John'sWildWorld

Anchor from the Queen Anne's Revenge Found

2011-05-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

MOREHEAD CITY, N.C. – An anchor from what's believed to be the wreck of the pirate Blackbeard's flagship has been raised from the ocean floor off the North Carolina coast.

Archaeologists believe the anchor recovered Friday is from the Queen Anne's Revenge, which sank in 1718. That was five months before Blackbeard was killed in a battle.

The artifact is the third-largest item at the shipwreck, outsized only by two other anchors.

Researchers retrieved the anchor from the shipwreck about 20 feet under water and were bringing it to shore. The work to retrieve it began last week. The anchor is about 11 feet long.

The recovery coincides with the release this month of "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides." The movie features both Blackbeard and the Queen Anne's Revenge.

Casey Anthony Trail Update

2011-05-24T14:33:00.000-07:00

CNN) -- Two-year-old Caylee Anthony was not murdered by her mother as prosecutors maintain, but drowned in the family's pool in June 2008, Casey Anthony's defense attorney told jurors during opening statements Tuesday.

Casey Anthony and her father, George Anthony, panicked upon finding the child, Jose Baez said. Anthony found her father cradling Caylee's body the morning of June 16, 2008, he said, and George Anthony yelled at his daughter, "Look what you've done. Your mother will never forgive you." He told her she would go to jail for child neglect, Baez said.

"This is a tragedy that snowballed out of control," Baez said. "This is not a murder case. This is not a manslaughter case ... this is a tragic accident that happened to some very disturbed people."

Anthony is accused of killing Caylee in 2008 and lying about it to investigators. The Orlando trial, which comes after nearly three years of legal twists, turns and delays, has garnered interest nationwide.

Anthony has pleaded not guilty, and denies harming her daughter or having anything to do with her disappearance. Baez has said that once all the facts are known, it will become clear his client is innocent.

In addition to capital murder, Anthony faces six other charges, including aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child and providing false information to authorities. If she is convicted by jurors -- seven women and five men along with five alternates -- she could face the death penalty.

Baez dropped another bombshell when explaining Anthony's behavior in the month before Caylee was reported missing on July 15 -- partying and lying about the child's whereabouts. "Casey did what she's been doing all her life, or most of it: hiding her pain," he said, adding that Casey Anthony had been sexually abused by her father starting at age 8.

Anthony was taught from an early age to behave as if nothing was wrong, he said, describing an incident where she went to school and behaved normally at age 13 after performing oral sex on her father. George Anthony sat stone-faced in the gallery as Baez made the allegations; Anthony put her head on the shoulder of another defense attorney and sobbed.

However, in his testimony, George Anthony -- the trial's first witness -- denied ever sexually abusing his daughter. He also said he was not at his home when Caylee died. "If I'd have known something happened to Caylee, we wouldn't be here today," he said as Casey Anthony shook her head.

George Anthony said as a former police officer, he was trained in CPR and that he would have done everything possible to save his granddaughter's life if he had found her in the pool as Baez alleged.

Baez also alleged Casey Anthony was inappropriately touched by her brother, Lee, although "it didn't go as far" as it had with her father. It was bad enough, however, he said, that the FBI conducted a paternity test to see if Lee Anthony had fathered Caylee.

He told jurors the Anthony family "keeps its secrets quiet ... You're going to hear all kinds of bizarre family behavior."

Baez said the family was "religious" about removing the above-ground pool ladder so that Caylee, who loved to swim, had no access to it. He suggested that Caylee's grandmother, Cindy Anthony, had forgotten to put it up the night before Caylee drowned, as she and Caylee were just exiting the pool when Anthony arrived home.

The day after Caylee's death, June 17, Cindy Anthony told coworkers she believed someone had been swimming in her pool, as the gate was left open and the ladder was left in place, Baez said.

Baez attacked much of the state's forensic evidence, saying such evidence has never before been admitted into courts -- and a death-penalty trial should not be the test case, as much of it is "questionable."

Police zeroed in on Anthony from the beginning, he said. "This investigation was extremely thorough when it comes to focusing in on Casey, probably the most comprehensive investigation that you will ever come across, and in the history of the state of Florida. It was directed at one person and one person only. The problem with this investigation is, it reached a level of desperation."

During his two-hour opening statement, Baez also cast doubt on Roy Kronk, the meter reader who found Caylee's skeletal remains in December 2008, alleging that he found the remains in an unknown location months earlier and moved them to where they would be found by authorities in an attempt to cash in on the high-profile case. "He thought he had himself a lottery ticket," Baez said.

"You will not be able to trust a thing having to do with Mr. Kronk, because he had control of Caylee's remains, obviously, for several months," Baez said. "Where he found her we do not know. We may never know, because the police never investigated him."

Kronk's attorney, David Evans, denied the allegations in a statement. "To the extent that the defense is stating that Mr. Krong somehow had possession of and had something to do with the disposition of the remains of Caylee Anthony, those statements are absolutely false," Evans said.

George Anthony's cross-examination by Baez was punctuated by objections from prosecutors, most of them sustained by Orange County Chief Judge Belvin Perry Jr.

Baez did elicit the information that George Anthony did not ask his daughter who had fathered her child until around the time Caylee was born.

George Anthony also said he never asked to meet the fictitious nanny, "Zanny," who Casey Anthony had claimed was named Zenaida Gonzalez. In the early days of the investigation, Casey Anthony initially alleged the woman had kidnapped Caylee, but authorities were never able to find the woman. George Anthony said he had no contact information for "Zanny."

Baez did not ask about sexual abuse, but George Anthony admitted to him he had heard the drowning theory before. Baez also attempted to cast doubt on George Anthony's recall of what Caylee was wearing the day he last saw her, suggesting he would likely not have retained that detail as he didn't know it was the last time he would see her. George Anthony completed his testimony on Tuesday but could be recalled to the stand later.

Now 25, Anthony wore a loose-fitting white shirt while she sat at the defense table for the first day of her trial. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, then put into a bun for the afternoon session.

Earlier, prosecutor Linda Drane Burdick told jurors that while it may be difficult to accept that a mother could kill her own child, there is no other conclusion that can be drawn, based on the evidence.

"No one but Casey Anthony had access to all the pieces of evidence in this case," Burdick said. "... No one else lied to their friends, to their family, to investigators. No one else benefited from the death of Caylee Marie Anthony. Caylee's death allowed Casey Anthony to live the good life -- at least for 31 days."

Anthony, who was 19 when her daughter was born, "appeared to all outward observers to be what her parents thought she was -- a loving mother working hard to provide support for her daughter," Burdick said. "But as the evidence in this case and the investigation into the background of Casey Anthony will show, that was an illusion." Anthony's parents thought she had returned to her job at Universal Studios after maternity leave, Burdick said, and indeed she dressed daily in work clothes and had a Universal Studios ID, but went "who knows where."

Caylee visited her great-grandfather on June 15, 2008 -- Father's Day -- and a photograph was taken of the two together, Burdick said.

"The next time a photograph was taken of Caylee Anthony is on December 11 of 2008, (when her remains were found)," Burdick said as Anthony frowned, shook her head and wiped tears off her cheeks.

"The story of this case is not about Casey Anthony. It is about what happened between the photograph taken on Father's Day, June 15, 2008, and the photograph taken on December 11 of 2008. What happened to Caylee Marie Anthony? You will hear, during the testimony in this case, that no one had any idea anything had befallen Caylee Marie Anthony until July 15 of 2008. How can that be? What happened between June 16 and July 15? Where was Caylee Marie?"

Burdick took jurors through that 31-day period before the little girl was reported missing, detailing Anthony's lies to her friends and her increasingly frantic parents, George and Cindy Anthony, regarding Caylee's whereabouts. She also talked about Anthony's getting a tattoo during that time -- "Bella Vita," Italian for "beautiful life" -- and referenced photographs of her partying at local clubs.

Baez told jurors, however, they were not in court "to talk about day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4. We're not here to talk about how foolish Casey acted. We're here to find out exactly how Caylee died. That's the key issue throughout this entire case."

Burdick told jurors they would hear in detail about evidence including a stain in Anthony's car trunk and the odor of human decomposition emanating from it, as well as her misleading statements to authorities during the investigation into Caylee's disappearance.

Prosecutors allege Anthony used chloroform -- evidence of which was found in her car trunk by technicians -- on the little girl before putting three pieces of duct tape over her mouth and nose, cutting off her air supply. They allege she then stashed the body in the trunk of her Pontiac Sunfire before disposing of it.

A cadaver dog alerted to the presence of human decomposition in the trunk, Burdick said, and a scientist will testify that air samples from the trunk were also similar in chemical composition to human decomposition. A search of a computer in the Anthony home showed that someone had searched for information on chloroform and how to make it, along with other searches.

Anthony explained the odor by saying there was a dead animal caught in the frame of the car, Burdick said. She eventually abandoned it, saying it had problems and had run out of gas. On June 30, it was towed to a wrecker yard, where it stayed until July 15, when Anthony's parents picked it up and drove it home.

Defense attorney Baez told jurors they would hear about "false positives" with cadaver dogs, and suggested it and the other evidence were "questionable." Anthony did some "ridiculous, stupid things," he said, but "there's not one piece of evidence, one single thread of evidence that links Casey to Caylee's body."

At 5 a.m., more than 30 potential spectators were lined up to get tickets to get inside the courtroom, according to In Session producer Nancy Leung. In an hour, that number had swelled to more than 50 -- with a full three hours to go before court began.

The jury was seated Friday after the process was moved to Clearwater, Florida, in Pinellas County out of concerns that an impartial jury could not be seated in Orlando, in Orange County, because of the intense media attention surrounding it.

Randy Savage Killed in Auto Crash

2011-05-20T15:31:00.001-07:00

Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan had just started talking again

Wrestlingnewsworld.com grabbed a post that Hulk Hogan had on his Facebook concerning Randy Savage’s passing. Hogan and Savage, of course, were two of the more prominent figures in the WWE/WWF during its most popular era.

Hogan posted:

I'm completely devastated, after over 10 years of not talking with Randy, we've finally started to talk and communicate. He had so much life in his eyes & in his spirit, I just pray that he's happy and in a better place and we miss him. We miss him a lot. I feel horrible about the ten years of having no communication. This was a tough one. HH

Hogan and Macho Man had reportedly had a feud over a failed relationship in Savage’s life. It’s a shame that two guys who were giants of the business fought for so long and then reconnected to each other so late.

WWE News: Wrestling Legend Macho Man Randy Savage Dies in Car Accident

At the very least it can be assumed that the last time they spoke they were on good terms.

It’s never easy to think about the time you wasted with someone just fighting with them. In the world of wrestling it must be hard as well. Your family you see more often, those rifts get repaired easier.

In the wrestling world guys leave, guys travel separately. It can be tough I’m sure. It’s a shame.

But Hogan does speak for the whole wrestling community when he hopes that Randy Savage is happy and in a better place.

That’s all any of us can hope for.

Donald Trump says public scorn greater than he expected

2011-05-11T15:26:00.000-07:00

NASHUA, New Hampshire (Reuters) – Real estate magnate Donald Trump suggested Wednesday it's not much fun flirting with the idea of running for president in the face of relentless attacks and ridicule.

"Nobody said it was going to be easy, but I had no idea I would get hammered in the way I've been hammered the past few weeks," Trump said in Nashua, New Hampshire.

The billionaire host of NBC-TV's "Celebrity Apprentice" has hinted for months that he will run for the 2012 Republican nomination for a chance to take on President Barack Obama.

But Trump has slipped badly in surveys taken since Obama released his birth certificate confirming he was born in the United States.

The so-called "birther" issue had been a major issue of Trump's nascent campaign

Arrons has spyware on there leased computer

2011-05-04T15:19:00.001-07:00

PITTSBURGH – You didn't pay your bill. We need our computer back. And here's a picture of you typing away on it, the computer rental company told a client as it tried to repossess the machine.

Those allegations appear in a federal lawsuit alleging that the firm, Atlanta-based Aaron's Inc., loaded computers with spyware to track renters' keystrokes, make screenshots and even take webcam images of them using the devices at home. The suit filed by a Wyoming couple Tuesday raises anew questions of how invasive custodians of technology should be in protecting their equipment.

Computer privacy experts said Aaron's, a major furniture rental chain, has the right to equip its computers with software it can use to shut off the devices remotely if customers stop paying their bills, but they must be told if they're being monitored.

"If I'm renting a computer ... then I have a right to know what the limitations are and I have a right to know if they're going to be collecting data from my computer," said Annie Anton, a professor and computer privacy expert with North Carolina State University.

But the couple who sued Aaron's said they had no clue the computer they rented last year was equipped with a device that could spy on them. Brian Byrd, 26, and his wife, Crystal, 24, said they didn't even realize that was possible until a store manager in Casper came to their home Dec. 22.

The manager tried to repossess the computer because he mistakenly believed the Byrds hadn't paid off their rent-to-own agreement. When Brian Byrd showed the manager a signed receipt, the manager showed Byrd a picture of Byrd using the computer — taken by the computer's webcam.

Byrd demanded to know where the picture came from, and the manager "responded that he was not supposed to disclose that Aaron's had the photograph," the lawsuit said.

Aaron's, which bills itself as the nation's leader in the sales and lease ownership of residential furniture, consumer electronics and home appliances, said the lawsuit was meritless. It said it respects its customers' privacy and hasn't authorized any of its corporate stores to install the software described in the lawsuit.

The Byrds contacted police, who, their attorney said, have determined the image was shot with the help of spying software, which the lawsuit contends is made by North East, Pa.-based Designerware LLC and is installed on all Aaron's rental computers. Designerware is also being sued in U.S. District Court in Erie.

Aaron's, with more than 1,800 company-operated and franchised stores in the United States and Canada, said the Byrds leased their computer from an independently owned and operated franchisee. Aaron's, which also manufactures furniture and bedding, said it believes that none of its more than 1,140 company-operated stores had used Designerware's product or had done any business with it.

Tim Kelly, who said he's one of the owners of Designerware, said he wasn't aware of the lawsuit and declined to comment.

Two attorneys who are experts on the relevant computer privacy laws, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, said it's difficult to tell if either was broken, though both said the company went too far.

Peter Swire, an Ohio State professor, said using a software "kill switch" is legal because companies can protect themselves from fraud and other crimes.

"But this action sounds like it's stretching the self-defense exception pretty far," Swire said, because the software "was gathering lots of data that isn't needed for self-protection."

Further, Swire said the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act "prohibits unauthorized access to my computer over the Internet. The renter here didn't authorize this kind of access."

Fred Cate, an information law professor at Indiana University agrees that consent is required but said the real question might be: "Whose consent?"

Courts have allowed employers to record employee phone calls because the employers own the phones. Similar questions arise as digital technology becomes more omnipresent, Cate said.

"Should Google let you know they store your search terms? Should Apple let you know they store your location? Should your employer let you know 'We store your e-mail'?" Cate said.

Last year, a Philadelphia-area school district agreed to pay $610,000 to settle two lawsuits over secret photos taken on school-issued laptops, admitting it captured thousands of webcam photographs and screen shots from student laptops in a misguided effort to locate missing computers.

Harriton High School student Blake Robbins, then 15, charged in an explosive civil-rights lawsuit that the Lower Merion School District used its remote tracking technology to spy on him inside his home. Evidence unearthed in the case showed that he was photographed 400 times in a two-week period, sometimes as he slept, according to his lawyer, Mark Haltzman.

The FBI investigated whether the district broke any criminal wiretap laws, but prosecutors declined to bring any charges. The district no longer uses the tracking program.

The Byrds want the court to declare their case a class action and are seeking unspecified damages and attorneys' fees. The privacy act allows for a penalty of $10,000 or $100 per day per violation, plus punitive damages and other costs, the lawsuit said.

"It feels like we were pretty much invaded, like somebody else was in our house," Byrd said. "It's a weird feeling, I can't really describe it. I had to sit down for a minute after he showed me that picture."

Sources: Al-Qaida head bin Laden dead

2011-05-01T20:28:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON – Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States, is dead, and the U.S. is in possession of his body, a person familiar with the situation said late Sunday.

President Barack Obama was expected to address the nation on the developments Sunday night.

Two senior counterterrorism officials confirmed that bin Laden was killed in Pakistan last week. One said bin Laden was killed in a ground operation, not by a Predator drone. Both said the operation was based on U.S. intelligence, and both said the U.S. is in possession of bin Laden's body.

Officials long believed bin Laden, the most wanted man in the world, was hiding a mountainous region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak ahead of the president.

The development comes just months before the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Centers and Pentagon, orchestrated by bin Laden's al-Qaida organization, that killed more than 3,000 people.

The attacks set off a chain of events that led the United States into wars in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and America's entire intelligence apparatus was overhauled to counter the threat of more terror attacks at home.

Al-Qaida organization was also blamed for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 231 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled.

NATO strike kills Gadhafi's son but leader escapes

2011-04-30T19:17:00.001-07:00

TRIPOLI, Libya – Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi escaped a NATO missile strike in Tripoli on Saturday, but his youngest son and three grandchildren under the age of 12 were killed, a government spokesman said.

The strike, which came hours after Gadhafi called for a cease-fire and negotiations in what rebels called a publicity stunt, marked an escalation of international efforts to prevent the Libyan regime from regaining momentum.

Rebels honked horns and chanted "Allahu Akbar" or "God is great" while speeding through the western city of Misrata, which Gadhafi's forces have besieged and subjected to random shelling for two months, killing hundreds. Fireworks were set off in front of the central Hikma hospital, causing a brief panic that the light would draw fire from Gadhafi's forces.

The attack struck the house of Gadhafi's youngest son, Seif al-Arab, when the Libyan leader and his wife were inside. White House spokesman Shin Inouye declined to comment on the developments in Libya, referring questions to NATO.

The alliance acknowledged that it had struck a "command and control building in the Bab al-Azizya neighborhood" Saturday evening, but it could not confirm the death of Gadhafi's son and insisted all its targets are military in nature and linked to Gadhafi's systematic attacks on the population.

The commander of the NATO operation, Canadian Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard, said he was aware of unconfirmed reports that some Gadhafi family members may have been killed and he regretted "all loss of life, specially the innocent civilians being harmed as a result of the ongoing conflict."

Seif al-Arab Gadhafi, 29, was the youngest son of Gadhafi and brother of the better known Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, who had been touted as a reformist before the uprising began in mid-February. The younger Gadhafi had spent much of his time in Germany in recent years.

Gadhafi's children had been increasingly engaged in covering up scandals fit for a "Libyan soap opera," including negative publicity from extravagant displays of wealth such as a million-dollar private concert by pop diva Beyonce, according to a batch of diplomatic cables released by the secret-spilling WikiLeaks website.

But Seif al-Arab remained largely in the shadows, although he had a penchant for fast cars and partying when outside Libya.

Moammar Gadhafi and his wife were in the Tripoli house of his 29-year-old son when it was hit by at least one bomb dropped from a NATO warplane, according to Libyan spokesman Moussa Ibrahim.

"The leader himself is in good health," Ibrahim said. "He was not harmed. The wife is also in good health."

Ibrahim would not give the names of the three children killed, except to say they were nieces and nephews of Seif al-Arab and that they were younger than 12. He said they are not releasing the names yet to protect the privacy of the family.

He said the compound that was hit was in the Garghour neighborhood.

"It seems there was intelligence that was leaked. They knew about something. They expected him for some reason. But the target was very clear, very, very clear. And the neighborhood, yes of course, because the leader family has a place there, you could expect of course it would be guarded, but it is a normal neighborhood. Normal Libyans live there," he said.

NATO warplanes have been carrying out airstrikes in Libya for the past month as part of a U.N. mandate to protect Libyan civilians. Saturday's strike marked the first time Gadhafi's family was being targeted directly.

Armed rebels have been battling Gadhafi loyalists for more than two months in an attempt to oust Libya's ruler of nearly 42 years. Standing outside an improvised triage unit in a tent in the parking lot, rebel fighter Abdel-Aziz Bilhaj, 22, welcomed the attack, saying it would make Gadhafi think twice about how he dealt with his people.

"It could make him more willing to back down on certain parts of his plan," Bilhaj said.

Medic Abdel-Monem Ibsheir considered the strike a form of justice.

"Gadhafi was not far away, meaning he's not safe," he said as occasional explosions could be heard throughout the city. "It's just like our children getting hit here. Now his children are getting hit there."

Eleven dead had reached the hospital morgue by midnight, including two brothers, ages 11 and 16. Two more had arrived by 1:30 a.m., and four more at another hospital.

On Tuesday, British Defense Minister Liam Fox and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters at the Pentagon that NATO planes were not targeting Gadhafi specifically but would continue to attack his command centers.

Ibrahim said Seif al-Arab had studied at a German university but had not yet completed his studies.

Seif al-Arab "was playing and talking with his father and mother and his nieces and nephews and other visitors when he was attacked for no crimes committed," Ibrahim said.

Journalists taken to the walled complex of one-story buildings in a residential Tripoli neighborhood saw heavy bomb damage. The blast had torn down the ceiling of one building and left a huge pile of rubble and twisted metal on the ground.

Dust and smoke rose from the rubble, which included household items including smashed toilet bowls, bathroom sinks and furniture among the broken walls and demolished floors. The mirror of a dressing table remained intact in the middle of a bedroom although the walls around it were demolished.

Libyans called in to a late-night television talk show to proclaim Seif al-Arab a martyr. A live shot from Gadhafi's compound Bab al-Aziziya showed dozens dancing, chanting pro-Gadhafi slogans, waving green flags and clapping in unison.

The government spokesman said the airstrike was an attempt to "assassinate the leader of this country," which he said violated international law.

Heavy bursts of gunfire were heard in Tripoli after the attack.

Gadhafi had seven sons and one daughter. The Libyan leader also had an adopted daughter who was killed in a 1986 U.S. airstrike on his Bab al-Aziziya residential compound, which was retaliation for the bombing attack on a German disco in which two U.S. servicemen were killed. The U.S. at the time blamed Libya for the disco blast.

Seif's mother is Safiya Farkash, Gadhafi's second wife and a former nurse.

The fatal airstrike came just hours after Gadhafi called for a mutual cease-fire and negotiations with NATO powers to end a six-week bombing campaign.

In a rambling pre-dawn speech Saturday, Gadhafi said "the door to peace is open."

"You are the aggressors. We will negotiate with you. Come, France, Italy, U.K., America, come to negotiate with us. Why are you attacking us?" he asked.

He also railed against foreign intervention, saying Libyans have the right to choose their own political system, but not under the threat of NATO bombings.

In Brussels, a NATO official said before Saturday's fatal strike that the alliance needed "to see not words but actions," and vowed the alliance would keep up the pressure until the U.N. Security Council mandate on Libya is fulfilled. NATO has promised to continue operations until all attacks and threats against civilians have ceased, all of Gadhafi's forces have returned to bases and full humanitarian access is granted.

Rebel leaders have said they will only lay down their arms and begin talks after Gadhafi and his sons step aside. Gadhafi has repeatedly refused to resign.

"We don't believe that there is a solution that includes him or any member of his family. So it is well past any discussions. The only solution is for him to depart," rebel spokesman Jalal al-Galal said.

___

Associated Press writers Ben Hubbard in Misrata, Libya, Hadeel al-Shalchi in Cairo and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report.

Storms kill 72 around South, including 58 in Ala.

2011-04-27T21:52:00.001-07:00

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – A wave of tornado-spawning storms strafed the South on Wednesday, splintering buildings across hard-hit Alabama and killing 72 people in four states.

At least 58 people died in Alabama alone, including 15 or more when a massive tornado devastated Tuscaloosa. The mayor said sections of the city that's home to the University of Alabama have been destroyed, and the city's infrastructure is devastated.

Eleven deaths were reported in Mississippi, two in Georgia and one in Tennessee.

News footage showed paramedics lifting a child out of a flattened Tuscaloosa home, with many neighboring buildings in the city of more than 83,000 also reduced to rubble. A hospital there said its emergency room had admitted at least 100 people.

"What we faced today was massive damage on a scale we have not seen in Tuscaloosa in quite some time," Mayor Walter Maddox told reporters, adding that he expected his city's death toll to rise.

The storm system spread destruction Tuesday night and Wednesday from Texas to Georgia, and it was forecast to hit the Carolinas next before moving further northeast.

President Barack Obama said he had spoken with Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and approved his request for emergency federal assistance, including search and rescue assets.

"Our hearts go out to all those who have been affected by this devastation, and we commend the heroic efforts of those who have been working tirelessly to respond to this disaster," Obama said in a statement.

Around Tuscaloosa, traffic was snarled Wednesday night by downed trees and power lines, and some drivers abandoned their cars in medians. University officials said there didn't appear to be significant damage on campus, and dozens students and locals were staying at a 125-bed shelter in the campus recreation center.

Volunteers and staff were providing food and water to people like 29-year-old civil engineering graduate student Kenyona Pierce.

"I really don't know if I have a home to go to," she said

Maddox said authorities were having trouble communicating, and 1,400 National Guard soldiers were being deployed around the state. The flashing lights of emergency vehicles could be seen on darkened streets all over town, and some were using winches to remove flipped vehicles from the roadside.

Brian Sanders, the manager of an oil change shop, brought his daughters to DCH Regional Medical Center because he felt they'd be safe there. He said his business had been leveled.

"I can't believe we walked away," he said.

Storms struck Birmingham earlier in the day, felling numerous trees that impeded emergency responders and those trying to leave hard-hit areas. Surrounding Jefferson County reported 11 deaths by late Wednesday; another hard-hit area was Walker County with eight deaths. The rest of the deaths were scattered around the state, emergency officials said.

Austin Ransdell and a friend had to hike out of their neighborhood south of Birmingham after the house where he was living was crushed by four trees. No one was hurt.

As he walked away from the wreckage, trees and power lines crisscrossed residential streets, and police cars and utility trucks blocked a main highway.

"The house was destroyed. We couldn't stay in it. Water pipes broke; it was flooding the basement," he said. "We had people coming in telling us another storm was coming in about four or five hours, so we just packed up."

Not far away, Craig Branch was stunned by the damage.

"Every street to get into our general subdivision was blocked off. Power lines are down; trees are all over the road. I've never seen anything like that before," he said

In Huntsville, meteorologists found themselves in the path of tornado and had to evacuate the National Weather Service office.

In Choctaw County, Miss., a Louisiana police officer was killed Wednesday morning when a towering sweetgum tree fell onto his tent as he shielded his young daughter with his body, said Kim Korthuis, a supervisory ranger with the National Park Service. The girl wasn't hurt.

The 9-year-old girl was brought to a motorhome about 100 feet away where campsite volunteer Greg Maier was staying with his wife, Maier said. He went back to check on the father and found him dead.

"She wasn't hurt, just scared and soaking wet," Maier said.

Her father, Lt. Wade Sharp, had been with the Covington Police Department for 19 years.

"He was a hell of an investigator," said Capt. Jack West, his colleague in Louisiana.

By late Wednesday, the state's death toll had increased to 11 for the day, said Mississippi Emergency Management Association spokesman Jeff Rent. The governor also made an emergency declaration for much of the state.

Storms also killed two people in Georgia and one in Tennessee on Wednesday.

In eastern Tennessee, a woman was killed by falling trees in her trailer in Chattanooga. Just outside the city in Tiftonia, what appeared to be a tornado also struck at the base of the tourist peak Lookout Mountain.

Tops were snapped off trees and insulation and metal roof panels littered the ground. Police officers walked down the street, spray-painting symbols on houses they had checked for people who might be inside.

Mary Ann Bowman, 42, stood watching from her driveway as huge tractors moved downed trees in the street. She had rushed home from work to find windows shattered at her house, and her grandmother's house next door shredded. The 91-year-old woman wasn't home at the time.

"When I pulled up I just started crying," Bowman said.

Many around the region were happy to survive unscathed even if their houses didn't. In Choctaw County, Miss., 31-year-old Melanie Cade patched holes in her roof after it was heavily damaged overnight.

Cade was in bed with her three children when the storm hit.

"The room lit up, even though the power was out. Stuff was blowing into the house, like leaves and bark. Rain was coming in sideways," she said, adding that they managed to scurry into a bathroom.

"I didn't care what happened to the house," Cade said. "I was just glad we got out of there."

___

Mohr reported from Choctaw County, Miss. Associated Press writers Jamie Stengle in Edom, Texas, Andrew DeMillo and Nomaan Merchant in Vilonia, Ark., Jack Elliott Jr. in Jackson, Miss., Bill Fuller and Alan Sayre in New Orleans, Dorie Turner in Atlanta, Bill Poovey in Chattanooga, Tenn., and Terry Wallace in Dallas contributed to this report.

Shrinking funds pull plug on alien search devices

2011-04-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO – In the mountains of Northern California, a field of radio dishes that look like giant dinner plates waited for years for the first call from intelligent life among the stars.

But they're not listening anymore.

Cash-strapped governments, it seems, can no longer pay the interstellar phone bill.

Astronomers at the SETI Institute said a steep drop in state and federal funds has forced the shutdown of the Allen Telescope Array, a powerful tool in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, an effort scientists refer to as SETI.

"There's plenty of cosmic real estate that looks promising," Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the institute, said Tuesday. "We've lost the instrument that's best for zeroing in on these better targets."

The shutdown came just as researchers were preparing to point the radio dishes at a batch of new planets.

About 50 or 60 of those planets appear to be about the right distance from stars to have temperatures that could make them habitable, Shostak said.

The 42 radio dishes had scanned deep space since 2007 for signals from alien civilizations while also conducting research into the structure and origin of the universe.

SETI Institute chief executive Tom Pierson said in an email to donors last week that the University of California, Berkeley, has run out of money for day-to-day operation of the dishes.

"Unfortunately, today's government budgetary environment is very difficult, and new solutions must be found," Pierson wrote.

The $50 million array was built by SETI and UC Berkeley with the help of a $30 million donation from Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul Allen. Operating the dishes cost about $1.5 million a year, mostly to pay for the staff of eight to 10 researchers and technicians to operate the facility.

An additional $1 million a year was needed to collect and sift the data from the dishes.

The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the billionaire's philanthropic venture, had no immediate plans to provide more funding to the facility, said David Postman, a foundation spokesman.

The institute, however, was hopeful the U.S. Air Force might find the dishes useful as part of its mission to track space debris and provide funding to keep the equipment operating.

The SETI Institute was founded in 1984 and has received funding from NASA, the National Science Foundation and several other federal programs and private foundations. Other projects that will continue include the development of software and tools to be used in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Despite the shutdown of the Allen Telescope Array, the search for E.T. will go on using other telescopes such as a dish at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, the largest radio telescope in the world, Shostak said.

The difference, he said, was that SETI researchers can point the Arecibo telescope at selected sites in space for only about two weeks a year.

While the telescope in Northern California is not as powerful, it could be devoted to the search year-round.

"It has the advantage that you can point it where you want to point it and you can keep pointing it in that direction for as long as we want it to," Shostak said.

The dishes also are unique in the ability to probe for signals from extraterrestrial civilizations while gathering more general scientific data.

"That made the telescope a double-barreled threat," said Leo Blitz, a professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley and former director of the observatory that includes the Allen Telescope Array.

___

Online:

seti.org

Iran says it has uncovered second cyber attack

2011-04-25T11:11:00.001-07:00

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran has been hit by a second computer virus, a senior military official said Monday, suggesting it was part of a concerted campaign to undermine the country's disputed nuclear program.

Gholam Reza Jalali, the head of an Iranian military unit in charge of combatting sabotage, said that experts discovered the "espionage virus," which he called "Stars."

"The Stars virus has been presented to the laboratory but is still being investigated," Jalali said in a report posted Monday on his organization's website, paydarymelli.ir. "No definite and final conclusions have been reached."

He did not say what equipment or facilities the virus targeted, or when experts first detected it.

"Stars" is the second serious computer worm to hit Iran in the past eight months. Late last year, a powerful virus known as Stuxnet targeted the country's nuclear facilities and other industrial sites.

Iran has acknowledged that Stuxnet affected a limited number of centrifuges — a key component in the production of nuclear fuel — at its main uranium enrichment facility in the central city of Natanz. But Tehran has said its scientists discovered and neutralized the malware before it could cause serious damage.

Jalali downplayed the impact of Stars, but said it is "harmonious" with computer systems and "inflicts minor damage in the initial stage and might be mistaken for executive files of governmental organizations."

Jalali heads a military unit called Passive Defense that primarily deals with countering sabotage. The unit was set up on the orders of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A separate unit has also been set up by Iran's Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications to decode incoming computer viruses and neutralize them, Jalali said.

Last week, Jalali said Stuxnet could have caused large-scale accidents and loss of life and claimed that Iranian experts have determined that the United States and Israel were behind the malware, which can take over the control systems of industrial sites like power plants.

The U.S. and its allies suspect Iran's nuclear program aims to develop atomic weapons. Iran denies the charges, and says the program is only for peaceful purposes.

Strike on Gadhafi compound badly damages buildings

2011-04-24T20:26:00.001-07:00

TRIPOLI, Libya – NATO airstrikes targeted the center of Moammar Gadhafi's seat of power early Monday, destroying a multi-story library and office and badly damaging a reception hall for visiting dignitaries.

Gadhafi's whereabouts at the time of the attack on his sprawling Bab al-Azizya compound were unclear. A security official at the scene said four people were lightly hurt.

Monday's strike came after Gadhafi's forces unleashed a barrage of shells and rockets at the besieged rebel city of Misrata, in an especially bloody weekend that left at least 32 dead and dozens wounded.

The battle for Misrata, which has claimed hundreds of lives in the past two months, has become the focal point of Libya's armed rebellion against Gadhafi since fighting elsewhere is deadlocked.

Video of Misrata civilians being killed and wounded by Gadhafi's heavy weapons, including Grad rockets and tank shells, have spurred calls for more forceful international intervention to stop the bloodshed in the rebel-held city.

In Washington on Sunday, three members of the Senate Armed Services Committee said that more should be done to drive Gadhafi out of power, including targeting his inner circle with air strikes. Gadhafi "needs to wake up every day wondering, `Will this be my last?'" Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican on the committee, told CNN's "State of the Union."

Early in the campaign of airstrikes against Gadhafi, a cruise missile blasted an administration building in Bab al-Azizya last month, knocking down half the three-story building. The compound was also targeted in a U.S. bombing in April 1986, after Washington held Libya responsible for a blast at a Berlin disco that killed two U.S. servicemen.

At least two missiles struck Bab al-Azizya early Monday, and the booms could be heard miles (kilometers) away.

A multi-story building that guards said served as Gadhafi's library and office was turned into a pile of twisted metal and broken concrete slabs. Dozens of Gadhafi supporters climbed atop the ruins, raising Libya's green flag and chanting in support of their leader.

A second building, where Gadhafi received visiting dignitaries, suffered blast damage. The main door was blown open, glass shards were scattered across the ground and picture frames were knocked down.

Just two weeks ago, Gadhafi had received an African Union delegation led by South African President Jacob Zuma in the ceremonial building, which was furnished with sofas and chandeliers. The delegation had called for an immediate cease-fire and dialogue between the rebels and the government.

NATO's mandate from the U.N. is to try to protect civilians in Libya, split into a rebel-run east and a western area that remains largely under Gadhafi's control. While the coalition's airstrikes have delivered heavy blows to Gadhafi's army, they have not halted attacks on Misrata, a city of 300,000 people besieged by Gadhafi loyalists for two months.

