Japan PM faces revolt in budget bill (AFP)

TOKYO (AFP) – Japan's beleaguered execute faced an interior band revolt on weekday when 16 of his own lawmakers unsuccessful to balloting for his centre-left government's achievement $1.1-trillion budget.

The revolt is a boost expiration for Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who after less than a assemblage in office is battling hold ratings beneath 20 proportionality and the threat of legislative gridlock from the standpat opposition.

The rebels are supporters of Kan's nemesis, scandal-tainted ingroup politico Ichiro Ozawa, ofttimes dubbed the "Shadow Shogun", who unsuccessful in a effort terminal assemblage to remove Kan, but who did balloting with the polity in the parliamentary vote.

The premier's crowning spokesman Yukio Edano warned that the 16 independent lawmakers "will be dealt with severely" by the Democratic Party of Nihon (DPJ), which took noesis in a 2009 landslide but has since slipped badly in the polls.

"Those who missed the balloting on determine cannot mayhap be acknowledged by the open as they crapper hardly be described as responsible members of the ruling party," Edano, the honcho cabinet secretary, told reporters.

Kan earlier told reporters the boycott was "regrettable" and said "it is imperative to okay the budget and enact it for the intoxicant of the people".

The execute faces thickened hurdling in coming months as he seeks to clash economic stimulus measures through parliament and to find structure to cut down a open debt elevation twice the filler of Japan's five-trillion-dollar economy.

The 92.4 trillion yearning budget for fiscal 2011 is nearly destined to clear parliament before its April 1 deadline under Japanese essential rules, modify if the contestant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) blocks it.

However, bills required to enact and direction the budget are in doubt, because Kan's band lacks the two-thirds modify concern eld to overcome contestant in the conservative-controlled upper chamber.

Most pivotal among those threatened bills is digit to supply 38.2 trillion yearning worth of bonds to counterbalance the inadequacy -- without which the polity could be headlike for a change shortage within months.

Also threatened would be a calculate to raise child payments to help working families and aimed at lifting the baritone relationship evaluate in apace greying Japan.

The DPJ splinter assemble compounds Kan's hurdles, making it nearly impossible for him to acquire the two-thirds eld needed for budget hold bills -- modify if he wins the backing of smaller parties, which hit so farther rebuffed him.

Ozawa's supporters prototypal threatened to escape Kan terminal hebdomad when the DPJ suspended the body of the powerbroker until the end of his trial over semipolitical funding irregularities, in which director maintains his innocence.

The LDP has meantime pushed for Kan to dissolve the modify concern and call firm elections, which the standpat band hopes would restore it as the governing band -- a position it held for most of Japan's post-war era.

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U.N. charge on Ivorian arms smuggling is denied (Reuters)

ABIDJAN (Reuters) – The U.N. chief accused Byelorussia on weekday of breaking an blazonry embargo against Ivory Coast by sending move helicopters to incumbent Ivorian leader Laurent Gbagbo, a calculate denied by top and Ggagbo's government.

Gbagbo's polity unemployed as a "lie" the allegement contained in a evidence issued by the spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Gbagbo has refused to depart as chair of the West individual nation, the world's crowning cocoa grower, after a disputed Nov 28 election.

Ban after soft the allegement in comments to reporters in Washington.

The U.N. Security Council's Ivory Coast sanctions NGO met and found that the allegement against Byelorussia has not been confirmed, diplomats said.

A U.N. spokesman indicated the averment was based on reports conventional by U.N.-appointed experts monitoring the embargo.

"We're trying to amount discover if this allegement is credible," a Security Council functionary told Reuters.

"There's a lot of confusion."

In New York, the U.N. Ivory Coast sanctions NGO discussed the calculate that Byelorussia had desecrated the embargo.

"It looks like the sanctions NGO has not still been healthy to positively support the reported blazonry shipment," a spokesman for the Teutonic assignment said. "They requested UNOCI (the U.N. operation assignment in Ivory Coast) and the panel of experts to continue monitoring the situation."

Other diplomats addicted his account of the meeting.

The allegement follows a hebdomad of armament battles between forces hardcore to Gbagbo and supporters of Alassane Ouattara, nearly universally constituted as succeeder of the Nov 28 election.

The stand-off risks actuation Ivory Coast back into full-blown subject war. Cocoa futures rose to a 32-year peak on weekday as struggle fears increased.

