Toll from China quake hits 94, with 1,000 injured

July 23, 2013

BEIJING (AP) — Rescuers with shovels and sniffer dogs chipped away at collapsed hillsides Tuesday as the death toll rose to 94 from a strong earthquake in a farming region of northwest China.

Just one person was listed as missing and 1,001 as injured in Monday morning's quake near the city of Dingxi in Gansu province. About 123,000 people were affected by the quake, with 31,600 moved to temporary shelters, the provincial earthquake administration said on its website. Almost 2,000 homes were completely destroyed, and about 22,500 damaged, the administration said.

The quake toppled brick walls and telephone lines, shattered mud-and-tile-roofed houses and sent cascades of dirt and rock down hillsides, blocking roads and slowing rescue efforts by crews trying to reach remote areas.

Hospitals set up aid stations in parking lots to accommodate the injured, while hundreds of paramilitary People's Armed Police fanned out to search for victims in the region of terraced farmland where the quake struck about 1,200 kilometers (760 miles) west of Beijing.

Min county in Dingxi's rural south accounted for almost all the deaths and the worst damage. Urban areas where buildings are more solid were spared major damage, unlike the traditional mud and brick homes in the countryside.

Tremors were felt in the provincial capital of Lanzhou 177 kilometers (110 miles) north, and as far away as Xi'an, 400 kilometers (250 miles) to the east. The government's earthquake monitoring center said the quake was magnitude-6.6, while the U.S. Geological Survey said it was 5.9. Measurements can often vary, especially if different monitoring equipment is used.

The Chinese Red Cross said it was shipping 200 tents, 1,000 sets of household items, and 2,000 jackets to the area. Other supplies were being shipped in by the army and paramilitary police, which dispatched around 6,000 personnel and two helicopters to aid in rescue efforts.

But heavy rain is expected later in the week, raising the need for shelter and increasing the chance of further landslides. Gansu, with a population of 26 million, is one of China's more lightly populated provinces, although the New Jersey-sized area of Dingxi has a greater concentration of farms in rolling hills terraced for crops and fruit trees. Dingxi has a population of about 2.7 million.

China's worst earthquake in recent years was a 7.9-magnitude temblor that struck the southwestern province of Sichuan in 2008, leaving 90,000 people dead or missing.

William, Kate, show off their royal newborn son

July 24, 2013

LONDON (AP) — Prince William and his wife Kate presented their newborn son to the world for the first time Tuesday, drawing whoops and wild applause from well-wishers as they revealed the new face of the British monarchy — though not, yet, his name.

"We're still working on a name. So we'll have that as soon as we can," William told scores of reporters gathered outside St. Mary's Hospital as he cradled the child. The young family's debut public appearance was the moment the world's media had been waiting for, but the royal couple showed no sign of stress in the face of dozens of flashing cameras. Instead the couple, both 31, laughed and joked with reporters as they took turns holding their baby son, who appeared to doze through it all.

"He's got her looks, thankfully," William said, referring to his wife, the Duchess of Cambridge, as the newborn prince squirmed in his arms and poked a tiny hand out of his swaddling blanket, almost like a little royal wave.

"He's got a good pair of lungs on him, that's for sure," William added with a grin. "He's a big boy. He's quite heavy." The infant is third in line to become monarch one day, after his grandfather, Prince Charles, and William.

But for now, the media and the public were focused on getting all the details of new parenthood they could from the couple: How they feel, what the baby looks like, and even who changed the diapers. Kate, wearing a simple baby blue dress, said William had already had a go at changing the first one.

"He's very good at it," she said. Asked how she felt, she said: "It's very emotional. It's such a special time. I think any parent will know what this feeling feels like." And William poked fun at his own lack of hair when he responded with a wink to a reporter's question about the baby's locks: "He's got way more than me, thank God."

It was a much more relaxed scene than the one when Princess Diana and Prince Charles carried their newborn son, William, out to pose for photographs on the same hospital steps in 1982. Charles, wearing a dark suit, tie and boutonniere, spoke awkwardly to reporters. By contrast, William, dressed in jeans and a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, joked with the assembled media and addressed some by name. At his side, Kate waved and smiled broadly, the blue sapphire engagement ring that had been Diana's on her finger.

The photographs snapped Tuesday are likely to be reprinted for decades as the baby grows into adulthood and his role as a future king, and onlookers were elated to witness the historic moment. "William gave us a wave as they drove away, so it was perfect. Days like this really bring the country together," said Katie Allan, 26, from Bristol, England.

The couple re-entered the hospital to place the child in a car seat before re-emerging to get into a black Range Rover. With William at the wheel, they drove away. Palace officials said they will head to an apartment in Kensington Palace and spend the night there.

The birth marks a new chapter for William and Kate, who had enjoyed a quiet life away from the public eye in Anglesey, Wales, since their wedding in April 2011. The couple had been living in a small Welsh cottage while William — known as Flight Lieutenant Wales — completed his term as a search-and-rescue pilot.

Now that they are a family, they are moving to a much larger apartment in Kensington Palace in central London, where William spent most of his childhood and where it will be much more difficult to keep a low profile and avoid the press.

Earlier Tuesday, William's father, Charles, and his wife, Camilla, as well as Michael and Carole Middleton — Kate's parents — visited the young family at the hospital. Charles called the baby "marvelous," while a beaming Carole Middleton described the infant as "absolutely beautiful."

It was not immediately clear when Queen Elizabeth II would meet the newborn heir. The queen was hosting a reception at Buckingham Palace Tuesday evening, and was due to leave for an annual holiday in Scotland in the coming days.

Meanwhile, much of Britain and parts of the Commonwealth were celebrating the birth of a future monarch. News that Kate gave birth to the 8 pound, 6 ounce (3.8 kilogram) boy on Monday was greeted with shrieks of joy and applause by hundreds of Britons and tourists gathered outside the hospital's private Lindo Wing and the gates of Buckingham Palace.

Revelers staged impromptu parties, and large crowds crushed against the palace gates to try to catch a glimpse — and a photograph — of the golden easel placed there to formally announce the birth. Hundreds were still lining up outside the palace gates Tuesday to get near the ornate easel.

In London, gun salutes were fired, celebratory lights came on, and bells chimed at Westminster Abbey, where William and Kate wed in a lavish ceremony that drew millions of television viewers worldwide.

The baby is just a day old — and may not be named for days or even weeks — but he already has a building dedicated to him. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said an enclosure at Sydney's Taronga Park Zoo would be named after the prince as part of a gift from Australia. The government will also donate $9,300 on the young prince's behalf toward a research project at the zoo to save the endangered bilby, a rabbit-like marsupial whose numbers are dwindling in the wild.

British media joined in the celebration, with many newspapers printing souvenir editions. "It's a Boy!" was splashed across many front pages, while Britain's top-selling The Sun newspaper temporarily changed its name to "The Son" in honor of the tiny monarch-in-waiting.

"His First Royal Wave" read the headline on the Times front page that accompanied a photo of the newborn, his tiny fist poking out from the white blanket he was swaddled in. The birth is the latest driver of a surge in popularity for Britain's monarchy, whose members have evolved, over several decades of social and technological change, from distant figures to characters in a well-loved national soap opera.

"I think this baby is hugely significant for the future of the monarchy," said Kate's biographer, Claudia Joseph. For some, though, it was all a bit much. The wry front page on British satirical magazine "Private Eye" — which simply read "Woman Has Baby" — summed up the indifference some felt about the news.

"It's a baby, nothing else," said Tom Ashton, a 42-year-old exterminator on his way to work. "It's not going to mean anything to my life."

Associated Press writers Jill Lawless, Raphael Satter, Gregory Katz, Paisley Dodds, Maria Cheng and James Brooks in London, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, and Kristen Gelineau in Sydney, Australia, contributed to this report.

Solomons peacekeeping force pulls back after 10 years

By Neil Sands | AFP News

The largest military operation in the Pacific since World War II wound up in the Solomon Islands on Wednesday after a decade working to end deep-seated ethnic violence in the poverty-stricken nation.

The Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) deployed in a fanfare of publicity in 2003 after a desperate appeal from Honiara for international assistance.

Since then, it has adopted a low-key approach to bringing stability to the nation of about 600,000 people, which lies 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) northeast of Australia.

At a ceremony in the capital on Wednesday RAMSI marked the 10th anniversary of the mission and the end of its military phase, with future operations concentrating on policing and governance.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Gordon Darcy Lilo said the real test for the nation was only now starting.

"I still remember vividly that there was a time in our lives when there was no hope," he told the ceremony.

"Ten short years ago, many people lived in fear, desperation and destitution.

"The real test is what we do when RAMSI leaves, whether we can hold together as a nation, or we crumble once again into individual microcosms that cannot work together."

Jenny Hayward-Jones, a Melanesia expert at Sydney-based foreign affairs think tank The Lowy Institute, told AFP the mission had been a success, "certainly in terms of restoring law and order".

"However, there's still not the level of trust from the Solomons population in their police that should have been achieved in 10 years," she said.

When RAMSI was formed, the Solomons government was at the mercy of warlords, ethnic militants and a corrupt police force, with virtually no control outside the capital Honiara.

More than 200 people had been killed and tens of thousands left homeless as gangs from rival islands terrorized local populations, with Australia's then-prime minister John Howard warning the situation posed a risk to regional stability.

"A failed state in our region, on our doorstep, will jeopardize our own security. The best thing we can do is to take remedial action and take it now," Howard said at the time as the situation looked set to spiral out of control.