Still, in recent days, the rebels' drive to push Gadhafi's men out of the city center gained momentum.

Late last week, they forced government snipers out of high-rise buildings. On Sunday, rebels took control of the main hospital, the last position of Libyan troops in the center of Misrata, said a city resident, who only gave his first name, Abdel Salam, for fear of reprisals. Throughout the day, government forces fired more than 70 rockets at the city, he said.

"Now Gadhafi's troops are on the outskirts of Misrata, using rocket launchers," Abdel Salam said.

A Misrata rebel, 37-year-old Lutfi, said there had been 300-400 Gadhafi fighters in the main hospital and in the surrounding area that were trying to melt into the local population.

"They are trying to run way," Lutfi said of the soldiers, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. "They are pretending to be civilians. They are putting on sportswear."

Ali Misbah, a captured Libyan soldier who had been wounded in the leg, was held under guard in a tent in the parking lot of the Al Hikmeh Hospital, one of the city's smaller medical centers.

Misbah, 25, said morale was low among Gadhafi's troops. "Recently, our spirit has collapsed and the forces that were in front of us escaped and left us alone," he said.

Misbah said he and his fellow soldiers were told that they were fighting against al-Qaida militants, not ordinary Libyans who took up arms against Gadhafi.

"They misled us," Misbah said of the government.

A senior Libyan government official has said the military is withdrawing from the fighting in Misrata, ostensibly to give a chance to tribal chiefs in the area to negotiate with the rebels. The official, Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim, said the tribal chiefs were ready to send armed supporters to fight the rebels unless they lay down their weapons.

Kaim also claimed that the army has been holding its fire since Friday.

Asked about the continued shelling on Misrata, Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said the army was responding to attacks by rebels. He insisted that most of Misrata was still under government control.

Rebels on Sunday dismissed government claims that tribes in the area were siding with Gadhafi and that troops were redeploying voluntarily.

"It's not a withdrawal. It's a defeat that they want to turn into propaganda," said Dr. Abdel-Basit Abu Mzirig, head of the Misrata medical committee. "They were besieging the city and then they had to leave."

In addition to the casualties, thousands of people, many of them foreign workers, have been stranded in Misrata. Hundreds of migrants, along with wounded Libyans, have been evacuated in aid vessels through the port in recent days.

One of those wounded, Misrata resident Osama al-Shahmi, said Gadhafi's forces have been attacking the city with rockets. "They have no mercy. They are pounding the city hard," said al-Shahmi after being rescued from Misrata.

"Everyone in Misrata is convinced that the dictator must go," said al-Shahmi, 36, a construction company administrator who was wounded by shrapnel. His right leg wrapped in bandages, al-Shahmi flashed a victory sign as he was put into a waiting ambulance upon arrival in Benghazi.

In Rome, Pope Benedict XVI offered an Easter prayer for Libya. He told a crowd of more than 100,000 Easter pilgrims in St. Peter's Square that he hopes "diplomacy and dialogue replace arms" in Libya and that humanitarian aid will get through to those in need.

___

Hadid reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Ben Hubbard in Benghazi, Libya, Sebastian Abbot in Ajdabiya, Libya, and Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed to this story.

NY case underscores Wi-Fi privacy dangers

2011-04-24T12:22:00.001-07:00

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of "pedophile!" and "pornographer!" stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo homeowner didn't need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents.

That new wireless router. He'd gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his Internet connection, he thought.

"We know who you are! You downloaded thousands of images at 11:30 last night," the man's lawyer, Barry Covert, recounted the agents saying. They referred to a screen name, "Doldrum."

"No, I didn't," he insisted. "Somebody else could have but I didn't do anything like that."

"You're a creep ... just admit it," they said.

Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale. Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router.

Plenty of others would agree. The Sarasota, Fla. man, for example, who got a similar visit from the FBI last year after someone on a boat docked in a marina outside his building used a potato chip can as an antenna to boost his wireless signal and download an astounding 10 million images of child porn, or the North Syracuse, N.Y., man who in December 2009 opened his door to police who'd been following an electronic trail of illegal videos and images. The man's neighbor pleaded guilty April 12.

For two hours that March morning in Buffalo, agents tapped away at the homeowner's desktop computer, eventually taking it with them, along with his and his wife's iPads and iPhones.

Within three days, investigators determined the homeowner had been telling the truth: If someone was downloading child pornography through his wireless signal, it wasn't him. About a week later, agents arrested a 25-year-old neighbor and charged him with distribution of child pornography. The case is pending in federal court.

It's unknown how often unsecured routers have brought legal trouble for subscribers. Besides the criminal investigations, the Internet is full of anecdotal accounts of people who've had to fight accusations of illegally downloading music or movies.

Whether you're guilty or not, "you look like the suspect," said Orin Kerr, a professor at George Washington University Law School, who said that's just one of many reasons to secure home routers.

Experts say the more savvy hackers can go beyond just connecting to the Internet on the host's dime and monitor Internet activity and steal passwords or other sensitive information.

A study released in February provides a sense of how often computer users rely on the generosity — or technological shortcomings — of their neighbors to gain Internet access.

The poll conducted for the Wi-Fi Alliance, the industry group that promotes wireless technology standards, found that among 1,054 Americans age 18 and older, 32 percent acknowledged trying to access a Wi-Fi network that wasn't theirs. An estimated 201 million households worldwide use Wi-Fi networks, according to the alliance.

The same study, conducted by Wakefield Research, found that 40 percent said they would be more likely to trust someone with their house key than with their Wi-Fi network password.

For some, though, leaving their wireless router open to outside use is a philosophical decision, a way of returning the favor for the times they've hopped on to someone else's network to check e-mail or download directions while away from home .

"I think it's convenient and polite to have an open Wi-Fi network," said Rebecca Jeschke, whose home signal is accessible to anyone within range.

"Public Wi-Fi is for the common good and I'm happy to participate in that — and lots of people are," said Jeschke, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that takes on cyberspace civil liberties issues.

Experts say wireless routers come with encryption software, but setting it up means a trip to the manual.

The government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team recommends home users make their networks invisible to others by disabling the identifier broadcasting function that allows wireless access points to announce their presence. It also advises users to replace any default network names or passwords, since those are widely known, and to keep an eye on the manufacturer's website for security patches or updates.

People who keep an open wireless router won't necessarily know when someone else is piggybacking on the signal, which usually reaches 300-400 feet, though a slower connection may be a clue.

For the Buffalo homeowner, who didn't want to be identified, the tip-off wasn't nearly as subtle.

It was 6:20 a.m. March 7 when he and his wife were awakened by the sound of someone breaking down their rear door. He threw a robe on and walked to the top of the stairs, looking down to see seven armed people with jackets bearing the initials I-C-E, which he didn't immediately know stood for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"They are screaming at him, 'Get down! Get down on the ground!' He's saying, 'Who are you? Who are you?'" Covert said.

"One of the agents runs up and basically throws him down the stairs, and he's got the cuts and bruises to show for it," said Covert, who said the homeowner plans no lawsuit. When he was allowed to get up, agents escorted him and watched as he used the bathroom and dressed.

The homeowner later got an apology from U.S. Attorney William Hochul and Immigration and Customs Enforcement Special Agent in Charge Lev Kubiak.

But this wasn't a case of officers rushing into the wrong house. Court filings show exactly what led them there and why.

On Feb. 11, an investigator with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees cybersecurity enforcement, signed in to a peer-to-peer file sharing program from his office. After connecting with someone by the name of "Doldrum," the agent browsed through his shared files for videos and images and found images and videos depicting children engaged in sexual acts.

The agent identified the IP address, or unique identification number, of the router, then got the service provider to identify the subscriber.

Investigators could have taken an extra step before going inside the house and used a laptop or other device outside the home to see whether there was an unsecured signal. That alone wouldn't have exonerated the homeowner, but it would have raised the possibility that someone else was responsible for the downloads.

After a search of his devices proved the homeowner's innocence, investigators went back to the peer-to-peer software and looked at logs that showed what other IP addresses Doldrum had connected from. Two were associated with the State University of New York at Buffalo and accessed using a secure token that UB said was assigned to a student living in an apartment adjacent to the homeowner. Agents arrested John Luchetti March 17. He has pleaded not guilty to distribution of child pornography.

Luchetti is not charged with using his neighbor's Wi-Fi without permission. Whether it was illegal is up for debate.

"The question," said Kerr, "is whether it's unauthorized access and so you have to say, 'Is an open wireless point implicitly authorizing users or not?'

"We don't know," Kerr said. "The law prohibits unauthorized access and it's just not clear what's authorized with an open unsecured wireless."

In Germany, the country's top criminal court ruled last year that Internet users must secure their wireless connections to prevent others from illegally downloading data. The court said Internet users could be fined up to $126 if a third party takes advantage of their unprotected line, though it stopped short of holding the users responsible for illegal content downloaded by the third party.

The ruling came after a musician sued an Internet user whose wireless connection was used to download a song, which was then offered on an online file sharing network. The user was on vacation when the song was downloaded.

Famed Hindu guru Sathya Sai Baba dies at 86

2011-04-24T00:04:00.001-07:00

PUTTAPARTI, India – Hindu holy man Sathya Sai Baba, considered a living god by millions of followers worldwide, died Sunday in a hospital near his southern Indian ashram, a doctor said. He was 86.

Sai Baba had spent more than three weeks on breathing support and dialysis while struggling with multiple-organ failure at the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences, near his ashram in Puttaparti village in southern Andhra Pradesh state. He died Sunday morning, hospital director Dr. A.N. Safaya said.

Women selling marigold garlands broke down in tears outside ashram when the news was announced.

The saffron-robed Sathya Sai Baba had a huge following with ashrams in more than 126 countries. He was said to perform miracles — conjuring rings and watches and "vibhuti," a sacred ash that his followers applied on their foreheads — from his overgrown and unkempt Afro-style hair.

Followers gathered to mourn in small groups in alleys and streets surrounding the ashram, while some began trickling into the temple complex where the holy man's body will be brought to lie in state until Tuesday.

Hundreds of thousands of devotees are expected in Puttaparti for Sathya Sai Baba's funeral.

A heavy police deployment, in place for weeks as the guru's condition worsened, was manning barricades on the roads to restrict traffic in the village. Shopkeepers were told to close to control the number of people near the ashram.

Born Nov. 23, 1926, in Puttaparti, the guru was first named Sathyanarayana Raju.

In 1940, he declared himself an "avatar," or reincarnation, of another Hindu holy man called the Sai Baba of Shirdi, a town in the western Indian state of Maharashtra who had died in 1918.

The Sathya Sai Baba was also mired in several controversies, with several news reports about allegations of sexual abuse and fake miracles.

In 2004, a television program by the British Broadcasting Corporation called the "Secret Swami," interviewed at least two American male devotees who claimed the guru had fondled their genitals and exposed himself to them, claiming it was part of a healing ritual.

The guru and his ashram have always denied all reports of any wrongdoing and he was never charged or convicted of any crime.

The holy man was never married and has no children.

Last Supper was a day earlier, scientist claims

2011-04-18T10:23:00.001-07:00

LONDON (AFP) – Christians have long celebrated Jesus Christ's Last Supper on Maundy Thursday but new research released Monday claims to show it took place on the Wednesday before the crucifixion.

Professor Colin Humphreys, a scientist at the University of Cambridge, believes it is all due to a calendar mix-up -- and asserts his findings strengthen the case for finally introducing a fixed date for Easter.

Humphreys uses a combination of biblical, historical and astronomical research to try to pinpoint the precise nature and timing of Jesus's final meal with his disciples before his death.

Researchers have long been puzzled by an apparent inconsistency in the Bible.

While Matthew, Mark and Luke all say the Last Supper coincided with the start of the Jewish festival of Passover, John claims it took place before Passover.

Humphreys has concluded in a new book, "The Mystery Of The Last Supper", that Jesus -- along with Matthew, Mark and Luke -- may have been using a different calendar to John.

"Whatever you think about the Bible, the fact is that Jewish people would never mistake the Passover meal for another meal, so for the Gospels to contradict themselves in this regard is really hard to understand," Humphreys said.

"Many biblical scholars say that, for this reason, you can't trust the Gospels at all. But if we use science and the Gospels hand in hand, we can actually prove that there was no contradiction."

In Humphreys' theory, Jesus went by an old-fashioned Jewish calendar rather than the official lunar calendar which was in widespread use at the time of his death and is still in use today.

This would put the Passover meal -- and the Last Supper -- on the Wednesday, explaining how such a large number of events took place between the meal and the crucifixion.

It would follow that Jesus' arrest, interrogation and separate trials did not all take place in the space of one night but in fact occurred over a longer period.

Humphreys believes a date could therefore be ascribed to Easter in our modern solar calendar, and working on the basis that the crucifixion took place on April 3, Easter Day would be on April 5.

Sheen says he may return to 'Two and a Half Men'

2011-04-14T07:27:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES – Charlie Sheen says he may be reunited with "Two and a Half Men."

In an interview with a Boston radio station Tuesday, Sheen said there have been discussions about bringing him back to the hit CBS sitcom he was fired from last month.

Sheen put the chances of him returning at "85 percent." He didn't offer details in the Sports Hub 98.5 WBZ-FM interview, saying he'd been asked not to divulge anything.

CBS declined to comment, and series producer Warner Bros. Television didn't immediately return a call for comment.

The actor also said his profits from the show's rich syndication deals are being withheld and that's part of his $100 million lawsuit against Warner and the show's executive producer.

Sheen was in Boston for his nationwide road show that has drawn mixed audience reaction.

Donald Trump tops new 2012 poll as he steps up outreach to GOP conservatives

2011-04-13T12:09:00.001-07:00

Donald Trump is gaining more momentum ahead of his potential 2012 presidential run.

A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll out today finds Trump tied with Mike Huckabee atop the field of potential GOP White House contenders. According to the poll, Trump and Huckabee both garner 19 percent support among likely GOP voters. Sarah Palin comes in second, with 12 percent, while Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are tied atthird, with 11 percent support each.

That's a significant drop for Romney, who was at 18 percent support in CNN's poll last month. The poll echoes the findings of a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last week that found Trump bouncing into second place among likely contenders, tied with Huckabee.

All of this comes as Trump steps up his 2012 maneuvering, especially among social conservatives who seem unhappy with the current field of GOP contenders.

The New York investor-turned-reality-TV-star talked up his conservative credentials in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody and admitted he's recently had conversations with top evangelical leaders, including former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins.

As The Ticket reported last month, Reed and Perkins have admitted they are intrigued by Trump's stances against abortion and gay marriage. They've suggested his positions might be enough to overcome negatives with evangelical voters, including Trump's past divorces and his role in the gambling industry.

In an interview with Brody, Trump also discussed his Christian faith, saying he strongly believes in God and saves Bibles that people send him. He said that he became pro-life after witnessing a friend and his wife decide to keep a child that at first they didn't want.

"He ends up having the baby and the baby is the apple of his eye. It's the greatest thing that's ever happened to him," Trump told CBN. "And you know here's a baby that wasn't going to be let into life. And I heard this, and some other stories, and I am pro-life."

In another position that's sure to gain attention in the GOP, Trump claims in the interview there's a "Muslim problem" in the United States and openly questions whether it's prompted by the teachings in the Koran.

"I'm certainly not an expert, to put it mildly, but there's something there that teaches some very negative vibe…There's a lot of hatred there," he told CBN. "Now I don't know if that's from the Koran, I don't know if that's from someplace else. But there's tremendous hatred out there that I've never seen anything like it."

Still, for all of his obvious attempts to appeal to the GOP's most conservative voters, Trump also suggested that the GOP's focus in 2012 should be on electability, not on finding a candidate who toes the movement line on social issues.

"You know you can't get so caught up on social issues and then put somebody who is wonderful socially but is going to get decimated by Barack Obama," Trump said. "You have to pick somebody that's going to win."

(Photo of Trump: Charles Sykes/AP)

Japan equates nuclear crisis severity to Chernobyl

2011-04-12T12:21:00.001-07:00

TOKYO – Japan ranked its nuclear crisis at the highest possible severity on an international scale — the same level as the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — even as it insisted Tuesday that radiation leaks are declining at its tsunami-crippled nuclear plant.

The higher rating is an open acknowledgement of what was widely understood already: The nuclear accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant is the second-worst in history. It does not signal a worsening of the plant's status in recent days or any new health dangers.

Still, people living nearby who have endured a month of spewing radiation and frequent earthquakes said the change in status added to their unease despite government efforts to play down any notion that the crisis poses immediate health risks.

Miyuki Ichisawa closed her coffee shop this week when the government added her community, Iitate village, and four others to places people should leave to avoid long-term radiation exposure. The additions expanded the 12-mile (20-kilometer) zone where people had already been ordered to evacuate soon after the March 11 tsunami swamped the plant.

"And now the government is officially telling us this accident is at the same level of Chernobyl," Ichisawa said. "It's very shocking to me."

Japanese nuclear regulators said the severity rating was raised from 5 to 7 on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency due to new assessments of the overall radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant.

According to the Vienna-based atomic energy agency, the new ranking signifies a major accident that includes widespread effects on the environment and people's health. The scale, designed by experts convened by the IAEA and other groups in 1989, is meant to help the public, the technical community and the media understand the public safety implications of nuclear events.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said Japan's decision did not mean the disaster had been downplayed previously.

Early actions by Japanese authorities — evacuations, radiation warnings and the work at the plant to contain leaks — showed they realized the gravity of the situation, Denis Flory, an IAEA deputy director general, said.

The upgraded status did not mean radiation from the plant was worsening, but rather reflected concern about long-term health risks as it continues to spew into the air, soil and seawater. Most radiation exposures around the region haven't been high enough yet to raise significant health concerns.

Workers are still trying to restore disabled cooling systems at the plant, and radioactive isotopes have been detected in tap water, fish and vegetables.

Iitate's town government decided Tuesday to ban planting of all farm products, including rice and vegetables, expanding the national government's prohibition on growing rice there.

Japan's prime minister, Naoto Kan, went on national television and urged people not to panic.

"Right now, the situation of the nuclear reactors at the Fukushima plant has been stabilizing step by step. The amount of radiation leaks is on the decline," he said. "But we are not at the stage yet where we can let our guard down."

Japanese officials said the leaks from the Fukushima plant so far amount to a tenth of the radiation emitted from Chernobyl, but about 10 times the amount needed to reach the level 7 threshold. They acknowledged the emissions could eventually exceed Chernobyl's, but said the chance that will happen is very small. However, regulators have also acknowledged that a more severe nuclear accident is a distinct possibility until regular cooling systems are restored — a process likely to take months.

"Although the Fukushima accident is now at the equal level as Chernobyl, we should not consider the two incidents as the same," said Hiroshi Horiike, professor of nuclear engineering at Osaka University. "Fukushima is not a Chernobyl."

In Chernobyl, in what is now the Ukraine, a reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing a cloud of radiation over much of the Northern Hemisphere. A zone about 19 miles (30 kilometers) around the plant was declared uninhabitable.

Thirty-one men died mostly from being exposed to very high levels of radiation trying to contain the accident. But there is no agreement on how many people are likely to die of cancers caused by its radiation.

No radiation exposure deaths have been blamed on the leaks at Fukushima Dai-ichi. Two plant workers were treated for burns after walking in heavily contaminated water in a building there.

The tsunami, spawned by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, knocked out cooling systems and backup diesel generators, leading to hydrogen explosions at three reactors and a fire at a fourth that was undergoing regular maintenance and was empty of fuel. Workers have been improvising for weeks with everything from helicopter drops to fire hoses to supply cooling water to the plant.

Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, noted that unlike in Chernobyl there have been no explosions of reactor cores, which are more serious than hydrogen explosions.

"In that sense, this situation is totally different from Chernobyl," he said.

NISA officials said they raised the incident level because of the cumulative amount of radioactive particles released into the atmosphere. Other factors included damage to the plant's buildings and accumulated radiation levels for its workers.

The revision was based on cross-checking and assessments of data on leaks of radioactive iodine-131 and cesium-137. Officials did not say why they skipped level 6 or when exactly the radiation level exceeded the level 7 threshold.

Based on government estimates, the equivalent of 500,000 terabecquerels of radiation from iodine-131 has been released into the atmosphere since the crisis began, well above the several tens of thousands of terabecquerels needed to reach level 7. A terabecquerel equals a trillion becquerels, a measure of radiation emissions. The Chernobyl incident released 5.2 million terabecquerels into the air.

"We have refrained from making announcements until we have reliable data," Nishiyama said. He also emphasized that no more major leaks are expected from the reactors, though he acknowledged more work is needed to keep the reactors stable.

Work to stabilize the plant has been impeded by continued aftershocks, the latest a 6.3-magnitude quake Tuesday that prompted plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, to temporarily pull back workers. Work removing highly radioactive water, a necessary step before cooling systems can be restored, finally resumed around 7:30 p.m.

In his televised address, Kan gave the nation a pep talk, telling people to focus on recovering from the disasters that are believed to have killed 25,000 people.

"Let's live normally without falling into excessive self-restraint," he said. "We should eat and drink products from the quake-hit areas as a form of support."

Many of the more than 14,500 people still listed as missing from the quake and tsunami are thought to have been swept out to sea. A month after the disaster, more than 145,000 people are still living in shelters.

Among them is Kenichi Yomogita, a plumbing contract worker at Fukushima Dai-ichi who was off work the day of the tsunami and has not returned. His hometown of Tomioka is in the evacuation zone, and he thinks it will be at least three years before he can return. For now he is living at a shelter in Koriyama, and said the upgraded crisis level has not improved his hopes.

"At first the reality of this situation didn't sink in," he said, "but this news shows how serious it is."

___

Associated Press writers Yuri Kageyama, Mari Yamaguchi, Mayumi Saito and Malcolm J. Foster and Noriko Kitano in Tokyo, George Jahn in Vienna and photographer Hiro Komae contributed to this report.

Deadline nears: Shutdown looms without agreement

2011-04-08T14:56:00.001-07:00

WASHINGTON – The federal government lurched toward a shutdown for the first time in 15 years on Friday as Republicans and Democrats in Congress struggled for a way out and swapped increasingly incendiary charges over which side was to blame.

The Obama administration readied hundreds of thousands of furlough notices for federal workers, to be released any time after the midnight deadline for a deal to keep operations running.

"We know the whole world is watching us today," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

He, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner all agreed a shutdown posed risks to an economy still recovering from the worst recession in decades. But there were disagreements aplenty among the principal players in an early test of divided government — Obama in the White House, fellow Democrats in control in the Senate and a new, tea party-flavored Republican majority in the House.

For much of the day, Reid and Boehner disagreed about what the disagreement was about.

Reid said there had been an agreement at a White House meeting Thursday night to cut spending by about $38 billion as part of a bill to finance the government through the Sept. 30 end of the budget year.

He said Republicans also were demanding unspecified cuts in health services for lower income women that were unacceptable to Democrats.

"Republicans want to shut down our nation's government because they want to make it harder to get cancer screenings," he said. "They want to throw women under the bus."

Boehner said repeatedly that wasn't the case — it was spending cuts that divided two sides.

"Most of the policy issues have been dealt with, and the big fight is about spending," he said. "When will the White House and when will Senate Democrats get serious about cutting federal spending."

By midday Friday, 12 hours before the funding would run out, most federal employees had been told whether they had been deemed essential or would be temporarily laid off in the event of a shutdown.

The military, mail carriers, air traffic controllers and border security guards would still be expected at work, although paychecks could be delayed.

National parks and forests would close, and taxpayers filing paper returns would not receive refunds during a shutdown.

Passports would be available in cases of emergencies only.

Obama canceled a scheduled Friday trip to Indianapolis — and a weekend family visit to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia — and kept in touch with both Boehner and Reid.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sounded hopeful, predicting an agreement and saying, "I assure you, these are not unresolvable issues."

The House passed legislation on Thursday to keep the government running for another week while also cutting $12 billion in spending — and providing enough money for the Pentagon to operate through Sept. 30.

Boehner urged Obama to reconsider a veto threat.

That seemed unlikely, although Republicans and Democrats alike talked of trying once more to pass a stopgap bill if the larger agreement remained elusive.

Obama has already signed two of those interim bills, which included a total of $10 billion in spending cuts.

The standoff began several weeks ago, when the new Republican majority in the House passed legislation to cut $61 billion from federal spending and place numerous curbs on the government.

In the weeks since, the two sides have alternately negotiated and taken time out to pass interim measures.

Democrats said Republicans had effectively jettisoned numerous demands to block Environmental Protection Agency regulations aimed at polluters, a key stumbling block in negotiations for weeks.

Originally, Republicans wanted to ban federal funds for Planned Parenthood, a health care services provider that is also the nation's largest provider of abortions.

Federal funds may not be used to pay for abortions except in strictly regulated cases, but supporters of the ban said cutting off government funds for the organization — currently about $330 million a year — would make it harder for it to use its own money for the same purpose.

Democrats rejected the proposal in private talks. Officials in both parties said Republicans returned earlier in the week with a proposal to distribute federal funds for family planning and related health services to the states, rather than directly to Planned Parenthood and other organizations.

Democrats said they rejected that proposal, as well, and then refused to agree to allow a separate Senate vote on the issue as part of debate over any compromise bill.

Instead, they launched a sustained campaign at both ends of the Capitol to criticize Republicans.

"We'll not allow them to use women as pawns," said Sen. Patty Murray, a fourth-term lawmaker from Washington who doubles as head of the Democratic senatorial campaign committee.

For Congress and Obama there are even tougher struggles still ahead — over a Republican budget that would remake entire federal programs, and a vote to raise the nation's debt limit.

____

Associated Press writers Andrew Taylor, Alan Fram, Julie Pace and Ben Feller contributed to this story.

Glenn Beck's Fox show dropped

2011-04-06T11:13:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK – Fox News Channel on Wednesday said it was dropping Glenn Beck's afternoon talk show, which has sunk in the ratings and suffered financially due to an advertiser boycott.

Fox and Beck said the show will end later this year.

Fox News and Beck's company, Mercury Radio Arts, said they will work together to create other projects for Fox television and digital.

Beck was a quick burn on Fox News Channel. Almost immediately after joining the network in January 2009, he doubled the ratings at his afternoon time slot. Fans found his conservative populism entertaining, while Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert described Beck's "crank up the crazy and rip off the knob" moments.

He was popular with Tea Party activists and drew thousands of people to the National Mall in Washington last August for a "restoring honor" rally.

Yet some of his statements were getting him in trouble, and critics appealed to advertisers to boycott his show last summer after Beck said President Barack Obama had "a deep-seated hatred for white people."

More than 400 Fox advertisers told the company they did not want their commercials on Beck's show.

Viewers also began turning away. Beck's 5 p.m. ET show averaged 2.7 million viewers during the first three months of 2010, and was at just under 2 million for the same period this year, the Nielsen Co. said. His decline was sharper among younger viewers sought by advertisers.

Increasingly, the show began to be dominated by Beck standing in front of a chalk board giving his theories about the world's troubles.

However, Beck has built a powerful brand for himself with a radio show and digital properties. A key Fox executive, Joel Cheatwood, is joining Mercury Radio Arts later this month.

"I truly believe that America owes a lot to Roger Ailes and Fox News," Beck said in a statement. "I cannot repay Roger for the lessons I've learned and will continue to learn from him and I look forward to starting this new phase of our partnership."

One of Beck's most prominent critics — David Brock, founder of the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America — said that "the only surprise is that it took Fox News months to reach this decision."

Indian 'living god' in critical condition: hospital

2011-04-05T12:05:00.001-07:00

HYDERABAD, India (AFP) – One of India's best-known spiritual leaders, famous for his apparent miracles and long list of influential followers, is on life support in a southern hospital, officials said on Tuesday.

Satya Sai Baba, 85, who has devotees in more than 100 countries, was admitted to a hospital funded by his organisation in the town of Puttaparthi with lung and chest congestion on March 28.

His condition has since deteriorated and he is now on a ventilator and is receiving kidney dialysis, the most recent health bulletin from the hospital said on Tuesday.

He remains "critical," although his "level of consciousness has considerably improved" and his vital systems are "stable", said the update from the Sri Satya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences.

Thousands of followers have begun arriving in Puttaparthi, home to Sai Baba's ashram in the southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh, with many agitated by conflicting information given out by local authorities.

Government officials have sought to play down the seriousness of his condition, while police are preventing groups from gathering in the town, according to local reports.

The wild-haired leader has a following of millions in India and abroad, many of whom believe him to be a living god, and the reincarnation of the great spiritual guru, Sai Baba of Shirdi, who died in 1918.

The guru, who claims to have performed several miracles including bringing men back to life, counts former Indian prime ministers, top businessmen and even the country's cricketers among his devotees.

His organisation funds health and education projects in India, including a string of hospitals that claim to be able to cure ailments beyond the capabilities of mainstream medicine.

He and Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, the so-called "hugging saint" of Kerala, are the best known of thousands of Hindu ascetics.

The swami's birth in Andhra Pradesh is shrouded in mystery.

One hagiographical account by a biographer claimed the mysterious sounding of drums signalled his impending birth.

In his teens he is said to have begun singing verses in Sanskrit, a language of which he had no prior knowledge, and then became able to materialise flowers and sweets to the astonishment of observers.

His devotees also credit him with an ability to remember his past lives, a frequent claim of Indian holy men, and he is believed to produce sacred ash every day.

His work in education and health have won him widespread acclaim and respectability, but his reputation has also been damaged by allegations of sexual abuse and paedophilia.

A BBC programme in 2004 called "The Secret Swami" featured interviews with former followers who claimed Sai Baba took advantage of them. The allegations were denied by the spiritual leader's organisation.

Sheen gets cheers, not boos in second stop on tour

2011-04-04T07:28:00.001-07:00

CHICAGO – This time, Charlie Sheen's stage show began and ended with a standing ovation.

Sheen changed up the format for his 20-city road show after bombing in Detroit, using a master of ceremonies who asked the former "Two and a Half Men" star questions during Sunday night's performance in Chicago. Sheen ditched the rapper, the long monologue and the videos that were part of the Detroit show that had people leaving in droves Saturday night.

The changes seem to have helped. Audience members said the second performance on Sheen's "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is not an Option" tour wasn't stellar, but it at least had some amusing moments. And the crowd at the 3,600-seat Chicago Theatre stayed for the entire performance and continued to cheer Sheen throughout.

Mackenzie Barth, 19, said the sold-out show was "weird," but that "at least no one was booing," referring to the reaction Sheen received in Detroit, where audience members chanted "refund" and headed for the exits even before the show abruptly ended.

Those attending the Chicago performance acknowledged they had low expectations going in after hearing the brutal reviews of the inaugural performance, which had started with thunderous applause.

"We figured we'd try it out and see what happens, and if it's bad, we'll leave," said Katie Iglehart, 23, of Chicago, who was attending the show with a friend.

But the talk show-style format kept Sheen from meandering and gave him the chance to make some of the snarky comments that have made him an Internet star since his falling out with CBS and the producers of "Two and a Half Men." Sheen, 45, smoked cigarettes as he talked about his marriages, his career and his life with the women he calls his "goddesses" — a former porn star and an actress who live with him — as he answered question from an interviewer who did not identify himself.

Asked how many times he had been married, Sheen retorted, "Seven-thousand. That's why I'm broke."

Asked why he's "paid for sex" in the past, Sheen responded, "Because I had millions to blow. I ran out of things to buy."

Overall, he seemed to have a better rapport with the Chicago crowd. As the show began, some began chanting "Detroit sucks." Early on, Sheen urged the audience in an obscenity-laced statement "not to become (expletive) Detroit tonight. Let's show Detroit how it's (expletive) done." Later, when the interviewer asked Sheen when he had started "winning," the actor responded, "The winning started in (expletive) Chicago."

Ellen Olson, who was wearing a black T-shirt with Sheen's catchphrase "Winning!" in white across the front, said she enjoyed the performance.

"I think he interacted with the audience a lot, which made it more funny," said Olson, 55, of Elmwood Park.

Sheen has made headlines in recent years as much for his drug use, failed marriages, custody disputes and run-ins with the police, as for his acting. Martin Sheen has compared his son's struggle with addiction to a cancer patient's struggle for survival.

In August, the wayward star pleaded guilty in Aspen, Colo., to misdemeanor third-degree assault after a Christmas Day altercation with his third wife, Brooke Mueller. The couple have since finalized their divorce.

Charlie Sheen's behavior, which included lashing out at "Two and a Half Men" producer Chuck Lorre, finally became too much for Warner Bros. Television, which fired him March 7.

Sheen fired back with a $100 million lawsuit and all-out media assault in which he informed the world about his standing as a "rock star from Mars" with "Adonis DNA."

___

Associated Press writers Mike Householder and Jeff Karoub in Detroit contributed to this report.

More customers exposed as big data breach grows

2011-04-03T19:01:00.001-07:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The names and e-mails of customers of Citigroup Inc and other large U.S. companies, as well as College Board students, were exposed in a massive and growing data breach after a computer hacker penetrated online marketer Epsilon.

In what could be one of the biggest such breaches in U.S. history, a diverse swath of companies that did business with Epsilon stepped forward over the weekend to warn customers some of their electronic information could have been exposed.

Drugstore Walgreen, Video recorder TiVo Inc, credit card lender Capital One Financial Corp and teleshopping company HSN Inc all added their names to a list of targets that also includes some of the nation's largest banks.

The names and electronic contacts of some students affiliated with the U.S.-based College Board -- which represents some 5,900 colleges, universities and schools -- were also potentially compromised.

No personal financial information such as credit cards or social security numbers appeared to be exposed, according to the company statements and e-mails to customers.

Epsilon, an online marketing unit of Alliance Data Systems Corp, said on Friday that a person outside the company hacked into some of its clients' customer files. The vendor sends more than 40 billion e-mail ads and offers annually, usually to people who register for a company's website or who give their e-mail addresses while shopping.

"We learned from our e-mail provider, Epsilon, that limited information about you was accessed by an unauthorized individual or individuals," HSN, also an e-commerce operator, said in an e-mail to customers on Sunday.

"This information included your name and e-mail address and did not include any financial or other sensitive information. We felt it was important to notify you of this incident as soon as possible."

Citigroup customer names and some credit card customers' e-mail addresses -- but no account information -- were part of the data breach, the third-largest U.S. bank said on Saturday.

The College Board, which administers the SAT admissions tests, on Saturday warned students about the breach and asked them to be cautious about receiving "links or attachments from unknown third parties," according to two e-mails reviewed by Reuters.

The not-for-profit organization is in contact with more than 7 million students, according to its website. It did not immediately return calls for comment.

PROBING FOR ANSWERS

Law enforcement authorities are investigating the breach, though it was unclear on Sunday how many customers or students had been exposed. Epsilon is also looking into what went wrong.

"While we are cooperating with authorities and doing a thorough investigation, we cannot say anything else," said Epsilon spokeswoman Jessica Simon. "We can't confirm any impacted or non-impacted clients, or provide a list (of companies) at this point in time."

Capital One, which also runs a bank, and Walgreens, the largest U.S. drugstore, said the Epsilon hacker accessed its customer e-mail addresses, but no personally identifiable information.