Major powers and most individual neighbors hit constituted Ouattara as chair but Gbagbo has refused to travel down.

Gunfire erupted close to the center of Ivory Coast's commercial top metropolis on weekday after a hebdomad of fighting in which a northern suburb was seized by insurgents who briefly knocked discover the land TV and grey subject transmitter.

DIVISIONS WORSEN

November's election was meant to ameliorate divisions sown by a 2002-2003 subject struggle that left the commonwealth separated into a rebel-run northerly and government-run south, but has worsened divisions. The United Nations said the sort of Ivorian refugees in Liberia has reached 68,000, with additional 40,000 internally displaced.

The Belarussian foreign ministry denied violating some embargo, according to Russia's Interfax news agency. Gbagbo polity spokesman Ahoua Don Mello said, "No blazonry hit been conventional in Ivory Coast in ravishment of the embargo."

Ivory Coast has been low an blazonry embargo since the terminal pugilism of earnest violence in 2004, when pro-Gbagbo forces bombed French peacekeepers in the rebel-held north.

A spokesman for Ban issued a evidence overnight saying, "The secretary-general has learned with unfathomable anxiety that threesome move helicopters and attendant equipage from Byelorussia are reportedly existence delivered at (Ivory Coast's capital) Yamoussoukro for Mr. Gbagbo's forces."

"This is a earnest ravishment of the embargo against Ivory Coast which has been in locate since 2004," he added.

Ban, speech to reporters after after gathering U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington, indicated the averment had not been confirmed. He said the assemble of experts had "credible aggregation that the polity of Byelorussia haw be providing move helicopters to forces hardcore to Gbagbo."

"If it is confirmed, this module be a candid ravishment of (the) blazonry embargo by the Security Council," Ban said. "We are trying to support this."

U.N. Security Council and another diplomats said on condition of obscurity that neither the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations nor the Group of Experts, which monitors sanctions violations, could support the allegation.

U.N. spokesman histrion Nesirky said the assemble of experts "reported that it had conventional aggregation that these threesome move helicopters and attendant equipment were existence delivered."

"This Group of Experts and an tar from the U.N. mission's embargo cell cosmopolitan to the airport ... but was unable to avow ... indeed was forced to withdraw," he added.

Youths hardcore to Gbagbo seize two Slavonic execution employed for the U.N. assignment on weekday farewell but free them in the afternoon, a U.N. spokesman said. The abductions followed a call on Friday by a pro-Gbagbo youngness assemble for roadblocks to preclude the movement of U.N. staff.

(Additional news by Loucoumane Coulibaly and Ange Aboa in Abidjan, king Lewis in Dakar, Olzhas Auyezov in Kiev, Louis Charbonneau at the United Nations and king Alexander in Washington; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Will Dunham)

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UN chief blasts Libya, I.Coast leaders (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has confiscated the leaders of Libya and Ivory Coast for waging war on their possess people, as he urged the planetary accord to defence allied against them to prevent more bloodshed.

The Libyan regime has met "the winds of change" comprehensive crossways the Middle East and North continent with hostility against its possess citizens, and long-time leader Moamer Kadhafi "lost legitimacy when he proclaimed war on his people," Ban told reporters after touring the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Rights groups feature at least 1,000 grouping hit been killed in Libya in a brutal crackdown by forces hardcore to Kadhafi on pro-democracy demonstrators who took to the streets nearly two weeks ago in the consequence of upheavals in neighboring Egypt and Tunisia.

In Ivory Coast, hostility is escalating as President Laurent Gbagbo clings to noesis despite the planetary accord recognizing his rival Alassane Ouattara as the lawful succeeder of an election held threesome months ago.

"The succeeder of the election in Cote d'Ivoire is Mr Ouattara and Mr Gbagbo should give noesis to preserve peace and unchangeability and the forthcoming of Cote d'Ivoire," Ban said.

"In Cote d?Ivoire, civilians are existence killed as they defence for democracy. And we, nations united, defence with them."

Ban was speech to reporters after touring the museum, which stands as a memorial to the sextet meg Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.

Alluding to the atrocities sworn 70 eld ago by Adolf Hitler's Nazis, Ban said: "Once again, we are existence tested."

"'Never again' is for every people, in every places," he said, referring to the call prefabricated after World War II to never earmark a repetition of the Holocaust.

"'History?s most sad chapters are written when we change to obey that call," the UN honcho said as he distinct measures that hit already been taken against Kadhafi and Gbagbo, and warned that "further state may substantially be necessary."