The answer was RAMSI, a peacekeeping force led by Australia with support from New Zealand and 13 other nations from the Pacific Islands Forum.

Its troops landed near Honiara on July 24, 2003, at Red Beach, symbolically selecting the site where US Marines stormed ashore in 1942 to launch the bloody Guadalcanal campaign against the Japanese.

Unsure of the reception the militias planned, they had shoot-to-kill clearance if engaged in a firefight.

However, resistance never materialized and within a few months most warlords had been arrested and their followers disarmed.

There have been isolated outbreaks of unrest since, including riots after elections in 2006, but New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) said the situation had stabilized.

Hayward-Jones said RAMSI had acted as a "quasi government" in the Solomons since then and was keen to have the administration in Honiara take responsibility for the country again.

"This 10th anniversary ceremony is sending a message that the Solomons is ready to stand on its own two feet again," she said.

Islamic and secular laws clash in Nigeria's Senate

July 23, 2013

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Many Nigerians are enraged, wondering how a senator notorious for marrying a 14-year-old girl can use Shariah law as an excuse to filibuster a constitutional amendment that has sparked a debate on the age of consent for girls.

Since the country's secular and Islamic laws clashed in the upper house of Parliament last week, concerned citizens are using petitions, protests and social networks to demand the Senate revisit the issue.

"Every Nigerian should bow his or her head in shame because instead of crushing the head of the lustful beast that seeks to fornicate with our children, to steal their virtues and to destroy their future, what the Senate did the other day was to compromise with and cater for the filthy appetites and godless fantasies of a bunch of child molesters and sexual predators," Femi Fani-Kayode, a traditional chief and former Cabinet minister, fumed in a letter to The Vanguard newspaper Monday.

The vote was on an amendment to set the age when Nigerians can renounce their citizenship, but it has wider implications because it suggests when a girl is old enough to be married. Currently, the constitution says only that a person must be of "full age" to renounce citizenship. The Senate had voted to approve an amendment to set the age at 18, to bring the clause in line with other laws setting the age of consent for marriage and voting.

But, after the vote was counted and against Senate rules and procedures, Sen. Sani Ahmed Yerima opposed the age limit, saying it goes against Islamic law. "By Islamic law any woman that is married, she is of age, so if you now say she is not of age then it means that you are going against Islamic law," declared Yerima.

In the second vote forced by Yerima, several Muslim senators who had voted "yes" to set the age at 18, changed their minds, and the amendment did not get the two-thirds majority needed to pass, according to Sen. Tenyi Abaribe, the Senate spokesman.

So now, a Nigerian male must be 18 to renounce his citizenship but a girl married at 14, like one of Yerima's wives, can do it at a much younger age. The vote applied only to citizenship, Abaribe emphasized.

Nigerians are seeing it as a confrontation with other laws that dictate a girl should not marry until she is 18 and, coming from a man known for marrying children, as a gateway challenge to those laws.

"The government needs to stick with the age of consent being 18 and to work with communities in recognizing that a child is a child," said Iheoma Obibi of the Nigerian Feminist Forum. Her forum has lodged a protest along with the Gender and Constitutional Reform Network, and other groups including advocates using the Twitter hash tag #ChildNOTBride.

Nobody knows quite how many thousands of girls are forced into marriage here — some say more than 50 percent of girls in the Muslim north — often sold for a bride price in mainly poor and rural communities.

Yerima is infamous for his marriage to a 14-year-old Egyptian girl in 2010, when he was 49. He had divorced a 17-year-old whom he married when she was 15, to comply with Islamic law that allows a maximum of four wives at a time.

Then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rebuked Yerima for "child slavery," and the State Department's 2012 report on human rights complained that Nigerian authorities did nothing to prosecute Yerima.

In a public outcry at the time, activists demanded that prosecutors investigate and Yerima be forced out of Parliament. Instead, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons questioned Yerima but said it lacked evidence to charge him. It said Yerima had paid $100,000 for the young bride, the daughter of his Egyptian driver.

The government agency recommended the justice minister and attorney general investigate Yerima for violating Nigeria's 2003 Child Rights Act. "But nothing was done, he has got away with it," said women's right activist Obibi.

She pointed to the horrendous statistics that show a high percentage of young girls suffer damage in child birth, with maternity wards in the mainly Muslim north filled with young mothers whose vaginas, uteruses and anal passages have ruptured. According to the U.N. Children's Fund, Nigeria has 2 percent of the world's underage marriages but 10 percent of its victims of vesicovaginal fistula, which leaves the girls incontinent, dripping urine and feces.

Such girls are often divorced and abandoned, left to beg on the streets or turn to prostitution, Obibi said. Dupe Killa, a human resources manager and mother of two girls, started an online petition at #ChildNOTBride after the Senate vote. When the petition was oversubscribed within hours, she decided to take to the streets to get signatures and has won support, including from the country's influential Movement for Islamic Culture and Awareness.

Protesters handed out #ChildNOTBride flyers featuring the silhouette of a girl with pig tails and bows set in a protective red circle. The petition urges the Senate and National Assembly to stop "loopholes within which Nigeria can continue to discriminate against half the population (i.e. females)."

Yerima was instrumental in introducing Shariah law to Nigeria's nine northern states in 2000 and 2001, when he was governor of Zamfara state. Another three states where Muslims form a plurality have since instituted Shariah as a substitute for Western-style family law for Muslims wishing to use it. The other 25 states are governed by secular law.

Shariah is interpreted differently by scholars and laws differ according to a country's history and culture. Fani-Kayode, the former minister, said most Muslim countries have banned child marriage and rape.

Nigeria's population, at 160 million the biggest in Africa, is almost equally divided between a mainly Muslim north and majority Christian south. While the religions coexist peacefully in most of the country, there are frequent and bloody clashes between militant Muslims and Christians in the north. Tens of thousands of been killed over the years, and churches and mosques razed.

Associated Press photographer Sunday Alamba contributed to this report from Lagos.

William and Kate thank hospital for baby care

July 23, 2013

LONDON (AP) — Prince William, Kate and their baby boy were spending their first full day as a family Tuesday inside a London hospital, thanking staff for their care but making well-wishers wait for a first glimpse of the royal heir.

As celebratory lights, gun salutes and other tributes were unleashed in Britain and abroad, William thanked staff at St. Mary's Hospital "for the tremendous care the three of us have received." "We know it has been a very busy period for the hospital and we would like to thank everyone — staff, patients and visitors — for their understanding during this time," he said in a statement.

The couple's Kensington Palace office said Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, had given birth to the 8 pound, 6 ounce (3.8 kilogram) baby boy at 4:24 p.m. Monday, triggering an impromptu party outside Buckingham Palace and in front of the hospital's private Lindo Wing.

The palace said Tuesday that "mother, son and father are all doing well this morning." The new family was expected to remain in the hospital until Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. In the meantime the infant's appearance — and his name — remain a royal mystery.

Tourists and well-wishers flocked to Buckingham Palace on Tuesday, lining up outside the gates to take pictures of the golden easel on which, in keeping with royal tradition, the birth announcement was displayed.

"This was a great event — yet again our royal family is bringing everyone together," said 27-year-old David Wills, who took a two-mile detour on his run to work to pass the palace. "I kind of feel as though I am seeing part of history here today."

A band of scarlet-clad guardsman at the palace delighted onlookers with a rendition of the song "Congratulations." Other celebrations Tuesday included gun salutes by royal artillery companies to honor the birth and the ringing of bells at London's Westminster Abbey.

Halfway around the world, royalist group Monarchy New Zealand said it had organized a national light show, with 40 buildings across the islands lit up in blue to commemorate the royal birth, including Sky Tower in Auckland, the airport in Christchurch, and Larnach Castle in the South Island city of Dunedin. A similar lighting ceremony took place in Canada; Peace Tower and Parliament buildings in the capital, Ottawa, were bathed in blue light, as was CN Tower in Toronto.

The baby isn't even a day old — and may not be named for days or even weeks — but he already has a building dedicated to him. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said an enclosure at Sydney's Taronga Park Zoo would be named after the prince as part of a gift from Australia. The government would donate 10,000 Australian dollars ($9,300) on the young prince's behalf toward a research project at the zoo to save the endangered bilby, a rabbit-like marsupial whose numbers are dwindling in the wild.

British media joined in the celebration, with many newspapers printing souvenir editions. "It's a Boy!" was splashed across many front pages, while Britain's top-selling The Sun newspaper temporarily changed its name to "The Son" in honor of the tiny monarch-in-waiting.

Beyond the newsstands, the birth of the royal baby was welcome news in a country where polls show the monarchy is as popular as any time in recent history. In the Yorkshire village of Bugthorpe — which Prince Charles was visiting as part of a tour through northern England — the baby was on everyone's lips.

"Morning Granddad," said local resident Robert Barrett, which drew a chuckle from the prince. Back in London, there was a healthy interest in the baby's name, combined with a note of concern for his future.

"I hope the child is given the opportunity to have a normal childhood," said Julie Warren, a 70-year-old retired schoolteacher waiting for her grandson outside one of the capital's subway stations. The birth caps a resurgence in popularity for Britain's monarchy, whose members have evolved, over several decades of social and technological change, from distant figures to characters in a well-loved national soap opera.

