donor. The operation was paid for by the U.S. military, which hopes to use findings from the procedure to help soldiers with severe facial wounds.
Wiens' features were all but burned away and he was left blind after hitting a power line while painting a church in November 2008.
On Monday, Wiens appeared before a packed room of reporters and photographers with a new, somewhat swollen face and a new head of hair.
"I adapted to it very quickly," Wiens told reporters. "As time went on ... I was able to smell again and breathe through my nose. Every step of the way was amazing."
The first thing Wiens' nose was able to detect after months of having no smell? Hospital lasagna.
"You wouldn't imagine it, but it smelled delicious," Wiens said.
Surgeons said the transplant was not able to restore his sight, and some nerves were so badly damaged from his injury that he will probably have only partial sensation on his left cheek and the left side of his forehead.
Plastic surgeon Bohdan Pomahac, who performed the operation on Wiens, said the transplant's results were better than he expected.
"The most fun part is to see the next six to nine months when the function will start to come back and when Dallas will start to feel a light touch on his face," Pomahac said. "To me, that's really exciting."
In an Associated Press story and a YouTube video last fall, Wiens spoke poignantly about why he wanted a transplant and how he wanted to smile again and feel kisses from his 4-year-old daughter, Scarlette. Face transplants give horribly disfigured people hope of an option other than "looking in the mirror and hating what they see," he said.
He told the AP that his daughter and his faith have kept him motivated. He repeated that Monday. "Even though I'm in amazing hands here," Wiens said, "I'm also in God's hands."
The surgery was paid for by the Department of Defense, which gave the hospital a $3.4 million research grant for five transplants.
About a dozen face transplants have been done worldwide, in the U.S., France, Spain and China.