TiVo, a maker of digital video recorders, said the information that was obtained was limited to e-mail addresses and clients' first names.

The incident comes three years after hackers penetrated Heartland Payment Systems, a credit and debit card processor, in one of the biggest identity-theft cases in U.S. history.

In that case, notorious hacker Albert Gonzalez led a ring that stole more than 40 million payment card numbers, and was later sentenced to 20 years in prison.

On Friday, JPMorgan Chase & Co, the second-largest U.S. bank, and Kroger Co, the biggest U.S. supermarket operator, said that some customers were exposed as part of the Epsilon data breach.

Citigroup announced that it had been affected on Saturday evening. Spokesman Sean Kevelighan said the bank started informing its customers of the breach on Friday through a link on its website.

Some of Epsilon's other clients include Verizon Communications Inc, Blackstone Group LP's Hilton Hotels, Kraft Foods Inc, and AstraZeneca.

(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer and Maria Aspan, editing by Maureen Bavdek, Diane Craft and Gunna Dickson)

Charlie Sheen show sputters in Motor City

2011-04-03T08:52:00.001-07:00

DETROIT – Charlie Sheen was heckled, booed and eventually abandoned by the crowd at his inaugural stage show, with many of the audience members chanting "refund" and heading for the exits even before the show abruptly ended.

Winning? Not on opening night.

The first stop on Sheen's "My Violent Torpedo of Truth/Defeat is Not an Option" 20-city variety show started Saturday night with thunderous applause but ended 70 minutes later. In between, Sheen tried to appease his audience with rants, a rapper and a question and answer session, ultimately concluding the first show was "an experiment."

The former "Two and a Half Men" star learned firsthand at Detroit's 5,100-seat Fox Theatre that show business still requires a show. The debacle called into question the fate of the nascent tour. Some fans already predicted a premature end for the monthlong trek, which was scheduled to resume Sunday in Chicago.

"No way" the show makes it through all the dates, said Bob Orlowski, a lawyer from Plymouth, Mich., who watched with six clients in a suite.

"He's not suited for this," said Orlowski, 46. "It wasn't funny."

Sheen's publicist, Larry Solters, declined to comment after the show. Sheen, 45, reappeared after the house lights went up to thank the hundreds who remained.

It wasn't clear when Sheen lost the audience, but there were many awkward moments.

Sheen, known for his wild partying and rampant drug use, said he thought Detroit would be a good place to tell some stories about crack cocaine. The remark prompted loud, immediate boos.

At another point, Sheen showed a short film he wrote, directed and produced years ago called "RPG." He sat in the front row to watch the flick, which starred a much younger Johnny Depp. Again, more boos.

The show actually started off with a bang.

After a video montage of movie clips — Sheen in "Wall Street" and "Platoon" set to a guitar solo from Sheen friend Rob Patterson — the star emerged to raucous applause and a standing ovation. The cheering increased as the women he calls his "goddesses" took the stage.

The two women, a former porn star and an actress who live with him, carried placards with the words "War" and "Lock," a reference to Sheen's recent description of himself.

When the goddesses locked lips in front of him, Sheen smirked. He had the crowd in the palm of his hand.

"I don't see a single empty seat," he said.

That quickly changed.

As the showed bogged down, an audience member booed, prompting Sheen to reply, "I've already got your money, dude."

Things only got worse.

"Tonight's an experiment," he said.

For some, it was an expensive experiment.

Linda Fugate, who paid $150 for two seats, left the theater and walked up the street, yelling, "I want my money back!"

"I was hoping for something. I didn't think it would be this bad," said Fugate, a 47-year-old from Lincoln Park, Mich.

Fans who arrived at the theater — some flying in for the show — said they were hoping to see the increasingly eccentric actor deliver some of the colorful rants that have made him an Internet star since his ugly falling out with CBS and the producers of "Two and a Half Men."

They got the ranting. It just wasn't funny.

"Brutal. I expected him to at least entertain a little bit," said Rodney Gagnon, 34, of Windsor, Ontario.

Some saw something between victory and defeat.

Geoff Rezek, 69, a computer consultant from Darien, Conn., who met Sheen after the concert and received a poster, said the show needed work, but was salvageable. He believes Sheen is a consummate showman who took a risk.

"I wouldn't miss the first show. Who knows if there's going to be a second show?" Rezek said, perhaps prophetically. He also bought a ticket for Sheen's performance next week in Connecticut.

Sheen has made headlines in recent years as much for his drug use, failed marriages, custody disputes and run-ins with the police, as for his acting. Martin Sheen has compared his son's struggle with addiction to a cancer patient's struggle for survival.

In August, the wayward star pleaded guilty in Aspen, Colo., to misdemeanor third-degree assault after a Christmas Day altercation with his third wife, Brooke Mueller. The couple have since finalized their divorce.

Charlie Sheen's behavior, which included lashing out at "Two and a Half Men" producer Chuck Lorre, finally became too much for Warner Bros. Television, which fired him March 7.

Sheen fired back with a $100 million lawsuit and all-out media assault in which he informed the world about his standing as a "rock star from Mars" with "Adonis DNA."

After one of the sustained booing moments, Sheen tried to calm the crowd.

"Come on, guys. You paid to see me," he said. "... You gave me your hard-earned money without knowing what this (expletive) show was about. I'm here now ... and I'm willing to open up."

GOP appears poised to take on entitlements

2011-03-28T08:13:00.001-07:00

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. – If there's any place where tea partiers in Congress might hesitate to call for cuts in Social Security and Medicare to shrink the federal debt, Florida's retirement havens should top the list.

Even here, however, Republican lawmakers are racing toward a spending showdown with Democrats exhibiting little nervousness about deep cuts, including those that eventually would hit benefit programs long left alone by politicians.

In fact, many GOP freshmen seem bolder than ever. It's Democrats, especially in the Senate, who are trying to figure out how to handle the popular but costly retirement programs. Congress, meanwhile, is rapidly nearing critical decisions on the budget and the nation's debt ceiling.

In southeast Florida last week, first-term GOP Rep. Allen West, a tea party favorite, called for changes that some might consider radical: abolish the Internal Revenue Service and federal income tax; retain tax cuts for billionaires so they won't shut down their charities; stop extending unemployment benefits that "reward bad behavior" by discouraging people from seeking new jobs.

As for entitlements, West told a friendly town hall gathering in Coral Springs, if Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid "are left on autopilot, if we don't institute some type of reform, they'll subsume our entire GDP" by 2040 or 2050. GDP, or gross domestic product, measures the value of all goods and services produced in the United States.

Social Security, the largest federal program, mainly benefits retirees. Medicare provides health coverage for older people. Medicaid helps those with low incomes. Combined, the three consume about 40 percent of the budget. Their costs are growing rapidly. Social Security and Medicare benefits now exceed the payroll taxes that fund them.

West, who's likely to draw serious Democratic opposition next year, showed scant interest in edging toward the center on anything. He didn't take issue with the man who said congressional Democrats "have joined with the radical Islamists," or with the woman who said President Barack Obama "certainly doesn't support Israel."

In Greenville, S.C., a different Republican freshman with tea party ties, Rep. Trey Gowdy, also suggested during last week's congressional break a paring back of social programs.

According to a Greenville News account posted on his website, Gowdy "described a recent school classroom where most children indicated they think it's the government's job to provide health care, Social Security and education. 'We've got to do something about the sense of entitlement,' Gowdy said."

Gowdy's office later said he thinks Social Security "is a key aspect of a broad effort to fundamentally reform our entitlement system, but any solution must honor our commitment to current retirees."

Indeed, West and many other Republicans say current and soon-to-be retirees should see no benefit cuts. Their calls for changing Medicare and Social Security often lack specifics, and it's unclear whether the divided Congress will tackle the programs' long-term problems or postpone action, as has happened many times before on Capitol Hill.

West's desire to slash spending seems to stop at his district's doorstep. The Coral Springs audience cheered loudly when he said he helped secure a $21 million grant for a new runway at the nearby Fort Lauderdale airport.

"Grant money is not pork," West said. He issued a press release saying the runway project "will generate at least 11,000 jobs" by 2014 and cost $791 million.

While West spoke in Coral Springs, several dozen Republicans had wine and hors d'oeuvres in Palm Beach as they awaited a speech by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. There was ample sympathy in the room for raising the eligibility age for Social Security benefits.

Obama's debt commission recommended gradually increasing the full retirement age, from 67 to 69, over the next 65 years.

"No one is going to be hurt by it," said Steve Stevens, 80, a retired real estate developer. If people, rich or poor, count on Social Security to fund their retirement, he said, "it's very poor planning."

Obama's debt commission has recommended gradually increasing the full retirement age, from 67 to 69, over the next 65 years.

Cynthia Steele, 51, said anyone making more than $100,000 a year should not receive Social Security benefits, even if it affected her and her friends.

In Washington, Democrats are conflicted. Thirty-two Senate Democrats joined 32 Republicans in urging Obama to negotiate a broad-based spending plan that includes changes to Social Security and Medicare.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., says he opposes cuts in Social Security benefits.

The centrist Democratic group Third Way says the public is ready to embrace gradual changes to entitlement programs and that Republicans are winning the issue so far.

"We don't believe Republicans 'going too far' will be their Waterloo," the group said in a memo. "The party seen as most serious on the issue will win the day."

If Republicans and Democrats cannot agree soon on spending plans for this year and next, the government could face its first partial shutdown since 1996. That prospect worries leaders of both parties, and they are watching to see if last week's recess hardened of softened lawmakers' positions.

West suggested there is room for compromise, but not much.

"I'm not for shutting down the government," he told the Coral Springs crowd. But he said Obama must lead the budget negotiations, or else.

If there is a shutdown, West said, "it's going to be because the president is not engaged."

Trump "screwed" Gadhafi in a real estate deal

2011-03-24T10:29:00.001-07:00

(CNN) – Donald Trump, whose flirtations with a presidential bid continue, says he has special experience dealing with Libyan leader Moammer Gadhafi.

Speaking on Fox News Monday, Trump says he has more of a track record than anyone in the Republican presidential field when it comes to dealing with foreign leaders and dignitaries: "I sell them real estate for tremendous amounts of money. I mean, I've dealt with everybody."

Trump, who has said he will decide on a presidential bid by June, said he is particularly happy with the fact he "screwed" Gadhafi on a past real estate deal.

"I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn't let him use the land," Trump boasted. "That's what we should be doing. I don't want to use the word 'screwed', but I screwed him."

Concern in Tokyo over radiation in tap water

2011-03-23T16:33:00.001-07:00

TOKYO – Radiation leaking from Japan's tsunami-damaged nuclear power plant has caused Tokyo's tap water to exceed safety standards for infants to drink, officials said Wednesday, sending anxiety levels soaring over the nation's food and water supply.

Residents cleared store shelves of bottled water after Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said levels of radioactive iodine in tap water were more than twice what is considered safe for babies. Officials begged those in the city to buy only what they needed, saying hoarding could hurt the thousands of people without any water in areas devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

"I've never seen anything like this," clerk Toru Kikutaka said, surveying the downtown Tokyo supermarket where the entire stock of bottled water sold out almost immediately after the news broke, despite a limit of two, two-liter bottles per customer.

The unsettling new development affecting Japan's largest city, home to around 13 million people, added to growing fears over the nation's food supply.

Radiation from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant has seeped into raw milk, seawater and 11 kinds of vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower and turnips, from areas around the plant. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it was halting imports of Japanese dairy and produce from the region near the facility. Hong Kong went further and required that Japan perform safety checks on meat, eggs and seafood before accepting those products.

Officials are still struggling to stabilize the nuclear plant, which on Wednesday belched black smoke from Unit 3 and forced the evacuation of workers, further delaying attempts to make needed repairs. The plant, 140 miles (220 kilometers) north of Tokyo, has been leaking radiation since the quake and tsunami knocked out its crucial cooling systems.

The crisis is emerging as the world's most expensive natural disaster on record, likely to cost up to $309 billion, according to a new government estimate. Police say an estimated 18,000 people were killed.

Concerns about food safety spread Wednesday to Tokyo after officials said tap water showed elevated radiation levels: 210 becquerels of iodine-131 per liter of water — more than twice the recommended limit of 100 becquerels per liter for infants. Another measurement taken later at a different site showed the level was 190 becquerels per liter. The recommended limit for adults is 300 becquerels.

"It is really scary. It is like a vicious negative spiral from the nuclear disaster," said Etsuko Nomura, a mother of two children ages 2 and 5. "We have contaminated milk and vegetables, and now tap water in Tokyo, and I'm wondering what's next."

Infants are particularly vulnerable to radioactive iodine, which can cause thyroid cancer, experts say. The limits refer to sustained consumption rates, and officials urged calm, saying parents should stop giving the tap water to babies, but that it was no problem if the infants already had consumed small amounts.

They said the levels posed no immediate health risk for older children or adults.

"Even if you drink this water for one year, it will not affect people's health," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.

Dr. Harold Swartz, a professor of radiology and medicine at Dartmouth Medical School in the U.S., said the radiation amounts being reported in the water are too low to pose any real risk, even to infants who are being fed water-based formula or to breast-fed infants whose mothers drink tap water.

Although the amounts are well above established limits, that doesn't automatically mean there's a health threat, he said.

"We live in a world that has natural background radiation that's many times greater than the amounts we're talking about here," Swartz said.

Still, because it's easy to avoid tap water, it makes sense for Japanese parents with infants to do so, he said.

Radioactive iodine is also short-lived, with a half-life of eight days — the length of time it takes for half of it to break down harmlessly.

Richard Wakeford, a public health radiologist at the University of Manchester in Britain, blamed the spike in radiation on a shift in winds from the nuclear plant toward Tokyo. He predicted lower levels in coming days once the wind shifts back to normal patterns. "I imagine that bottled water is now quite popular in Tokyo," he said.

Tokyo's municipal government said it would distribute 240,000 bottles of water to households with infants. They estimated that there are currently 80,000 babies in the affected area, with each infant getting three bottles of 550 milliliters.

Edano pleaded with shoppers to restrict purchases of bottled water to the bare necessity, urging them to think of tsunami victims in need.

"We have to consider Miyagi, where there is no drinking water at all," he said, referring to a stricken region. "Under these conditions, we would appreciate it if people would avoid buying more water than they need."

The latest data showed sharp increases in radioactivity levels in a range of vegetables. In an area about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of the nuclear plant, levels for one locally grown leafy green called kukitachina measured 82 times the government limit for radioactive cesium and 11 times the limit for iodine.

The death toll from the disaster continued to rise, with more than 9,500 bodies counted and more than 16,000 people listed as missing.

With supplies of fuel and ice dwindling, officials have abandoned the traditional practice of cremation in favor of quick, simple burials. Some are interred in bare plywood caskets and others in blue plastic tarps, with no time to build proper coffins. The bodies will be dug up and cremated once crematoriums catch up with the glut, officials assured families.

In Higashimatsushima in Miyagi prefecture, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, soldiers lowered plywood coffins into the ground, saluting each casket.

Some relatives placed flowers on the graves. Most remained stoic, folding hands in prayer. Two young girls wept inconsolably, hugged tightly by their father.

"I hope their spirits will rest in peace here at this temporary place," said mourner Katsuko Oguni, 42.

Masaru Yamagata, a Higashimatsushima official, said the crematorium cannot keep up with demand.

"Giving the grieving families coffins is the most we can do right now," Yamagata said. "Every day, more dead bodies are found, and we need more coffins quickly."

Hundreds of thousands remained homeless, squeezed into temporary shelters without heat, warm food or medicine and no idea what to call home after the colossal wave swallowed up communities along the coast.

The tsunami also heavily damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facility, with explosions and fires in four of the plant's six reactors sending radioactive steam into the air.

Progress in cooling down the troubled plant has been intermittent, disrupted by rises in radiation, elevated pressure in reactors and overheated storage pools.

The plant's operator had restored circuitry to bring power to all six units and turned on lights at Unit 3 late Tuesday for the first time since the disaster — a significant step toward restarting the cooling system.

It had hoped to restore power to cooling pumps at the unit within days, but experts warned the work included the risk of sparking fires as electricity is restored through equipment potentially damaged in the tsunami.

And then on Wednesday, black smoke suddenly billowed from Unit 3, prompting another evacuation of workers from the plant in the afternoon, Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials said. They said there had been no corresponding spike in radiation at the plant.

Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said officials did not know the reason for the smoke.

Tokyo Electric manager Teruaki Kobayashi said the pump for Unit 3 had been tested and was working Wednesday. But officials weren't sure when they would be able to turn the power on to the pump.

Nuclear agency official Kenji Kawasaki said workers would not be allowed to return to the plant until Thursday morning, since smoke was still rising as of late Wednesday night.

As a precaution, officials have evacuated residents within 12 miles (20 kilometers) of the plant and advised those up to 19 miles (30 kilometers) away to stay indoors to minimize exposure.

And for the first time, Edano, the chief Cabinet secretary, suggested that those downwind of the plant should stay indoors with the windows shut tight — even if just outside the zone.

___

Associated Press writers Tomoko A. Hosaka, Yuri Kageyama and Jay Alabaster in Tokyo, Tim Sullivan in Higashimatsushima, Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington, Lindsey Tanner in Chicago and Foster Klug in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

Liz Taylor Dead at 79

2011-03-23T08:25:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES – Elizabeth Taylor, the violet-eyed film goddess whose sultry screen persona, stormy personal life and enduring fame and glamour made her one of the last of the old-fashioned movie stars and a template for the modern celebrity, died Wednesday at age 79.

She was surrounded by her four children when she died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where she had been hospitalized for about six weeks, said publicist Sally Morrison.

"My Mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor, and love," her son, Michael Wilding, said in a statement.

"We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts."

"We have just lost a Hollywood giant," said Elton John, a longtime friend of Taylor. "More importantly, we have lost an incredible human being."

Taylor was the most blessed and cursed of actresses, the toughest and the most vulnerable. She had extraordinary grace, wealth and voluptuous beauty, and won three Academy Awards, including a special one for her humanitarian work. She was the most loyal of friends and a defender of gays in Hollywood when AIDS was still a stigma in the industry and beyond. But she was afflicted by ill health, failed romances (eight marriages, seven husbands) and personal tragedy.

"I think I'm becoming fatalistic," she said in 1989. "Too much has happened in my life for me not to be fatalistic."

Her more than 50 movies included unforgettable portraits of innocence and of decadence, from the children's classic "National Velvet" and the sentimental family comedy "Father of the Bride" to Oscar-winning transgressions in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Butterfield 8." The historical epic "Cleopatra" is among Hollywood's greatest on-screen fiascos and a landmark of off-screen monkey business, the meeting ground of Taylor and Richard Burton, the "Brangelina" of their day.

She played enough bawdy women on film for critic Pauline Kael to deem her "Chaucerian Beverly Hills."

But her defining role, one that lasted long past her moviemaking days, was "Elizabeth Taylor," ever marrying and divorcing, in and out of hospitals, gaining and losing weight, standing by Michael Jackson, Rock Hudson and other troubled friends, acquiring a jewelry collection that seemed to rival Tiffany's.

She was a child star who grew up and aged before an adoring, appalled and fascinated public. She arrived in Hollywood when the studio system tightly controlled an actor's life and image, had more marriages than any publicist could explain away and lasted long enough to no longer require explanation. She was the industry's great survivor, and among the first to reach that special category of celebrity — famous for being famous, for whom her work was inseparable from the gossip around it.

The London-born actress was a star at age 12, a bride and a divorcee at 18, a superstar at 19 and a widow at 26. She was a screen sweetheart and martyr later reviled for stealing Eddie Fisher from Debbie Reynolds, then for dumping Fisher to bed Burton, a relationship of epic passion and turbulence, lasting through two marriages and countless attempted reconciliations.

She was also forgiven. Reynolds would acknowledge voting for Taylor when she was nominated for "Butterfield 8" and decades later co-starred with her old rival in "These Old Broads," co-written by Carrie Fisher, the daughter of Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.

Taylor's ailments wore down the grudges. She underwent at least 20 major operations and she nearly died from a bout with pneumonia in 1990. In 1994 and 1995, she had both hip joints replaced, and in February 1997, she underwent surgery to remove a benign brain tumor. In 1983, she acknowledged a 35-year addiction to sleeping pills and pain killers. Taylor was treated for alcohol and drug abuse problems at the Betty Ford Clinic in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

Her troubles bonded her to her peers and the public, and deepened her compassion. Her advocacy for AIDS research and for other causes earned her a special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, in 1993.

As she accepted it, to a long ovation, she declared, "I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being — to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame."

The dark-haired Taylor made an unforgettable impression in Hollywood with "National Velvet," the 1945 film in which the 12-year-old belle rode a steeplechase horse to victory in the Grand National.

Critic James Agee wrote of her: "Ever since I first saw the child ... I have been choked with the peculiar sort of adoration I might have felt if we were in the same grade of primary school."

"National Velvet," her fifth film, also marked the beginning of Taylor's long string of health issues. During production, she fell off a horse. The resulting back injury continued to haunt her.

Taylor matured into a ravishing beauty in "Father of the Bride," in 1950, and into a respected performer and femme fatale the following year in "A Place in the Sun," based on the Theodore Dreiser novel "An American Tragedy." The movie co-starred her close friend Montgomery Clift as the ambitious young man who drowns his working-class girlfriend to be with the socialite Taylor. In real life, too, men all but committed murder in pursuit of her.

Through the rest of the 1950s and into the 1960s, she and Marilyn Monroe were Hollywood's great sex symbols, both striving for appreciation beyond their physical beauty, both caught up in personal dramas filmmakers could only wish they had imagined. That Taylor lasted, and Monroe died young, was a matter of luck and strength; Taylor lived as she pleased and allowed no one to define her but herself.

"I don't entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I'm me. God knows, I'm me," Taylor said around the time she turned 50.

She had a remarkable and exhausting personal and professional life. Her marriage to Michael Todd ended tragically when the producer died in a plane crash in 1958. She took up with Fisher, married him, then left him for Burton. Meanwhile, she received several Academy Award nominations and two Oscars.

She was a box-office star cast in numerous "prestige" films, from "Raintree County" with Clift to "Giant," an epic co-starring her friends Hudson and James Dean. Nominations came from a pair of movies adapted from work by Tennessee Williams: "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Suddenly, Last Summer." In "Butterfield 8," released in 1960, she starred with Fisher as a doomed girl-about-town. Taylor never cared much for the film, but her performance at the Oscars wowed the world.

Sympathy for Taylor's widowhood had turned to scorn when she took up with Fisher, who had supposedly been consoling her over the death of Todd. But before the 1961 ceremony, she was hospitalized from a nearly fatal bout with pneumonia and Taylor underwent a tracheotomy. The scar was bandaged when she appeared at the Oscars to accept her best actress trophy for "Butterfield 8."

To a standing ovation, she hobbled to the stage. "I don't really know how to express my great gratitude," she said in an emotional speech. "I guess I will just have to thank you with all my heart." It was one of the most dramatic moments in Academy Awards history.

"Hell, I even voted for her," Reynolds later said.

Greater drama awaited: "Cleopatra." Taylor met Burton while playing the title role in the 1963 epic, in which the brooding, womanizing Welsh actor co-starred as Mark Antony. Their chemistry was not immediate. Taylor found him boorish; Burton mocked her physique. But the love scenes on film continued away from the set and a scandal for the ages was born. Headlines shouted and screamed. Paparazzi snapped and swooned. Their romance created such a sensation that the Vatican denounced the happenings as the "caprices of adult children."

The film so exceeded its budget that the producers lost money even though "Cleopatra" was a box-office hit and won four Academy awards. (With its $44 million budget adjusted for inflation, "Cleopatra" remains the most expensive movie ever made.) Taylor's salary per film topped $1 million. "Liz and Dick" became a couple on a first name basis with millions who had never met them.

They were a prolific acting team, even if most of the movies aged no better than their relationship: "The VIPs" (1963), "The Sandpiper" (1965), "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966), "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967), "The Comedians" (1967), "Dr. Faustus" (1967), "Boom!" (1968), "Under Milk Wood" (1971) and "Hammersmith Is Out" (1972).

Art most effectively imitated life in the adaptation of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" — in which Taylor and Burton played mates who fought viciously and drank heavily. She took the best actress Oscar for her performance as the venomous Martha in "Virginia Woolf" and again stole the awards show, this time by not showing up at the ceremony. She refused to thank the academy upon learning of her victory and chastised voters for not honoring Burton.

Taylor and Burton divorced in 1974, married again in 1975 and divorced again in 1976.

"We fight a great deal," Burton once said, "and we watch the people around us who don't quite know how to behave during these storms. We don't fight when we are alone."

In 1982, Taylor and Burton appeared in a touring production of the Noel Coward play "Private Lives," in which they starred as a divorced couple who meet on their respective honeymoons. They remained close at the time of Burton's death, in 1984.

Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in London on Feb. 27, 1932, the daughter of Francis Taylor, an art dealer, and the former Sara Sothern, an American stage actress. At age 3, with extensive ballet training already behind her, Taylor danced for British princesses Elizabeth (the future queen) and Margaret Rose at London's Hippodrome. At age 4, she was given a wild field horse that she learned to ride expertly.

At the onset of World War II, the Taylors came to the United States. Francis Taylor opened a gallery in Beverly Hills and, in 1942, his daughter made her screen debut with a bit part in the comedy "There's One Born Every Minute."

Her big break came soon thereafter. While serving as an air-raid warden with MGM producer Sam Marx, Taylor's father learned that the studio was struggling to find an English girl to play opposite Roddy McDowall in "Lassie Come Home." Taylor's screen test for the film won her both the part and a long-term contract. She grew up quickly after that.

Still in school at 16, she would dash from the classroom to the movie set where she played passionate love scenes with Robert Taylor in "Conspirator."

"I have the emotions of a child in the body of a woman," she once said. "I was rushed into womanhood for the movies. It caused me long moments of unhappiness and doubt."

Soon after her screen presence was established, she began a series of very public romances. Early loves included socialite Bill Pawley, home run slugger Ralph Kiner and football star Glenn Davis.

Then, a roll call of husbands:

• She married Conrad Hilton Jr., son of the hotel magnate, in May 1950 at age 18. The marriage ended in divorce that December.

• When she married British actor Michael Wilding in February 1952, he was 39 to her 19. They had two sons, Michael Jr. and Christopher Edward. That marriage lasted 4 years.

• She married cigar-chomping movie producer Michael Todd, also 20 years her senior, in 1957. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Francis. Todd was killed in a plane crash in 1958.

• The best man at the Taylor-Todd wedding was Fisher. He left his wife Debbie Reynolds to marry Taylor in 1959. She converted to Judaism before the wedding.

• Taylor and Fisher moved to London, where she was making "Cleopatra." She met Burton, who also was married. That union produced her fourth child, Maria.

• After her second marriage to Burton ended, she married John Warner, a former secretary of the Navy, in December 1976. Warner was elected a U.S. senator from Virginia in 1978. They divorced in 1982.

• In October 1991, she married Larry Fortensky, a truck driver and construction worker she met while both were undergoing treatment at the Betty Ford Center in 1988. He was 20 years her junior. The wedding, held at the ranch of Michael Jackson, was a media circus that included the din of helicopter blades, a journalist who parachuted to a spot near the couple and a gossip columnist as official scribe.

But in August 1995, she and Fortensky announced a trial separation; she filed for divorce six months later and the split became final in 1997.

"I was taught by my parents that if you fall in love, if you want to have a love affair, you get married," she once remarked. "I guess I'm very old-fashioned."

Her philanthropic interests included assistance for the Israeli War Victims Fund, the Variety Clubs International and the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

She received the Legion of Honor, France's most prestigious award, in 1987, for her efforts to support AIDS research. In May 2000, Queen Elizabeth II made Taylor a dame — the female equivalent of a knight — for her services to the entertainment industry and to charity.

In 1993, she won a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute; in 1999, an institute survey of screen legends ranked her No. 7 among actresses.

During much of her later career, Taylor's waistline, various diets, diet books and tangled romances were the butt of jokes by Joan Rivers and others. John Belushi mocked her on "Saturday Night Live," dressing up in drag and choking on a piece of chicken.

"It's a wonder I didn't explode," Taylor wrote of her 60-pound weight gain — and successful loss — in the 1988 book "Elizabeth Takes Off on Self-Esteem and Self-Image."

She was an iconic star, but her screen roles became increasingly rare in the 1980s and beyond. She appeared in several television movies, including "Poker Alice" and "Sweet Bird of Youth," and entered the Stone Age as Pearl Slaghoople in the movie version of "The Flintstones." She had a brief role on the popular soap opera "General Hospital."

Taylor was the subject of numerous unauthorized biographies and herself worked on a handful of books, including "Elizabeth Taylor: An Informal Memoir" and "Elizabeth Taylor: My Love Affair With Jewelry." In tune with the media to the end, she kept in touch through her Twitter account.

"I like the connection with fans and people who have been supportive of me," Taylor told Kim Kardashian in a 2011 interview for Harper's Bazaar. "And I love the idea of real feedback and a two-way street, which is very, very modern. But sometimes I think we know too much about our idols and that spoils the dream."

Survivors include her daughters Maria Burton-Carson and Liza Todd-Tivey, sons Christopher and Michael Wilding, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

A private family funeral is planned later this week.

___

Associated Press Writer Bob Thomas contributed to this report.

Yemen's weakened president abandoned by own tribe

2011-03-20T12:07:00.001-07:00

SANAA, Yemen – The U.S.-backed president of Yemen suffered a devastating political blow on Sunday when his own powerful tribe demanded his resignation, joining religious leaders, young people and the country's traditional opposition in calls for an end to his three decades in power.

Massive crowds flooded cities and towns around the impoverished and volatile nation, screaming in grief and anger as they mourned dozens of protesters killed Friday when President Ali Abdullah Saleh's security forces opened fire from rooftops on a demonstration in the capital.

Saleh appeared to be trying to hold on, firing his entire Cabinet ahead of what one government official said was a planned mass resignation, but making no mention of stepping down himself. Yemen's ambassador to the United Nations and its human rights minister had announced their resignations earlier in the day.

Experts said that Saleh, who has cooperated closely with U.S. military operations against his country's branch of al-Qaida, had lost the support of every major power base in Yemen except the military.

Many said he would now be forced to choose between stepping down and confronting demonstrators with even deadlier force.

"We're talking a new set of dynamics that are driving the conflict into either the resignation of Saleh or a very serious clash between the two sides," said Ibrahim Sharqieh, deputy director of the Brookings Doha Center. "The U.S. should work now on an orderly transition in Yemen and press Saleh to find an arrangement that doesn't allow chaos."

Sharqieh said from Washington that it was far from clear what would replace Saleh if he goes. Options could include a military-run transitional government and an adminstration of traditional political opposition parties.

Sharqieh described the Obama administration as "extremely worried."

Saleh and his weak government have faced down many serious challenges, often forging tricky alliances with restive tribes to delicately extend power beyond the capital. Most recently, he has battled an on-and-off, seven-year armed rebellion in the north, a secessionist movement in the south, and an al-Qaida offshoot that is of great concern to the U.S.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which formed in January 2009, has moved beyond regional aims and attacked the West, including sending a suicide bomber who came terrifyingly close to blowing up a U.S.-bound airliner with a bomb sewn into his underwear. The device failed to detonate properly.

Yemen is also home to U.S.-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have offered inspiration to those attacking the U.S., including Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 people and wounding dozens in a 2009 shootout at Fort Hood, Texas.

"The U.S. just cannot afford losing Yemen," Sharqieh said.

The Yemeni government appeared to shy away from more violence for the moment, disbanding police and special forces around Sanaa University, which has been the center of the deadly crackdown, and replacing them with a largely unarmed force.

"From now on, we will be controlling the entrances and exits of the square by orders from the supreme military command," said Lt. Col. Mohammed Hussein.

Soldiers with sticks checked people arriving to join crowds of thousands who carried the flag-wrapped bodies of the slain through the square where on Friday, gunmen hidden on rooftops fired methodically into protesters. Police sealed off a key escape route with a wall of burning tires and more than 40 people, including children, perished, many shot in the head and neck.

The day after the bloodshed, the head of Saleh's Hashed tribe met with religious leaders at his home on Saturday and emerged with a statement of support for the protesters' demands that the president step down.

"We hail with all respect and observance, the position of the people at the (Sanaa University) square," Sheik Sadiq al-Ahmar said late Saturday.

Al-Ahmar does not command the automatic loyalty of tribal members but his positions are deeply influential, Sharqieh said.

The tribal leader now stands with opposition parties who have gone from negotiating Saleh's eventual departure to demanding his immediate resignation.

The parties said they would not be satisfied by Saleh's pledges not to run for re-election in 2013 or to hand power to his son.

"Our only choice now is the removal of the regime soon. We stand by the people's demand," opposition leader Yassin Said Numan told The Associated Press.

The opposition will under no circumstances agree to a dialogue with Saleh after Friday's violence, spokesman Mohammad al-Sabri told The Associated Press.

"The president must understand that the only way to avoid more bloodshed and strife in this country is for him to leave. Nobody will have any regrets about him," he said.

The president has now been left almost entirely dependent on external support, mainly from the United States, which sends Yemen hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to battle the potent al-Qaida offshoot in the country's mountainous hinterlands, political analyst and researcher Abdelkarim al-Khiwani said.

The U.S. has condemned violence against Yemeni protesters.

People living in apartment buildings around the square tossed down flowers at Sunday's funeral procession. Electricity was cut off for about three hours in Yemen's major cities, and activists accused the government of trying to block people from seeing television coverage of the march. Cell service was also interrupted.

Massive crowds flooded into the Sanaa University square and solidarity demonstrations were held across the country in regions including Aden, Hadramawt, Ibb, Al-Hudaydah, Dhamar and Taiz.

Human Rights Minister Huda al-Ban said she was stepping down to protest the government's "horrible, coward and perfidious crime." And a Foreign Ministry official told The Associated Press that UN Ambassador Abdullah Alsaidi had sent in his letter of resignation.

Health Minister Abdul-Karim Rafi told reporters the killing of protesters was "a crime unacceptable by logic or could be justified."

He said 44 protesters were killed and 192 wounded, 21 critically.

Prosecutor-General Abdullah al-Ulty said that 693 protesters were hurt and some bodies have not yet been identified.

Mohammed Naji Allaw, a lawyer and activist, said the government offering money to victims' families to not cooperate with the investigation, and was pressuring them not to participate in the funeral procession.

_____

Michael Weissenstein and Zeina Karam in Cairo contributed to this report.

'Supermoon' Dazzles: Biggest Full Moon in 18 Years Amazes Skywatchers

2011-03-20T09:20:00.001-07:00

The largest full moon in more than 18 years – a so-called "supermoon" – did not disappoint eager skywatchers around the world Saturday when it rose, big and bright, into Earth's night sky.

The full moon of March was 221,565 miles (356,575 kilometers) on Saturday, March 19 just 50 minutes after it hit its full phase, making it the biggest and brightest full moon since 1993. The "supermoon" phenomenon occurred because the moon was in its full phase and just 50 minutes past perigee – the point of its orbit that brings it closer to Earth. [Supermoon Photos From Around the World]

This year's biggest full moon also gained notoriety after erroneous claims that it would spark waves of natural disasters around the world.