The institution reached a popular nadir after the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in 1997. Diana had been popular, glamorous and — in the eyes of many — badly treated by the royal "Firm." But the dignified endurance of Queen Elizabeth II — now in her 62nd year on the throne — and the emergence of an attractive young generation that includes William, his soldier-socialite brother Prince Harry and the glamorous, middle-class Kate has been a breath of fresh air for the monarchy.

The baby, born to a prince and a commoner, looks set to help the institution thrive for another generation. "I think this baby is hugely significant for the future of the monarchy," said Kate's biographer, Claudia Joseph. "It is the first future king for 350 years to have such an unusual family tree. Not since Queen Mary II has the offspring of a 'commoner' been an heir to the throne."

That view was echoed by Pippa Rowe, head teacher at the primary school in Kate's home village of Bucklebury, west of London. "The children have been very excited about the birth — fizzing is the word I would use," she said. "It's all the talk in the playground.

"I think this will enable the children to have a real chance to connect with the monarchy. They learn about kings and queens but we are going to have a real live prince with one set of grandparents living down the road."

For some, though, it was all a bit much. "It's a baby, nothing else," said Tom Ashton, a 42-year-old exterminator on his way to work. "It's not going to mean anything to my life."

Associated Press writers Gregory Katz, Paisley Dodds, and Maria Cheng in London, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, and Kristen Gelineau in Sydney contributed to this report.

Egypt: 6 dead in Cairo university clashes

July 23, 2013

CAIRO (AP) — Clashes between supporters and opponents of the country's ousted president before dawn on Tuesday near the main campus of Cairo University left six dead, a senior medical official said.

Khaled el-Khateeb, who heads the Health Ministry's emergency and intensive care department, said the six died close to the site of a sit-in by supporters of Mohammed Morsi, ousted by the military on July 3 after a year in office.

The ouster of Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president, followed massive street protests by millions of Egyptians demanding that the Islamist president step down. His supporters are calling for his reinstatement and insist they will not join the military-backed political process until then.

The latest clashes capped a day marred by violence in several parts of the country. In the town of Qalioub north of Cairo, three people were killed Monday in clashes between supporters and opponents of Morsi. Backers of the two sides also fought near the site of the main sit-in by Morsi supporters in an eastern Cairo district and in the central Tahrir square, birthplace of the 2011 uprising that toppled the regime of Morsi's authoritarian predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

More than 80 people were injured on Monday, according to el-Khateeb. Morsi's family denounced the military in a Monday news conference, accusing it of "kidnapping" him, and European diplomats urged that he be released after being held incommunicado for nearly three weeks since his ouster.

The fate of Morsi, who has been held without charge, has become a focus of the political battle between Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood and the new military-backed government. The Brotherhood has tried to use his detention to rally the country to its side, hoping to restore its badly damaged popularity. The interim government, in turn, appears in part to be using it to pressure his supporters into backing down from their protests demanding his reinstatement.

So far, however, the outcry over Morsi's detention seems to have gained little traction beyond the president's supporters, without bringing significantly greater numbers to its ongoing rallies around the country.

In a toughly worded statement Monday, the Brotherhood laid out a plan for resolving the crisis that was little changed from what Morsi proposed in his final days in office. It said Morsi must first be reinstated along with the now-dissolved upper house of parliament and the suspended constitution, followed by new parliamentary elections that would start a process for amending the constitution, and then a "national dialogue" could be held.

It denounced those behind Morsi's ouster as "putschists" and accused "coup commanders, with foreign support" of overthrowing "all the hopes in a democratic system." Interim President Adly Mansour repeated calls for reconciliation in a nationally televised speech late Monday. "We ... want to turn a new page in the nation's book," he said. "No contempt, no hatred, no divisions and no collisions." His speech marked the 61st anniversary of a military coup that toppled the monarchy and ushered the start of decades of de facto military rule.

Syria opposition hails EU's blacklisting Hezbollah

July 23, 2013

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria's main Western-backed opposition group on Tuesday welcomed an EU decision to place the military wing of Hezbollah on the bloc's terror list as a "step in the right direction," and called for the Lebanese militant group's leaders to be put on trial for their role in the Syrian civil war.

Hezbollah, a staunch ally of the Syrian regime, has sent its fighters to bolster President Bashar Assad's forces in their assault on rebel-held areas in Syria. The group was instrumental in helping government forces seize the strategic town of Qusair near the Lebanese border last month, and its members are believed to be fighting alongside regime forces in the central province of Homs.

The Shiite group's role is highly divisive in Lebanon and has outraged the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels fighting in Syria to topple Assad. The EU's 28 foreign ministers placed Hezbollah's military wing on its terror list on Monday after prolonged diplomatic pressure from the U.S. and Israel, which consider the group a terrorist organization.

Some European countries had pushed for EU action, citing a terrorist attack in Bulgaria's Black Sea resort of Burgas last year that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian. Hezbollah's military wing was accused of involvement, an allegation it denied. In March, a criminal court in Cyprus found a Hezbollah member guilty of helping to plan attacks on Israelis on the Mediterranean island.

But several EU nations have pointed to Hezbollah's involvement in Syria as further reason for the move. The Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition umbrella group, hailed the EU decision but stressed the need for European countries to take "concrete steps that would contribute to stopping the militia's involvement in Syria."

"We call for Hezbollah leaders to be put on trial for the terrorist crimes they committed on Syrian territory," the SNC said in a statement. It did not say where they should face trial, and the prospects of senior Hezbollah figures ever appearing in a courtroom to answer for the Iranian-backed group's role in Syria appear dim.

Iran, meanwhile, said the European Union's decision was "strange" and "uncalculated" and said it serves Israel's interests. Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Araghchi told a news conference in Tehran Tuesday that the designation won't change Hezbollah's "popular and justice-seeking identity."

In Syria, an al-Qaida-linked group warned civilians to stay off a road linking central Syria with the northern province of Aleppo, declaring it a military zone, as the rebels try to cut one of the regime's main routes for supplying its forces in the north, activists said Tuesday.

The warning comes a day after rebels went on the offensive in Syria's north, seizing three villages in the province where a military stalemate has been in place since last summer. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Aleppo Media Center said that Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, is threatening to target any vehicle using the road starting Wednesday. A copy of the warning was posted online.

The regime uses the route to ferry supplies to its forces in the north because the rebels already have severed the main north-south highway that connects Damascus with the embattled city of Aleppo, where regime forces have battled rebels in vicious street fighting for a year. The desert road was paved and opened by regime forces earlier this year.

The statement, which was stamped with the Nusra Front emblem, said the Syrian military "opened this road to civilian cars and trucks when in fact it is a military road." "There are daily clashes and military operations there. Holy warriors have booby-trapped the road," it said, instructing civilians not to use the road and claiming that the army will be using them as "human shields to cover its movements."

If the rebels succeed in cutting the road, it will be a major blow to the regime, making it more difficult to bring in military reinforcements as well as other supplies to Aleppo province, most of which is under rebel control.

Yemen President pardons Qaeda propagandist

2013-07-23

SANAA - Yemeni authorities on Tuesday released a journalist who had been detained for three years on charges of promoting Al-Qaeda, the state news agency Saba reported.

Investigative journalist Abdul Ilah Haydar Shae was arrested on August 16, 2010 on charges of links to Al-Qaeda and sentenced the following years to five years in prison.

Saba said in a text message he had been freed "after he spent three years in prison for working with Al-Qaeda."

But Shae will remain under house arrest for two years in line with an earlier court ruling, it said.

He was pardoned by President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, it added.

Shae was arrested after reporting US involvement in a deadly air raid against Al-Qaeda in southern Yemen, according to rights groups that had been calling for his release.

Last year, Amnesty International said that Shae had alleged US involvement in a December 2009 missile attack on Al-Majalah in Abyan province of southern Yemen, noting the strike killed 41 local residents, mostly women and children, and 14 Al-Qaeda suspects.

Former Yemeni strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh had issued an order for his release in February 2011 but rights groups said it was never carried out due to US pressure.

In January 2011, a special court convicted Shae, 34, of "working in the media for the benefit of Al-Qaeda, taking pictures of security buildings, embassies and foreign interests in Sanaa, and inciting Al-Qaeda to attack them."

Shae was close to slain US-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi.

Washington says Awlaqi, killed in a US drone strike in Yemen in September 2011, was linked to a failed 2009 attack on a US-bound airliner, who was killed on September 30 in an air strike in Yemen.

Shae, who was employed by Saba, said in July 2010 that security agents had kidnapped and beaten him.

An expert on terrorism, Shae is considered one of Yemen's most knowledgeable journalists on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- the network's local affiliate.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=60306.

Iraq: Al-Qaida claims prison raids

July 23, 2013

BAGHDAD (AP) — Al-Qaida's arm in Iraq has claimed responsibility for deadly raids on prisons on the outskirts of Baghdad this week that set free hundreds of prisoners, including some of its followers.

The statement issued in the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was posted on an online jihadist forum Tuesday. The group dubbed the prison assault operation that began late Sunday "Conquering the Tyrants," and says it involved 12 car bombs and help from prisoners who had managed to obtain weapons on the inside.

It claims to have freed hundreds of prisoners, including more than 500 mujahideen, or holy fighters. Iraqi officials have said the raids killed dozens and set free more than 500 inmates.

Syria rebels seize strategic regime bastion in Aleppo

2013-07-22

BEIRUT - Syria's rebels on Monday seized the strategic town of Khan al-Assal, a regime bastion in the northern province of Aleppo, a monitoring group said.

They also took two villages located southeast of Aleppo, as they advanced towards cutting off the army's supply route to Syria's second city.