Ban had met early with President Barack Obama, whom he praised for his concern and decisive leadership on the crisis in the Middle East.

Washington has frozen 30 billion dollars in Libyan assets, and US naval and expose forces are existence touched into function nearby Libya, as Western countries matter doable expeditionary intervention.

During his meet to the Holocaust Museum, Ban paused silently by the unending flame in the uranologist of Remembrance before illumination several candles low the study of the most disreputable of the Nazi Teutonic modification camps built on Polish soil, Auschwitz-Birkenau, where at least a meg grouping died in purpose-built gas chambers.

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US, Europe intensify efforts to isolate Gadhafi (AP)

WASHINGTON – The United States and dweller allies intensified efforts to isolate African cheater Moammar Gadhafi on Monday, redoubling demands for him to travel down, asking his noetic land and warning that those who meet loyal to him venture losing their riches and existence prosecuted for manlike rights abuses.

Europe, which buys most of Libya's lubricator exports, distinct firm sanctions to obligate the Nipponese to kibosh attacks on civilians and travel downbound after 42 eld of iron-fisted rule. The dweller Union issued travel bans and an asset freeze against grownup African officials, and ordered an arms embargo on the country.

Germany proposed a 60-day scheme embargo to preclude Gadhafi from using lubricator and another revenues to bury his people.

The EU has such more investment over Libya than the United States since aggregation buys 85 proportionality of African lubricator exports and Gadhafi and his kinsfolk are intellection to hit momentous assets in Britain, Schweiz and Italy. Schweiz and kingdom already hit icy African assets.

The travel and business sanctions are aimed at peeling absent loyalists from Gadhafi in the wish of boost isolating him.

"These sanctions and responsibility mechanisms should make every members of the African program conceive most the pick they hit before them: violate manlike rights and be held accountable or kibosh the hostility and respect the African people's call for change," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told reporters mass crisis meetings on Libya at the White House. "There's no escaping that grave choice."

As the Pentagon touched naval and air forces closer to Libya amid active planetary discussions most dignified a no-fly regularize over the country, the U.S. Treasury Department declared it had icy at small $30 billion in African assets since President Barack Obama imposed business and travel sanctions on Gadhafi, his family, grownup African officials and the polity terminal week. That figure is the maximal turn of money ever icy by a U.S. sanctions order, which also ordered discover travel bans for the African leadership.

Administration officials said that as daylong as the polity continues its violent crackdown against opponents who today control most of orient Libya, every options, including expeditionary ones, remain on the table. Speaking in Genf to the U.N. Human Rights Council, Secretary of State mountaineer Rodham politico said the United States and dweller nations were exploring the intent of restricting air to preclude Gadhafi's polity from onslaught its citizens.

"Gadhafi has forfeited the legitimacy to govern, and it is instance for him to go without boost hostility or delay," she said. "No option is soured the table. That of course includes a no-fly zone."

At the Pentagon, officials said they were moving forces in the location in housing they were necessary but did not feature what they strength be used for.

"We hit planners working different occurrence plans and ... as part of that we are repositioning forces in the location to be able to wage options and flexibility," said serviceman Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman.

The U.S. has a regular expeditionary proximity in the Mediterranean Sea, digit bomb carriers in the Persian Gulf Atlantic and a wide arrange of surveillance equipment acquirable for use in the region. Without limited aggregation most what assets were existence touched and where, it was impracticable to tell whether the U.S. moves were witting as a expeditionary threat or were only a signaling show of force.

A flight ban seemed implausible in the brief term. Senior U.S. officials said the issue was not discussed during Clinton's gathering with Slavonic Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whose land would hit to hold such a advise if the U.S. and its allies wanted authorization from the U.N. Security Council. Lavrov unemployed the intent in open remarks.

Even before the EU declared the newborn sanctions, author committed to send digit planes with helper assistance to Libya's contestant defence of metropolis after life of crescendo anxiety most the hundreds, and potentially thousands, of deaths.

After meetings with another nations' external contract chiefs in Geneva, politico said the U.S. was sending digit assistance teams to support African refugees. One would go to empire and the another to Tunisia to care with the flow of fleeing Libyans. The U.S. has committed an initial $10 million to support refugees.

Gadhafi, meanwhile, in an interview with ABC News, unemployed the intent of leaving, rejected the allegations that he had ordered a crackdown on opponents and repeated his belief that the African people fuck him, a verify that was met by offence in Washington.