NASA scientists and others dismissed the fringe lunar disaster claims as nonsense, but did admit the moon should look spectacular. Saturday's full moon appeared 14 percent larger and 30 percent bigger than the smallest full moons Earth sees, though the difference wasn't immediately apparent to some skywatchers.

And for moon lovers graced with clear skies, that's exactly what happened according to overwhelming number of email reports received by SPACE.com from around the world.

In New York City, avid skywatcher Tony Hoffman watched the moon rise from a bedroom window and caught a lucky shot when an airplane passed by. [See Tony Hoffman's photo]

"It was beautiful as it rose, though it didn’t look particularly large to me, then again, I wasn’t expecting it to," I was fortunate enough to catch a jetliner’s passage in front of it," Hoffman told SPACE.com. "I don’t usually photograph the Moon when it’s so low, but tonight it paid off."

Just outside New York City, in northern New Jersey, the bright moon offered a serene view for me and my family. We caught an amazing view of it low on the horizon, and then stopped at a hilltop vista to see the full moon with the lights and skyscrapers of Manhattan and Newark in the distance.

Big moon rising

Skywatcher Ian Griffin watched the moon as it rose over his village of Brill in the United Kingdom and soaked in the amazing view. In his photos, a huge moon hangs low in the horizon awash in dusky colors. [See Ian Griffin's moon photo]

Griffin wasn't the only one to send SPACE.com an account of a huge rising moon.

In Grand Rapids, Mich., skywatcher Susan Wagener watched as the moon climbed up from behind the horizon, catching a stunning view of the so-called "moon illusion" in which the moon appears to be much larger near the horizon than it does overhead.

"We watched the moon rise last night from our condo on the 23rd floor of Plaza Towers in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan with our 4 1/2-year-old granddaughter, Matilyn Sizemore," Wagener told SPACE.com. "We talked about the moon and how it's different sizes during different times of the month and year. Matilyn's favorite moon is the half-moon she told us."

In one of Wagener's photos, the bright curve of the moon peeks out from behind the horizon, its edge distorted by atmospheric interference. Another image shows the moon hanging low over Grand Rapids. [See Susan Wagener's moon photo]

"For reasons not fully understood by astronomers or psychologists, a low-hanging moon looks incredibly large when hovering near trees, buildings and other foreground objects," SPACE.com skywatching columnist Joe Rao explained in a recent column. "The fact that the moon will be much closer than usual this weekend will only serve to amplify this strange effect."

Skywatcher Sandy Adams caught similar views of the rising moon over the U.S. capitol of Washington, D.C. [See Sandy Adams' supermoon photo]

Omar Mendoza, of Hermosillo, Sonora in Mexico, snapped his version of the view to show a reddish-hue moon rising behind hills in the distance.

"So beautiful, my moon," Mendoza told SPACE.com.

The next comparable full moon to offer a view like Saturday's "supermoon" won't occur until Nov. 14, 2016, according to Rao. [Infographic: 'Supermoon' Full Moons Explained]

Supermoon around the world

While SPACE.com received a flood of supermoon accounts, the theme was the same: an amazingly bright moon. While some skywatchers did not immediately notice the moon's larger size on Saturday night, they were all dazzled by its brightness.

"That was sure a beautiful moon," said Abbe Arenson of Sanford, Fla. "The moon while bright and beautifully big, still did not seem larger upon rising (about 8 p.m.) than that night of January 19th when it rose. But as I just went outside, it is very definitely closer to the Earth - usually the moon by this time, 12:45 a.m., is very small up there."

In Tasmania, Australia, observers Marlene and Tim B were worried that cloud cover would obscure their view of the moon. Those fears, it turned out, were unfounded. Marlene's photo shows a moon so bright it overwhelmed the frame.

"What struck my husband and I was that it was difficult to look at. That is how bright it appeared. The glow that emanated from the moon surpassed any full moon that we have observed in a very long time," Marlene told SPACE.com in an email. "It appeared slightly larger; I suppose that was due to the close proximity of the Earth … it was absolutely entrancing. Who would have believed that you could take a picture at night, without using a flash, and get a picture of the moon like that!!!!!"

Another bright view of the moon came from Gina Farthing in Crimora, Va., who snapped photos of the bright moon through some trees that appeared to glow with the lunar backlighting.

"We live in the Blue Ridge mountains, so didn't get to see it at the horizon," Farthing said. "But it did appear slightly larger coming over the mountain."

In Ekaterinburg Russia, photographer Dmitry Benbau took the opportunity to snap a close-up of the moon full disk. The bright and full moon, he said, was "very exciting."

In Shallotte, North Carolina, photographer Tavi Greiner made the supermoon of March a family affair. Greiner's amazing photos show the moon low over the Shallotte River.

"I took my entire family down to the river tonight, to experience tonight's 'Super Moon,' and was pleasantly surprised to see many of the locals out for a look, as well," Greiner told SPACE.com "It was really nice to see so many people looking up!"

Editor's Note: SPACE.com received an overwhelming number of first-hand accounts and photos from readers who made stunning observations of the moon. While it is impossible to recount all of those experiences, you can see many of the photos in our Supermoon 2011 Photo Gallery, with more being added all the time

Charlie Sheen adds 12 more dates to his live tour

2011-03-18T09:16:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES – Charlie Sheen's "Violent Torpedo of Truth" is growing.

Sheen is adding a dozen more dates to his live show, which is now set to stretch into Canada and continue through May 3.

The outspoken actor announced his first two live performances last week on his Twitter account. Those shows in Detroit and Chicago sold out quickly.

Earlier this week, Sheen added an additional five dates. He tacked on a dozen more late Thursday, including stops in Toronto, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Sheen has not revealed the content of the show, other than to call it "the REAL story."

Tickets for the latest dates go on sale Saturday.

Charlie Sheen expands live tour to 5 more cities

2011-03-16T16:34:00.001-07:00

LOS ANGELES – Charlie Sheen is bringing his live show to five more venues, including New York's famed Radio City Music Hall.

Sheen is adding five dates to his "Violent Torpedo of Truth" tour. Tickets go on sale Thursday for performances in Ohio, Connecticut, Boston and New York City.

The actor's shows in Detroit and Chicago on April 2 and 3 sold out quickly. Additional performances are scheduled for April 5 in Cleveland, April 6 in Columbus, Ohio, and April 8 at Radio City Music Hall. He will also perform at the Oakdale Theater in Wallingford, Conn., and at Boston's Agganis Arena on April 12.

Sheen was fired last week from the hit CBS show "Two and a Half Men." He then sued the show's producers for $100 million for breach of contract

How California would fair in a major quake

2011-03-15T04:26:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California will experience unthinkable damage when the next powerful quake strikes, probably within 30 years, even though the state prides itself on being on the leading edge of earthquake science.

Modern skyscrapers built to the state's now-rigorous building codes might ride out the big jolt that experts say is all but inevitable, but the surviving buildings will tower over a carpet of rubble from older structures that have collapsed.

Hot desert winds could fan fires that quakes inevitably cause, overwhelming fire departments, even as ancient water pipelines burst, engineers and architects say.

Part of the lesson from the disaster that hit Japan on Friday is that no amount of preparation can fully protect a region such as California that sits on top of fault lines.

Even so, critics fear the state may have long skimped on retrofitting older buildings. Yet the cost of cleaning up after a big quake is likely to be much higher than the cost of even the most expensive prevention, they warn.

"Everybody is playing a gamble that something like this won't happen," said Dana Buntrock, associate professor of architecture, at the University of California, Berkeley.

Buntrock, like many others, sees California's past as a present danger. The university is spending more than $300 million to retrofit and renovate its ancient sports stadium, tucked into the hills overlooking the bay.

"There are places where two walls that were aligned in the 1920s have moved a half meter apart," she said.

But the steps that the school is taking are not as common in California as the overwhelming risks might suggest.

The concrete high-rises that rose in the years after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake were made without adequate reinforcing steel, while homes and apartment complexes that are built atop of ground-floor parking lots are among the most vulnerable structures in the state.

Japan's 8.9 earthquake and the tsunami it unleashed destroyed entire villages and left 10,000 or more dead. That sends shivers up the spines of the engineers and architects who follow California's strategy to withstand a big quake that experts say will surely hit the state one day.

"The question is not if but when Southern California will be hit by a major earthquake -- one so damaging that it will permanently change lives and livelihoods in the region," according to a 2008 study by the United States Geological Survey study.

It predicted 2,000 deaths and $200 billion in damage from a 7.8 southern California quake on the San Andreas Fault.

Geologists say a big earthquake in California would probably top out at a magnitude 8 as the state's fault structures are different from Japan's.

A quake of the 7.8 magnitude in the USGS study would have about 30 times less power than the one that struck Japan.

Forecasters in 2008 saw a 99 percent chance of a 6.7 magnitude quake within three decades, and 46 percent chance of a 7.5 or greater, with Southern California the likely center.

A monster California quake of magnitude 8 had only about a 4 percent probability -- except in far Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. That area has a 10 percent chance of experiencing a magnitude 8 to 9 quake -- Japan-sized -- in the next 30 years.

A repeat of San Francisco's 7.9 magnitude quake in 1906 could take up to about 900 lives, injure thousands and destroy 3,000 residential buildings, a recent report for the city found.

Even a smaller 7.2 quake would cause $30 billion in building damage, $10 billion more in additional costs -- and if fires sweep the city, damage could rise by $4 billion, the report sponsored by the San Francisco Department of Building Inspection concluded. About 27,000 of the city's 160,000 buildings would become unsafe to occupy.

One of the authors of the report, geotechnical engineer Thomas Tobin, reflected that the hot winds of Santa Ana winds blowing from the desert into Los Angeles could intensify a disaster created by a southern California quake.

"If it happens to be a large earthquake on a hot, dry day with the wind blowing, the losses could be huge," he said.

COLLAPSING BOX

Tobin lists several types of "killer buildings" that would sustain the most damage in a California temblor, including older high rises and complexes featuring ground-floor parking:

* Most "tall, beautiful older buildings" built before 1980 that dot the San Francisco skyline were made without reinforcing steel, Tobin said.

* "Soft story" buildings with a ground-floor open garage or retail space also lack adequate bracing. The sturdier box of the upper floors likely would come crashing down on the "soft story."

* "Tilt up" buildings of concrete slab that are pushed upright to create a big box, such as for a grocery store, are among the most vulnerable. Some localities have mandated relatively low-cost reinforcement. Tobin says San Francisco has not.

* Unreinforced brick buildings would collapse easily.

Some of the fixes for such structures are relatively inexpensive, such as tying together tilt-up buildings, he said. So-called "soft story" apartment buildings with five units would cost $10,000 to $20,000 per apartment to fix.

Local governments can offer powerful financial incentives to encourage landlords to make changes, he said, but most don't.

That said, shoring up high rises is pricey, Tobin allows, and retrofitting has been inconsistent.

While California nuclear plants are built to withstand earthquakes and shut down when the earth shakes, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which supports nuclear energy to counter global warming, wants tougher safety measures.

PAST PERFORMANCE

Japan's experience suggests that even the best preparations are no match for the power of nature.

Matthew Hornbach, a geophysicist research associate at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics, said he was shocked by the scale of disaster across the Pacific.

"You don't get better prepared than Japan and to see what's going on there now is, I think, a real wake-up call, really, to the U.S.," he said.

California and Japan tend to track each other in requirements for new buildings, but Japan tends to tear down and rebuild frequently, leaving them with a much smaller stock of older buildings, said UC Berkeley's Buntrock.

California's history of repairing quake damage varies.

Former California Governor Pete Wilson said that he waved environmental and other regulations after the 1994 Northridge earthquake - magnitude 6.7. As a result, he managed to get the Los Angeles U.S. 10 highway, the worlds' busiest road, up and running in two months, versus some estimates of two years.

But the Bay Bridge, which partially collapsed in the 7.1 Loma Prieta quake that shook the San Francisco Bay Area five years earlier is still being replaced, said Randy Rentschler, director of legislation and public affairs at the San Francisco-area Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

"One lesson that we can give them (Japan) is how not to do it," Rentschler said. "It took us how many years to do the Bay Bridge? - and it's still under construction," he added.

Aside from the obvious issue of cost, Rentschler said that debate over what to do slowed improvements.

"Local citizens' groups were raising hell about all kinds of things, and they were permitted to get away with it," he said. The replacement for the damaged span of the two-part bridge is set to open in 2013 and engineers say it is designed to withstand an event that occurs once every 1,500 years.

A final lesson from Japan is that the cities are not necessarily the most vulnerable areas. Rural areas of Japan closest to Friday's quake were destroyed by tsunamis while Tokyo fared much better.

Frank Vernon, a geophysics professor and seismology specialist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, described a similar fault far from San Francisco, hundreds of miles up the West Coast.

"The most important lesson in the U.S. and North America is the reminder that we have a similar subduction zone called Cascadia up on the coast of British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and very northern California which could do the same thing," he said.

"Some day we will be having this same type of earthquake near our shores," he said.

(For more environmental news see our Environment blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/environment)

(Additional reporting by Kevin Gray, Pascal Fletcher and Tom Brown in Miami and Dan Levine, Jim Christie and Braden Reddall in San Francisco, Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank McGurty)

Anonymous Releases Bank of America Related Documents

2011-03-14T10:41:00.001-07:00

The group of online activists known as "Anonymous" has released a batch of e-mail concerning Bank of America that was given to the group by a whistleblower who worked for a related mortgage and vehicle loan insurer.

The e-mail purportedly comes from a seven-year employee of Balboa Insurance, a company that provides insurance to financial institutions in the mortgage and vehicle finance markets. Balboa was a unit of Countrywide Financial, which Bank of America acquired in 2008. Bank of America said in February it would sell Balboa to QBE Insurance Group.

The former Balboa employee alleges that the e-mail trail indicates that Balboa withheld certain foreclosure information from U.S. federal auditors during the takeovers of the financial institution IndyMac, which the U.S. federal government seized in July 2008, and Aurora Loan Services, a mortgage loan company that was a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers, the failed investment bank. The person also alleges that loan documentation was falsified in order to proceed with foreclosures.

Bank of America officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

Anonymous has conducted a range of distributed denial-of-service attacks against websites seen as unsympathetic to the WikiLeaks website as well as many other targets for its campaigns, which have included the Church of Scientology and the music royalty company BMI.

The documents, which consist of a series of e-mails and correspondence between Anonymous and the whistleblower, were posted on a domain called www.bankofamericasuck.com, which now appears offline.

Google's cache of the website, however, is still available. Google's snapshot of the website was taken around 6 a.m. GMT.

The domain was registered through the company GoDaddy in December by a person named "James Jophan" of California. The listed phone number, however, has been disconnected. Although people who register a domain name are required to give contact details, which are listed in so-called "whois" directories," the information is often intentionally inaccurate.

Although bankofamericasuck.com is now down, it does appear the material is getting widely distributed through other domains posted on social networking services such as Twitter.

Send news tips and comments to jeremy_kirk@idg.com

Hacker group plans BofA e-mail release Monday

2011-03-13T21:05:00.001-07:00

CHARLOTTE, N.C./WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters) – Anonymous, a hacker group sympathetic to WikiLeaks, plans to release e-mails obtained from Bank of America Corp early Monday morning, according to posts on the group's Twitter feed.

The group, unrelated to the document leak website founded by Julian Assange, said it plans to release documents exposing "corruption and fraud" at the largest U.S. bank by assets.

A representative of Anonymous said the documents relate to the issue of whether Bank of America has improperly foreclosed on homes. The representative added that he had not seen the documents, but he has been briefed on their contents.

A Bank of America Corp spokesman said the documents were non-foreclosure related clerical and administrative documents stolen by a former Balboa Insurance employee.

The division -- which BofA has since agreed to sell to Australian insurer QBE Insurance Group -- provides mortgage and auto insurance for banks, and provides home insurance for consumers.

"We are confident that his extravagant assertions are untrue," the spokesman said.

(Reporting by Joe Rauch; Editing by Gunna Dickson and Dhara Ranasinghe)

Cartel greets new Juarez police chief with threat

2011-03-13T10:10:00.001-07:00

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – The new police chief in the violent Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez received a threat on just his second day on the job, an official said Saturday.

Two previous Ciudad Juarez police chiefs have quit their jobs since 2008 after criminals killed police officers and threatened to kill more unless they resigned. The city across the border from El Paso, Texas, is suffering a bloody turf war between drug cartels that has made it one of the most dangerous places in the world.

City police spokesman Adrian Sanchez said a sign threatening Public Security Director Julian Leyzaola Perez was left beside a man who was found on Friday tortured but alive and wrapped in a blanket.

The message said "this is your first gift" and was signed "the Sinaloa cartel."

Leyzaola was formerly the police chief in Tijuana, where he survived several plots and fought police corruption.

Leyzaola assumed the Ciudad Juarez post on Thursday.

Also Saturday, Mexico's attorney general's office said it had extradited Esteban Rodriguez Olivera to the United States, where he will face charges in New York and Washington, D.C. federal courts for trafficking cocaine and money-laundering.

Rodriguez, also known by nicknames including "Dangers" and "the Blond," is alleged to have run a drug-trafficking operation out of New York linked to Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. He is accused of moving about 100 tons of cocaine into the U.S. between 2004 and 2006.

Scenes of devastation at heart of Japan disaster

2011-03-12T21:06:00.001-08:00

SENDAI, Japan – She scanned the landscape of debris and destruction, looking at the patch of earth where Japan's massive tsunami erased her son's newly built house so thoroughly that she can't even be certain where it once stood.

Satako Yusawa teared up but pulled herself together quickly. Because for the 69-year-old widow, there was this to be thankful for: Her son and his family were out of town when Friday's offshore, 8.9-magnitude quake sparked huge surges of water that washed fleets of cars, boats and entire houses across coastal Sendai like detritus perched on lava.

But her son had borrowed a lot of money to build that house, and had moved in only last month.

"This," she said, "is life."

No one knows yet how many people died in the disaster. Police found 200 to 300 bodies on beaches near Sendai but were still assessing the devastation in the northeastern port of 1 million people, where regional Gov. Yoshihiro Murai was to visit on Sunday. Japan's overall death toll stood at 686, though the government said the eventual tally could far exceed 1,000 as search efforts step up in the coming days.

For those who survived, the bleakest of landscapes unfolded before them.

In Sendai, mud-spattered survivors wandered streets strewn with fallen trees and houses ripped from foundations, alongside smaller relics of destroyed lives — a desk chair, a beer cooler. Power and phone reception remained cut, as rescuers plied through murky waters around flooded structures. Smoke from at least one large fire billowed in the distance.

This is what it looks like when the earth shakes, the water comes and the fires burn: Life is interrupted, reduced for hours and days to basic survival. Conveniences, taken for granted in one of the world's most developed societies, become mere hopes for tomorrow.

[Related: The world’s deadliest tsunamis]

Yusawa said she was having tea at a friend's house when the main quake struck, shaking the ground massively for more than two horrifying minutes.

"We were desperately trying to hold the furniture up," she said, "but the shaking was so fierce that we just panicked."

Yoshio Miura, 65, was in his small trucking company office Friday afternoon when the rumbling started, sending him under a table and dislodging heavy metal cabinets.

"These cabinets fell down right on top of me, and luckily they were stopped by this table," he said, gesturing across an office in shambles, its contents strewn across the floor by the quake and then coated in a thick layer of grime from the tsunami.

"The shaking was mostly side to side, it was very strong. ... Look at what it did to this building!" He points to a large shed that was lifted off its foundation.

Then came the water â€” massive waves that swept some 6 miles (10 kilometers) inland.

"The flood came in from behind the store and swept around both sides," remembered convenience store owner Wakio Fushima. "Cars were flowing right by."

Wakio's store, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) from the shore, already was reopened for business, but there was no power and the floors were filthy with tsunami residue.

Many Sendai residents spent the first night outdoors, unable to return to homes damaged or destroyed in the disaster. Some fellow residents and business owners chipped in with help. At an electronics store, workers gave away batteries, flashlights and cell phone chargers. Several dozen people waited patiently outside.

[Related: Reactor leaks spark fears of another Chernobyl]

From a distance, the store appeared to have survived intact. But a closer look revealed several smashed windows and slightly buckled walls.

Inside was chaos. The ceiling of the second floor had collapsed, and large TVs, air conditioners and other products lay smashed and strewn about the aisles.

"Things were shaking so much we couldn't stand up," said Hiroyuki Kamada, who was working in the store when the initial quake hit.

The tsunami hit the city's dock area and then barreled down a long approach road, carrying giant metal shipping containers about a mile (2 kilometers) inland and smashing buildings along the way.

Hundreds of cars and trucks were strewn throughout the area — on top of buildings, wedged into stairwells, standing on their noses or leaning against each other.

Most ships in port managed to escape to sea before the tsunami hit, but a large Korean ship was swept onto the dock.

Cell phone saleswoman Naomi Ishizawa, 24, was working when the quake hit in the mid afternoon. She said it took until nightfall to reach her house just outside Sendai and check on her parents, who were both OK. Their home was still standing, but the walls of a bedroom and bathroom had collapsed and debris was strewn throughout.

And yet, she was lucky. The tsunami's inland march stopped just short of her residence; other houses in her neighborhood were totally destroyed.

Like many people throughout Japan's northeast, she had not heard from others in her family and was worried.

"My uncle and his family live in an area near the shore where there were a lot of deaths," Ishizawa said. "We can't reach them."

Kia recalls 70,000 Optimas for transmission defect

2011-03-12T09:33:00.001-08:00

DETROIT – Kia Motors is recalling more than 70,000 Optima midsize sedans to fix transmission problems that can cause the cars to roll even while they're in park.

The cars are from the 2006 through 2008 model years and were built from Sept. 29, 2005 to June 13, 2007.

In documents filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Kia said that on some of the cars, a transmission shifter cable was installed incorrectly and can become detached from the shifter. If the cable comes off, the car would stay in the last gear used even if the driver puts the transmission in park, the documents said.

"If the driver leaves the vehicle without engaging the parking brake, there is a possibility that the vehicle can roll, creating the risk of a crash," Kia said.

No injuries have been reported from the problem, but Kia has concluded that under "extraordinary circumstances" the cars could roll inadvertently.

Kia plans to start the recall this month and will notify owners by mail. Drivers will be told to always use the parking brake when shifting the transmission into park "especially until they can take their vehicle to the dealer," the documents said.

Dealers will inspect the cable and reinstall it if necessary, free of charge.

Owners who have questions can call Kia at (800) 333-4542.

Explosion at Japan nuke plant, disaster toll rises

2011-03-12T02:44:00.001-08:00

IWAKI, Japan – An explosion at a nuclear power station Saturday destroyed a building housing the reactor amid fears that it was close to a disastrous meltdown after being hit by a powerful earthquake and tsunami.

Friday's double disaster, which pulverized Japan's northeastern coast, has left 574 people dead by official count, although local media reports said at least 1,300 people may have been killed.

Tokyo Power Electric Co., the utility that runs the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, said four workers had suffered fractures and bruises and were being treated at a hospital. A nuclear expert said a meltdown may not pose widespread danger.

Footage on Japanese TV showed that the walls of the reactor's building had crumbled, leaving only a skeletal metal frame standing. Puffs of smoke were spewing out of the plant in Fukushima, 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Iwaki.

"We are now trying to analyze what is behind the explosion," said government spokesman Yukio Edano, stressing that people should quickly evacuate a six-mile (10-kilometer) radius. "We ask everyone to take action to secure safety."

The trouble began at the plant's Unit 1 after the massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami it spawned knocked out power there. According to official figures, 586 people are missing and 1,105 injured. In addition, police said between 200 and 300 bodies were found along the coast in Sendai, the biggest city in the area near the quake's epicenter.

The true scale of the destruction was still not known more than 24 hours after the quake since washed-out roads and shut airports have hindered access to the area. An untold number of bodies were believed to be buried in the rubble and debris.

In another disturbing development that could substantially raise the death toll, Kyodo news agency said rail operators lost contact with four trains running on coastal lines on Friday and still had not found them by Saturday afternoon.

East Japan Railway Co. said it did not know how many people were aboard the trains.

Adding to worries was the fate of nuclear power plants. Japan has declared states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability.

The most troubled one, Fukushima Dai-ichi, is facing meltdown, officials have said.

A "meltdown" is not a technical term. Rather, it is an informal way of referring to a very serious collapse of a power plant's systems and its ability to manage temperatures. It is not immediately clear if a meltdown would cause serious radiation risk, and if it did how far the risk would extend.

Yaroslov Shtrombakh, a Russian nuclear expert, said a Chernobyl-style meltdown was unlikely.

"It's not a fast reaction like at Chernobyl," he said. "I think that everything will be contained within the grounds, and there will be no big catastrophe."

In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded and caught fire, sending a cloud of radiation over much of Europe.

Pressure has been building up in Fukushima reactor — it's now twice the normal level — and Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency told reporters Saturday that the plant was venting "radioactive vapors." Officials said they were measuring radiation levels in the area. Wind in the region is weak and headed northeast, out to sea, according to the Meteorological Agency.

The reactor in trouble has already leaked some radiation: Operators have detected eight times the normal radiation levels outside the facility and 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1's control room.

Ryohei Shiomi, a nuclear official, said that each hour the plant was releasing the amount of radiation a person normal absorbs in a year.

He has said that even if there were a meltdown, it wouldn't affect people outside a six-mile (10-kilometer) radius — an assertion that might need revising if the situation deteriorates. Most of the 51,000 residents living within the danger area had been evacuated, he said.

Meanwhile, the first wave of military rescuers began arriving by boats and helicopters.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan said 50,000 troops would join rescue and recovery efforts following the quake that unleashed one of the greatest disasters Japan has witnessed — a 23-foot (7-meter) tsunami that washed far inland over fields, smashing towns, airports and highways in its way.

"Most of houses along the coastline were washed away, and fire broke out there," said Kan after inspecting the quake area in a helicopter. "I realized the extremely serious damage the tsunami caused."

More than 215,000 people were living in 1,350 temporary shelters in five prefectures, or states, the national police agency said. Since the quake, more than 1 million households have not had water, mostly concentrated in northeast.

The transport ministry said all highways from Tokyo leading to quake-hit areas were closed, except for emergency vehicles. Mobile communications were spotty and calls to the devastated areas were going unanswered .

Local TV stations broadcast footage of people lining up for water and food such as rice balls. In Fukushima, city officials were handing out bottled drinks, snacks and blankets. But there were large areas that were surrounded by water and were unreachable.

One hospital in Miyagi prefecture was seen surrounded by water. The staff had painted an SOS on its rooftop and were waving white flags.

Kan said a total of 190 military aircraft and 25 ships have been sent to the area, which continued to be jolted by tremors, even 24 hours later.

More than 125 aftershocks have occurred, many of them above magnitude 6.0, which alone would be considered strong.

Technologically advanced Japan is well prepared for quakes and its buildings can withstand strong jolts, even a temblor like Friday's, which was the strongest the country has experienced since official records started in the late 1800s. What was beyond human control was the killer tsunami that followed.

It swept inland about six miles (10 kilometers) in some areas, swallowing boats, homes, cars, trees and everything else.

"The tsunami was unbelievably fast," said Koichi Takairin, a 34-year-old truck driver who was inside his sturdy four-ton rig when the wave hit the port town of Sendai.

"Smaller cars were being swept around me," he said. All I could do was sit in my truck."

His rig ruined, he joined the steady flow of survivors who walked along the road away from the sea and back into the city on Saturday. Smoke from at least one large fire could be seen in the distance.

Smashed cars and small airplanes were jumbled up against buildings near the local airport, several miles (kilometers) from the shore. Felled trees and wooden debris lay everywhere as rescue workers coasted on boats through murky waters around flooded structures, nosing their way through a sea of debris.

Basic commodities were at a premium. Hundreds lined up outside of supermarkets, and gas stations were swamped with cars. The situation was similar in scores of other towns and cities along the 1,300-mile-long (2,100-kilometer-long) eastern coastline hit by the tsunami.

In Sendai, as in many areas of the northeast, cell phone service was down, making it difficult for people to communicate with loved ones.

President Barack Obama pledged U.S. assistance following what he called a potentially "catastrophic" disaster. He said one U.S. aircraft carrier was already in Japan and a second was on its way. A U.S. ship was also heading to the Marianas Islands to assist as needed, he said.

Japan's worst previous quake was a magnitude 8.3 temblor in Kanto that killed 143,000 people in 1923, according to the USGS. A magnitude 7.2 quake in Kobe killed 6,400 people in 1995.

Japan lies on the "Ring of Fire" — an arc of earthquake and volcanic zones stretching around the Pacific where about 90 percent of the world's quakes occur, including the one that triggered the Dec. 26, 2004, Indian Ocean tsunami that killed an estimated 230,000 people in 12 countries. A magnitude-8.8 quake that shook central Chile in February 2010 also generated a tsunami and killed 524 people.

___

Kageyama reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writers Malcolm J. Foster, Mari Yamaguchi, Tomoko A. Hosaka and Shino Yuasa in Tokyo and Jay Alabaster in Sendai also contributed.

U.S. border town mayor arrested on gun running charges

2011-03-11T17:28:00.001-08:00

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) The mayor and police chief of a small town on the U.S.-Mexico border were among 11 suspects indicted for allegedly trafficking around 200 guns to Mexico, authorities said on Thursday.

The U.S. Attorney's office in New Mexico said the mayor of Columbus, Eddie Espinoza, the town's police chief Angelo Vega, and village trustee Blas Gutierrez were among those arrested on an 84-count indictment.

"Gutierrez, Espinoza and Vega were duty sworn to protect and safeguard the people of Columbus," U.S. Attorney Kenneth J. Gonzales said in a statement.

"Instead, they increased the risk of harm that the people of Columbus face ... by allegedly using their ... positions to facilitate and safeguard the operations of a smuggling ring that was exporting firearms to Mexico," he added.

Columbus is a small town just north of the border from Palomas, in Mexico's northern state of Chihuahua, where more than 4,400 people were killed by drug cartels last year.

The bust followed a year-long investigation led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, together with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Drug Enforcement Administration agencies.

The indictment alleges that between January 2010 and March 2011, the defendants conspired to buy around 200 firearms for illegal export to Mexico.

Among the weapons allegedly bought by the ring from a gun store in Chaparral, New Mexico, were a cut-down version of the Kalashnikov assault rifle -- the weapon of choice for Mexican drug cartel hit men -- as well as high-capacity magazines and pistols.

Charges brought included conspiracy to smuggle firearms to Mexico, and making false statements while acquiring firearms, which carry a five-year jail term and a fine of $250,000 on conviction.

The United States is presently under pressure to curb the illicit flow of guns to Mexico, where more than 34,000 people have died in drug violence since President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006 and sent the army to break the powerful cartels.

The operation comes days after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder ordered an investigation into a controversial ATF operation that allowed guns bought in the United States to slip into Mexico, in the hope of nabbing major drug kingpins.

The U.S. Attorney's office said every effort had been made to seize firearms from defendants nabbed in Columbus to prevent them from entering Mexico. It added that no guns were knowingly allowed to cross the border.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Jerry Norton)

'Survivor' star Hatch gets 9 months on violation

2011-03-11T17:23:00.001-08:00

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Reality TV star Richard Hatch was ordered back to prison Friday to serve a nine-month sentence for failing to pay taxes on the $1 million he won on the first season of the hit CBS show "Survivor."

Hatch, who is currently appearing on NBC's "The Celebrity Apprentice," spent more than three years in prison for tax evasion before being released in 2009, and has been serving a three-year term of supervised release. During that period, he was supposed to refile his 2000 and 2001 taxes and pay what he owed, but he never did.

U.S. District Court Judge William Smith on Friday said Hatch, who has strenuously maintained his innocence, had exhibited no remorse and had made no effort to comply with an order that he straighten out and pay his taxes. He imposed a sentence three months longer than what was recommended by prosecutors: six months — the maximum in the federal sentencing guidelines.

He said the term of supervised release, which is supposed to be a time of rehabilitation, did not appear to be doing any good in Hatch's case. He said a substantial sentence was required to send a message to Hatch and others who flout the court's orders.

"You can continue to proclaim your innocence," Smith said. "You don't have the option of engaging in this type of game or negotiation with the court. It needs to be a severe punishment. That's the only thing that will deter you in the future."

He also ordered Hatch serve 26 months supervised release, during which time 25 percent of Hatch's gross income would be garnished and paid to the Internal Revenue Service. Prosecutor Andrew Reich said Friday that Hatch now owes an estimated $2 million to the IRS on the Survivor winnings and other income, including penalties.

Hatch, who lives in Newport, R.I., was ordered to report for his prison term on Monday.

He said outside court that he was disappointed and planned to appeal.

During the hearing, Hatch told Smith that he had fully cooperated with the terms of his release, and that his taxes were extremely complicated and he was working with an accountant to determine from the IRS what he owed. His lawyer said he had only made $26,000 to $27,000 in income since being released from prison, and said he had sought jobs in marketing, on a fishing boat and was currently trying to leverage his charity appearance on "Celebrity Apprentice" into paying jobs in the entertainment industry.

Hatch also told the judge he recently discovered he had a second son and was trying to build a relationship with him. He asked Smith because of that and the job opportunities that could come out of his "Celebrity Apprentice" appearance not to send him back to prison.

NBC said 11 of 12 episodes of "Celebrity Apprentice," which features 16 celebrities competing for charities, have already been taped. It premiered March 6. The finale, which ordinarily features the last two contenders and a winner chosen, is scheduled to air live on May 22.

NBC spokesman Sean Martin said Hatch's legal problems would have no effect on the show.

"The finale will move forward regardless," he said.

Asked outside court whether he was prepared to go back to prison, Hatch didn't answer.

Calif., Ore. sustained most damage from tsunami

2011-03-11T14:18:00.001-08:00

CRESCENT CITY, Calif. – The warnings traveled quickly across the Pacific in the middle of the night: An 8.9-magnitude earthquake in Japan spawned a deadly tsunami, and it was racing east Friday as fast as a jetliner.

Sirens blared in Hawaii. The West Coast pulled back from the shoreline, fearing the worst. People were warned to stay away from the beaches. Fishermen took their boats out to sea and safety.

The alerts moved faster than the waves, giving millions of people across the Pacific Rim hours to prepare.

In the end, the damage was mainly to harbors and marinas in California and Oregon. Boats crashed into each other, some vessels were pulled out to sea and docks were ripped out. Rescue crews searched for a man who was swept out to sea while taking pictures.

None of the damage — in the U.S., South America or Canada — was anything like the devastation in Japan.

The warnings — the second major one for the region in a year — and the response showed how far the earthquake-prone Pacific Rim had come since a deadly tsunami caught much of Asia by surprise in 2004.

"That was a different era," said Gerard Fryer, a geophysicist with the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. "We got the warning out very quickly. It would not have been possible to do it that fast in 2004."

Within 10 minutes after Japan was shaken by its biggest earthquake in recorded history, the center had issued its warning. The offshore quake pushed water onto land, sometimes miles inland, sweeping away boats, cars, homes and people.

As the tsunami raced across the Pacific at 500 mph, the first sirens began sounding across Hawaii late Thursday night.

Police went through the tourist mecca of Waikiki, warning of an approaching tsunami. Hotels moved tourists from lower floors to upper levels. Some tourists ended up spending the night in their cars.