Khan al-Assal was the last regime bastion in the west of Aleppo province, which lies on the Turkish border, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The town lies on a road linking the province to the western part of Aleppo city where rebels have stepped up their bids to break a year-long stalemate and take control of areas still in regime hands.

Large swathes of northern and eastern Syria are in rebel control, while much of central and southern Syria is squarely held by regime forces.

"Opposition fighters have taken control of the town of Khan al-Assal, which is strategically located in the west of Aleppo province," said the Britain-based Observatory.

The rebel Ninth Division, which is deployed in the western part of Aleppo city, also announced it had captured Khan al-Assal in an online video.

"We the leadership of the Ninth Division announce that the town of Khan al-Assal has been completely liberated," a rebel commander said in a video posted on YouTube.

The Observatory said clashes also raged on the southern outskirts of Khan al-Assal.

The rebels had tried for several months to advance on Khan al-Assal.

The town's biggest battle took place in March, when the rebels took control of the police academy and temporarily seized several other positions.

The eight-day battle killed 200 rebels and government forces.

Both sides also traded accusations that chemical weapons were used in Khan al-Assal and killed around 30 people, according to toll released in March by the Observatory and the regime.

The rebels also seized on Monday the villages of Obeida and Hajireh southeast of Aleppo city, the Observatory said.

The takeover comes amid a rebel attempt to cut off the army's main supply route linking Hama in central Syria to Aleppo in the north.

Meanwhile in Damascus, the loyalist air force staged two strikes against the eastern district of Jobar, home to sizeable pockets of resistance to the army, the Observatory said.

It also reported violence in southern Damascus and said the entrance to the Yarmuk Palestinian camp had been closed, a day after an army assault on rebel positions in the district.

Monday's violence comes a day after at least 232 people were killed across Syria, said the Observatory, adding the toll was one of the highest in the 28-month conflict.

Some 100,000 people have been killed in Syria's war since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad erupted in March 2011, according to Observatory figures.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=60275.

Syrian Kurds score more victories in ongoing battle against Jihadists

2013-07-23

BEIRUT - Syrian Kurds made rapid advances in the north of the country Tuesday, expelling jihadists from several villages, as a gulf of mistrust between Arabs and Kurds grew, a watchdog and activists said.

Tuesday's fighting hit several villages including Yabseh, Kandal and Jalbeh, which lie in the northern province of Raqa on Syria's border with Turkey and are home to a mixture of ethnic and religious communities, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It also reported that the Kurds expelled the jihadists from Kur Hassu, Atwan, Sarej and Khirbet Alu villages in the same area, which lies near the majority Kurdish town of Cobany.

In Hasake to the east, Kurdish-jihadist fighting went into the seventh consecutive day in the Jal Agha area and other villages in the majority Kurdish province, the Observatory added.

The latest battles come a week after fighters loyal to the Committees for the Protection of the Kurdish People (YPG) expelled the jihadist Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) from the strategic Kurdish town of Ras al-Ain in Hasake province.

Ever since, fighting has spread from Hasakeh in northeastern Syria to several hotspots in Raqa province in the north.

At least 70, most of them jihadists, have been killed in eight consecutive days of Kurdish-jihadist fighting, said the Observatory.

"What we are seeing is the spreading of fighting between Kurds and jihadists westwards, across areas that are home to both Arab and Kurdish communities," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

Though the fighting is between jihadists and organized Kurdish forces, there is "a growing gulf between Kurdish and Arab residents of these areas," Abdel Rahman said.

"The battle is morphing from a fight between the YPG and the jihadists to a struggle between Kurds and Arabs as a whole."

Prior to the outbreak of the 2011 revolt against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, the Kurds suffered for decades from marginalization and oppression at the hands of the Syrian regime.

When the revolt erupted, one of the first measures taken by Assad was to grant the Syrian nationality to Kurds who had up until then been deprived of this right.

Then, starting mid-2012, Assad's forces withdrew from Kurdish regions which now are run by local Kurdish councils.

The Kurds, who represent about 15 percent of the Syrian population, have since walked a fine line, trying to avoid antagonizing either the regime or the rebels.

But as abuses by jihadist groups in areas that have fallen out of Assad's control mounted, the Kurds announced they would seek a temporary autonomous state and establish a constitution.

The speedy developments have brought to the surface a deep-seated mistrust that has been heightened by the Syrian opposition's failure to adequately represent Kurdish groups, activists say.

"There hasn't been real trust at the political level since the start" of the revolt, Syrian Kurdish activist Havidar said via the Internet.

"We (Kurds) all stood by the revolution but unfortunately the Syrian opposition... has played games with the Kurds... and marginalized them," Havidar said.

As a consequence, "there is a very obvious divide now" between Kurds and Arabs, he said.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=60293.

Turkish protesters suffer defeat after victory: Court ruling casts new doubt on park's future

2013-07-22

ISTANBUL - A Turkish court on Monday overturned a judgment suspending the redevelopment of Istanbul's Gezi Park, the issue that sparked huge anti-government protests last month.

The regional administrative court reversed a May 31 decision by an Istanbul court to halt redevelopment work at the park, press agency Dogan reported.

But it is unclear whether the decision means work will resume at the park, because another Istanbul court ruled in June in a separate case that there should be no redevelopment because of a lack of public consultation.

Protesters said they were confident the controversial plans to raze the park and reconstruct an Ottoman-era military barracks on the site would not go forward.

"This order is unlawful. You can't even hammer a nail in the park because... (of the) Istanbul First Administration Court decision on the suspension of all construction efforts in the area," said lawyer Can Atalay, a noted opponent of the proposed development.

"This removal has no judicial effect. You need a construction plan to construct something in the first place. That plan is cancelled now," Atalay told news website Bianet.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government backs the redevelopment of the park.

Turkish police on May 31 violently dispersed hundreds of ecological activists who had gathered to protest the destruction of the park's 600 trees.

Anger over the authorities' heavy-handed response erupted into nationwide protests against the government and Erdogan, who many protesters accused of turning authoritarian and seeking to "Islamize" Turkish society.

According to police estimates, some 2.5 million people took to the streets in nearly 80 cities for three weeks to demand his resignation.

Five people were killed and more than 8,000 injured in the civil unrest.

Erdogan said on June 14 that his government will respect the courts' final decision on the park.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=60279.

Yemen President pardons Qaeda propagandist

2013-07-23

SANAA - Yemeni authorities on Tuesday released a journalist who had been detained for three years on charges of promoting Al-Qaeda, the state news agency Saba reported.

Investigative journalist Abdul Ilah Haydar Shae was arrested on August 16, 2010 on charges of links to Al-Qaeda and sentenced the following years to five years in prison.

Saba said in a text message he had been freed "after he spent three years in prison for working with Al-Qaeda."

But Shae will remain under house arrest for two years in line with an earlier court ruling, it said.

He was pardoned by President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, it added.

Shae was arrested after reporting US involvement in a deadly air raid against Al-Qaeda in southern Yemen, according to rights groups that had been calling for his release.

Last year, Amnesty International said that Shae had alleged US involvement in a December 2009 missile attack on Al-Majalah in Abyan province of southern Yemen, noting the strike killed 41 local residents, mostly women and children, and 14 Al-Qaeda suspects.

Former Yemeni strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh had issued an order for his release in February 2011 but rights groups said it was never carried out due to US pressure.

In January 2011, a special court convicted Shae, 34, of "working in the media for the benefit of Al-Qaeda, taking pictures of security buildings, embassies and foreign interests in Sanaa, and inciting Al-Qaeda to attack them."

Shae was close to slain US-born radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi.

Washington says Awlaqi, killed in a US drone strike in Yemen in September 2011, was linked to a failed 2009 attack on a US-bound airliner, who was killed on September 30 in an air strike in Yemen.

Shae, who was employed by Saba, said in July 2010 that security agents had kidnapped and beaten him.

An expert on terrorism, Shae is considered one of Yemen's most knowledgeable journalists on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula -- the network's local affiliate.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=60306.

Investigation - U.S. Bankrolled Anti-Morsi Activists

by Emad Mekay
21 July 2013

President Barack Obama recently stated the United States was not taking sides as Egypt's crisis came to a head with the military overthrow of the democratically elected president.

But a review of dozens of US federal government documents shows Washington has quietly funded senior Egyptian opposition figures who called for toppling of the country's now-deposed president Mohamed Morsi.

Documents obtained by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley show the US channeled funding through a State Department program to promote democracy in the Middle East region. This program vigorously supported activists and politicians who have fomented unrest in Egypt, after autocratic president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising in February 2011.

The State Department's program, dubbed by US officials as a "democracy assistance" initiative, is part of a wider Obama administration effort to try to stop the retreat of pro-Washington secularists, and to win back influence in Arab Spring countries that saw the rise of Islamists, who largely oppose US interests in the Middle East.

Activists bankrolled by the program include an exiled Egyptian police officer who plotted the violent overthrow of the Morsi government, an anti-Islamist politician who advocated closing mosques and dragging preachers out by force, as well as a coterie of opposition politicians who pushed for the ouster of the country's first democratically elected leader, government documents show.

Information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, interviews, and public records reveal Washington's "democracy assistance" may have violated Egyptian law, which prohibits foreign political funding.

It may also have broken US government regulations that ban the use of taxpayers' money to fund foreign politicians, or finance subversive activities that target democratically elected governments.