Across the islands, people stocked up on bottled water, canned foods and toilet paper. Authorities opened buildings to people fleeing low-lying areas. Fishermen took their boats out to sea, away from harbors and marinas where the waves would be most intense.

Residents did the same last February, when an 8.8-magnitude quake in Chile prompted tsunami warnings. The waves did little damage then, either.

Early Friday, the tsunami waves reached Hawaii, tossing boats in Honolulu. The water covered beachfront roads and rushed into hotels on the Big Island. Low-lying areas in Maui were flooded as 7-foot waves crashed ashore.

As the sun rose, people breathed a sigh of relief.

"With everything that could have happened and did happen in Japan, we're just thankful that nothing else happened," said Sabrina Skiles, who along with her husband spent a sleepless night at his office in Maui. Their beachfront house was unscathed.

Many other Pacific islands also evacuated their shorelines for a time. In Guam, the waves broke two U.S. Navy submarines from their moorings, but tug boats brought them back to their pier.

In Oregon, the first swells to hit the U.S. mainland were barely noticeable.

Sirens pierced the air in Seaside, a popular tourist town near the Washington state line. Restaurants, gift shops and other beachfront businesses stayed shuttered. Some residents moved to the hills nearby, gathering behind a house.

Albert Wood said he and his wife decided to leave their home late Thursday night after watching news about the Japan quake — the fifth-largest earthquake since 1900.

Wood was expecting the waves to get bigger and more intense than what he saw. Still, he shook his head as the cars lining the hills began to drive west, into the lowlands adjacent to the shore.

"Just if you ask me, they're being too bold," Wood said. "It's still early. They're just not being cautious."

Erik Bergman was back at the shore by 9:30 in the morning. Roughly 100 feet away was a man playing with his dog. Two small children chased seagulls.

"People aren't too nervous," Bergman said.

President Barack Obama said the Federal Emergency Management Agency was ready to come to the aid of any U.S. state or territory that needed help. Coast Guard cutters and aircraft were readied to respond as soon as conditions allowed.

In Crescent City, Calif., just south of the Oregon border, the Coast Guard searched for a man who was swept out to sea. He was taking photos near the mouth of the Klamath River. Two friends with him were able to get back to land.

Sheriff's deputies went door to door at dawn to urge residents to seek higher ground.

By midmorning, water rushing into the harbor had destroyed about 35 boats and ripped chunks off the wooden docks, as marina workers and fishermen scrambled between surges to secure property. Officials estimated millions of dollars in damage.

When the water returned, someone would yell "Here comes another one!" to clear the area.

Ted Scott, a retired mill worker who lived in the city when a 1964 tsunami killed 17 people on the West Coast, including 11 in Crescent City, watched the water pour into the harbor.

"This is just devastating. I never thought I'd see this again," he said. "I watched the docks bust apart. It buckled like a graham cracker."

The waves, however, had not made it over a 20-foot break wall protecting the rest of the city. No serious injuries were immediately reported.

On the central coast in Santa Cruz, loose fishing boats crashed into one another and docks broke away from the shore. The water rushed out as quickly as it poured in, leaving the boats tipped over in mud.

Some surfers ignored evacuation warnings and took advantage of the waves ahead of the tsunami.

"The tides are right, the swell is good, the weather is good, the tsunami is there," said William Hill, an off-duty California trooper. "We're going out."

Scientists warned that the first tsunami waves are not always the strongest. The threat can last for several hours and people should watch out for strong currents.

U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Ken Hudnut said residents along the coast should heed any calls for evacuation.

"Do the right thing," Hudnut said. "Be safe."

___

Associated Press writers contributing to this report include Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Denise Petski and Daisy Nguyen in Los Angeles, Garance Burke in San Francisco, Kathy McCarthy in Seattle, Nigel Duara in Seaside, Ore., Jeff Barnard in Crescent City, Calif., Rob Gillies in Toronto, Alicia Chang in Pasadena, Calif., Terry Tang, Michelle Price and Carson Walker in Phoenix. Mark Niesse contributed from Ewa Beach, Hawaii. Song reported from Honolulu.

99-Cents Only gets family-led offer to go private

2011-03-11T11:43:00.001-08:00

CITY OF COMMERCE, Calif. – Discount store operator 99 Cents Only Stores has received a proposal to take the company private from the company's founding family and investment firm Leonard Green & Partners LP for $19.09 per share.

The offer would value the company at about $1.3 billion.

But Wedbush analyst Joan Storms said in a client note that she believes the offer somewhat undervalues the company. She thinks there is the potential for a sweetened bid in an effort to ward off any possible competing offers.

Storms maintained a "Neutral" rating and raised 99 Cents Only's price target to $20 from $16.

The chain's stock surged $2.95, or 17.7 percent, to $19.63 in afternoon trading. The shares hit a fresh 52-week high of $19.97 earlier in the session.

99 Cents Only said Friday that the would-be acquirers include the Schiffer-Gold family, which owns about 33 percent of its outstanding stock.

David Gold co-founded 99 Cents Only with his wife, Sherry, and serves as its chairman. His son-in-law Eric Schiffer is CEO and his son Jeff Gold serves as president and chief operating officer. Another son, Howard Gold, has served as executive vice president of special projects since 2005, according to a regulatory filing.

Schiffer, David and Jeff Gold are board members. The board also includes Peter Woo, Eric Flamholtz, Marvin Holen and Lawrence Glascott.

In a letter sent to the company, the Schiffer-Gold family indicated that it is ready to contribute a "substantial portion" of its existing stock ownership as part of the proposed acquisition. The letter also says the family has not made any commitment of exclusivity with Leonard Green related to the proposal.

99 Cents Only said its board has yet to evaluate the proposal and that there is no guarantee a definitive offer will be made.

The Commerce, Calif., company said it expects to create a special committee comprised of independent board members to assess the bid.

Leonard Green has set its sights on retail buyouts recently. It was part of the $3 billion J. Crew Group Inc. buyout, along with TPG Capital, that closed on Monday. J. Crew and its CEO Mickey Drexler have a history with TPG, which took a majority stake in J. Crew in 1997 and remained majority shareholder until the preppy apparel retailer went public in 2006.

Leonard Green, which is based in Los Angeles, has also offered $1.6 billion for fabric and craft store chain Jo-Ann Stores Inc. and has reportedly expressed interest in buying warehouse club operator BJ's Wholesale Club Inc.

99 Cents Only currently runs 283 stores, with 210 stores in California, 34 in Texas, 27 in Arizona, and 12 in Nevada.

Comedian Gallagher collapses during Minn. show

2011-03-11T09:56:00.001-08:00

ROCHESTER, Minn. – Comedian Gallagher is hospitalized in Minnesota after collapsing during a performance.

Todd Powers, owner of Whiskey Bone's Roadhouse in Rochester, said the 64-year-old Gallagher collapsed in the middle of a show there Thursday night.

Gallagher's manager, Craig Marquardo, says the comedian is in stable condition and will be hospitalized overnight. He says he doesn't yet know what caused Gallagher to collapse.

A witness, Chris Blade, told the Rochester Post-Bulletin that Gallagher had complained of pain in his left arm and shortness of breath earlier in the evening. Blade said Gallagher was responsive when emergency crews were taking him out of the club.

Gallagher, whose real name is Leo Anthony Gallagher, is best known for smashing watermelons with a sledgehammer.

Billionaire Carl Icahn returns $1.76B to investors

2011-03-08T17:09:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK – On the eve of the bull market's second anniversary, billionaire investor Carl Icahn had an unsettling message for his investors: Take your money back. Icahn told investors in his hedge funds that he didn't want to be responsible to them for "another possible market crisis," especially given the rapid increases over the past two years. Stocks have nearly doubled since hitting 12-year lows on March 9, 2009.

Icahn, who has built a fortune from taking stakes in well-known companies and then pressing for changes, also said he was concerned about the economic outlook and political tensions in the Middle East. Icahn's targets over the years have included Yahoo Inc., RJR Nabisco and Revlon.

"While we are not forecasting renewed market dislocation, this possibility cannot be dismissed," Icahn said in a letter to his limited partners. The letter was dated Monday and disclosed in a regulatory filing Tuesday.

Outside investors make up just 25 percent, or $1.76 billion, of the $7 billion in assets Icahn oversees. Despite losses in 2008, the funds have had returns of 106.9 percent since their inception in 2004. In the first two months of the year the funds have returned 8.7 percent.

Not everyone believes Icahn is returning his investors' money because he's bearish about the markets.

Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Private Bank, said Icahn is likely trying to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Under new laws, hedge funds have to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission and allow the agency to inspect them.

"Why submit yourself to regulatory scrutiny when you don't have to?" asked Ablin. "But I think if he had spelled it out that way, it wouldn't have gone over too well."

Icahn is known as a corporate raider with a personal fortune estimated by Forbes to be worth $11 billion, mostly from forcing changes at companies in which he invests.

"When you have that kind of money, why bother with limited partners? Most hedge fund managers dream of managing just their own money," said Michael R. Levin, who writes the blog The Activist Investor.

In his letter, Icahn said he was bothered by the losses the funds incurred in 2008 and the fact that many of the investors withdrew large amounts of cash at the time.

For the kind of activism that Icahn is involved in, it didn't help that investors were pulling their money out. Activist investors operate in some ways like private-equity funds, said Damien Park, managing partner at Hedge Fund Solutions, which advises investors and companies on shareholder activism.

Park said that such flight of capital hurts their longer term strategies since they need to have ample capital on hand to manage an activist campaign, which can run as long as two or three years.

By allowing his investors to cash out, Icahn is back to relying on his own funds.

"At the end of this, he will still manage a sizable fund and he is still Carl Icahn," says Park.

___

AP Business Writer Rachel Beck contributed to this story

Phil Collins announces retirement

2011-03-08T11:02:00.001-08:00

LONDON – British singer and drummer Phil Collins has taken to his personal website to announce his retirement in a bid to clarify recent speculation over his career.

In a post titled "Breaking News," the multiple Grammy award winner writes that he wants to explain his reasons "for calling it a day" in response to articles claiming why he was quitting the music business.

"Many of the articles printed over the last few months have ended up painting a picture of me that is more than a little distorted," Collins explains.

Collins says he is stopping music so he can be a full time father to his two young sons "on a daily basis" — not because of bad reviews, bad press or because he doesn't "feel loved."

Collins has sold an estimated 100 million albums as a solo artist.

Lawyer: Van der Sloot to plead temporary insanity

2011-03-08T10:57:00.001-08:00

LIMA, Peru – Joran van der Sloot plans to plead guilty to killing a young Peruvian woman he met gambling but will argue temporary insanity in a bid to significantly shorten his sentence, his defense lawyer said Monday.

Van der Sloot, the key suspect in the 2005 disappearance of U.S. teenager Natalee Holloway on the Caribbean island of Aruba, will use a "violent emotion" defense in the slaying of Stephany Flores, attorney Maximo Altez told The Associated Press.

Altez said he filed papers three weeks ago informing prosecutors of his intent to argue that Van der Sloot became enraged and killed the 21-year-old Peruvian business student last May 30 because she had learned of his relation to Holloway by looking in his laptop.

The 23-year-old Dutchman is accused of first-degree murder, which carries a 15- to 35-year sentence on conviction.

The "violent emotion" plea is typically used in Peru for crimes of passion where a spouse, for example, is surprised in the act of adultery.

If it were to be accepted by a trial judge, Van der Sloot would be sentenced to 3 to 5 years, and Altez said his client could be freed in 20 months.

Peruvian judges and prosecutors rarely speak publicly about their cases and it was not known how they would react to Van der Sloot's planned plea.

A prominent defense lawyer not involved in the case, Mario Amoretti, told the AP that much would rest on how judges received the opinions of psychologists and other experts about the emotional state and history of Van der Sloot.

The lawyer for the victim's family called the proposed plea absurd, saying that given all the factors of the case, Van der Sloot deserved to spend a minimum of 25 years in prison.

"The manner in which the suspect killed Stephany evidenced disproportionate violence," attorney Edward Alvarez said.

The young woman — who was killed in Van der Sloot's Lima hotel room five years to the day after Holloway disappeared — was bludgeoned and asphyxiated, according to the coroner's report.

Alvarez said Van der Sloot also stole money and other items from Flores before fleeing south from the Peruvian capital to Chile, where he was later captured by police.

In a signed confession last year, Van der Sloot described slamming Flores in the face with his right elbow, strangling her for a full minute then taking off his shirt and asphyxiating her. He also contended Flores threw the first blow.

Van der Sloot has admitted, however, to being a congenital liar.

He has several times confessed then recanted a role in the disappearance of Holloway, an 18-year-old Alabama student who was visiting Aruba on a high school graduation trip with classmates when she meet Van der Sloot at a casino.

Because of delays in Peru's judicial process that Alvarez blamed on the defense, Van der Sloot has not yet been formally charged.

The young Dutchman remains in Lima's Castro Castro prison, where his lawyer says he gives English lessons to other inmates.

An attorney for Holloway's mother, Beth Twitty, said she considered the planned plea "outrageous." Twitty knows the Flores family will never accept it and she plans to "make whatever noise she has to" to make sure it doesn't happen, the lawyer, John Kelly, added.

"He's a very slippery, smart criminal," Kelly said of Van der Sloot, adding that any suggestion he "flipped out for a moment" in killing Flores was mocked by the meticulous calculation of his attempt to cover up the crime and his escape.

Kelly also emphasized that even if Peruvian justice were to go easy on Van der Sloot he still faces prosecution in the United States on wire fraud and extortion charges.

An Alabama grand jury indicted the Dutchman in June for allegedly trying to extort $250,000 from Twitty in exchange for information on where she could find her daughter's body.

According to court papers, Van der Sloot received a total of $25,000 a few weeks before Flores' death — money it is believed he used to travel to Peru.

___

Associated Press writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report.

Warner: Sheen fired from `Two and a Half Men'

2011-03-07T14:13:00.001-08:00

LOS ANGELES – Warner Bros. Television says it has fired Charlie Sheen from the hit sitcom "Two and a Half Men."

The studio that produces the CBS series said the decision was made after "careful consideration."

Sheen's erratic personal life had prompted Warner to suspend production on the show for the season, and Sheen in return had been waging an angry media campaign against the show's producers.

No decision has been made on the future of the series, Warner Bros. said in a statement

Too much Sheen: Good for ratings, bad for Sheen?

2011-03-07T10:10:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK – Of all the thousands upon thousands of words said, written or broadcast about Charlie Sheen in the past week, one pithy tweet may have best summed up the seemingly endless appetite for all things Charlie.

"Haven't heard anything from (hashtag)CharlieSheen lately," comedian Norm MacDonald tweeted. "I hope he's still not all right."

Not to worry — there was much more Sheen to come, and he was still not all right. With production halted on his top-rated "Two and a Half Men," the self-proclaimed "Vatican assassin warlock" was ragging on his bosses, insisting he was clean while barely sounding coherent, and fighting for custody of his twin toddlers. And soon, the apparently unlimited forum he was being given was raising questions about the media's role in all of it.

Were they, to use a term from the addiction world, "enabling" Sheen to continue on what seemed to many a path dangerous to his career, his health and his family? To use a stronger word, were they exploiting him?

And if yes, did that matter? To what extent, if any, did the media have a responsibility to consider what's best for their subject — especially a rich TV star aggressively courting publicity?

What seemed clear is that we were watching one of the most astonishingly visible celebrity meltdowns in memory. Sheen's ramblings promoting his new lifestyle — not bipolar, but "bi-winning," he called it — took him from NBC's "Today" to CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight" to ABC's "20/20," and onwards. (The Associated Press also interviewed Sheen.) By the weekend, his record-setting Twitter feed was closing in on 2 million followers, SiriusXM Radio had broadcast 24 hours of straight Sheen on a special channel, Tiger Blood Radio, and he'd done his own 50-minute Internet show, "Sheen's Korner."

How much coverage would be enough, and would it ever stop? The harshest criticism came not from the addiction community or mental health professionals, but from media critics.

"Enabling is exactly the right word," said prominent media blogger Jeff Jarvis. "The drug Sheen is on right now is attention, and he's overdosing on that drug. This is a cynical act by the media. It's exploitation."

In an interview, Jarvis raised the possibility some have raised in interviews with Sheen: that he may have bipolar disorder.

"If what we're seeing is bipolar disorder, then it isn't Charlie Sheen we are hearing right now — it's the disorder," he said. "And we are delaying his recovery."

Jarvis wasn't alone. "The coverage has become excessive, even dangerous," wrote Julie Moos on the website of the Poynter Institute. Kansas City Star TV critic Aaron Barnhart wrote that the media should stop returning Sheen's texts and calls, and instead should be "using their journalism to identify the people around Charlie who can actually get him into a rehab facility — against his will if necessary."

Not surprisingly, the networks did not agree.

"Not at all," said ABC's Andrea Canning, when asked by media critic Howard Kurtz on CNN Sunday whether she'd had any hesitation about her extensive interview with Sheen for "20/20," which generated huge ratings. "I dont know if you can really stop the train once people are this interested in it."

And no, she replied when asked if now, the actor had had enough air time. "You know, I still think he has some things to say," she said.

An ABC News spokesman, Jeffrey Schneider, said the coverage was justified. "Look, Charlie Sheen is the highest paid actor on TV's top comedy show, whose personal life has been a huge topic of conversation for months. He also clearly had an interest in being interviewed and getting his side of the story out," he said.

At least one TV personality was pointedly refraining from covering Sheen.

"I'm not gonna do it," Craig Ferguson told his audience on CBS' "Late Late Show." He compared the frenzy to an 18th-century practice of people paying a penny to peer into the windows of asylums to watch the mentally ill.

Of course, it was impossible to know what Sheen is suffering from, if anything. Was it the drug abuse he'd acknowledged in the past but said was now over? Was it a mental issue? Or was he merely acting?

"In that case, he deserves an Academy award," said Todd Boyd, a professor of popular culture at the University of Southern California. "I never saw him act that well on `Two and a Half Men.'"

In any case, "Only he knows how much he is really falling apart," said psychiatrist Gail Saltz. But, she added, all the media attention couldn't be good.

"The spotlight is almost never helpful to people in these situations," Saltz said. "It makes it harder to evaluate mistakes, to think things through, to take a different turn."

And potentially more problematic than the impact on Sheen, she noted, was the impact on his children. Sheen has five kids, the youngest his nearly 2-year-old twins with estranged wife Brooke Mueller Sheen.

"Will this be good for his children to look back on? No — none of this is good for the children," Saltz said. She added, though, that the media "are not therapists. They don't really have the responsibility to protect Sheen."

A fellow mental health professional, psychoanalyst Mark Smaller, agreed. He said the best one could hope for from the media was context — for example, when Sheen ragged on Alcoholics Anonymous.

"Yes, for some AA doesn't work, but for many it provides a critical function," Smaller said. "So I'd hope the media could provide information like that."

In fact, the blinding attention to Sheen could actually turn out to be a positive thing, suggested Deni Carise, the senior clinical officer for the Phoenix House drug treatment center. "The coverage could be a real wake-up call to others who may need attention for similar problems, to seek out help," she said.

Carise did not pretend to know the nature of Sheen's problems, though she said his behavior in interviews was "clearly worrisome." She said she hoped the media coverage would compel his friends and family to help him.

Though some media watchers worried about exploitation, others said it was unreasonable for anyone to expect outlets to ignore a troubled celebrity this famous.

"Sure, the media have been Charlie Sheen's enablers," said Marty Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the USC Annenberg School of Communication. "But he wouldn't be getting wall-to-wall coverage if that didn't win big ratings, so it's the audience — us — who are his codependents. Is the attention making his behavior worse? Maybe. But the media didn't invent people's urge to rubberneck at car crashes."

And the ratings HAVE been big. ABC said its "20/20" special last week generated its biggest numbers for any ABC newsmagazine telecast since February 2009, among adults 18-49 and 25-54.

So in one respect, Sheen was still winning — er, "bi-winning."

"Fame," said Boyd, the USC professor, "is perhaps as much a drug as the real drugs. And it's legal."

Or, to quote another tweet from comedian MacDonald: "I pray that someone can help (at sign)CharlieSheen before he becomes even more successful, richer and happier."

Oil hits 107.00 per barrel

2011-03-07T09:52:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK – Oil prices continued to set new post-recession highs Monday as forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi pounded rebels near a key oil port in Libya. It's unclear how long the country's oil exports will be cut off, and traders prepared for a worst-case scenario in which world supplies would be under pressure for months. .

Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude for April delivery gained 52 cents at $104.95 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price almost hit $107 per barrel earlier in electronic trading, the highest since Sept. 26, 2008.

In London, Brent crude added 32 cents at $116.29 per barrel.

The rise in oil is driving U.S. gasoline prices to levels that weren't expected for at least another month. Pump prices have jumped an average of 39 cents per gallon since the Libyan uprising began in mid-February, forcing motorists to pay an additional $146 million per day for using the same amount of fuel. The national average hit $3.509 per gallon on Monday, according to AAA, Wright Express and Oil Price Information Service.

Libya, which sits on the largest oil reserves in Africa, has been engulfed in a four-week rebellion as militants try to oust Gadhafi after 41 years in power. Officials in the country say oil fields continue to operate, but daily exports of 1.5 million barrels could be cut off for some time.

On Monday, Libyan warplanes launched more airstrikes on rebel positions around the Ras Lanouf oil port as forces loyal to Gadhafi tried to keep rebels from advancing on his stronghold in the capital, Tripoli.

Saudi Arabia has increased production to make up for the loss of Libyan crude, which goes mainly to Europe. The Obama administration was also considering tapping the U.S. strategic oil reserves of 727 million barrels.

Releasing those supplies could cool off overheated energy markets, but it also would put a tighter squeeze on the world's oil supplies as the global economy recovers and consumption rises.

"They'll remove the cushion of extra supplies," said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates. "Until this situation gets resolved, prices are going to continue to grind higher."

The Energy Information Administration estimates OPEC can crank up production by another 4.7 million barrels per day. An extended shut down of Libya's exports would slice that capacity by about 32 percent to around 3.2 million barrels per day. Most of the world's spare capacity lies in OPEC nations, primarily Saudi Arabia.

"The question then is what else can happen," said Erik Kreil, who covers international energy markets for EIA. "If it gets worse in North Africa or the Middle East, production could fall further and you'll have less spare capacity."

Global spare capacity fell below 2 million barrels per day in 2008 before oil prices spiked to an all-time record of $147 per barrel.

In other Nymex trading on Monday for April contracts, heating oil was unchanged at $3.0896 per gallon, while gasoline futures lost a penny at $3.0332 per gallon. Natural gas rose 6 cents to $3.870 per 1,000 cubic feet.

___

Associated Press Writer Paul Schemm contributed to this story from Ras Lanouf, Libya.

Pay TV battle turning bitter; no agreement reached

2011-03-06T18:43:00.001-08:00

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A battle over fees between Dish Network and television station owner Lin TV Corp. caused 27 local stations to go dark for Dish subscribers Saturday.

The two companies faced a deadline that came and went at 2 a.m. EST Saturday without a resolution. The stations were still unavailable Saturday afternoon.

The companies traded accusations and gave conflicting versions of which pulled the plug.

Dish Network Corp. said Lin pulled its channels down at midnight, "holding viewers in 17 markets ... hostage" to coerce Dish to submit to Lin's demands for higher rates and that it refused to negotiate during the final hours.

Lin said it has "worked tirelessly" to negotiate with Dish. Lin also said that Dish removed the signals over its objection.

Both companies said negotiations were ongoing Saturday.

Neither side has said how many subscribers are affected. Lin stations are affiliates of CBS, Fox, NBC, ABC and the CW in 17 cities including Indianapolis; Providence, R.I.; and Buffalo, N.Y.

Such disputes have become increasingly common.

In October, a breakdown in negotiations between Cablevision Systems Corp. and News Corp.'s Fox network left 3 million Cablevision subscribers in the New York area without Fox programming for 15 days — including through two World Series games — after the broadcaster pulled its signal.

Lin is based in Providence. Dish Network Corp. is headquartered in Englewood, Colo.

US commandos capture 4 suspected pirates in raid

2011-03-06T10:07:00.001-08:00

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Anti-piracy officials say U.S. commandos have captured four suspected pirates who boarded a Japanese-owned oil tanker off the coast of Oman.

A statement by the international anti-piracy task force says the 24 crew members on the MV Guanabara took refuge in a protected part of the vessel after reporting they were under attack Saturday.

A special unit from the destroyer USS Bulkeley boarded the tanker Sunday and detained the suspected pirates about 328 nautical miles southeast of Duqm in southern Oman.

The statement said no shots were fired and the merchant crew was not harmed.

The Bulkeley is part of an Bahrain-based multinational flotilla fighting piracy from Somalia.

Former French President Chirac to stand trial

2011-03-06T06:54:00.001-08:00

PARIS – After years of claiming presidential immunity to avoid legal proceedings, Jacques Chirac is finally facing a court.

The former president, a bugaboo for George W. Bush during his rush to war in Iraq, on Monday becomes France's first former head of state to go on trial since its Nazi-era leader was exiled

That is, if the whole case isn't derailed by a last-minute protest by another defendant.

If the trial goes ahead as planned, Chirac, 78, faces a month in court on charges that he masterminded a scheme to have Paris City Hall pay for work that benefited his political party when he was mayor — before he became president in 1995.

A prison term is seen as highly unlikely, but in principle if convicted, Chirac could be jailed for up to 10 years and fined euro150,000 ($210,000).

France's restive political circles are gearing up for next year's presidential race, but the fallout from this trial is unlikely to hit anyone other than Chirac and the nine other defendants including a grandson of Gen. Charles de Gaulle and a former left-wing labor union leader.

Still, the trial looms as an embarrassing coda to Chirac's 12-year presidential term, potentially denting his legacy, recent philanthropic work and image as one of France's most popular personalities since he left office.

The trial will also shine a spotlight on the underside of high-level politics that could be uncomfortable background noise for Chirac's successor and one-time protege, President Nicolas Sarkozy, who wants to rebuild his depleted poll numbers before a possible re-election bid.

The trial fuses two separate but similar cases.

One of the other defendants, former Chirac aide Remy Chardon, says the two cases shouldn't be combined. His lawyer told The Associated Press he will ask the judges Monday to decide whether the decision was constitutional, which could throw the whole trial into disarray.

In the first case, investigating magistrate Xaviere Simeoni in Paris has focused on claims that Chirac had City Hall pay for 21 contract hires who never worked for the city but instead worked for his party, then called RPR. He faces charges of embezzlement and breach of trust.

Simeoni, in her order for Chirac to stand trial, wrote that he was the "conceiver, author and beneficiary" of that system.

The other case, led by investigating judge Jacques Gazeaux in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre, centers on seven jobs at Chirac's former party said to be improperly paid for by City Hall. Chirac is accused of illegal conflict of interest in that case.

That case netted a conviction and temporary ban from political office in 2004 for Chirac's longtime political ally Alain Juppe, a former prime minister who recently returned in a big way to political life — and is now foreign minister.

Chirac will answer for only a fraction of the scandals that have hounded him over the years: the others were either thrown out for a lack of evidence or had exceeded the statute of limitations. Even for those going to court, he will answer for just 21 total jobs out of 481 turned up in the investigation by Simeoni's team: Those before 1992 are too old to warrant prosecution.

Plus, under one of the unusual aspects of France's legal system, the Paris prosecutor, Jean-Claude Marin, will actually argue against a conviction. He argues there's not enough evidence. It's up to the judges to determine now whether there is.

Additionally, while not acknowledging wrongdoing, Chirac and his party struck a deal last year with City Hall — now run by the opposition Socialists — to pay back an $2.2 million calculated to be the amount paid in the jobs in question. As a result, the city won't be among Chirac's accusers in court.

For years, investigating magistrates had sought to prosecute Chirac, who hid behind his presidential immunity during his term from 1995 to 2007.

Chirac has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, insisting that France had no judicial rules laying out a framework for party financing at the time, and that the expenses were approved by the city council.

The behavior smacks of an era when France's economy was fresh off a 30-year post-war boom and political largesse was commonplace, both on left and right. Chirac ran Paris like a fiefdom, and made it his power base.

The trial, while focusing on his pre-presidency years, will inevitably raise the hypothetical question: Would Chirac have become head of state had he not — if as alleged — dabbled in corruption to build his political machine?

He will be the first former French head of state to stand trial since Marshal Philippe Petain, the leader of France's Nazi collaborationist regime, was convicted of treason and shipped into exile after World War II.

The debonair Chirac has been one of France's most towering political figures for at least 35 years: president for 12 years, prime minister twice, four-time presidential candidate, mayor of its biggest city for 18 years, Cabinet minister, National Assembly lawmaker and regional councilor.

Some say the case amounts to a test for the French judicial system as well as muscle-flexing by France's independent-minded investigative judges, who have often run afoul of conservative governments in recent years.

Chirac's five-lawyer legal team has grown increasingly silent about the case as the trial nears, and Chirac wants to keep his comments for the court hearings, scheduled to run through April 8.

His health has been in question. In January, Chirac told a French TV station he was doing "fine" and denied he was too feeble to stand trial, and his wife denied a report saying he might have Alzheimer's disease as "a lie." Chirac was hospitalized for a week in 2005 for a vascular problem that has never been fully explained.

He is also said to not be letting on much about his state of mind ahead of the proceedings. Chirac spokeswoman Benedicte Brissart told The Associated Press only that he views the trial as "an ordeal."

One major question is how much the proceedings — and a possible conviction — could stain his legacy as president.

In his term, Chirac was perhaps best known internationally for vocally opposing Bush's drive to war in Iraq, and earlier, for resuming French nuclear tests in the South Pacific and recognizing the French state's responsibility in the Nazi deportation of Jews during World War II.

Chirac, in recent years, has morphed from his image as a backslapping bon vivant with an uncanny knack for the political game into a more avuncular former president widely appreciated for his service and style.

Jean-Francois Probst, who was a high-ranking Paris City Hall official under Chirac in the 1980s and author of two books on him, said he thought the ex-president was "relatively calm" going into the proceedings.

"He'll explain what he believes in his conscience is the truth," he told the AP. "But it's never fun to go to trial — he's never been there in his life."

___

Pierre-Antoine Souchard contributed to this report.

Actor Mickey Rooney tells Congress about abuse

2011-03-03T16:52:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON – Actor Mickey Rooney told Congress on Wednesday that he was left powerless by a family member who took and misused his money.

"I felt trapped, scared, used and frustrated," Rooney told a special Senate committee considering legislation to curb abuses of senior citizens. "But above all, when a man feels helpless, it's terrible."

The 90-year-old film and television star told lawmakers that elder abuse comes in various forms, including physical and emotional. In his case, he described the abuse as financial.

In his testimony, Rooney did not identify the family member he contends abused him. But he has obtained a restraining order from a judge in Los Angeles keeping his stepson, Chris Aber, away from him until an April 5 court hearing.

Rooney has accused Aber in court filings of withholding food and medicine and meddling in his personal finances. Attempts by The Associated Press to find a working phone number for Aber have been unsuccessful.

Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., who chairs the Special Senate Committee on Aging, said the elderly are particularly vulnerable because they are "often fragile" and their abusers usually stand little chance of getting caught.

Rooney began his film career in the 1920s and has appeared in scores of feature films and TV shows, including the musicals "Babes in Arms" (1939) and "Strike Up the Band" (1940) and the Andy Hardy film series. He was nominated for an Academy Award four times, including a supporting actor nomination for his role in "The Black Stallion" (1979). He received an honorary Oscar in 1982.

Committee passes Ohio bill to ban worker strikes

2011-03-02T13:58:00.001-08:00

COLUMBUS, Ohio – An Ohio bill that would restrict collective bargaining rights for 350,000 public workers was headed Wednesday to a vote by the GOP-led Senate after leadership ousted from a key committee a fellow-Republican who had expressed his disapproval of the measure.

The chamber was expected to take up the bill Wednesday afternoon after it passed out of the Senate Insurance, Commerce and Labor Committee on a 7-5 vote. All four Democrats and one Republican voted against it.

Lawmakers approved changes to the bill that include banning public workers from striking, and establishing fines and jail time for those who do participate in walkouts. Unionized workers could negotiate wages, hours and safety conditions but not health care, sick time or pension benefits. It would affect teachers, university professors, firefighters, police officers and other public workers.

GOP State Sen. Shannon Jones, who sponsored the bill, had said it "gives power back to the taxpayer and restores flexibility to the management of their hard-earned dollars."

Committee approval came after GOP state Sen. Bill Seitz, a Cincinnati Republican, was replaced on the panel by state Sen. Cliff Hite of Findlay, a move that allowed the party to secure the necessary support to move the bill forward.

In the Cincinnati Enquirer's online edition, Seitz wrote Tuesday that the new version of the Ohio bill was being prepared "in secret."

In an opinion post for the web site, Seitz said he was taking a cue — or as he called it, "tea party lessons" — from the health care debate in Washington, D.C. He wrote that he wouldn't support the bill unless he read it and understood it. "We should expect no less from Republican majorities than we demanded of Democrat ones."

Committee Chairman Kevin Bacon said replacing Seitz on the panel was done "due to vote count" but would not comment further.

Bacon, a Columbus Republican, said the measure has enough support to pass the Senate, where the GOP has a 23-10 advantage. Before becoming law, it would have to go through the Ohio House, where Republicans hold a 59-40 advantage, and be signed by Republican Gov. John Kasich.

Kasich supports the effort and has said restricting collective bargaining also would be part of a package he plans to present March 15 in his budget plan to address the state's $8 billion deficit, joblessness and poverty.

The legislation would set up a new process to settle worker disputes. Either party could request a mediator, but local or state elected officials would have the final say in unresolved contract issues. Binding arbitration, which police officers and firefighters use to resolve contract disputes as an alternative to strikes, would be eliminated.

The lone GOP committee member who voted against the bill, Sen. Jim Hughes, said he was "very concerned" about the new dispute process, and Senate Democratic Leader Capri Cafaro said the bill "turns collective bargaining into a one-sided conversation where management always gets the last word."

Report: Serena Williams has pulmonary embolism

2011-03-02T12:14:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK – Tennis star Serena Williams underwent "emergency treatment" Monday, days after doctors discovered a blood clot in her lungs, People magazine reported.

Spokeswoman Nicole Chabot told the magazine that Williams "underwent emergency treatment for a hematoma suffered as a result of treatment for a more critical situation."

Williams suffered from a pulmonary embolism last week, Chabot said. The 29-year-old Williams is being treated at a Los Angeles hospital. "Doctors are continuing to monitor her situation closely to avoid additional complications," Chabot told the magazine.

Williams' mother, Oracene Price, tweeted Wednesday afternoon: "Thank you for your concern. She is fine."

The winner of 13 Grand Slam titles, Williams attended Sunday night's Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party.

On Tuesday night, Williams posted on her Twitter account "Tough day." A few minutes later she retweeted Kim Kardashian.

The younger sister of seven-time major champion Venus Williams hasn't played an official match since winning Wimbledon for the fourth time July 3. She cut her right foot on broken glass at a restaurant shortly after the victory, and her comeback has been repeatedly delayed by complications with the injury since.

Williams had surgery after initially hurting her foot and pulled out of the U.S. Open. She resumed practicing in September, but kept pushing back her return and needed an additional operation in October.