'Bureau for Democracy'

Washington's democracy assistance program for the Middle East is filtered through a pyramid of agencies within the State Department. Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars is channeled through the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), USAID, as well as the Washington-based, quasi-governmental organisation the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

In turn, those groups re-route money to other organisations such as the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute (NDI), and Freedom House, among others. Federal documents show these groups have sent funds to certain organisations in Egypt, mostly run by senior members of anti-Morsi political parties who double as NGO activists.

The Middle East Partnership Initiative - launched by the George W Bush administration in 2002 in a bid to influence politics in the Middle East in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks - has spent close to $900m on democracy projects across the region, a federal grants database shows.

USAID manages about $1.4bn annually in the Middle East, with nearly $390m designated for democracy promotion, according to the Washington-based Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

The US government doesn't issue figures on democracy spending per country, but Stephen McInerney, POMED's executive director, estimated that Washington spent some $65m in 2011 and $25m in 2012. He said he expects a similar amount paid out this year.

A main conduit for channeling the State Department's democracy funds to Egypt has been the National Endowment for Democracy. Federal documents show NED, which in 2011 was authorized an annual budget of $118m by Congress, funneled at least $120,000 over several years to an exiled Egyptian police officer who has for years incited violence in his native country.

This appears to be in direct contradiction to its Congressional mandate, which clearly states NED is to engage only in "peaceful" political change overseas.

Exiled policeman

Colonel Omar Afifi Soliman - who served in Egypt's elite investigative police unit, notorious for human rights abuses - began receiving NED funds in 2008 for at least four years.

During that time he and his followers targeted Mubarak's government, and Soliman later followed the same tactics against the military rulers who briefly replaced him. Most recently Soliman set his sights on Morsi's government.

Soliman, who has refugee status in the US, was sentenced in absentia last year for five years imprisonment by a Cairo court for his role in inciting violence in 2011 against the embassies of Israel and Saudi Arabia, two US allies.

He also used social media to encourage violent attacks against Egyptian officials, according to court documents and a review of his social media posts.

US Internal Revenue Service documents reveal that NED paid tens of thousands of dollars to Soliman through an organisation he created called Hukuk Al-Nas (People's Rights), based in Falls Church, Virginia. Federal forms show he is the only employee.

After he was awarded a 2008 human rights fellowship at NED and moved to the US, Soliman received a second $50,000 NED grant in 2009 for Hukuk Al-Nas. In 2010, he received $60,000 and another $10,000 in 2011.

In an interview with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, Soliman reluctantly admitted he received US government funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, but complained it wasn't enough. "It is like $2000 or $2,500 a month," he said. "Do you think this is too much? Obama wants to give us peanuts. We will not accept that."

NED has removed public access to its Egyptian grant recipients in 2011 and 2012 from its website. NED officials didn't respond to repeated interview requests.

'Pro bono advice'

NED's website says Soliman spreads only nonviolent literature, and his group was set up to provide "immediate, pro bono legal advice through a telephone hotline, instant messaging, and other social networking tools".

However, in Egyptian media interviews, social media posts and YouTube videos, Soliman encouraged the violent overthrow of Egypt's government, then led by the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party.

"Incapacitate them by smashing their knee bones first," he instructed followers on Facebook in late June, as Morsi's opponents prepared massive street rallies against the government. Egypt's US-funded and trained military later used those demonstrations to justify its coup on July 3.

"Make a road bump with a broken palm tree to stop the buses going into Cairo, and drench the road around it with gas and diesel. When the bus slows down for the bump, set it all ablaze so it will burn down with all the passengers inside ... God bless," Soliman's post read.

In late May he instructed, "Behead those who control power, water and gas utilities."

Soliman removed several older social media posts after authorities in Egypt took notice of his subversive instructions, court documents show.

Egyptian women supporters of ousted president Morsi [EPA]

More recent Facebook instructions to his 83,000 followers range from guidelines on spraying roads with a mix of auto oil and gas - "20 liters of oil to 4 liters of gas"- to how to thwart cars giving chase.

On a YouTube video, Soliman took credit for a failed attempt in December to storm the Egyptian presidential palace with handguns and Molotov cocktails to oust Morsi.

"We know he gets support from some groups in the US, but we do not know he is getting support from the US government. This would be news to us," said an Egyptian embassy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Funding other Morsi opponents

Other beneficiaries of US government funding are also opponents of the now-deposed president, some who had called for Morsi's removal by force.

The Salvation Front main opposition bloc, of which some members received US funding, has backed street protest campaigns that turned violent against the elected government, in contradiction of many of the State Department's own guidelines.

A longtime grantee of the National Endowment for Democracy and other US democracy groups is a 34-year old Egyptian woman, Esraa Abdel-Fatah, who sprang to notoriety during the country's pitched battle over the new constitution in December 2012.

She exhorted activists to lay siege to mosques and drag from pulpits all Muslim preachers and religious figures who supported the country's the proposed constitution, just before it went to a public referendum.

The act of besieging mosques has continued ever since, and several people have died in clashes defending them.

Federal records show Abdel-Fatah's NGO, the Egyptian Democratic Academy, received support from NED, MEPI and NDI, among other State Department-funded groups "assisting democracy". Records show NED gave her organization a one-year $75,000 grant in 2011.

Abdel-Fatah is politically active, crisscrossing Egypt to rally support for her Al-Dostor Party, which is led by former UN nuclear chief Mohamed El-Baradei, the most prominent figure in the Salvation Front. She lent full support to the military takeover, and urged the West not call it a "coup".

"June 30 will be the last day of Morsi's term," she told the press a few weeks before the coup took place.

US taxpayer money has also been sent to groups set up by some of Egypt's richest people, raising questions about waste in the democracy program.

Michael Meunier is a frequent guest on TV channels that opposed Morsi. Head of the Al-Haya Party, Meunier - a dual US-Egyptian citizen - has quietly collected US funding through his NGO, Hand In Hand for Egypt Association.

Meunier's organization was founded by some of the most vehement opposition figures, including Egypt's richest man and well-known Coptic Christian billionaire Naguib Sawiris, Tarek Heggy, an oil industry executive, Salah Diab, Halliburton's partner in Egypt, and Usama Ghazali Harb, a politician with roots in the Mubarak regime and a frequent US embassy contact.

Meunier has denied receiving US assistance, but government documents show USAID in 2011 granted his Cairo-based organisation $873,355. Since 2009, it has taken in $1.3 million from the US agency.

Meunier helped rally the country's five million Christian Orthodox Coptic minority, who oppose Morsi's Islamist agenda, to take to the streets against the president on June 30.

Reform and Development Party member Mohammed Essmat al-Sadat received US financial support through his Sadat Association for Social Development, a grantee of The Middle East Partnership Initiative.

The federal grants records and database show in 2011 Sadat collected $84,445 from MEPI "to work with youth in the post-revolutionary Egypt".

Sadat was a member of the coordination committee, the main organizing body for the June 30 anti-Morsi protest. Since 2008, he has collected $265,176 in US funding. Sadat announced he will be running for office again in upcoming parliamentary elections.

After soldiers and police killed more than 50 Morsi supporters on Monday, Sadat defended the use of force and blamed the Muslim Brotherhood, saying it used women and children as shields.

Some US-backed politicians have said Washington tacitly encouraged them to incite protests.

"We were told by the Americans that if we see big street protests that sustain themselves for a week, they will reconsider all current US policies towards the Muslim Brotherhood regime," said Saaddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American politician opposed Morsi.

Ibrahim's Ibn Khaldoun Center in Cairo receives US funding, one of the largest recipients of democracy promotion money in fact.

His comments followed statements by other Egyptian opposition politicians claiming they had been prodded by US officials to whip up public sentiment against Morsi before Washington could publicly weigh in.

Democracy program defense

The practice of funding politicians and anti-government activists through NGOs was vehemently defended by the State Department and by a group of Washington-based Middle East experts close to the program.

"The line between politics and activism is very blurred in this country," said David Linfield, spokesman for the US Embassy in Cairo.

Others said the United States cannot be held responsible for activities by groups it doesn't control.

"It's a very hot and dynamic political scene," said Michelle Dunne, an expert at the Atlantic Council think-tank. Her husband, Michael Dunne, was given a five-year jail sentence in absentia by a Cairo court for his role in political funding in Egypt.

"Just because you give someone some money, you cannot take away their freedom or the position they want to take," said Dunne.

Elliot Abrams, a former official in the administration of George W. Bush and a member of the Working Group on Egypt that includes Dunne, denied in an email message that the US has paid politicians in Egypt, or elsewhere in the Middle East.

"The US does not provide funding for parties or 'local politicians' in Egypt or anywhere else," said Abrams. "That is prohibited by law and the law is scrupulously obeyed by all US agencies, under careful Congressional oversight."

But a State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, said American support for foreign political activists was in line with American principles.

"The US government provides support to civil society, democracy and human rights activists around the world, in line with our long-held values, such as respecting the fundamental human rights of free speech, peaceful assembly, and human dignity," the official wrote in an email. "US outreach in Egypt is consistent with these principles."

A Cairo court convicted 43 local and foreign NGO workers last month on charges of illegally using foreign funds to stir unrest in Egypt. The US and UN expressed concern over the move.

Out of line

Some Middle East observers suggested the US' democracy push in Egypt may be more about buying influence than spreading human rights and good governance.

"Funding of politicians is a problem," said Robert Springborg, who evaluated democracy programs for the State Department in Egypt, and is now a professor at the National Security Department of the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey, California.

"If you run a program for electoral observation, or for developing media capacity for political parties, I am not against that. But providing lots of money to politicians - I think that raises lots of questions," Springborg said.

Some Egyptians, meanwhile, said the US was out of line by sending cash through its democracy program in the Middle East to organisations run by political operators.

"Instead of being sincere about backing democracy and reaching out to the Egyptian people, the US has chosen an unethical path," said Esam Neizamy, an independent researcher into foreign funding in Egypt, and a member of the country's Revolutionary Trustees, a group set up to protect the 2011 revolution.

"The Americans think they can outsmart lots of people in the Middle East. They are being very hostile against the Egyptian people who have nothing but goodwill for them - so far," Neizamy said.

Source: allAfrica.
Link: http://allafrica.com/stories/201307220534.html?viewall=1.

World's largest building opens in west China

July 12, 2013

BEIJING (AP) -- Move aside Dubai. China now has what is billed as the world's largest building — a vast, wavy rectangular box of glass and steel that will house shops, hotels, offices and a faux ocean beach with a huge LED screen for video sunsets.

The mammoth New Century Global Center that opened last month in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu has 1.7 million square meters (19 million square feet) of floor space — or about 329 football fields — edging out the previous record-holder, the Dubai airport.

The structure is half a kilometer long, 400 meters wide and 100 meters high.

The New Century project is a sign that China's growth has spread from the country's more prosperous eastern and southern regions to the west, where wages are lower and the central government has encouraged development with subsidies and tax breaks. With its booming economy, China has become home to some of the largest and tallest buildings in the world.

Backed by local governments, the building in a planned urban district south of Chengdu aims to boost the global stature of the capital city of Sichuan province, known for its spicy cuisine.

Once fully completed, the centerpiece of the building will be a water park with a 400-meter coast and beaches under a gigantic glass dome. Up to 6,000 visitors at a time will be able to sunbathe, play in a wave pool, sip cocktails or feast on seafood. A 150-meter-by-40-meter LED screen will rise above a section of water with videos of an ocean horizon.

The center will include two five-star hotels as well as high-end boutiques set in a replica of a Mediterranean town under faux blue skies. The shopping section has been open to the public since late June, though the building's office space has been occupied for some time.

The building also has a 14-screen movie theater and an ice rink.

Ex-Russian spy Anna Chapman proposes marriage to Edward Snowden

Claudine Zap July 4, 2013
Yahoo! News

The rest of the world may not want him, but NSA leaker Edward Snowden has at least one potential taker: Anna Chapman. The ex-spy tweeted yesterday, “Snowden, will you marry me?!”

The former Russian spy may have sympathy for the man who spilled top-secret documents. Chapman, after all, is no stranger to run-ins with government authorities.

The 31-year-old had been posing as a real-estate agent in the United States in 2010 when she was accused of gathering intel for Russia. She and nine others were deported back to Russia in a prisoner swap.

Now the ex-secret agent has become a celebrity in her homeland, most recently as host of the TV show, “Secrets of the World.”

Snowden may have caught Chapman’s attention since he landed at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport to seek refuge. “@nsa will you look after our children?” She posted later.

But Snowden seems to be unavailable at the moment -- and may be rejected by Russia as well. After 11 days, the AP reports that “Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia had received no request for political asylum from Snowden and he had to solve his problems himself.”

The NSA contractor has been on the run since he spilled secrets on the classified NSA surveillance programs to the press. He has been in diplomatic limbo since having his passport revoked, and has had countless requests for asylum refused.

Russia holds biggest war games in decades

July 16, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday watched Russia's biggest military maneuvers since Soviet times, involving 160,000 troops and about 5,000 tanks across Siberia and the far eastern region in a massive show of the nation's resurgent military might.

Dozens of Russia's Pacific Fleet ships and 130 combat aircraft also took part in the exercise, which began on Friday and continue through this week. Putin watched some of the drills on Sakhalin Island in the Pacific, where thousands of troops were ferried and airlifted from the mainland.

Russia's Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov assured foreign military attaches on Monday that the exercise was part of regular combat training and wasn't directed against any particular nation, though some analysts believe the show of force was aimed at China and Japan.

Konstantin Sivkov, a retired officer of the Russian military's General Staff, told the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta that the Sakhalin part of the maneuvers was intended to simulate a response to a hypothetical attack by Japanese and U.S. forces.

Russia and Japan have a dispute over a group of Pacific islands, which Russia calls the Kurils and Japan calls the Northern Territories. The islands off the northeastern tip of Japan's Hokkaido Island were seized by Soviet troops in the closing days of World War II. They are surrounded by rich fishing grounds and are believed to have offshore oil and natural gas reserves and other mineral resources.

Antonov said that Russia had warned its neighbors about the exercise before it started, and provided particularly detailed information to China in line with an agreement that envisages a mutual exchange of data about military activities along the 4,300-kilometer (2,700-mile) border.

The two Cold war-era rivals have forged what they described as a "strategic partnership" after the 1991 Soviet collapse, developing close political, economic and military ties in a shared aspiration to counter U.S. power around the world.

Russia has supplied sophisticated weapons to China, and the neighbors have conducted joint military drills, most recently a naval exercise in the Sea of Japan earlier this month. But despite close economic ties and military cooperation, many in Russia have felt increasingly uneasy about the growing might of its giant eastern neighbor.

Some fear that Russia's continuing population decline and a relative weakness of its conventional forces compared to the Chinese People's Liberation Army could one day tempt China to grab some territory.

Russia and China had territorial disputes for centuries. Relations between Communist China and the Soviet Union ruptured in the 1960s, and the two giants fought a brief border conflict in 1969. Moscow and Beijing signed a new border treaty in 2004, which saw Russia yielding control over several islands in the Amur River. Some in Russia's sparsely populated far east feared that the concessions could tease China's appetite.

Alexander Khramchikhin, an independent Moscow-based military analyst, said that the massive exercise held in the areas along the border with China was clearly aimed at Beijing. "It's quite obvious that the land part of the exercise is directed at China, while the sea and island part of it is aimed at Japan," he said.

Khramchikhin, who recently posted an article painting a grim picture of Russia being quickly routed in a surprise Chinese attack, said that the war games were intended to discourage China from harboring expansionist plots.

"China may now think that Russia has finally become more aware of what could happen," he said, describing the exercise as a sobering signal. The maneuvers are part of recent efforts to boost the military's mobility and combat readiness after years of post-Soviet decline, but they have far exceeded previous drills in both numbers and territorial scope.

As part of the war games held across several time zones, some army units deployed to areas thousands of kilometers away from their bases. Paratroopers were flown across Russia in long-range transport planes, and some units were ferried to Sakhalin under escort of navy ships and fighter jets.

A decade of post-Soviet economic meltdown has badly crippled Russia's military capability, grounding jets and leaving navy ships rusting in harbors for lack of funds to conduct training. Massive corruption and vicious bullying of young conscripts by older soldiers have eroded morale and encouraged widespread draft-dodging.

The weakness of the once-proud military was shown in two separatist wars in Chechnya when Russian troops suffered heavy losses at the hands of lightly armed rebels. The Russian military won a quick victory in a war with Georgia's small military in August 2008, but the five-day conflict also revealed that the military had trouble quickly deploying its forces to the area. The shortage of precision weapons and modern communications were also apparent.

The Kremlin responded by launching a military reform intended to turn the bloated military into a more modern and agile force. The government also has unveiled an ambitious arms modernization program that envisages spending over 20 trillion rubles (over $615 billion) on new weapons through 2020.

Some military analysts cautioned, however, that the rearmament effort was badly planned and might not be sufficient to reverse the military's decline. "This program is clearly insufficient," Khramchikhin said.

Russia subs military with civilians at Syrian base

June 27, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia has withdrawn all military personnel from its naval base in Syria and replaced them with civilian workers, the Defense Ministry said Thursday.

The ministry did not say when the switch at the base at Tartus took place or how many personnel were deployed there. The minor facility is Russia's only naval outpost outside the former Soviet Union. It consists of several barracks and depots used to service Russian navy ships in the Mediterranean.

The ministry statement said that Tartus has continued to service the Russian navy ships. "They are continuing to work in a regular mode, and there is no talk about their evacuation from Tartus," the statement said. "Tartus remains the official base and repair facility for the Russian ships in the Mediterranean and is continuing to fulfill its mission."

The ministry didn't explain why it was replacing military personnel with civilians, but the move could be part of efforts by Moscow to pose as an objective mediator trying to broker Syria peace talks.

Moscow, however, also has an unknown number of military advisers in Syria who help its military operate and maintain Soviet- and Russian-built weapons that make up the core of its arsenals. Russia has been the main ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, shielding his regime from the U.N. Security Council's sanctions and continuing to provide it with weapons despite the two-year civil war that has killed more than 93,000 Syrians, according to the U.N. estimates.

The ministry's statement followed reports Wednesday in the Al Hayat newspaper and Russia's business daily Vedomosti, which claimed that Moscow had withdrawn all of its military and civilian personnel from Tartus along with all military advisers.

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell refused conjecture about the Russian move, but pointed at the "deteriorating security situation." "I just can't speculate if that's their reasoning," he added.

Russia announced earlier this month that it will keep a fleet of about dozen navy ships in the Mediterranean, a move seen as an attempt to project power and protect its interests in the region. Russian navy ships have been making regular visits to the Mediterranean in recent months, but the latest announcements by President Vladimir Putin and other officials mark an attempt to revive a Soviet-era practice, when Moscow had a permanent navy presence in the area.