Williams missed the Australian Open in January, where she was the two-time defending champion.

Chabot told the magazine the embolism was discovered after Williams returned to Los Angeles from New York "for doctor appointments for the ongoing issues with her foot."

Second-ranked Kim Clijsters tweeted Wednesday: "Just read about Serena!!!! Very scary, hope she is ok!fingers crossed!"

Williams has a wide range of business, fashion and charitable interests that keep her in the public eye even when she's not on the court. Since winning her first Grand Slam title in 1999, she has struggled with injuries on several occasions only to come back to win more championships.

2 US airmen killed in Frankfurt airport shooting

2011-03-02T12:11:00.001-08:00

FRANKFURT, Germany – A man armed with a handgun attacked a bus carrying U.S. airmen outside Frankfurt airport Wednesday, killing two Americans and wounding two others before being taken into custody, authorities said.

Boris Rhein, the top security official in the German state of Hesse where the shooting took place, identified the shooter as a 21-year-old from Kosovo.

In Washington, President Barack Obama promised to "spare no effort" in investigating the slayings.

The attack came as the bus sat outside the airport's Terminal 2, according to Frankfurt police spokesman Manfred Fuellhardt. The bus driver and a passenger were killed, one person suffered serious wounds and another light injuries, he said.

The attacker and U.S. military personnel apparently had an altercation in front of the bus just before the man started shooting, Fuellhardt said. The attacker also briefly entered the bus, and was apprehended by police when he tried to escape.

The U.S. has drastically reduced its forces in Germany over the last decade, but still has some 50,000 troops stationed here. It operates several major facilities in the Frankfurt region, including the Ramstein Air Base, which is often used as a logistical hub for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

U.S. Air Force Europe spokeswoman Maj. Beverly Mock said all four victims were airmen. They were based in Britain, a U.S. Air Force spokesman for the Lakenheath airfield in eastern England said.

Lakenheath is home to the 48th Fighter Wing, the only F-15 fighter wing in Europe. It employs some 4,500 active-duty military members, as well as 2,000 British and U.S. civilians.

In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed sympathy for the victims and their families and pledged that Germany would do everything in its power to investigate the crime.

"It is a terrible event," she said.

The German news agency DAPD quoted Rhein, the security minister who rushed to the scene of the shooting, as saying there were no indications of a terrorist attack.

Still, a member of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Patrick Meehan, said in Washington that it looked like a terrorist attack. The chairman of the subcommittee that focuses on terrorism and intelligence added he did not have all the facts yet and was still being briefed.

At Frankfurt airport, taxi cab driver Salimi Seraidon was sitting at a stand about 200 yards (meters) away when the attack took place and said it was over quickly as police rushed to the scene.

"We just heard the shots," he said.

Kosovo Interior Minister Bajram Rexhepi identified the suspect as Arif Uka, a Kosovo citizen from the northern town of Mitrovica.

"This is a devastating and a tragic event," Rexhepi said. "We are trying to find out whether this was something that was organized or what was the nature of the attack."

The bus was transporting a Security Forces team assigned to RAF Lakenheath, U.K., from the airport to Ramstein. They were on their way to support overseas military operations.

Kosovo remained part of Serbia amid the collapse of former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, but a struggle for independence by ethnic Albanians there eventually led to the Kosovo war in 1998. The bloodshed was halted only in 1999 when NATO stepped in and bombed Serbia, followed by the deployment of peacekeepers. The NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) still has some 8,700 troops there provided by 32 nations, including the U.S. and Germany.

The northern town of Mitrovca is best known for the ongoing ethnic division between majority ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs. The former mining town, however, has also been the focus of reports that it breeds radical Islamic extremists.

In the past Western intelligence reports have said the region could be an ideal recruitment ground for the so-called "white al-Qaida" — Muslims with Western features who could easily blend into European or U.S. cities and execute terrorist attacks.

The American forces in Germany have been the target of previous terror attacks, including a 1986 bombing at a disco in then-West Berlin that was frequented by U.S. servicemen. Two soldiers and one civilian were killed and 230 others injured in that attack, which a Berlin court in 2001 ruled was organized by the Libyan secret service and aided by the Libyan Embassy in then-communist East Berlin.

A leftist terror group, the Red Army Faction, was also responsible for a string of attacks on Americans in the 1970s and 1980s before the group was disbanded in 1998.

More recently, German police thwarted a plot in 2007 to attack U.S. facilities by members of the extremist Islamic Jihad Union. Four men had planning to attack American soldiers and citizens at facilities including the U.S. Air Force's Ramstein Air Base in Germany but were caught before they could carry out the plot.

_____

Baetz reported from Berlin. Pauline Jelinek in Washington, Nebi Qena in New Haven, Connecticut, Silvia Hui in London, David Rising, Melissa Eddy and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

Senate to send Obama a stopgap GOP spending bill

2011-03-02T00:12:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON – The Democratic Senate is about to send President Barack Obama a Republican measure that cuts $4 billion in spending as the price for keeping the government open for an additional two weeks.

The Senate vote comes a day after the legislation won sweeping bipartisan support in the House.

The bill buys time for difficult negotiations on a follow-up bill to set spending levels through the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.

The $4 billion in savings comes from some of the easiest spending cuts for Congress to make, hitting accounts that Obama already has proposed eliminating and reaping some of the money saved by earlier moves by Republicans to ban lawmakers from "earmarking" pet projects back to their districts and states.

Christina Aguilera arrested for drunkenness

2011-03-01T10:23:00.001-08:00

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – Fresh from a stumble at the Grammys and muffing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, singer Christina Aguilera was arrested early Tuesday near the Sunset Strip on suspicion of being drunk in public but will not be prosecuted, authorities said.

Aguilera, 30, was "extremely intoxicated" when a car driven by her boyfriend was stopped at about 2:45 a.m. on Clark Street, Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy Bill McSweeney said.

The car was stopped just off the Sunset Strip, not far from such famous nightspots as Whiskey A Go-Go and the Viper Room.

The driver, Matthew Rutler, 25, was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and jailed on $5,000 bail, sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

Aguilera was arrested on suspicion of being drunk in public so that she could be held at the West Hollywood sheriff's station, Whitmore said.

"She was cooperative. She was not belligerent in any way whatsoever," Whitmore said.

He did not know much the 5-foot-2, 100-pound Aguilera may have been drinking.

"She was booked, she was fingerprinted and she was put in a cell," he said. "And then she's monitored, and as she gets better, she begins to fend for herself, her head clears up and when she passes the sobriety test within the jail facility ... that's why we take them into custody, to protect them as well as others."

Whitmore said that as Aguilera got better she stated that she wanted to leave.

"When she was able to navigate and think on her own ... she was released," he said.

Aguilera was released from the back of the station at about 7:30 a.m., avoiding a cluster of paparazzi out front. A friend drove her home, Whitmore said.

Aguilera was arrested because she appeared too drunk to care for herself and had no driver to take her home, McSweeney said.

The law allows deputies to detain intoxicated people for their own welfare until they sober up but there is no intention to prosecute them, he said.

"You're sitting in a car drunk. You have every legal right to be there but when we come across you we say you can't drive and we're not going to put you on the sidewalk," he explained.

Aguilera won't be charged with a crime, although the misdemeanor arrest will remain on her record, Whitmore said. "Technically it's an arrest, but from the very beginning there was never an intention to prosecute," he said.

Calls to Aguilera's agent, Tracy Brennan, and her publicist, Nicole Perez, weren't returned Tuesday.

Aguilera recently split from music executive Jordan Bratman, the father of her 3-year-old son. She filed for divorce in October and their split becomes official April 15.

Aguilera lost her footing at the Feb. 13 Grammy Awards during a tribute medley to singer Aretha Franklin. She also made headlines by botching a line while singing the national anthem at the Feb. 6 Super Bowl.

Jane Russell, star of '40s and '50s films, dies

2011-02-28T23:04:00.001-08:00

LOS ANGELES – She was the voluptuous pin-up girl who set a million male hearts to pounding during World War II, the favorite movie star of a generation of young men long before she'd made a movie more than a handful of them had ever seen.

Such was the stunning beauty of Jane Russell, and the marketing skills of the man who discovered her, the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes.

Russell, surrounded by family members, died Monday at her home in the central coast city of Santa Maria. Her death from respiratory failure came 70 years after Hughes had put her on the path to stardom with his controversial Western "The Outlaw." She was 89.

Although she had all but abandoned Hollywood after the 1960s for a quieter life, her daughter-in-law Etta Waterfield said Russell remained active until just a few weeks ago when her health began to fail. Until then she was active with her church, charities that were close to her heart and as a member of a singing group that made occasional appearances around Santa Maria.

"She always said I'm going to die in the saddle, I'm not going to sit at home and become an old woman," Waterfield told The Associated Press on Monday. "And that's exactly what she did, she died in the saddle."

It was an apt metaphor for a stunningly beautiful woman who first made her mark as the scandalously sexy and provocatively dressed (for the time) pal of Billy the Kid, in a Western that Hughes fought for years with censors to get into wide release.

As the billionaire battled to bring the picture to audiences, his publicity mill promoted Russell relentlessly, grinding out photos of her in low-cut costumes, swimsuits and other outfits that became favorite pinups of World War II GIs.

To contain her ample bust the designer of the "Spruce Goose" airplane used his engineering skills to make Russell a special push-up bra (one she said she never wore). He also bought the ailing RKO film studio and signed her to a 20-year contract that paid her $1,000 a week.

By the time she made her third film, the rollicking comedy-western "The Paleface," in which she played tough- but-sexy Calamity Jane to Bob Hope's cowardly dentist sidekick, she was a star.

She went on to appear in a series of potboilers for RKO, including "His Kind of Woman" (with Robert Mitchum), "Double Dynamite" (Frank Sinatra, Groucho Marx), "The Las Vegas Story" (Victor Mature) and "Macao" (Mitchum again).

Although her sultry, sensual look and her hourglass figure made her the subject of numerous nightclub jokes, unlike Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth and other pinup queens of the era, Russell was untouched by scandal in her personal life.

During her Hollywood career she was married to star UCLA and pro football quarterback Bob Waterfield.

"The Outlaw," although it established her reputation, was beset with trouble from the beginning. It took two years to make, according to its theatrical trailer, and director Howard Hawks, one of Hollywood's most eminent and autocratic filmmakers, became so rankled under producer Hughes' constant suggestions that he walked out.

"Hughes directed the whole picture — for nine bloody months!" Russell said in 1999.

It had scattered brief runs beginning in 1943, earning scathing reviews. The Los Angeles Times called it "one of the weirdest Western pictures that ever unreeled before the public."

Russell's only other notable film was "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," a 1953 musical based on the novel by Anita Loos that cast her opposite Monroe.

She followed that up with the 1954 musical "The French Line," which — like "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" — had her cavorting on an ocean liner. The film was shot in 3-D, and the promotional campaign for it proclaimed "J.R. in 3D. Need we say more?"

In 1955, she made the sequel "Gentlemen Marry Brunettes" (without Monroe) and starred in the Westerns "The Tall Men," with Clark Gable, and "Foxfire," with Jeff Chandler. But by the 1960s, her film career had faded.

"Why did I quit movies?" she remarked in 1999. "Because I was getting too old! You couldn't go on acting in those years if you were an actress over 30."

She continued to appear in nightclubs, television and musical theater, including a stint on Broadway in Stephen Sondheim's "Company." She formed a singing group with Connie Haines and Beryl Davis, and they recorded gospel songs.

For many years she served as TV spokeswoman for Playtex bras, and in the 1980s she made a few guest appearances in the TV series "The Yellow Rose."

She was born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minn., and the family later moved to Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. Her mother was a lay preacher, and she encouraged the family to build a chapel in their back yard.

Despite her mother's Christian teachings, young Jane had a wild side. She wrote in her 1985 autobiography, "My Paths and Detours," that during high school she had a back-alley abortion, which may have rendered her unable to bear children.

Her early ambition was to design clothes and houses, but that was postponed until her later years. While working as a receptionist, she was spotted by a movie agent who submitted her photos to Hughes.

The producer was famous for dating his discoveries, as well as numerous other Hollywood actresses, but his contact with Russell remained strictly business. Her engagement and 1943 marriage to Waterfield assured that.

She was the leader of the Hollywood Christian Group, a cluster of film people who gathered for Bible study and good works. After experiencing problems in adopting her three children, she founded World Adoption International Agency, which has helped facilitate adoptions of more than 40,000 children from overseas.

She made hundreds of appearances for WAIF and served on the board for 40 years.

As she related in "My Path and Detours," her life was marked by heartache. Her 24-year marriage to Waterfield ended in bitter divorce in 1968. They had adopted two boys and a girl.

That year she married actor Roger Barrett; three months later he died of a heart attack. In 1978 she married developer John Peoples, and they lived in Sedona, Ariz., and later, Santa Barbara. He died in 1999 of heart failure.

Over the years Russell was also beset by alcoholism.

Always she was able to rebound from troubles by relying on lessons she learned from her Bible-preaching mother.

"Without faith, I never would have made it," she commented a few months after her third husband's death. "I don't know how people can survive all the disasters in their lives if they don't have any faith, if they don't know the Lord loves them and cares about them and has another plan."

Survivors include her children, Thomas K. Waterfield, Tracy Foundas and Robert "Buck" Waterfield, six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

A public funeral is scheduled March 12 at 11 a.m. at Pacific Christian Church in Santa Maria.

In lieu of flowers the family asks that donations be made in her name to either the Care Net Pregnancy and Resource Center of Santa Maria or the Court Appointed Special Advocates of Santa Barbara County.

___

Associated Press Writer Bob Thomas contributed to this story.

Assassin maintains he can't remember shooting RFK

2011-02-28T16:18:00.001-08:00

LOS ANGELES – More than four decades after Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, his convicted murderer wants to go free for a crime he says he can't remember.

It is not old age or some memory-snatching disease that has erased an act Sirhan Bishara Sirhan once said he committed "with 20 years of malice aforethought." It's been this way almost from the beginning. Hypnotists and psychologists, lawyers and investigators have tried to jog his memory with no useful result.

Now a new lawyer is on the case and he says his efforts have also failed.

"There is no doubt he does not remember the critical events," said William F. Pepper, the attorney who will argue for Sirhan's parole Wednesday. "He is not feigning it. It's not an act. He does not remember it."

Sirhan may not remember much about the night of June 4, 1968, but the world remembers.

They have heard how Sirhan was grabbed as he emptied a pistol in the crowded kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel here where Kennedy stood moments after claiming victory in the California presidential primary. They heard how he kept firing even as his hand was pinned to a table. They heard how Kennedy, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, was shot and died, changing the course of American history.

Parole Board members are bound to review those facts, but they won't consider the many conspiracy theories floated over the years.

Pepper, a New York-based lawyer who also is a British barrister, is the latest advocate of a second gunman theory. Believers claim 13 shots were fired while Sirhan's gun held only eight bullets and that the fatal shot appeared to come from behind Kennedy while Sirhan faced him.

Pepper also suggests Sirhan was "hypno-programmed," turning him into a virtual "Manchurian Candidate," acting robot-like at the behest of evil forces who then wiped his memory clean. It's the stuff of science fiction and Hollywood movies, but some believe it is the key.

How Pepper plans to use any of this to his client's advantage remains to be seen because it will have little bearing on the decision of the panel that must determine if Sirhan is suitable for parole. The board is not being asked to retry the case and lawyers may not present evidence relating to guilt or innocence.

At issue is whether Sirhan, 66, remains a threat to others or to himself, whether he has accepted responsibility for the crime and expressed adequate remorse and whether he has an acceptable parole plan if he is released.

His lack of memory makes expressions of remorse and accepting responsibility difficult.

Sirhan could address that if he speaks at the hearing at Pleasant Valley men's prison in Coalinga. Whether he'll do that is uncertain. He has rarely commented during 13 past parole hearings and sometimes hasn't shown up at all.

Pepper said in an interview with The Associated Press that he has had Sirhan examined several times by psychologist Daniel Brown of Harvard University, an expert in hypnosis of trauma victims. He will not disclose exactly what was accomplished in the sessions but said, "There have been substantial breakthroughs."

Pepper said he may have more to say after the hearing.

"It was very clear to me that this guy did not kill Bob Kennedy," said Pepper.

Asked who did kill the senator, he said, "I believe I have it but I'm not going to deal with it at this time."

In one of many emotional outbursts during his trial, Sirhan blurted out that he had committed the crime "with 20 years of malice aforethought," a statement that could now come back to haunt him. That and his declaration when arrested: "I did it for my country" were his only relevant comments before he said he didn't remember shooting Kennedy.

Public opinion could be an invisible force in the board's decision.

If Sirhan is released, he would be the first imprisoned political assassin to win parole in this country. James Earl Ray, convicted of killing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Jack Ruby, convicted of killing John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, both died in prison.

Sirhan was originally sentenced to death over objections by Kennedy family members who said they wanted no more killing. The sentence was commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court briefly outlawed the death penalty in 1972.

Kennedy's son, Maxwell, who has spoken for the family previously, did not return phone calls from the AP regarding Sirhan.

The lawyer notes that he has a personal tie to Kennedy, having been chairman of his citizens' committee when he ran for Senate in 1964.

Pepper also represented James Earl Ray, through 10 years of appeals and a civil trial which he said proved that Ray was not King's killer. By then Ray was dead.

David Dahle, head Los Angeles deputy district attorney for parole candidates serving life sentences, said his remarks at the hearing will depend on what is presented by the defense.

"At this point, I am skeptical that I will see something that will cause me to not oppose the grant of parole," he said.

Few high profile prisoners have been released in the California system. Charles Manson and his followers have been repeatedly turned down for parole. Manson follower Susan Atkins attended her final parole hearing on a gurney dying of cancer but was denied release and died in prison three weeks later.

Dahle said the board will review Sirhan's behavior in prison and whether the explosive outbursts of the young man who stood trial in 1969 have continued as he aged. By all accounts, Sirhan has been a model prisoner. But he said there will also be discussions of how he might adjust to life on the outside.

His brother, Munir Sirhan, 64, will submit a statement and a plan for Sirhan to live with him in his Pasadena home if released. However, even Pepper says that is an unlikely prospect because Sirhan, who was a Palestinian immigrant from Jordan, will be considered an illegal alien and would be turned over to immigration officials for deportation.

Munir Sirhan told The Associated Press he has made arrangements with a family in Jordan to house Sirhan if he is deported there.

"I hope it comes out in his favor," said Munir Sirhan. "As Christians we hold a lot of faith. I stand ready to help him in any way possible. If he is not deported our house is still here for him. We feel for the senator, God rest his soul. But 43 years is a long time. "

Both Pepper and Dahle said Sirhan's Middle Eastern connections have always provided a backdrop for considerations of parole.

"I don't think there will ever be a disconnect between issues of Middle East politics and this case," said Dahle.

Pepper said Sirhan is a victim of misperception because of his Palestinian Arab background. He said most assume Sirhan is a Muslim and some have referred to him as "the first terrorist." In fact, he said, Sirhan is a Christian and had no ties to terrorist groups.

Among those attending the hearing will be one of the victims. William Weisel, who was an ABC-TV director, was shot in the stomach.

"There's no doubt he was the shooter," Weisel said. "Whether or not there was another one, I don't know. If there were 13 shots, who was the other shooter?"

Having covered the White House through seven presidents, he said he does not ascribe to conspiracy theories because, "The government can't keep a secret."

However, Weisel said he will tell the parole board he has no objection to Sirhan's release "if the district attorney and the parole board decide it's to everyone's advantage."

Another surviving shooting victim, Paul Schrade, said he was not attending and would have no comment.

__________

AP Special Correspondent Linda Deutsch covered the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Sirhan trial in 1968-69.

Sheen says he wants a raise to return to show

2011-02-28T08:56:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK – Charlie Sheen says he wants a raise to come back to the CBS show "Two and a Half Men."

The troubled star appeared on dueling morning show interviews Monday to continue an attack on CBS and producers of his hit sitcom for shutting down the show because of his off-set behavior. Both ABC's "Good Morning America" and NBC's "Today" show aired lengthy segments of their interviews in their first and second half hours.

It was startling television that overshadowed morning-after Oscars coverage. Sheen boasted about his "epic" partying, said he's fueled by "violent hatred" of his bosses, said he cleaned up from drugs at home at his "Sober Valley Lodge" and said he's "tired of pretending I'm not a total, bitchin' rock star from Mars."

NBC interviewer Jeff Rossen appeared taken aback when Sheen said he wanted to be paid $3 million an episode to return to the show. He's reportedly paid $1.8 million an episode now, one of the highest-paid actors on television.

"You want a raise?" Rossen asked.

Replied Sheen: "Yeah, look what they put me through."

On ABC, Sheen said to correspondent Andrea Canning that he planned to sue his bosses.

"Wouldn't you?" he said. "I've got a whole family to support and love. People beyond me are relying on that. I'm here to collect. They're going to lose. They're going to lose in a courtroom, so I would recommend that they settle out of court."

While Sheen said in a radio interview last week that it would be impossible to do a ninth season of "Two and a Half Men" with the show's creators in charge, he said in the television interviews he's ready to work another season.

He said CBS owes him an apology, "publicly, while licking my feet."

Sheen, who was hospitalized three times in three months, said that he's bored now with cocaine. But he said he "exposed people to magic" when they partied with him and that he loved doing drugs.

"What's not to love?" he said on ABC. "Especially when you see how I party. It was epic. The run I was on made Sinatra, Flynn, Jagger, Richards just look like droopy-eyed armless children."

ABC and Radar Online had Sheen's blood and urine tested for drugs over the weekend.

The results were "a big win for Charlie Sheen, no question," said Radar's Dylan Howard. He said the dual tests revealed Sheen hadn't had drugs in at least 72 hours.

"I am on a drug," Sheen said. "It's called Charlie Sheen. It's not available because if you try it you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body."

When Canning asked Sheen whether the people who supplied him with drugs were out of his life, Sheen hesitated.

"That's nobody's business," he said. "I think you know the answer to that."

The interviews heightened the competition between the two top-rated morning shows. ABC spokeswoman Alison Bridgman said Sheen had promised Saturday that ABC would get the only television interview last weekend but "changed his mind." Both "Today" and "Good Morning America" said they planned to air more segments of their interview on Tuesday, and ABC is planning a "20/20" special with Sheen on Tuesday.

Both networks had their own boasts: "Today" said Sheen had given NBC his "first morning show interview," while ABC said it had gotten the "first television interview since the controversy erupted."

Soldier impersonators target women in web scams

2011-02-27T16:24:00.001-08:00

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Con artists are targeting women on Facebook in what's becoming an all-too-common ruse: They steal photos of soldiers to set up profiles, profess their love and devotion in sappy messages — and then ask their victims to cut a check.

Army Sgt. James Hursey, 26, discharged and sent home from war in Iraq to nurse a back injury, found a page with his photos on Facebook — on a profile that wasn't his. It was fake, set up by someone claiming to be an active-duty soldier looking for love.

Military officials say they've seen hundreds of similar cases in the past several years. Some of the impersonators have even used photos of soldiers who have died overseas.

"It's identity theft, really, if you think about it," said Hursey, of Corbin, Ky., a married father of a 2-year-old.

The impersonator using Hursey's photos portrayed himself as a soldier named "Sergent (sic) Mark Johnson." The fake followed the same steps every time: Send a friend request, immediately express undying love and affection, and ask for money.

The fake's cover was blown, though: Janice Robinson, 53, of Orlando, Fla., knew something wasn't right when the man professed his love to her and signed every message with, "Johnson cares." She had begun talking to him thinking he was one of several people named Mark Johnson that she knew.

"I said, 'How can you say you love me? You don't even know me. You are insane,'" she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "... You could tell the guy in the picture was young. I'm 53 years old. You can look at my picture and tell I'm not 20."

Her story was first reported by WYMT-TV in Hazard, Ky., and WKMG-TV in Orlando.

Christopher Grey, spokesman for the Army's Criminal Investigation Command at Fort Belvoir, Va., said the Internet impersonators often make ridiculous claims. Some say they need money for special laptops and cell phones. Others say they need cash to buy special papers to come home on leave or a registration form because military officials won't let them talk to family.

"Well, there is no such thing," Grey said. The papers are phony, often poorly doctored versions of actual military documents.

The person using Hursey's photographs sent Robinson what he called a form to register to be able to speak to the soldier on the telephone. He told her it would cost $350 for them to be able to communicate by phone.

The form, a poorly doctored copy of a common Army form used to correct information in a soldier's official record, included a blank to fill in the intended victim's social security number.

Robinson said she knew people didn't have to register to talk to soldiers and refused to fill out the form. She also refused his requests to wire money and send credit card and bank account numbers.

Instead, she contacted a local television reporter and Hursey, whose name was visible in the phony profile's photos.

"I just wanted to see exactly how far this would go and I wanted to protect people ... that aren't as savvy to scams as I am and don't pick up on this stuff," Robinson said.

Grey said there are no known instances of Army personnel losing money in such scams. But the victims have. In one case, a person lost some $25,000, he said. Because many scams originate in foreign countries, military officials can do little except offer advice about the scams and direct victims to agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission.

The scam artists use untraceable e-mail addresses, route accounts through international locations, and use pay-per-hour Internet cyber-cafes that also make it difficult to trace them, Grey said.

The Army encourages anyone who suspects they are being used in a scam to file a report with their local police as well as report the cases to agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission.

Only one state, California, has made online impersonation a crime, said Tim Senft, founder of Facecrooks.com, a website that focuses on scams via social media. The law makes impersonating someone online a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.

Hursey, who had been based at Fort Richardson, Alaska, said has no clue who concocted the scheme or why he was targeted.

The fake profile featured several photos of Hursey: After basic training, in Iraq and decked out in his military dress uniform. There was even a picture of his dog. Some of the photos apparently were taken from his mother's Facebook page, Hursey said.

"I think it's pathetic that someone is going to impersonate a soldier to try to get money from women," he said.

Obama says government shutdown imperils economy

2011-02-26T09:11:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says the economic recovery will stall if Congress can't agree on spending cuts and avoid a government shutdown.

The current budget expires next Friday. That means lawmakers must OK a new spending plan before the March 4 deadline to keep much of the government from running out of money and closing. The Republican-run House and Democratic-controlled Senate are bickering over how much to cut.

"For the sake of our people and our economy, we cannot allow gridlock to prevail," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. "I urge and expect them to find common ground so we can accelerate, not impede, economic growth."

House Republicans have proposed $4 billion in cuts as part of legislation to keep the government functioning through March 18, and they have urged Senate Democrats to accept that approach to avoid closing it down.

Democrats want a short-term extension at current spending levels so the parties can negotiate over how deeply to cut expenditures and begin chipping away at the deficit and the trillions of dollars in accumulated debt.

But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, insists that a short-term bill without spending cuts is unacceptable.

Democrats have also rejected as draconian a bill the House passed last week to fund government operations through Sept. 30, the end of the budget year, while slashing spending by $61 billion. Obama has threatened to veto that bill.

Both sides have sought to blame the other pre-emptively as the first government shutdown since 1996 looms.

In the weekly Republican message, freshman Sen. Rob Portman criticized Obama's 2012 budget plan for proposing no changes to entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, which are huge contributors to overall government spending.

A former White House budget director, Portman, R-Ohio, urged Congress to make the "tough choices all Americans know are necessary to get our fiscal house in order and strengthen our economy."

"Our goal as Republicans is to make sensible reductions in this spending and create a better environment for job growth, not to shut down the government," he said. "Getting our debt and deficits under control is the first step we can take, and the single most important step Washington can take, to get our economy moving and create the jobs we so badly need."

2 arrested in Vegas casino heist of $33K in chips

2011-02-25T17:20:00.001-08:00

LAS VEGAS – Police searched Friday for a man suspected of donning a fedora, fake mustache and sunglasses in a stickup that netted more than $33,000 in chips from a Las Vegas casino.

It was the second grab-and-run heist in Sin City in two months. In December, a bandit snatched $1.5 million in chips from a craps table at the Bellagio casino then sped away on a motorcycle.

Police do not believe the holdups were connected or were linked to organized crime.

Police said Steven Gao, 45, went to the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino on Thursday and grabbed the chips from a pai gow poker table. He also pointed a gun at a card dealer who tried to stop him before he escaped in a cab, robbery Lt. Ray Steiber said.

Police arrested cab driver Hiroyuki Yamaguchi, 61, within hours of the robbery.

"He had knowledge of what was to occur," Steiber said.

Yamaguchi and Gao worked together at the same taxi company, according to an arrest report.

Also taken into custody was Edward Land, 41, who police said met Gao at another casino after the robbery and received $17,000 in stolen chips.

Land told police Gao owed him $15,000 and robbed the casino as a way to pay back the debt, the report said.

Land told detectives he drove Gao to the Rio on the day of the heist and became suspicious when Gao donned a fake mustache and wig.

"Land said he knew Gao was 'going to do something,'" the report said. "Land said he told Gao that he was 'crazy,' and Gao told him, 'Don't worry about it.'"

Land said he later drove Gao to catch a bus to California.

Authorities recovered nearly $18,000 in Rio chips — nearly $17,000 from Land's home and $1,000 from Yamaguchi's cab — plus a silver revolver and wig suspected to have been used in the robbery, according to the arrest report.

Yamaguchi and Land were being held in the Clark County jail for investigation of robbery, burglary and conspiracy. Bail for each was set at $25,000.

The robbery came after the stickup at the Bellagio hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip.

Police have arrested Anthony Carleo, 29, the son of a Las Vegas judge, in connection with that robbery. He has not yet entered a plea and remained in Clark County jail with bail set at $1 million.

The Rio is owned by Caesars Entertainment, the world's largest gambling company by revenue, and is home to the annual World Series of Poker.

The Bellagio robbery involved chips mostly worth $25,000 — a denomination unusual for most gamblers to possess. Chips worth $1,000 or less are far more common in Nevada casinos, making them tougher to track.

Charlie Sheen: I'm Returning to Work Anyway

2011-02-25T10:13:00.001-08:00

Although CBS shut down production of Two and a Half Men, Charlie Sheen intends to be on the set as scheduled next week.

The actor, 45, who went on a bizarre rampage this week against the show's creator, Chuck Lorre, has another year left on his contract earning him nearly $2 million an episode.

The show had been on hiatus while Sheen underwent a private rehab program and took a vacation. On Thursday, the network canceled the rest of the season because of what it called his "statements, conduct and condition."
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Undeterred by the shutdown of his "Two and A Half Men" TV comedy, actor Charlie Sheen unleashed a new torrent of messages on Friday as Hollywood backed away from the increasingly erratic star.

Sheen, on vacation in the Bahamas after a month of "rehab" at his Los Angeles home for alcohol and drug addiction, told TV show "Good Morning America" in a text message he would turn up for work next week despite the fact that on Thursday producers pulled the plug on his top-rated CBS comedy for the remainder of the season.

In a separate text message to celebrity website Radaronline.com, Sheen claimed he was in talks for a new program of his own on cable channel HBO that would land him an unheard of $5 million an episode.

HBO said there was "no truth to the report."

Sheen, 45, had also been in line to make a third "Major League" baseball movie. But producer James G. Robinson told TMZ.com he would not risk putting Sheen in the film.

"If Charlie doesn't straighten up...I unfortunately can't put him in the movie," said Robinson.

"When an actor doesn't show up for work, you can lose half a million dollars a day paying the 250 other people there for the shoot and the costs for the set," he said.

Sheen claimed on Friday he was clean of drink and drugs despite manic, rambling remarks the day before in which he called "Two and A Half Men" co-creator and producer Chuck Lorre a "stupid, stupid little man" in expletive-filled rants.

His comments were the last straw for CBS, which airs "Two and A Half Men" and Warner Bros. Television, which makes the comedy, after a year of Sheen's rabble rousing and a conviction for assaulting his ex-wife.

"I am frightened for the guy," celebrity addiction specialist Dr. Drew Pinsky told website TMZ.com. "It's no joke. He's getting manic...these are bi-polar, manic symptoms."

Production of "Two and a Half Men" -- the most popular comedy on U.S. television and a major cash cow for CBS and Warner Bros Television -- was suspended in January when Sheen was persuaded to seek help after a wild 36-hour party.

Work on the show was due to resume on Monday.

In an open letter on Thursday, Sheen urged fans "to walk with me side-by-side as we march up the steps of justice to right this unconscionable wrong" and bring the TV show back.

Despite his problems, Sheen has remained popular, so far, and audiences for "Two and a Half Men" have remained strong with about 15 million U.S. viewers a week.

Sheen signed up for two more seasons in May 2010, and got a pay raise that brought his salary to a reported $27.5 million a year for his role as hard-drinking womanizing bachelor Charlie Harper, which in many ways has mirrored his real life.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

Gadhafi tells followers to defend the nation

2011-02-25T09:16:00.001-08:00

BENGHAZI, Libya – Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has told a crowd of his supporters massed in a central Tripoli Square to fight back against protesters and "defend the nation."

Gadhafi, wearing a fur cap and sunglasses, is speaking from the ramparts of the Red Castle, a historic fort, overlooking Green Square, where over 1,000 of his supporters were massed Friday evening, waving pictures of him and green flags. Anti-Gadhafi protests erupted during the day Friday, met by gunfire from pro-regime militia.

Ghadafi, pumping his fist in the air, told the crowd to "retaliate against them, retaliate against them" and "prepare to defend the nation and defend the oil."

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — Militias loyal to Moammar Gadhafi opened fire Friday on protesters streaming out of mosques and marching across the Libyan capital to demand the regime's ouster, witnesses said, reporting at least four killed. In rebellious cities in the east, tens of thousands held rallies in support of the first Tripoli protests in days.

In the capital's Souq al-Jomaa district, protesters came under fire from gunmen on rooftops as they tried to march to Tripoli's central Green Square, several miles (kilometers) away. "There are all kind of bullets," said one man in the crowd, screaming in a telephone call to The Associated Press, with the rattle of gunfire audible in the background.

One witness reported seeing three protesters killed in Souq al-Jomaa, and another reported a fourth death in the district of Fashloum, where another rally was trying to march to the center. The reports could not be immediately confirmed.

Gunmen opened a hail of bullets on thousands heading toward the center from Tajoura, a crowded impoverished district on the eastern side of the capital, a participant said.

"We can't see where it is coming from," he said. "They don't want to stop." He said one man next to him was shot in the neck. Others reported gunfire near Green Square itself where dozens of militiamen opened fire in the air to disperse protesters coming out of a nearby mosque. Other armed Gadhafi supporters were speeding through streets in vehicles, said another witness.

The call for regime opponents to march from mosques after prayers was the first attempt to hold a major anti-Gadhafi rally in the capital since early this week, when militiamen launched a bloody crackdown on protesters that left dozens dead. In the morning and night before, SMS messages were sent around urging, "Let us make this Friday the Friday of liberation," residents said. The residents and witnesses all spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

Tripoli, home to about a third of Libya's population of 6 million, is the center of the eroding territory that Gadhafi still controls. The uprising that began Feb. 15 has swept over nearly the entire eastern half of the country, breaking cities there out of his regime's hold.

Even in the pocket of northwestern Libya around Tripoli, several cities have also fallen into the hands of the rebellion. Militiamen and pro-Gadhafi troops were repelled Thursday when they launched attacks trying to take back opposition-held territory in Zawiya and Misrata, near the capital, in fighting that killed at least 30 people.

Support for Gadhafi continued to fray within a regime where he long commanded unquestioned loyalty.

Libya's delegation to the United Nations in Geneva announced Friday it was defecting to the opposition — and it was given a standing ovation at a gathering of the U.N. Human Rights Council. They join a string of Libyan ambassadors and diplomats around the world who abandoned the regime, as have the justice and interior ministers at home, and one of Gadhafi's cousins and closest aides, Ahmed Gadhaf al-Dam, who sought refuge in Egypt.

On a visit to Turkey, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the violence by pro-Gadhafi forces is unacceptable and should not go unpunished.

"Mr. Gadhafi must go," he said.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch has put the death toll in Libya at nearly 300, according to a partial count. Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said estimates of some 1,000 people killed were "credible."

The upheaval in the OPEC nation has taken most of Libya's oil production of 1.6 million barrels a day off the market. Oil prices hovered above $98 a barrel Friday in Asia, backing away from a spike to $103 the day before amid signs the crisis in Libya may have cut crude supplies less than previously estimated.

The opposition camp says it is in control of two of Libya's major oil ports — Breqa and Ras Lanouf — on the Gulf of Sidra in central Libya. A resident of Ras Lanouf said Friday that the security force guarding that port had joined the rebellion and were helping guard it, along with residents of the area.

Signaling continued defiance, Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, vowed his family will "live and die in Libya," according an excerpt from an interview to be aired later Friday on CNNTurk.

Asked about alternatives in the face of growing unrest, Gadhafi said: "Plan A is to live and die in Libya, Plan B is to live and die in Libya, Plan C is to live and die in Libya.

Gadhafi's militiamen — a mixture of Libyans and foreign mercenaries — have clamped down hard in Tripoli the past week after the Libyan leader called on his supporters to take back the streets from protesters and hunt them in their homes. A wave of arrests has taken place in recent days, with residents reporting security forces raiding homes and dragging away suspected protest organizers.

Starting Friday morning in Tripoli, militiamen set up heavy security around many mosques in the city, trying to prevent any opposition gatherings. Armed young men with green armbands to show their support of Gadhafi set up checkpoints on many streets, stopping cars and searching them. Tanks and checkpoints lined the road to Tripoli's airport, witnesses said.

Several tens of thousands held a rally in support of the Tripoli protesters in the main square of Libya's second-largest city, Benghazi, where the revolt began, about 580 miles (940 kilometers) east of the capital along the Mediterranean coast.

Tents — some with photographs of people who had been killed in fighting — were set up and residents served breakfast to people, many carrying signs in Arabic and Italian. Others climbed on a few tanks parked nearby, belonging to army units in the city that allied with the rebellion.

"We will not stop this rally until Tripoli is the capital again," said Omar Moussa, a demonstrator. "Libyans are all united ... Tripoli is our capital. Tripoli is in our hearts."

Muslim cleric Sameh Jaber led the prayers in the square, telling worshippers that Libyans "have revolted against injustice."

"God take revenge from Moammar Gadhafi because of what he did to the Libyan people," the cleric, wearing traditional Libyan white uniform and a red cap, said in remarks carried by Al-Jazeera TV. "God accept our martyrs and make their mothers, fathers and families patient."

Similar rallies took place in other cities in the east, as well as in opposition-controlled Misrata, Libya's third largest city, located in the northwest of the country, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) from the capital.

Several thousand were gathered in Misrata's main square, chanting their support for the Tripoli protesters, a doctor at the main hospital said. A day earlier, militiamen attacked Misrata residents guarding the local airport. The doctor said 20 residents and one attacker were killed in the violence.

The worst bloodshed Thursday was in Zawiya, 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tripoli. An army unit loyal to Gadhafi opened fire with automatic weapons on a mosque where residents — some armed with hunting rifles for protection — have been holding a sit-in to support protesters in the capital, a witness said. A doctor at a field clinic set up at the mosque said he saw the bodies of 10 dead, shot in the head and chest, as well as around 150 wounded. A Libyan news website, Qureyna, put the death toll at 23.

Zawiya, a key city close to an oil port and refineries, is the nearest population center to Tripoli to fall into the opposition hands.

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said Friday that the bloc needs to consider sanctions such as travel restrictions and an asset freeze against Libya to achieve a halt to the violence there and move toward democracy.

NATO's main decision-making body also planned to meet in emergency session Friday to consider the deteriorating situation, although Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said the alliance has no intention of intervening in the North African nation.

The U.N.'s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, meanwhile, said reports of mass killings of thousands in Libya should spur the international community to "step in vigorously" to end the crackdown against anti-government protesters.

_____

Mroue reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb and Ben Hubbard in Cairo contributed to this report.

CBS, Warner pull plug on season of Sheen's sitcom

2011-02-24T20:48:00.001-08:00

LOS ANGELES – In the wake of an incendiary radio interview with "Two and a Half Men" star Charlie Sheen, CBS and Warner Bros. Television said they are ending production on TV's top-rated sitcom for the season.

The decision was based on the "totality of Charlie Sheen's statements, conduct and condition," the companies said in a joint statement Thursday. The show's future was not addressed.

Production had been suspended in January to allow Sheen to seek rehabilitation. Earlier Thursday, Warner and Sheen's publicist, Stan Rosenfield, said the series would resume taping next week with Sheen.

That was before the 45-year-old actor's rambling, often vitriolic radio interview with host Alex Jones in which Sheen blasted "Two and a Half Men" producer Chuck Lorre and other targets including Alcoholics Anonymous.

The abrupt decision to pull the plug on additional episodes of the lucrative sitcom came after Sheen's increasingly erratic behavior, including an earlier interview in which he claimed he had sought to return to work but was barred by producers.

In his interview with Jones, Sheen repeatedly evoked violent images and ideas. He also derided Lorre in an attack that suggested anti-Semitism.

"There's something this side of deplorable that a certain Chaim Levine — yeah, that's Chuck's real name — mistook this rock star for his own selfish exit strategy, bro. Check it, Alex: I embarrassed him in front of his children and the world by healing at a pace that his unevolved mind cannot process," Sheen said.

"Last I checked, Chaim, I spent close to the last decade effortlessly and magically converting your tin cans into pure gold. And the gratitude I get is this charlatan chose not to do his job, which is to write," he said.

Lorre, who was born Charles Levine, is a veteran producer whose hits include "The Big Bang Theory," "Dharma & Greg" and "Cybill."

Speaking of himself, Sheen said he has "magic and poetry in my fingertips, most of the time."

Warner had already planned to cut this season's 24 planned episodes to 20 because of the hiatus. Now, CBS is left with a total of 16 episodes of its cornerstone Monday comedy, all of which have aired.

The network and studio had tolerated Sheen's recent misadventures, part of a long-checkered life. He went into rehab in January, reportedly at home, after three hospitalizations in three months. The most recent was a brief hospital stay that followed a 911 call in which he was described as very intoxicated.

In the interview with Jones, Sheen had harsh words for Alcoholics Anonymous. He referred to it as a "bootleg cult" with a 5 percent success rate, compared to his own "100 percent" success rate.

One of the group's mottos, he said, is, "'Don't be special. Be one of us.' News flash: I am special and I will never be one of you."

When Jones told Sheen he sounded like Jefferson, Sheen dismissed the U.S. founding father with a rude insult.

"It may be lonely up here but I sure like the view, Alex," he said.

Sheen referred to himself as a new sheriff in town who has an "army of assassins."

"If you love with violence and you hate with violence, there's nothing that can be questioned," said Sheen, who played a soldier in the war film "Platoon."

Boeing wins massive US air tanker contract

2011-02-24T18:46:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US aerospace giant Boeing on Thursday won a massive contract to supply aerial refueling tankers to the Air Force, defeating European rival EADS in a long-running contest.

Announcing the first part of $30-billion-plus contract, the Pentagon said: "Boeing was a clear winner."

The verdict capped a nearly 10-year attempt by the Air Force to begin to replace an aging Boeing-built fleet of tankers dating back to the 1950s. The planes, effectively flying gasoline stations, give the Air Force its global reach.

As a first step, Boeing is tasked with delivering 18 aircraft by 2017, but the contract is expected to grow to 179 tanker planes.

The decision was an upset, with most experts predicting Boeing's European rival EADS would land the victory.

Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said both firms met 372 mandatory requirements, but because there was a more than one percent price difference between the two companies the non-mandatory aspects were not taken into account. The lower-priced Boeing offer will offer taxpayer savings, he added.

The Air Force-led selection effort included experts from the larger Defense Department community, including the office of the Defense Secretary Robert Gates and independent review teams during each step of the process, the Pentagon said.

Facing the prospect of a procedural challenge, Donley emphasized that the decision was careful and thorough.

"This isn't about opinions, it's about the integrity of the source selection process," Donley said.

"We hope that all parties, recognizing the thorough process and intense multiple levels of review that have gone into this source selection, will respect the decision and allow this important procurement to proceed unimpeded."

"The war fighter deserves nothing less."

Boeing proposed the KC-767, or NewGen Tanker, built around its long-haul 767 plane.

The plane will be assembled at Boeing's plant in Everett, Washington state and equipped in Wichita, Kansas.

Boeing says the win will support 50,000 US jobs.

EADS North America officials expressed "disappointment" and "concern" over the announcement.

"This is certainly a disappointing turn of events, and we look forward to discussing with the Air Force how it arrived at this conclusion," EADS North America chairman Ralph Crosby said in a statement.

"For seven years our goal has been to provide the greatest capability to our men and women in uniform, and to create American jobs by building the KC-45 here in the US. We remain committed to those objectives."

Washington state Senator Patty Murray swiftly welcomed the news as a win for Boeing and a win for the state.

"Today?s long-awaited decision by the Pentagon is the right one for our military, our taxpayers and our nation?s aerospace workers," Murray said in a statement.

"At a time when our economy is hurting and good-paying aerospace jobs are critical to our recovery, this decision is great news for the skilled workers of Everett and the thousands of suppliers across the country who will help build this critical tanker for our Air Force."

Murray said the decision was consistent with President Barack Obama's call to "out-innovate" the rest of the world.

"This decision is a major victory for the American workers, the American aerospace industry and America?s military."

General ordering probe into report of mind tricks

2011-02-24T11:04:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON – The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is ordering an investigation into charges that an army unit trained in psychological operations was improperly told to manipulate American senators to get more money and troops for the war.

A senator allegedly targeted said Thursday that he's confident there will be a review of the facts, but played down the idea that he was manipulated.

The staff of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, head of the effort to train Afghan security forces, ordered the information operations unit to compile profiles, voting records and other information on visiting lawmakers to leverage in a campaign to get more assistance, said a story Thursday on Rolling Stone's website. It says the campaign also improperly targeted the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and others.

Caldwell's office denied that the command used information operations cell to influence distinguished visitors. But a press statement from Kabul said that the commander of forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus would order a probe "based on the information" in the article.

But the episode underscores how murky the dividing line can be between information operations and public affairs officers — one the Pentagon has wrestled with in recent years as it struggled to win the hearts and minds of populations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said Thursday that the probe will look at the actions taken by Caldwell and his staff and determine whether they were inappropriate or illegal.That distinction, he said, depends on the circumstances.

"It just depends on what it is they are doing. It's the actions not just the assignment," said Lapan. "It all depends on how the information is used. There is no blanket prohibition against having that information provided."

As an example, he said an information operations officer could be asked to look up someone's biography online. He added that Petraeus will announce who the investigating officer will be, but said it does not necessarily have to be someone of the same or higher rank than Caldwell.

The military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" believed their mission on arriving in Afghanistan in November 2009 was to assess the effects of U.S. propaganda on the Taliban and local Afghan population, Rolling Stone said, quoting Lt. Col. Michael Holmes, whom it identified as the leader of the five-man team.

Holmes said they resisted the order to compile information on congressional delegations that were visiting there and think of what information "to plant inside their heads." He said they were subjected to retaliation for resisting.

"My job in psy-ops is to play with people's heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," Holmes is quoted as saying. "When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you're crossing a line."

Those singled out in the campaign included Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., Jack Reed, D-R.I., Al Franken, D-Minn., and Carl Levin, D-Mich. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., of the House Appropriations Committee; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts, the story said, without identifying the international figures by name.

Levin pointed out Thursday that he has long been in favor of building up Afghan forces.

"For years, I have strongly and repeatedly advocated for building up Afghan military capability because I believe only the Afghans can truly secure their nation's future," Levin said in a statement. "I have never needed any convincing on this point. Quite the opposite, my efforts have been aimed at convincing others of the need for larger, more capable Afghan security forces, and that we and NATO should send more trainers to Afghanistan, rather than more combat troops."

___

Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann contributed to this report from Kabul.

Feds raid Fla. pill mills; arrest docs, owners

2011-02-23T20:27:00.001-08:00

WESTON, Fla. – U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local police swept across South Florida on Wednesday making arrests as part of a lengthy undercover operation into illegal pill mills that dispense huge amounts of powerful prescription drugs across the nation.

Federal law enforcement officials said the yearlong probe resulted in initial arrests of 20 people, including at least five doctors, in an operation in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties that involved about 400 law enforcement officers. Six people were charged in a federal indictment and others face state charges, including the physician son of Broward County's medical examiner.

Mark R. Trouville, chief of the Miami DEA field office, said more arrests are coming, noting that undercover agents made at least 340 purchases of oxycodone and other painkillers at 40 clinics over the past year.

Speaking at a news conference directly to doctors and clinic owners, Trouville said: "We have probably bought dope from you — and we're coming to see you soon."

The federal indictment unsealed Wednesday against six people who operated a network of South Florida pain clinics asserts that they trolled the Internet for prospective patients using some 1,600 domain names that captured searches for pain medication. They charged clinic visit fees of between $200 and $350 per patient, and patients could pay additional "VIP" fees to jump ahead in line.

Court documents show this one network dispensed some 660,000 units of oxycodone through five clinics between Jan. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2010. The six operators are charged with oxycodone distribution conspiracy and some with money laundering as well.

Prosecutors in that case seek forfeiture of more than $22 million in cash, real estate and a list of 49 vehicles and boats including exotic Lamborghini sports cars, a Bentley convertible and several Mercedes-Benzes.

U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer said the raids targeted "drug dealers who are hiding behind medical prescriptions."

A total of 172 state charges were brought in Palm Beach County against clinic operators and employees and doctors, including racketeering and oxycodone trafficking. The potential maximum sentences for some of those defendants top 500 years.

Affidavits filed by undercover agents show how easy it is to get prescriptions for massive amounts of pills despite complaining only of a stiff neck. In one buy, an agent is warned to stay away from chain drugstores because suspicious prescriptions are easier to track.

"I can't say this enough," a clinic employee is quoting as saying in a recorded visit. "They are not your friend, they are your enemy."

Later, according to the affidavit, the employee adds: "All right. Any questions? All right. Let's get this party started!"

South Florida is the national epicenter for illegal dispensing of prescription drugs such as the highly addictive painkiller oxycodone. State officials said recently that 85 percent of all oxycodone pills sold in the U.S. come from Florida and that the nation's top 50 medical prescribers of such drugs are located in the state.

Federal officials say 27,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2007, nearly half from prescription drugs. The data is the most recent available. Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said prescription drug abuse has become law enforcement's top drug problem.

"Every 27 hours in Palm Beach County, we handle a drug overdose. It's not from heroin, it's not from cocaine, it's from prescription drugs," Bradshaw said.

As law enforcement officials struggle to keep up with the problem, Florida Gov. Rick Scott has recently faced criticism both inside and outside Florida for his proposal to scrap a planned state database for tracking prescription drugs. Scott said Tuesday he will not back down, contending that the program is a waste of money and an invasion of privacy.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, like Scott a Republican, said she supports the database but is focused on boosting penalties and enforcement against illicit pill mill operations.

Several U.S. senators, including Democrats Charles Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have written Scott to urge that Florida's tracking system be put in place because the lack of it has "serious ramifications" for drug abuse nationwide.

At Wednesday's news conference, the DEA's Trouville noted that Florida has attracted more illicit pain clinics because it does not have such a database. Broward County Sheriff Al Lamberti, whose county has 130 pain clinics — more clinics than McDonald's restaurants — said it took seven years to win approval of the tracking system and that Scott is wrong to kill it.

"It is a huge step backward to rescind that," Lamberti said. "It's critical that we have that."

Pakistan's intelligence ready to split with CIA

2011-02-23T15:30:00.001-08:00

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Pakistan's ISI spy agency is ready to split with the CIA because of frustration over what it calls heavy-handed pressure and its anger over what it believes is a covert U.S. operation involving hundreds of contract spies, according to an internal document obtained by The Associated Press and interviews with U.S. and Pakistani officials.

Such a move could seriously damage the U.S war effort in Afghanistan, limit a program targeting al-Qaida insurgents along the Pakistan frontier, and restrict Washington's access to information in the nuclear-armed country.

According to a statement drafted by the ISI, supported by interviews with officials, an already-fragile relationship between the two agencies collapsed following the shooting death of two Pakistanis by Raymond Davis, a U.S. contracted spy who is in jail in Pakistan facing possible multiple murder charges.

"Post-incident conduct of the CIA has virtually put the partnership into question," said a media statement prepared by the ISI but never released. A copy was obtained this week by the AP.

The statement accused the CIA of using pressure tactics to free Davis.

"It is hard to predict if the relationship will ever reach the level at which it was prior to the Davis episode," the statement said. "The onus of not stalling this relationship between the two agencies now squarely lies on the CIA."

The ISI fears there are hundreds of CIA contracted spies operating in Pakistan without the knowledge of either the Pakistan government or the intelligence agency, a senior Pakistani intelligence official told the AP in an interview. He spoke only on condition he not be identified on grounds that exposure would compromise his security.

Pakistan intelligence had no idea who Davis was or what he was doing when he was arrested, the official said, adding that there are concerns about "how many more Raymond Davises are out there."

Davis was arrested Jan. 27 in Lahore after shooting two Pakistanis. A third Pakistani was killed by a U.S. Consulate vehicle coming to assist the American. Pakistan demanded the driver be handed over, but the AP has learned the two U.S. employees in the car now are in the United States.

Davis has pleaded self-defense, but the Lahore police upon completing their investigation said they would seek murder charges. The ISI official told the AP that Davis had contacts in the tribal regions and knew both the men he shot. He said the ISI is investigating the possibility that the encounter on the streets of Lahore stemmed from a meeting or from threats to Davis.

U.S. officials deny Davis had prior contact with the men before the incident, and CIA spokesman George Little said any problems between the two agencies will be sorted out.

"The CIA works closely with our Pakistani counterparts on a wide range of security challenges, including our common fight against al-Qaida and its terrorist allies," he said. "The agency's ties to ISI have been strong over the years, and when there are issues to sort out, we work through them. That's the sign of a healthy partnership."

The CIA repeatedly has tried to penetrate the ISI and learn more about Pakistan's nuclear program. The ISI has mounted its own operations to gather intelligence on the CIA's counterterrorism activities

The ISI is now scouring thousands of visas issued to U.S. employees in Pakistan. The ISI official said Davis' visa application contains bogus references and phone numbers. He said thousands of visas were issued to U.S. Embassy employees over the past five months following a government directive to the Pakistan Embassy in Washington to issue visas without the usual vetting by the interior ministry and the ISI. The same directive was issued to the Pakistan embassies in Britain and the United Arab Emirates, he said.

Within two days of receiving that directive, the Pakistani Embassy issued 400 visas and since then thousands more have been issued, said the ISI official. A Western diplomat in Pakistan agreed that a "floodgate" opened for U.S. Embassy employees requesting Pakistani visas.

The ISI official said his agency knows and works with "the bona fide CIA people in Pakistan" but is upset that the CIA would send others over behind its back. For now, he said, his agency is not talking with the CIA at any level, including the most senior.

To regain support and assistance, he said, "they have to start showing respect, not belittling us, not being belligerent to us, not treating us like we are their lackeys."

NATO and U.S. operations in Afghanistan could be adversely effected by a split between the ISI and the CIA. Washington complains bitterly about Pakistan's refusal to go after the Pakistani-headquartered Haqqani network, which is believed to be the strongest fighting force in Afghanistan and closely allied with al-Qaida.

The ISI official said Pakistan is fed up with Washington's complaints, and he accused the CIA of planting stories about ISI assistance to the Haqqani network.

Relations between the CIA and ISI have been on a downward slide since the name of the U.S. agency's station chief in Pakistan was leaked in a lawsuit accusing him of killing civilians in a drone strike.

Fearing for his safety, the CIA eventually pulled the station chief out of the country. ISI leaders balked at allegations that they outed the CIA top spy in their country. Former and current U..S. officials believe the station chief fell out of favor, but the Pakistanis say this is not the case

Those accusations and the naming of ISI chief Shujah Pasha in a civil lawsuit in the United States — filed by family members of victims of a November 2008 attack in Mumbai, India, by insurgents — started the downslide in relations, the ISI official said.

To help repair the crucial relationship, the CIA earlier this year dispatched a very senior officer to be the new station chief who was previously the head of the European Division, one of the most important jobs in the National Clandestine Service, the agency's spy arm.

The spy agencies have overcome lows before. During President George W. Bush's first term, the ISI became enraged after it shared intelligence with the United States, only to learn that the then-CIA station chief passed that information to the British. The incident caused a serious row, one that threatened the CIA's relationship with the ISI and deepened the levels of distrust between the two sides. At the time Pakistan almost threw the CIA station chief out of the country.

____

Adam Goldman reported from Washington. Kathy Gannon is AP special regional correspondent for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Saudi king back home, orders $37 billion in handouts

2011-02-23T13:20:00.001-08:00

RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi King Abdullah returned home on Wednesday after a three-month medical absence and unveiled benefits for Saudis worth some $37 billion in an apparent bid to insulate the world's top oil exporter from an Arab protest wave.

The king, who had been convalescing in Morocco after back surgery in New York in November, stood as he descended from the plane in a special lift. He then took to a wheelchair.

Hundreds of men in white robes performed a traditional Bedouin sword dance on carpets laid out at Riyadh airport for the return of the monarch, thought to be 87.

Abdullah left his ailing octogenarian half-brother, Crown Prince Sultan, in charge during his absence.

Before Abdullah arrived, state media announced an action plan to help lower- and middle-income people among the 18 million Saudi nationals. It includes pay rises to offset inflation, unemployment benefits and affordable family housing.

Saudi Arabia has so far escaped popular protests against poverty, corruption and oppression that have raged across the Arab world, toppling entrenched leaders in Egypt and Tunisia and even spreading to Bahrain, linked to the kingdom by a causeway.

Significantly, Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa was among the princes thronging the tarmac when Abdullah flew in.

King Hamad freed about 250 political prisoners on Wednesday and has offered dialogue with protesters, mostly from Bahrain's Shi'ite majority, who demand more say in the Sunni-ruled island.

Riyadh would be worried if unrest in Bahrain, where seven people were killed and hundreds wounded last week, spread to its own disgruntled Shi'ite minority in the oil-rich east.

"DAY OF RAGE"

Hundreds of people have backed a Facebook call for a Saudi "day of rage" on March 11 to demand an elected ruler, greater freedom for women and the release of political prisoners.

Saudi analysts said the king might soon reshuffle his cabinet to inject fresh blood and revive stalled reforms.

Saudi stability is of global concern. A key U.S. ally, the top OPEC producer holds more than a fifth of world oil reserves.

The king announced no political reforms such as municipal council polls demanded by opposition groups. Saudi Arabia has no elected parliament or parties and allows little public dissent.

Jeddah-based Saudi analyst Turad al-Amri welcomed what he called "a nice gesture" from the king, saying the measures were not unprecedented or prompted by Arab protests elsewhere.

But other Saudis were critical. "We want rights, not gifts," said Fahad Aldhafeeri in one typical message on Twitter.

"They are under pressure. They have to do something. We know Saudi Arabia is surrounded by revolutions of various types, and not just in poor countries, but in some such as Libya which are rich," said Mai Yamani, at London's Chatham House think tank. "Basically what the king is doing is good, but it's an old message of using oil money to buy the silence, subservience and submission of the people," she said. "The new generation of revolution is surrounding them from everywhere."

Mahmoud Sabbagh, 28, said he and 45 other young Saudi activists had sent the king a petition advocating more profound change, not just economic handouts. He listed the group's demands as "national reform, constitutional reform, national dialogue, elections and female participation."

Saudi Arabia holds more than $400 billion in net foreign assets, but faces social pressures such as housing shortages and high youth unemployment in a fast-growing population.

"Housing and job creation for Saudis are two structural challenges this country is facing," said John Sfakianakis, chief economist at Banque Saudi Fransi, who put the total value of the king's measures at 140 billion riyals ($37 billion).

He said some benefits were one-off and others were already budgeted. "The inflationary impact will not be significant."

G20 member Saudi Arabia has outlined spending of 580 billion riyals for 2011 in its third consecutive record budget.

Investment bank EFG-Hermes put the king's benefit package at 100 billion riyals, saying it could rally a stock market that lost 4 percent in the past week on unrest in Bahrain and elsewhere.

Ahmad al-Omran, who runs the popular Saudi Jeans blog, said on Twitter that the measures would benefit many people, but were equivalent to fighting the symptoms and ignoring the disease.

"People don't revolt because they are hungry. People revolt because they want their dignity, because they want to govern themselves. Money won't solve our issues. We need true political and social reform. We need freedom, justice and dignity."

(Additional reporting by Asma al-Sharif in Jeddah, writing by Alistair Lyon; editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Reid proposes 30-day bill to avert shutdown

2011-02-22T20:43:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON – The top Democrat in the Senate said Tuesday that he'll bring legislation to the floor next week to keep the government running at current spending levels for 30 days to avoid a shutdown in March.

The move by Majority Leader Harry Reid is in keeping with longstanding tradition, but it was immediately rejected by GOP leaders who assailed the Nevada Democrat for freezing spending at levels inflated by generous budget increases provided under President Barack Obama.

A short-term bill is required because the House on Saturday passed a $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill to finance the government through Sept. 30. That measure would slash domestic agency budgets by more than $60 billion over the last seven months of the budget year, which would lead to widespread furloughs of federal workers and dismantle a host of environmental regulations.

It will take weeks or even months to work out differences on the massive spending bill, thus requiring the stopgap bill.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, rejected Reid's proposal, which was revealed in a politically freighted statement charging that Boehner is maneuvering the government toward a shutdown by insisting on immediate spending cuts.

"Speaker Boehner should stop drawing lines in the sand, and come to the table to find a responsible path forward that cuts government spending while keeping our communities safe and our economy growing," Reid said.

Boehner said, as he did last week, that the House will not pass a stopgap bill, known as a continuing resolution, at existing rates of spending.

"The House will pass a short-term spending bill — one that also cuts spending," Boehner said in a statement. "Senate Democratic leaders are insisting on a status quo that has left us with a mountain of debt."

"They want cuts right now, on their terms, before a negotiation can take place," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "How can you say you're in good faith when you say, 'I want my demands before any negotiation.'"

Unless someone budges, a partial government shutdown could occur March 5 for the first time since two partial shutdowns in 1995-1996, including one that spanned three weeks.

Reid warned of dire consequences in the event of an impasse.

"A shutdown could send our fragile economy back into a recession, and mean no Social Security checks for seniors, less funding for border security and no paychecks for our troops," Reid said.

In fact, Social Security checks would go out as scheduled. Troop pay would be unaffected, as would a host of other government operations, like border protection, law enforcement, air traffic control and food inspection. But applications for passports and visas, national parks and payments to federal contractors would be affected.

The White House says the government is prepared for a shutdown under longstanding contingency plans that have remained in effect since the Reagan administration.

"All of this is beside the point since, as the congressional leadership has said on a number of occasions and as the president has made clear, no one anticipates or wants a government shutdown," said White House budget office spokesman Kenneth Baer.

After being blocked from passing a massive omnibus spending bill of their own last year, Democrats have agreed to a hard spending freeze at 2010 levels. That's significant because it would mean cuts to many domestic agencies in order to pay for budget increases for the Pentagon and the Veterans Administration. But it's far short of where House Republicans want to go.

4 American hostages killed by pirates, US says

2011-02-22T10:51:00.001-08:00

NAIROBI, Kenya – Four Americans taken hostage by Somali pirates off East Africa were shot and killed by their captors Tuesday, the U.S. military said, marking the first time U.S. citizens have been killed in a wave of pirate attacks plaguing the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean for years.

U.S. naval forces who were trailing the Americans' captured yacht with four warships quickly boarded the vessel after hearing the gunfire. They tried to provide lifesaving care to the Americans, but they died of their wounds, U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida said in a statement.

A member of a U.S. special operations force killed one of the pirates with a knife as he went inside of the yacht, said Vice Adm. Mark Fox, commander of U.S. naval forces for Central Command.

Fox said in a televised briefing that the violence on Tuesday started when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired from the yacht at the USS Sterett, a guided-missile destroyer 600 yards (meters) away. The RPG missed and almost immediately afterward small arms fire was heard coming from the yacht, Fox said.

President Barack Obama, who was notified about the deaths at 4:42 a.m. Washington time, had authorized the military on Saturday to use force in case of an imminent threat to the hostages, said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

A total of two pirates, including the one who was knifed, died during the ensuing confrontation — which happened around 9 a.m. East Africa time — and 13 were captured and detained, the Central Command said. The remains of two other pirates who were already dead for some time were also found. The U.S. military didn't state how those two died. It was unclear if the pirates had fought among themselves.

Negotiations had been under way to try to win the release of the two couples on the pirated vessel Quest when the gunfire was heard, the U.S. military said. Fox, asked by reporters about the nature of the negotiations, said he had no details.

He identified the slain Americans as Jean and Scott Adam, of Marina del Rey near Los Angeles, and Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, of Seattle, Washington.

The Quest was the home of the Adams who had been sailing around the world since December 2004 with a yacht full of Bibles.

Pirates hijacked the Quest on Friday several hundred miles south of Oman. Fox said mariners are warned about traveling through the area because of the dangers of pirate attacks.

Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of U.S. Central Command, said: "We express our deepest condolences for the innocent lives callously lost aboard the Quest."

In total the U.S. said that 19 pirates were involved in the hijacking of the Quest.

Two days before the attack, a New York court had sentenced a pirate to 33 years in prison for the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama, a U.S. cargo vessel. That hijacking ended when Navy sharpshooters killed two pirates holding the ship's captain. A pirate in Somalia told the AP last week that pirates were more likely to attack Americans because of the verdict.

"It's a black day for us and also the Americans, but they lost bigger than us," a pirate who said his name was Bile Hussein said Tuesday. "If they still want a solution and safety for their citizens in the oceans, let them release our men they arrested."

At the Seattle Singles Yacht Club, where Riggle and Macay were members, Joe Grande said the two were "great sailors, good people. They were doing what they wanted to do, but that's small comfort in the face of this."

Only minutes before the military announced that the four Americans had died, a Somali pirate told The Associated Press by phone that if the yacht were attacked, "the hostages will be the first to go."

"Some pirates have even suggested rigging the yacht with land mines and explosives so as the whole yacht explodes with the first gunshot," said the pirate, who gave his name as Abdullahi Mohamed, who claimed to be a friend of the pirates holding the four Americans.

Graeme Gibbon-Brooks, the head of Dryad Maritime Intelligence, said he was confounded by the turn of events.

"We have heard threats against the lives of Americans before but it strikes me as being very, very unusual why they would kill hostages outright," he said, adding that the pirates must realize that killing Americans would invite a military response.

The military said U.S. forces have been monitoring the Quest for about three days, since shortly after the Friday attack. Four Navy warships were involved, including the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.

The killing of the four Americans appears to underscore an increasingly brutal and aggressive shift pirates have been showing toward hostages. The conventional wisdom in the shipping industry had been that Somali pirates are businessmen looking for a ransom payday, not insurgents looking to terrorize people.

Pirates — who currently hold 30 ships and more than 660 hostages — typically win a multimillion ransom for releasing their captives, a huge sum that is shared among investors and pirates. The money is often spent on alcohol, drugs and prostitutes. One ransom paid last year was reported as $9.5 million. Most ransoms are worth several million dollars.

Given that typical financial motivation, Tuesday's killings left several unanswered questions, such as whether the four hostages had tried to take over the yacht from the pirates, or if the American forces spooked the pirates by approaching the yacht.

Pirates have increased attacks off the coast of East Africa in recent years despite an international flotilla of warships dedicated to protecting vessels and stopping the pirate assaults.

Mohamed, the pirate in Somalia, told AP that pirate leaders had been expecting the yacht to make landfall soon.

Five cars full of pirates were headed toward the pirate dens of Eyl and Gara'ad in anticipation of the Quest reaching land Monday, he said. Had the four reached land, they may have faced a long hostage ordeal like the 388 days that the British sailing couple Paul and Rachel Chandler spent in the hands of pirates. The two were released in November.

Omar Jamal, first secretary at Somalia's mission at the U.N., sent his condolences to the families of the four Americans and called the deaths a tragic loss of life. Jamal said there is an urgent need to address the piracy problem.

"This incident is a clear message and alarm that it's time the world community quickly steps up to stop these pirate criminal activities. They should be treated mercilessly," said Gen. Yusuf Ahmed Khayr, the security minister in the northern Somalia region of Puntland, a pirate haven.

The Adams ran a Bible ministry and have been distributing Bibles to schools and churches in remote villages in areas including the Fiji Islands, Alaska, New Zealand, Central America and French Polynesia.

At the Seattle Singles Yacht Club, friend Hank Curci said Riggle and Macay were carrying out a lifelong dream. The couple left Seattle about nine or 10 months ago.

"Now that they're gone it's just difficult for us to accept because it's like having a family member killed," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Pauline Jelinek in Washington; Abdi Guled in Mogadishu, Somalia; and George Tibbits and Doug Esser in Seattle, Washington contributed to this report.

Gadhafi's hold on Libya weakens in protest wave

2011-02-21T13:21:00.001-08:00

CAIRO – Deep cracks opened in Moammar Gadhafi's regime Monday, with Libyan government officials at home and abroad resigning, air force pilots defecting and a major government building ablaze after clashes in the capital of Tripoli. Protesters called for another night of defiance against the Arab world's longest-serving leader despite a crackdown.

At sunset, pro-Gadhafi militia drove around Tripoli with loudspeakers and told people not to leave their homes, witnesses said, as security forces sought to keep the unrest that swept eastern parts of the country — leaving the second-largest city of Benghazi in protesters' control — from overwhelming the capital of 2 million people.

State TV said the military had "stormed the hideouts of saboteurs" and urged the public to back security forces. Protesters called for a new demonstration in Tripoli's central Green Square and in front of Gadhafi's residence.

Gadhafi appeared to have lost the support of at least one major tribe, several military units and his own diplomats, including the delegation to the United Nations. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi accused Gadhafi of committing genocide against his own people in the current crisis.

Warplanes swooped low over Tripoli in the evening and snipers took up position on roofs, apparently to stop people outside the capital from joining protests, according to Mohammed Abdul-Malek, a London-based opposition activist in touch with residents.

Communications to the capital appeared to have been cut, and residents' mobile phones could not be reached from outside the country. State TV showed video of hundreds of Gadhafi supporters rallying in Green Square, waving palm fronds and pictures of the Libyan leader.