But experts say the current plan will stretch the Russian fleet capability and note that the base in Tartus can't provide a sufficient backup for a permanent navy presence in the region. The base is also too small for big ships.

Military officials have said in the past that Russian navy ships in the Mediterranean could be used to evacuate equipment and personnel from Tartus. Previous Russian deployments in the area have invariably included amphibious landing vessels, which could serve the purpose.

AP writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington.

Russia protest leader's verdict looms large

July 17, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — Alexei Navalny's energy and charisma propelled him from a lonely role blogging about corruption to wide renown as Russia's leading opposition activist. His projects, including a campaign to run for Moscow mayor, have attracted hordes of volunteers and fundraisers. Now comes a day that looms large for Navalny and the opposition: A court hands down its verdict Thursday in an embezzlement case that could send him to prison for six years.

In the four years since Navalny began blogging about Russia's endemic corruption, the 37-year-old lawyer has become the major figure of Russia's nascent opposition. He spearheaded the wave of massive protest rallies that arose in late 2011, riveting crowds of 100,000 or more. Even as his embezzlement trial proceeded in the provincial city of Kirov, Navalny pushed forward his movement by declaring himself a candidate for this fall's Moscow mayoral election, attracting a wave of eager young volunteers.

He and many observers are sure a conviction is coming in what they describe as a politically motivated case. What seems less certain is the impact: If he goes to prison, it could sap his movement by taking away its galvanizing figure — or make supporters more determined.

Navalny is charged with heading a group that embezzled 16 million rubles ($500,000) worth of timber from state-owned company Kirovles while he worked as an unpaid adviser to the provincial governor in Kirov in 2009. Although the case is murky, the only question is "whether there will be a conditional sentence on trumped-up charges or a prison sentence on the same trumped-up charges," Navalny told Echo Moskvy radio last week.

Navalny began his rise to prominence by blogging about his investigations into corruption at state-owned companies where he owned shares. Supporters and funding poured in, turning this one-man show into the leader of a team of 14 lawyers and activists. Although state-controlled broadcasters ignored him, he exploited social media and his blog to reach hundreds of thousands.

Navalny's best-known project, the Rospil website, monitors state contracts and appeals to law enforcement agencies to get the dodgy ones annulled. It employs six lawyers who have overturned nearly 130 contracts since 2010, worth 59 billion rubles ($1.8 billion) in taxpayer money. Other Navalny projects rely on crowdsourcing, attracting information about various grievances from potholes on the roads to leaking pipes in apartment blocks.

Navalny has also plumbed property registers abroad to name and shame top officials and lawmakers for owning undeclared foreign assets and holding foreign citizenship. One of them, Vladimir Pekhtin, the head of the ethics commission in the lower house of parliament, resigned in February after Navalny blogged about Pekhtin's luxury property holdings in Miami Beach.

Navalny's investigations have targeted a wide circle of loyalists to President Vladimir Putin — from members of parliament to state bankers, striking at the core of Putin's "vertical of power" and threatening to discredit the entire system of governance he has built. Lilia Shevtsova, a political analyst at the Carnegie Center in Moscow, said Navalny's anti-corruption campaign has inflicted "painful bites on the system," turning the blogger into a political leader.

Unlike many of his peers in the Russian opposition, Navalny poses a tangible threat to the government because he doesn't only "sign petitions against the bloody regime" but actually does something every day, said Leonid Volkov, head of Navalny's election headquarters.

"Navalny is the only person in Russia who views politics as routine 24/7 work," Volkov said. "Navalny always has something going on. He's always busy." His Foundation for Fighting Corruption, an umbrella organization for projects, is run by Navalny himself and Vladimir Ashurkov, a U.S.-educated former asset manager who has been the key fundraiser for the foundation. Ashurkov refused to comment on the prospects of Navalny's projects until the verdict is announced. But some of his employees voiced confidence that Navalny's anti-corruption efforts will not be affected by his possible prison sentence.

Lyubov Sobol, a lawyer who has worked for Rospil for two years, is optimistic that she and her colleagues will be able to carry on. Navalny and his team have talked about the possibility of a prison sentence and "different scenarios for development," Sobol said.

"We came to a conclusion that what we do at the Foundation will go on regardless," Sobol said. "All of the employees are independent and know their job well." At Navalny's election headquarters in central Moscow, dotted with bright pink desks and white chairs, dozens of cheerful volunteers canvass voters by phone and push Navalny's mayoral candidacy on social media. The possibility of prison for their candidate doesn't seem to faze them.

Volunteer Oleg Kozlovsky, 29, said the lawyer's supporters "try to focus on things that we can change" rather than on something "as unpredictable as the weather." "If Alexei gets a prison sentence, the number of volunteers and supporters will only increase," he said.

But Navalny's conviction could undermine the fund's activities by robbing it of its vocal leader. Imprisonment could also spook potential donors. "Navalny will carry on with his activities in so far as it's possible in incarceration, but it's impossible to fight corruption out of prison," said Alexei Makarkin of the Moscow-based Center for Political Technologies.

According to Makarkin, potential donators became more cautious bankrolling the opposition since Putin's crackdown on the protest movement last spring, and their fears could get even worse. "They may have problems with the financing," Makarkin said. "In financing a lot of things are based on personal relations, and Navalny is a charismatic figure, he was able attract investors and donors."

Navalny's name could still be on the ballot on Sept. 8 if he's convicted on Thursday. Authorities will not be able to bar him from running until the guilty verdict comes into effect; that wouldn't happen until the defense has exhausted appeals, a process that could take at least several months.

The protest rallies of 2011 and 2012 were largely peaceful, authorized gatherings, attracting thousands of middle-class Russians who had not been to the largely marginal protests of the past decade. But this may be changing with the Thursday verdict for the central leader of those protests. Navalny's supporters are already planning a rally that evening just outside the Kremlin walls — despite the fact that authorities refused to give the green light. The Facebook page of the event has more than 6,500 people listed as going.

Campaign volunteer Alexei, a 20-year-old law student, said he has never been to an unsanctioned rally, but would take the risk on Thursday if Navalny is sentenced to prison. "Moscow authorities left us no choice," said Alexei, who asked that his last name not be used for fear of being expelled from university, something that he saw happen to his friends before.

A guilty verdict for Navalny is "probable and even inevitable," said Shevtsova of Carnegie, but it still has yet to be seen how strong a blow for the opposition movement this will be. "So far, Navalny is not a Boris Yeltsin," Shevtsova said, referring to Russia's first president who rode an unstoppable popular movement to power.

Longer-term consequences of Navalny's convictions could be more dangerous for the Kremlin than unsanctioned protests on the day of the verdict. State-television has vilified Navalny, portraying him as a corrupt rich Muscovite who defrauded an impoverished timber company.

But his imprisonment alone could turn Navalny into a victim of the Kremlin intrigue. Makarkin said a conviction could give Navalny a new role: "People's martyr sent to jail by corrupt officials."

Russian opposition leader joins Moscow mayor race

July 01, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's leading opposition figure launched his campaign against the Kremlin's handpicked choice for mayor of Moscow Monday despite being on trial in a case he says is politically motivated.

Anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny promised about 100 supporters in a hotel auditorium he would "destroy" President Vladimir Putin's allies and "make life better" in Russia's capital by winning snap elections to be held in early September.

"We're different from all those people in the mayor's office and the Kremlin who only have one practical program," Navalny said. "They want to steal from us here, transfer it to an offshore account, buy houses on (Moscow's "millionaire's row") Rublevka and in Spain, send their children to study in Switzerland, and then come on national TV and tell us about their new law to strengthen patriotism," he added.

Navalny has become the face of the movement against Putin. His program includes measures to decentralize city spending — 99% of which is controlled by the mayor's office — elect magistrates, fight Moscow's paralyzing traffic jams, stop corrupt officials from hiring illegal immigrants and skimming off their salaries, and improve Moscow's dismal 30th place in the Doing Business rankings of Russian cities.

But the campaign launch was somewhat overshadowed by the air of doom hovering over the opposition as Putin's crackdown on dissent gathers pace. Prominent liberal economist Sergei Guriev, who co-authored Navalny's program, fled Russia in May after becoming embroiled in a criminal investigation surrounding jailed former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and had to appear by video link.

After the event, Navalny took an overnight train to stand trial in the city of Kirov on embezzlement charges carrying a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. In the past year, Navalny has been charged in five other cases that he says were fabricated on Putin's orders.

Navalny's supporters say the trial is being micro-managed from Moscow and they expect a guilty verdict by the end of the month, though they hope for a suspended sentence. Under a law passed last year, people convicted of felonies like the ones Navalny is charged with cannot run for public office.

Even if Navalny keeps his freedom, incumbent mayor and Kremlin candidate Sergei Sobyanin — a native Siberian who had never lived in Moscow before becoming Putin's chief of staff in 2005 and who was appointed mayor by then-president Dmitry Medvedev in 2010 — is expected to win handily.

As well as having far greater resources and much more time to prepare than his opponents, Sobyanin is aided by a "municipal filter" brought in when mayoral elections were reintroduced last year that requires the signatures of 110 local council members by July 10.

Forty council members have committed to Navalny and a further 40 have promised him their signature, Vladimir Ashurkov, director of his anti-corruption foundation, said. Candidates then have to get signatures from 73,000 Muscovites.

Sobyanin, who has presided over a mild Westernization of Moscow, is supported by about 45 percent of Muscovites, according to a poll by the independent Levada Center last month. Navalny polled 3 percent, but may benefit from New Jersey Nets owner and former presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov's decision not to run. The 31 other candidates also have only a fraction of the vote and are widely perceived as a Kremlin attempt to simulate competitive elections.

Navalny vowed to continue his campaign whether or not he makes the ballot — or makes it out of Kirov a free man. "We're totally serious about this election," he said. "Putin, Sobyanin and all the Kremlin and Moscow scumbags don't want to let us run, they're scared," he added.

Russia's Putin signs anti-gay measures into law

June 30, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a measure that stigmatizes gay people and bans giving children any information about homosexuality.

The lower house of Russia's parliament unanimously passed the Kremlin-backed bill on June 11 and the upper house approved it last week. The ban on "propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations" is part of an effort to promote traditional Russian values over Western liberalism, which the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church see as corrupting Russian youth and contributing to the protests against Putin's rule.

Hefty fines can now be imposed on those who provide information about the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to minors or hold gay pride rallies. The Kremlin announced Sunday that Putin has signed the legislation into law.

Pope all smiles as Brazilians swarm his car in Rio

July 23, 2013

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Pope Francis wants to ignite the passion of Roman Catholics for their faith while on his first international trip, and the boisterous, sometimes frenzied welcome he got on his first day in Rio seemed to fill those hopes.

Returning to his home continent for the first time since becoming pontiff, Francis smiled broadly as thousands of people rushed his car Monday after it became stuck behind buses and taxis when his driver made a wrong turn on a main avenue in Rio's center.

It was a nightmarish scene for security officials, but clearly a delight and another opportunity to connect for this pope, who was scheduled to take a day off Tuesday for rest and private meetings. The ecstatic throngs forced his motorcade to repeatedly come to a standstill, weeks after violent protests against the government paralyzed parts of Brazil. Francis' driver turned into the wrong side of a boulevard at one point, missing lanes that had been cleared. Other parts of the pope's route to the city center weren't lined with fencing, giving the throngs more chances to get close, with uniformed police nowhere in sight to act as crowd control.

The three dozen visible Vatican and Brazilian plainclothes security officials struggled to keep the crowds at bay. Francis not only looked calm but got even closer to the people. He rolled down his back-seat window, waved to the crowd and touched those who reached inside. He kissed a baby a woman handed to him.

"His secretary was afraid, but the pope was happy," said the papal spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. The pope is here on a seven-day visit meant to fan the fervor of the faithful around the globe. That task has grown more challenging as Catholics stray, even in strongholds of the religion such as Brazil, yet it seemed to come easily to Francis even on the drive from the airport to an official opening ceremony.

After finally making it past crowds and blocked traffic, Francis switched to an open-air vehicle for a cruise along main streets past crowds of people who screamed wildly as he waved and smiled. He left his popemobile — the bulletproof one — in the Vatican garage so he could better connect with people during the church's World Youth Day.

Vatican officials insisted they had no concern for the pope's safety as his vehicles eased through the masses, but Lombardi acknowledged there might have been some "errors" that need correcting. "This is something new, maybe also a lesson for the coming days," Lombardi said.

Many in the crowd looked stunned to see the pope, with some standing still and others sobbing loudly. "I can't travel to Rome, but he came here to make my country better ... and to deepen our faith," Idaclea Rangel, a 73-year-old Catholic, said, choking through her tears after the pope passed by.

As many as 1 million young people from around the world are expected in Rio for the Catholic youth fest, a seemingly tailor-made event for the Argentine-born pope, who has proven enormously popular in his four months on the job. But the fervor of the crowds that regularly greet Francis in St. Peter's Square was nothing compared with the raucous welcome in Rio.

Popes generally get a warm welcome in Latin America; even the more aloof Pope Benedict XVI received a hero's welcome when he visited Mexico and Cuba in 2012. John Paul II frequently received rock star treatment, and during one 1996 visit to Venezuela, his motorcade was similarly mobbed when he stopped to greet well-wishers.

Outside Rio's Guanabara government palace where the pope was officially welcomed, Alicia Velazquez, a 55-year-old arts teacher from Buenos Aires, waited to catch a glimpse of the man she knew well when he was archbishop of her hometown.

"It was so amazing when he was selected, we just couldn't believe it. We cried and hugged one another," Velazquez said. "I personally want to see if he's still the same man as simple and humble whom we all knew. I have faith that he's remained the same."

Francis displayed that humility in greeting President Dilma Rousseff, saying he understood that to really know Brazilians, one must pass through their heart. "So let me knock gently at this door," Francis said in Portuguese at the official welcoming ceremony. "I have neither silver nor gold, but I bring with me the most precious thing given to me: Jesus Christ."

On the plane trip to Rio, Francis had lamented that an entire generation of young people risked not knowing what it's like to work thanks to an economic crisis that has seen youth unemployment skyrocket in many European countries while leaving the poor of the developing world behind.

"People get their dignity from work, they earn their bread," he told reporters aboard the plane. "Young people in this moment are in crisis." Francis arrived at a tense time for Brazil, as the country reels from sometimes violent demonstrations that began last month as a protest against public transport price hikes and mushroomed into a wave of protests against government corruption, inefficiency and spending for the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

Those protests continued after Francis' arrival. Police and anti-government protesters clashed outside the government palace. The government has spent about $52 million for Francis' visit, but he does not appear to be a focus of protesters' rage.

"We've got nothing against the pope. Nobody here is against him," said Christopher Creindel, a 22-year-old art student and Rio native protesting outside the government palace. "This protest is against our politicians."

Lombardi confirmed that a homemade explosive device was found Sunday by Brazilian authorities in a public toilet near the basilica at Aparecida, a Marian shrine that Francis is to visit Wednesday. Vatican security was informed of the device but didn't think it was aimed at the pope, Lombardi said.

"There are no concerns for security. The concerns are that the enthusiasm is so great that it's difficult to respond to so much enthusiasm for the pope. But there is no fear and no concern," he told reporters.

Francis' weeklong schedule underscores his commitment to make his pontificate focus on the poor. He will walk through one of Rio's shantytowns, or favelas, and meet with juvenile offenders, an extension of his call for a more missionary church that goes to the peripheries to preach.

He will also pray at Aparecida, an indication of his strong Marian devotion that is shared in much of Latin America. And, in a rather incongruous matchup, he will preside over a procession re-enacting Christ's crucifixion on the beach at Copacabana, ground zero of Rio's Sin City.

Alex Augusto, a 22-year-old seminarian dressed in the bright green official T-shirt for pilgrims, said Monday that he and five friends made the journey from Brazil's Sao Paulo state to "show that contrary to popular belief, the church isn't only made up of older people, it's full of young people. We want to show the real image of the church."

Associated Press writers Jenny Barchfield, Vivian Sequera and Marco Sibaja contributed to this report.

Polish parliament shuns religious animal slaughter

July 12, 2013

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Polish parliament's lower house has voted to reject a government plan to reinstate the religious slaughter of animals.

Lawmakers rejected the divisive issue in a 222-178 vote Friday as 38 members of the ruling Civic Platform party joined the opposition to vote against it. Until January, Poland was making good business exporting kosher and halal meat to Israel and Muslim countries, but religious slaughter was banned under pressure from animals' rights groups, which say it causes unnecessary suffering because the livestock aren't stunned before being killed.

The government argues the ban means a loss of money and 6,000 jobs at a time when around 13 percent of Poles are unemployed. The Conference of European Rabbis condemned the vote, calling it a sad day for Polish and European Jews.

Reaction to birth of a royal heir in the UK

July 23, 2013

Reaction to Monday's birth of a baby boy to Prince William and his wife, Kate. The prince is now third in line to the British throne:

"Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well and will remain in hospital overnight. Members of both families have been informed and are delighted with the news." — Birth announcement from Kensington Palace.

"It is an incredibly special moment for William and Catherine and we are so thrilled for them on the birth of their baby boy ... I am enormously proud and happy to be a grandfather for the first time." — Prince Charles, in a statement.

"Michelle and I are so pleased to congratulate The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on the joyous occasion of the birth of their first child. We wish them all the happiness and blessings parenthood brings. — President Barack Obama and the first lady.

"I'm delighted for the Duke and Duchess now (that) their son has been born. The whole country will celebrate. They'll make wonderful parents." — Prime Minister David Cameron.

The arrival of "a future sovereign of Canada" is a "highly anticipated moment for Canadians given the special and warm relationship that we share with our Royal Family." — Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"Today Diana, Princess of Wales, would have been a proud grandmother," said Tessy Ojo, CEO of the Diana Award, an initiative which recognizes teenagers who make outstanding contributions to their communities. "Her legacy continues through the inspirational work of these young people who carry this honor, set up in her memory, with pride."

"I am sure that people across Scotland will be absolutely thrilled to hear the news of the birth of a baby boy to the royal couple and will want to join me in wishing the proud parents many congratulations." — Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond.

"It's a boy!!! Special times ahead for Kate and William." — former Spice Girl Emma Bunton.

On Wall Street, stocks barely moved for much of the day. Then the birth was announced shortly before the close, and stocks managed to eke out a gain.

Coincidence? Who cares?

"It was such a dead day, it was the highlight," said Tom Digaloma, a senior vice president at investment firm ED&F Man Capital. "It's summer."