The first major protests to hit an OPEC country — and major supplier to Europe — have sent oil prices jumping, and the industry has begun eyeing reserves touched only after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the first Gulf War in 1991.

Tripoli was largely shut down Monday, with schools, government offices and most stores closed, except for a few bakeries, said residents, who hunkered down in their homes. Armed members of pro-government organizations called "Revolutionary Committees" hunted for protesters in Tripoli's old city, said one protester named Fathi.

Members of the militia occupied the city center and no one was able to walk in the street, said one resident who lived near Green Square and spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, describing a "very, very violent" situation.

"We know that the regime is reaching its end and Libyans are not retreating," the resident said. "People have a strange determination after all that happened."

Another witness in Tripoli said armed men were roaming the streets of the capital's upscale diplomatic neighborhood and firing heavily. He said they were dressed in uniforms of pro-Gadhafi militia. They opened fire on a group of protesters gathering to organize a march and people in the area were weeping over bodies on the ground.

Residents hoped that help would arrive from the other parts of the country.

The eruption of turmoil in the capital after seven days of protests and bloody clashes in Libya's eastern cities sharply escalated the challenge to Gadhafi. His security forces have unleashed the bloodiest crackdown of any Arab country against the wave of protests sweeping the region, which toppled the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia. At least 233 people have been killed so far, according to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, visiting neighboring Egypt, called the Libyan government's crackdown "appalling."

"The regime is using the most vicious forms of repression against people who want to see that country — which is one of the most closed and one of the most autocratic — make progress," he told reporters in Cairo.

The heaviest fighting so far has been in the east. Security forces in Benghazi opened fire on Sunday on protesters storming police stations and government buildings. But in several instances, units of the military turned against them and sided with protesters.

By Monday, protesters had claimed control of the city, overrunning its main security headquarters, called the Katiba.

Celebrating protesters raised the flag of the country's old monarchy, toppled in 1969 by a Gadhafi-led military coup, over Benghazi's main courthouse and on tanks around the city.

"Gadhafi needs one more push and he is gone," said Amal Roqaqie, a lawyer at the Benghazi court, saying protesters are "imposing a new reality. ... Tripoli will be our capital. We are imposing a new order and new state, a civil constitutional and with transitional government."

Gadhafi's son, Seif al-Islam, went on state TV in the early hours Monday with a sometimes confused speech of nearly 40 minutes, vowing to fight and warning that if protests continue, a civil war will erupt in which Libya's oil wealth "will be burned."

"Moammar Gadhafi, our leader, is leading the battle in Tripoli, and we are with him," he said. "The armed forces are with him. Tens of thousands are heading here to be with him. We will fight until the last man, the last woman, the last bullet." he said.

He also promised "historic" reforms if protests stop. State TV said Monday he had formed a commission to investigate deaths during the unrest. Protesters ignored the vague gestures. Even as he spoke, the first clashes between demonstrators and security forces in the heart of Tripoli were still raging, lasting until dawn.

Fire raged Monday at the People's Hall, the main building for government gatherings where the country's equivalent of a parliament holds sessions several times a year, the pro-government news website Qureyna said.

It also reported the first major sign of discontent in Gadhafi's government, saying Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil resigned to protest the "excessive use of force" against unarmed demonstrators.

There were reports of ambassadors abroad defecting. Libya's former ambassador to the Arab League in Cairo, Abdel-Moneim al-Houni, who resigned his post Sunday to side with protesters, demanded Gadhafi and his commanders and aides be put on trial for "the mass killings in Libya."

"Gadhafi's regime is now in the trash of history because he betrayed his nation and his people," al-Houni said in a statement.

A Libyan diplomat in China, Hussein el-Sadek el-Mesrati, told Al-Jazeera, "I resigned from representing the government of Mussolini and Hitler."

Two Mirage warplanes from the Libyan air force fled a Tripoli air base and landed on the nearby island of Malta, and their pilots — two colonels — asked for political asylum, Maltese military officials said.

A protest march Sunday night sparked scenes of mayhem in the heavily secured capital. Protesters had streamed into Green Square, all but taking over the plaza and surrounding streets in the area between Tripoli's Ottoman-era old city and its Italian-style downtown.

That was when the backlash began, with snipers firing from rooftops and militiamen attacking the crowds, shooting and chasing people down side streets, according to witnesses and protesters.

Gadhafi supporters in pickup trucks and cars raced through the square, shooting automatic weapons. "They were driving like madmen searching for someone to kill. ... It was total chaos, shooting and shouting," said a 28-year-old protester.

The witnesses reported seeing casualties, but the number could not be confirmed. The witness named Fathi said he saw at least two he believed were dead and many more wounded. After midnight, protesters took over the main Tripoli offices of state-run satellite stations Al-Jamahiriya-1 and Al-Shebabiya, a witness said.

Fragmentation is a real danger in Libya, a country of deep tribal divisions and a historic rivalry between Tripoli and Benghazi. The system of rule created by Gadhafi — the "Jamahiriya," or "rule by masses" — is highly decentralized, run by "popular committees" in a complicated hierarchy that effectively means there is no real center of decision-making except Gadhafi, his sons and their top aides.

Seif has often been put forward as the regime's face of reform and is often cited as a likely successor to his father. Seif's younger brother, Mutassim, is the national security adviser, with a strong role in the military and security forces. Another brother, Khamis, heads the army's 32nd Brigade, which according to U.S. diplomats is the best-trained and best-equipped force in the military.

The revolt in Benghazi and other cities in the east illustrated the possibility of the country rumbling.

In Benghazi, cars honked their horns in celebration and protesters in the streets chanted "Long live Libya" on Monday, a day after bloody clashes that killed at least 60 people.

Benghazi's airport was closed, according to an airport official in Cairo. A Turkish Airlines flight trying to land in Benghazi to evacuate Turkish citizens was turned away Monday, told by ground control to circle over the airport, then to return to Istanbul.

There were fears of chaos as young men — including regime supporters — seized weapons from the Katiba and other captured security buildings. "The youths now have arms and that's worrying," said Iman, a doctor at the main hospital. "We are appealing to the wise men of every neighborhood to rein in the youths."

Youth volunteers directed traffic and guarded homes and public facilities, said Najla, a lawyer and university lecturer in Benghazi. She and other residents said police had disappeared from the streets.

After seizing the Katiba, protesters found the bodies of 13 uniformed security officers inside who had been handcuffed and shot in the head, then set on fire, said a doctor named Hassan, who asked not to be identified further for fear of reprisals. He said protesters believed the 13 had been executed by fellow security forces for refusing to attack protesters.

____

AP correspondents Sarah El Deeb and Hamza Hendawi in Cairo contributed to this report.

Arrested US official is actually CIA contractor

2011-02-21T13:16:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON – An American jailed in Pakistan for the fatal shooting of two armed men was secretly working for the CIA and scouting a neighborhood when he was arrested, a disclosure likely to further frustrate U.S. government efforts to free the man and strain relations between two countries partnered in a fragile alliance in the war on terror.

Raymond Allen Davis, 36, had been working as a CIA security contractor and living in a Lahore safe house, according to former and current U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk publicly about the incident.

Davis, a former Special Forces soldier who left the military in 2003, shot the men in what he described as an attempted armed robbery in the eastern city of Lahore as they approached him on a motorcycle. A third Pakistani, a bystander, died when a car rushing to help Davis struck him. Davis was carrying a Glock handgun, a pocket telescope and papers with different identifications.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration insisted anew Monday that Davis had diplomatic immunity and must be set free. i

In a hastily arranged conference call with reporters shortly after details of Davis' employment were reported, senior State Department officials repeated the administration's stance that he is an accredited member of the technical and administrative staff of the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. They said the Pakistani government had been informed of his status in January 2010 and that Pakistan is violating its international obligations by continuing to hold him.

The officials would not comment on Davis' employment but said it was irrelevant to the case because Pakistan had not rejected his status The officials spoke only on grounds of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

The revelation that Davis was an employee of the CIA comes amid a tumultuous dispute over whether he is immune from criminal prosecution under international rules enacted to protect diplomats overseas. New protests in Pakistan erupted after The Guardian newspaper in London decided to publish details about Davis' relationship with the CIA.

The U.S. had repeatedly asserted that Davis had diplomatic immunity and should have been released immediately. The State Department claimed Davis was "entitled to full criminal immunity in accordance with the Vienna Convention" and was a member of the "technical and administrative staff" at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

The Associated Press learned about Davis working for the CIA last month, immediately after the shootings, but withheld publication of the information because it could endanger his life while he was jailed overseas, with at least some protesters there calling for his execution as a spy.

The AP had intended to report Davis' CIA employment after he was out of harm's way, but the story was broken Sunday by The Guardian. The CIA asked The AP and several other U.S. media outlets to hold their stories as the U.S. tried to improve Davis' security situation.

A U.S. official says Davis is being held at a jail on the outskirts of Lahore where there are serious doubts about whether the Pakistanis can truly protect him. The official says the Pakistanis have expressed similar concerns to the U.S.

A senior Pakistani intelligence official said the government had taken measures to ensure the safety of Davis, stepping up security at the facility, removing certain inmates from the prison and sending a contingent of well-trained paramilitaries known as the Rangers.

The State Department said the Pakistani government was informed that Davis was a diplomat and entitled to immunity when he was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

"We are very mindful of the difficulty that the government of Pakistan faces with public opinion in this case," department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. "We remain concerned about him and our message to Pakistan remains that he should be released as soon as possible."

Davis identified himself as a diplomat to police when he was arrested and "has repeatedly requested immunity" to no avail, Crowley said. The U.S. Embassy said he has a diplomatic passport and a visa valid through June 2012. It also said in a recent statement the U.S. had notified the Pakistani government of Davis' assignment more than a year ago. However, the senior Pakistani intelligence official says that Davis' visa application contained bogus U.S. contact information.

Since Pakistani authorities took the ex-Special Forces soldier into custody Jan. 27, U.S. officials said, the situation has slowly escalated into a crisis, threatening the CIA's ability to wage a dangerous war against al-Qaida and militants. Some members of Congress have threatened to cut off the billions in funding to Pakistan if Davis isn't released.

Davis was attached to the CIA's Global Response Staff, which provides security overseas to agency bases and stations, former and current U.S. officials told the AP. In that role, he was assigned to protect CIA personnel. One of their duties includes protecting case officers when they meet with sources. On the day he was captured, he was familiarizing himself with the area.

"Davis is a protective officer, someone who provides security to U.S. officials in Pakistan," the U.S official said. "Rumors to the contrary are simply wrong."

In a YouTube video of local police interrogating him, Davis says he's a consultant and he's with the "RAO," a reference to the American Regional Affairs Office. Davis also said at one point he was attached to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad.

Working for the agency's GRS comes with risks — sometimes fatal ones. The head of security at the CIA's base in Khost, Afghanistan, was killed with six others in December 2009 after a suicide bomber detonated a powerful explosive under his belt.

The CIA has a major presence in Pakistan, where it runs the drone program in Islamabad and offensive operations against militants, al-Qaida and Pakistan's spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence.

Former and current U.S. officials say the Pakistanis might have been stalling to release Davis so he could be extensively questioned, hoping he could provide more information about CIA activities in the troubled country or possibly even identify other agency officers.

The senior Pakistani intelligence official told the AP the two men in the response vehicle that went to aid Davis, killing the bystander, have left the country. The official said the Pakistani government's decision to let them leave was a concession to the U.S.

The U.S.-Pakistani partnership had begun to fray in recent months. In late 2010, a pair of civil lawsuits filed in the U.S. accused Pakistan's spy chief of nurturing terrorists involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Shortly after the lawsuits were filed, the name of the CIA's top spy in Pakistan was publicly disclosed and his life threatened. He was eventually pulled out of the country in December, a month before the scheduled end of his tour.

A former CIA officer said militants have also threatened the children of ISI officers. And the CIA in recent years has become increasingly concerned about the safety of its officers in outlying areas like Lahore and Peshawar, a former senior U.S. intelligence source said. But the danger was more pronounced in Lahore, where the CIA learned there might be government elements willing to harm agency officers.

Former CIA officials said the agency officers could have been killed in 2009 when terrorists attacked an ISI compound in Lahore. CIA officers regularly met their counterparts at the compound but didn't have a meeting scheduled the day of the attack.

Further inflaming tensions, the wife of one of the men Davis shot committed suicide. She had said she feared her husband's killer would be freed without trial.

Military records show Davis, a Virginia native, served a decade in the Army, including five years with the 3rd Special Forces Group in Fort Bragg, N.C., home to the Green Berets.

Davis also worked for security contractor Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe Services.

Davis and his wife run a Las Vegas-registered company called Hyperion Protective Services. The address for its headquarters is a mailbox at a UPS store in a strip mall. The truth about Davis' true employer briefly slipped out after a local television reporter in Colorado called his wife.

In a story posted on the website of Denver's 9News, the wife provided the name and number of a "CIA spokesperson" in Washington, D.C. But the story was quickly taken down, edited and then reposted with new language eliminating any reference to the CIA.

The incident in Pakistan also raises serious questions about how an armed CIA employee could become involved in a fatal shooting with street bandits and allow himself to be captured. Former CIA officers say they were taught to make their way back to the safety of the embassy or consulate in potentially dangerous situations, but the circumstances could have made that impossible in Davis' case.

Former CIA officials say this is not the first time an agency employee was detained in a foreign country. In the 1980s, a CIA officer with diplomatic immunity was abducted in Ethiopia after he was suspected of spying. The case was quietly resolved and the officer was eventually released.

___

Associated Press writers Oskar Garcia in Las Vegas and Anne Gearan and Matt Apuzzo in Washington and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report

Hijacked Ca. sailor sought to mix faith, adventure

2011-02-21T09:47:00.001-08:00

LOS ANGELES – A friend and former professor of a California man whose yacht was hijacked by Somali pirates said Sunday that Scott Adam wanted to combine his love of adventure with his faith by spreading bibles around the world.

Professor Robert K. Johnston of Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena told The Associated Press that Adam — who last year earned a master of theology degree from the school — had sent friends emails detailing his international sailing trip. But Adam went silent Feb. 12 to avoid revealing the location of his yacht, the Quest, to pirates.

"He was sailing around the world and serving God, two of his passions," Johnston said.

Organizers of the Blue Water Rally yacht race said passengers of the sailboat owned by Adam and his wife, Jean, carried them and two other Americans, Phyllis Macay and Bob Riggle, both of Seattle. It was hijacked Friday off the coast of Oman. It is now in the waters between Yemen and northern Somalia, two pirates and a Somali government official told The Associated Press.

Johnston said that despite an adventurous spirit, the Adams were meticulous planners who knew the dangers they faced. The couple had sailed with a large flotilla to stay safe from pirates near Thailand earlier in the trip.

"They knew and we knew they still had to go by the Somalia coast," he said. "We're asking people to pray for them."

Adam, now in his mid-60s, had been an associate producer in Hollywood when he turned in a spiritual direction and enrolled in the seminary a decade ago, Johnston said.

"He decided he could take his pension, and he wanted to serve God and humankind," he said.

Johnston and Adam worked together to start a film and theology institute. Adam also taught a class on church and media at the school.

Since 2004, the Adams lived on their yacht in Marina Del Rey for about half the year and the rest of the year they sailed around the world, often distributing Bibles in remote parts of the Fiji Islands, Alaska, New Zealand, Central America and French Polynesia, Johnston said.

Pirates hijack 4 Americans; US mulls responses

2011-02-19T07:20:00.001-08:00

NAIROBI, Kenya – The United States government on Saturday said it was assessing possible responses after Somali pirates hijacked a yacht with four Americans on board in the Arabian sea off the coast of Somalia.

Pirates hijacked the yacht Quest on Friday, two days after a Somali pirate was sentenced to 33 years in prison by a New York court for the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama. That case ended in a spectacular rescue when Navy sharpshooters killed two pirates holding the ship's captain, Richard Phillips.

The Quest is the home of Jean and Scott Adam, a couple who has been sailing around the world since December 2004, according to a website the Adams keep.

A U.S. military spokesman at Central Command in Florida said: "We're aware of the situation and we continue to monitor it."

Matt Goshko, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, which oversees Somalia, said preliminary reports indicate there are four U.S. citizens aboard the Quest.

"All relevant U.S. agencies are monitoring the situation, working to develop further information, assess options and possible responses," Goshko said.

Pirates have increased attacks off the coast of East Africa in recent years despite an international flotilla of warships dedicated to protecting vessels and stopping the pirate assaults.

Multimillion dollar ransoms are fueling the trade, and the prices for releasing a ship and hostages have risen sharply. One ransom last year was reported to be $9.5 million. Pirates currently hold 30 ships and more than 660 hostages, not counting the attack against the Quest.

After the Maersk Alabama was hijacked in April 2009, Navy sharpshooters on the fantail of the USS Bainbridge fired on pirates holding Phillips, the ship's captain, killing two of them. The only pirate to survive that U.S. rescue was Abdiwali Abdiqadir Muse, the pirate who was sentenced to 33 years in prison this week.

The best known case of Westerners being held hostage in Somalia was that of Paul and Rachel Chandler, a British couple held for 388 days. The two, who were captured while sailing in their private yacht, were released in November.

U.S. officials will likely try to prevent the Adams' yacht from reaching Somalia, where their options to rescue the Americans become more limited.

The Adams website chronicles the couple's travels over the last seven years, from El Salvador and Panama in 2005 to Fiji in 2007 and Singapore and Cambodia last year. They most recently sailed from Thailand to Sri Lanka and India. Their website said they were on their way to Oman when they were taken. Djibouti — the tiny East African country directly north of Somalia — had been next on their list. A satellite tracking system the couple uses showed them docked in Mumbai, India on Feb. 1.

"Djibouti is a big refueling stop. I have NO idea what will happen in these ports, but perhaps we'll do some local touring," the couple's website says.

The couple runs a Bible ministry, according to their website, and have been distributing Bibles to schools and churches in remote villages in areas including the Fiji Islands, Alaska, New Zealand, Central America and French Polynesia.

They are members of the Marina del Rey Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, California, according to the website.

The prison sentence given to Muse this week could have implications on the hijacking of the Quest and the four Americans. Pirates have turned increasingly violent in their attacks, and naval officials say pirates have begun systematically torturing hostages and using them as human shields.

Earlier this week a Somali pirate told an Associated Press reporter in Somalia that pirates would target Americans in retaliation for the sentencing. The pirate, who identified himself by the name Hassan, said Americans would suffer "regrettable consequences."

Pirates have recently tied hostages upside down and dragged them in the sea, locked them in freezers, beaten them and used plastic ties around their genitals, the commander of the European Union anti-piracy force, Maj. Gen. Buster Howes told AP this month.

___

Associated Press reporter Abdi Guled in Mogadishu, Somalia, contributed to this report.

House Republicians Moved To Block FCC Internet Rules

2011-02-18T17:38:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON – House Republicans on Thursday moved to block the Federal Communications Commission from enforcing new rules that prohibit broadband providers from interfering with Internet traffic on their networks.

With a 244-181 vote, Republican leaders succeeded in attaching an amendment to a sweeping spending bill that would bar the FCC from using government money to implement its new "network neutrality" regulations.

The rules prohibit phone and cable companies from favoring or discriminating against Internet content and services, including online calling services like Skype and Web video services like Netflix that could compete with their core operations. The FCC's three Democrats voted to adopt the regulations late last year over the opposition of the agency's two Republicans.

The rules are already facing court challenges from Verizon Communications Inc. and Metro PCS Communications Inc. Republicans in both chambers of Congress have introduced legislation to try to repeal the rules outright.

Republicans argue that the net neutrality rules amount to onerous and unnecessary regulations that will discourage phone and cable companies from continuing to upgrade their broadband networks by making it too hard for them to earn a healthy return on those investments. They also maintain that the FCC overstepped its authority in adopting the rules.

Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., the sponsor of the spending bill amendment and chairman of the House Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, said his measure is "about keeping the government out of the business of running the Internet."

The FCC had no comment Thursday.

The new FCC rules require broadband providers to let subscribers access all legal online content, applications and services over their wired networks.

The rules do give providers flexibility to manage data on their systems to deal with network congestion and unwanted traffic, including spam, as long as they publicly disclose those practices. But they prohibit unreasonable network discrimination — a category that would likely include "paid prioritization," which favors the broadband providers' own traffic or the traffic of business partners that can pay extra.

The regulations also prohibit wireless carriers from blocking access to any websites or competing services such as Internet calling applications on mobile devices, and they require carriers to disclose their network management practices, too. Still, they do give wireless companies more flexibility to manage data traffic because wireless systems have less network bandwidth and can become overwhelmed with traffic more easily than wired lines.

While Republican efforts to repeal the FCC rules are likely to face an uphill battle in the Senate, where Democrats remain in control, the regulations may be harder to defend in court.

Both Verizon and Metro PCS are challenging the rules in federal appeals court in the District of Columbia. That is the same court that ruled last year that the FCC had exceeded its legal authority in rebuking cable giant Comcast Corp. for blocking its subscribers from accessing an Internet file-sharing service used to trade online video and other big files. Comcast maintained that traffic from the service was clogging its network.

The agency said Comcast had violated broad net neutrality principles first established by the commission in 2005. Those principles served as a foundation for the formal rules adopted by the FCC late last year.

Social Security agency warns of workers' furloughs

2011-02-18T11:50:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON – Upping the ante in the budget faceoff, the Obama administration warned Friday that workers who distribute Social Security benefits might be furloughed if congressional Republicans force cuts in federal spending.

In a letter the Social Security Administration sent to its employees' union, agency officials said that while no decision about a furlough had been made, one was possible "given the potential of reduced congressional appropriations."

The letter was circulated by congressional Democrats, who said in a written statement that such cuts could mean shuttered Social Security offices and delayed benefit payments. The letter's distribution by Democrats underscored how the threat of jeopardizing Social Security payments is a potent political weapon.

GOP lawmakers accused Democrats of "irresponsible scare tactics," and said their proposed cuts would not affect benefits or force the Social Security Administration to close offices. Any furloughs "would result only if that decision were made by the administration," House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said in a written statement.

Republicans are pushing a huge spending bill through the House that would impose deep cuts on domestic programs.

The overall bill is the first step in an increasingly bitter struggle between Democrats and Republicans over how much to cut federal agencies' funding over the second half of the budget year that ends Sept. 30. Current funding runs out March 4 and a temporary spending bill will be needed to avoid a government shutdown.

Republicans say the legislation would pare Social Security's administrative budget by $125 million from current levels plus another $500 million from a reserve fund. Democrats say the cut would leave the agency with $1.7 billion less than President Barack Obama requested.

As Friday's debate began, the focus was on Obama's health care overhaul, which dominated Congress' work in 2009 and was enacted last year. The GOP has virtually no chance of killing the law because of support for the program from Obama and the Democratic-run Senate, but House Republicans have been trying relentlessly to chip away at it.

"It's a law designed by those who wish to control every health care decision made by health care providers and patients, by every employer and employee, by every family and individual," said Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., who sponsored one of several amendments blocking health overhaul money.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said the GOP effort would "put insurance companies back in charge, further demonstrating the majority's special-interest priorities and hypocrisy on job creation and deficit reduction."

Action expected Friday also included votes on a proposal to block federal aid to Planned Parenthood, bar the Pentagon from spending taxpayer money to sponsor NASCAR race teams; to reverse a proposed Obama administration rule that seeks to crack down of for-profit colleges and vocational schools; and to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its authority to issue regulations on global warming.

With a government shutdown possible if the spending measure isn't extended at least temporarily, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, inflamed the situation Thursday by insisting that the GOP-controlled House would refuse to approve even a short-term measure at current spending levels.

"Read my lips: We're going to cut spending," Boehner declared. Democrats immediately charged that Boehner was maneuvering Congress to the precipice of a government shutdown.

The GOP would reduce spending to about $60 billion below last year's levels, mixing an increase of less than 2 percent for the Pentagon with slashing cuts averaging about 12 percent from non-Pentagon accounts. Such cuts would feel almost twice as deep since they would be spread over the final seven months of the budget year.

The Environmental Protection Agency and foreign aid accounts would be especially hard hit, while GOP leaders orchestrated just a modest cut to Congress' own budget.

Some of the most politically difficult cuts, to grants to local police and fire departments, special education and economic development grants, were reversed. Amtrak supporters easily withstood an attempt to slash its budget.

But with the fiscal framework of the measure already saddled with a veto threat, Republicans mounted an assault on the administration's regulatory agenda. By a 244-181 tally Thursday, Republicans voted to block the Federal Communications Commission from enforcing new rules that prohibit broadband providers from interfering with Internet traffic on their networks. The new "network neutrality" rules are opposed by large Internet providers.

Republicans then moved, on a 250-177 vote, to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from imposing limits on mercury pollution from cement factories. Supporters said the new rules would send American jobs overseas, where air quality standards are more lax or non-existent.

Republicans also turned back Democratic attempts to boost funding for the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, whose budgets would be cut sharply under the measure, to pay for responsibilities added in last year's overhaul of federal financial regulations.

Social issues also came into play.

Thursday night's action was dominated by a lengthy debate on an amendment by Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., a strong foe of abortion, to block Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal money. The organization provides a variety of women's health services.

"It is morally wrong to take the taxpayer dollars of millions of pro-life Americans and use them to fund organizations that provide and promote abortion, like Planned Parenthood of America," Pence said.

Democrats said Planned Parenthood provides much-needed access to contraception, medical exams and counseling to women and that federal law already prohibits the use of government funds for abortions in most circumstances.

Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said the GOP proposal would "make it harder to access pap tests, breast exams, routine gynecological examinations, flu vaccinations, smoking cessation services, cholesterol screening, contraceptives, and all of the other services that Planned Parenthood provides."

Liberal Minnesota Democrat Betty McCollum hoped to team up with tea party-backed GOP freshmen to bar the Pentagon from spending taxpayer dollars to sponsor NASCAR race teams. She said such sponsorships can cost millions of dollars, simply for placing decals on race cars and for a few driver appearances.

The Army, the Air Force and the National Guard each sponsor cars with the aim of boosting military recruitment, but the Navy and Marine Corps dropped their NASCAR sponsorships in recent years, saying they didn't know whether they were effective.

Special report: China flexed its muscles using U.S. Treasuries

2011-02-17T20:35:00.001-08:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Confidential diplomatic cables from the U.S. embassies in Beijing and Hong Kong lay bare China's growing influence as America's largest creditor.

As the U.S. Federal Reserve grappled with the aftershocks of financial crisis, the Chinese, like many others, suffered huge losses from their investments in American financial firms -- from Lehman Brothers to the Primary Reserve Fund, the money market fund that broke the buck.

The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks, show that escalating Chinese pressure prompted a procession of soothing visits from the U.S.Treasury Department. In one striking instance, a top Chinese money manager directly asked U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner for a favor.

In June, 2009, the head of China's powerful sovereign wealth fund met with Geithner and requested that he lean on regulators at the U.S. Federal Reserve to speed up the approval of its $1.2 billion investment in Morgan Stanley, according to the cables, which were provided to Reuters by a third party.

Although the cables do not mention if Geithner took any action, China's deal to buy Morgan Stanley shares was announced the very next day.

The two Treasury officials to whom the cables were addressed, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asia Robert Dohner and Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Monetary and Financial Policy Mark Sobel, declined through a spokesperson to comment for this story. The State Department also declined to comment.

China is America's biggest foreign lender, playing a crucial role in the U.S.Treasury auctions that allow Washington to borrow what it needs to keep its government running. At the same time, the United States is China's top export destination: America's trade deficit with the nation reached a record $273.1 billion in 2010. Most economists describe the two economies as co-dependent.

The concern in certain influential Washington and Wall Street circles is that Beijing would leverage its position as the main enabler of U.S. overspending. And the cables provide a glimpse into how much politics inform relations between the world's two largest economies.

One cable cites Chinese money managers expressing concern that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan -- a major, longstanding irritant in the relationship -- could sour the Chinese public on Treasury purchases.

The subject of Taiwan came up during an October 9, 2008 meeting the U.S. financial attache's office had with Liu Jiahua, Deputy Director General of China's foreign currency reserve manager, the secretive behemoth known as the State Administration for Foreign Exchange, or SAFE.

"Liu observed that the recent U.S. announcement of another arms sale to Taiwan made it more difficult for the Chinese government to explain its policies supportive of the U.S. to the Chinese public," reads an account of his comments in one of the cables.

The cables also indicate a high level of confidence among the Americans that China can't entirely stop buying U.S. debt, a sentiment shared by most economists who describe the dynamic as a form of mutually assured financial destruction.

But the cables do show that China can and will pull back, with financial repercussions. In the spring of 2009, with U.S.-China financial tensions running especially high, China's Treasury holdings fell to around $764 billion, down from nearly $900 billion. In July, after tensions between the two nations mostly subsided, its holdings rose to a record $940 billion.

During the financial turmoil, the cables show that Beijing also shifted its portfolio away from longer-term Treasury notes, which helped drive up America's long-term borrowing costs.

NOT TOO BIG TO FAIL

The collapse of Lehman had a swift and powerful impact on SAFE. "Several interlocutors have told us that Lehman was a counterparty to SAFE in financial transactions and as a result SAFE suffered large losses when Lehman collapsed," Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing Dan Piccuta wrote in a cable to Washington on March 20, 2009.

The hit to its balance sheet is likely what prompted a Chinese official to tell a U.S. diplomat months earlier that SAFE was afraid to re-enter the U.S. repo market -- that is, it was reluctant to resume lending its short-term Treasuries to counterparties wanting to use them as collateral in cash loans.

On October 9, 2008, officials from the U.S. embassy's office of the financial attache in Beijing met with SAFE Deputy Director General Liu Jiahua. "SAFE is very concerned over the danger involved in lending U.S. Treasuries to U.S. financial institutions in the repurchase agreement market," Liu said.

Liu said SAFE's confidence in U.S. banks had been shaken. SAFE had exited the repo market, which is a way for corporations and financial institutions to borrow overnight.

The cable continues, "Liu remained noncommittal on the possible resumption of lending, but agreed that SAFE had sufficient confidence in those institutions and would consider a system whereby the Federal Reserve or other U.S. government agency would act as a guarantor."

Public opinion clearly rattled China's financial leaders. One cable shows Liu citing an internet discussion forum, saying "the Chinese leadership must pay close attention to public opinion in forming policies."

The U.S. government does not appear to have offered the Chinese a special setup guaranteeing U.S. banks. Instead, the cables show, American diplomats reassured the Chinese by pointing out that Washington had infused banks' balance sheets with $700 billion in fresh capital, effectively propping up the banking system.

FANNIE AND FREDDIE, GUARANTEED OR NOT

China holds hundreds of billions of dollars in debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing agencies known as Government Sponsored Entities, or GSEs.

Like many other investors, it purchased agency debt before the crisis with the expectation that Fannie and Freddie were implicitly backed by the U.S. government.

In September 2008, when the Treasury Department took control of the two GSEs, SAFE officials grew alarmed, the cables show. Suggestions that senior GSE debt holders would have to take a haircut sparked a public outcry in China. The media warned that the government's currency manager faced monstrous losses similar to those suffered earlier by the nation's sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corp., after its investments in U.S. financial institutions blew up.

Media outlets had already heavily criticized the government for CIC's losses -- a Financial Times story circulated by outlets such as China Daily speculated that CIC had lost $80 billion of the government's foreign reserves. In late 2008 Chinese newspapers routinely ran headlines with the words "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" spelled out in English.

To defuse the situation, the Treasury Department sent Undersecretary for International Affairs David McCormick to Beijing for two days in October 2008. The gesture went over well.

"All of Undersecretary McCormick's counterparts appeared to appreciate his willingness to come to Beijing in the midst of a financial crisis," Piccuta wrote in a cable dated October 29, 2008. "Interlocutors stressed that unless leaders' concerns about the viability of banks and U.S. government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) are assuaged, lower-level officials will be constrained from taking on greater counter-party risks."

The cables show McCormick trying to reassure the Chinese. "In each meeting, Undersecretary McCormick emphasized that even though the U.S. government did not explicitly guarantee GSE debt, it effectively did so by committing to inject up to $100 billion of equity in each institution to avoid insolvency and that this contractual commitment would remain for the life of these institutions," Piccuta wrote.

PACIFIC RIFT

The U.S. Federal Reserve announced a program to buy agency mortgage-backed securities and Treasuries in early 2009 to help flood the financial system with liquidity and stop Treasury yields from rising. But at first the purchases had very little impact on yields, which climbed steadily while the Treasury Department's auctions of new debt wobbled.

In China, top officials began publicly criticizing the inflationary side-effects of the Fed's program. They said the expansion of the Fed's balance sheet would devalue their Treasury holdings -- and indeed, the Chinese public watched as Treasury yields rose and the older debt the Chinese had sank in value.

On March 13, 2009, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said at a press conference he was "concerned" about the security of China's investments in U.S. Treasuries. The March 20 cable, titled "Premier Wen's comments on U.S. Treasuries: Protect China's investments," documents a score of Chinese officials discussing their worries about U.S. Treasuries and the potential consequences of their uncertainty.

One economist at Caijing Magazine, which diplomats described as a "respected" Chinese outlet, told U.S. officials in late February "there has been a 'huge debate' within the government about China's holdings of U.S. Treasuries."

According to the cable, the Chinese economist told U.S. embassy officials that "SAFE has been shifting its portfolio toward shorter-term assets to reduce the risk of capital losses from higher inflation."

That information dovetailed with data, released many months later, showing the Chinese had indeed sold longer-dated Treasuries and bought more T-bills, which surged to $210 billion by May 2009. The move likely contributed to the rise in long-term yields.

GEITHNER IN BEIJING

Tensions remained high during Geithner's visit to China -- his first as Treasury Secretary -- on June 1 and 2, 2009.

Geithner, who has lived in China and other parts of Asia and holds a master's in East Asian studies, met with top Chinese officials, including the head of CIC, China's $200 billion sovereign wealth fund, and the ministers of finance and commerce.

The trip had been scheduled for months with a predictable agenda, but the meetings were full of spontaneous discussion and frank complaints from the Chinese, the cables reveal.

Xie Xuren, China's minister of finance, met with Geithner on June 1 and "expressed concern about the potential for inflation and the long-term sustainability of U.S. budget deficits," according to a cable detailing Geithner's visit, dated June 17, 2009.

The next day, June 2, CIC Chairman Lou Jiwei confided in Geithner that his fund had halted all new investments in 2008 after the financial crisis broke out, but had since scoped out a new stake in Morgan Stanley, the U.S. investment bank.

At the time of Geithner's visit, Morgan Stanley was planning a new share issue to raise funds to repay the government for the money it received during the financial crisis.

"Lou asked if it would be possible for the Fed to expedite approval of CIC's request that this investment be exempted from restrictions on investment by bank holding companies, as the customary two-week process for considering such exemption requests is too long to allow CIC to take advantage of this opportunity," according to the cable.

There's no record in the cable of how Geithner responded, but it was only a day later, on June 3, that CIC announced plans to purchase $1.2 billion in Morgan Stanley shares.

A spokesperson for the Fed said in the instance of the June 3 CIC investment, no application for an exemption was made to the Federal Reserve Board.

(Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke and Mark Hosenball; Editing by Jim Impoco and Claudia Parsons)