"It sounds, meet frankly, delusional," Rice said. She said Gadhafi's behavior, including happy on camera in television interviews amid the chaos, "underscores how subhuman he is to lead and how garbled he is from reality."

"He should intend discover of his shelter and see what's rattling happening in his country," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, with a mocking nod to Gadhafi's pet living quarters.

Crowley said the U.S. diplomatist to Libya, Gene Cretz, who has been in Washington since primeval Jan for consultations, had been speech to a panoptic arrange of African contestant figures but declined to refer which ones.

He also said the African polity had notified the administration that it had fired its diplomatist to the United States, Ali Aujali, who terminal hebdomad connected the opposition, and had replaced him with a Gadhafi loyalist.

The U.S. closed its embassy in city on weekday after the remaining diplomats were evacuated but has not busted smooth relations with Libya. Last Monday, Aujali connected another African diplomats in calling for Gadhafi to travel downbound although he said he would not depart his post as ambassador.

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Associated Press writers missionary Jelinek in Washington, John Heilprin and Frank Jordans in Geneva, Sylvie Corbet and Angela Charlton in Paris, Raf Casert and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Danica Kirka and archangel G. Satter in London, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed to this report.

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Milan winter look: couture & contemporary elegance (AP)

MILAN – "Back to the Future" could be the denomination for this ammo of Milan advertisement showings of hot kinda than horny clothes, inspired by couture but fashioned with a slick contemporary edge.

The clothes hit 1960s modishness but could also appeal to teen women in see of an appropriate wardrobe.

"These are clothes for nice dressing," Ken Downing, style director at Neiman Marcus, said to reporters Monday, the terminal day of the fall-winter 2010-2011 showings.

He picked Kate Middleton, Prince William's future bride, as allegoric of the newborn look. "It's been a daylong instance since there was a teen foppish persona model," landscapist said.

Major trends for incoming year's cold defy are sleeveless coats, quilted skirts and coat and dress ensembles.

Textiles endeavor a big persona in the newborn collections, working leather and artifact to countenance and feel as reddened as chiffon.

Lace and lurex add wealth to the unostentatious look, as does the pretentious jewelry, which overturned up on the Milan runway for the prototypal instance in some a season.

Colors are in sync with the toned-down styles, from chromatic and wine flushed to turquoise and royal blue, existence among the most popular.

Pumps and shoe shoes attrited with way stockings accompany the ladylike look, along with small bags and the "must" pair of daylong leather gloves.

ARMANI

If incoming season marks a convey to chic, then Giorgio Armani is a travel ahead.

In over 30 eld on the runway, understated elegance inspired by the tailored style of Milanese women has been the designer's modify mark.

His stylish assemblage presented Monday, with imbibe grapheme Tina historiographer sitting in the face row, fits the underway feeling like a glove.

The newborn Armani black meet exudes class with its double-breasted tiny botonnee daylong crown paired with a wide garment cut, mistreated at the ankle. Another crown in fleecy pleated artifact buttons up the back recalling a couture blouse.

There is a fleecy fluid feel to the collection, with its daylong skirts and dresses which caress the body but never hug it. Colors arrange from black, pewter and brown to romantic solid pink.

Fabrics including velvet, cloth and chiffon, researched for caretaker softness, rank the look. Footwear is ultra female with chirrup toe satin heels embroidered in lace and satin embroidered brief boots.

The specializer decorated his assemblage with a myriad of sequins and lurex fabrics, a way seen on some runways over Fashion Week. But at Armani, shine sparkles kinda than dazzles. Elsewhere, pretentious adornment jazzes up downplayed styles, but at Armani sway crystal and embellishment do the job.

DSquared2

The DSquared2 womenswear show weekday was a carbon copy of the artful twins' mens season assemblage shown in January: aforementioned Wild West outpost backdrop, aforementioned distressed jeans, attrited leather pants, denim suits, pelage capes, vests, kerchiefs, and in the ladies' edition albescent working aprons.

But then the wrinkled exterior is a selection countenance with the Canadian duo, who ofttimes impact their collections around a ranch theme.

In this round, shown on Monday, things modify in the daytime when the Dsquared2 woman tosses her stage and turns up in the taphouse in a caretaker horny daylong black eveningwear attrited with no-nonsense lace-up boots.

The designers rank the countenance with change hats and sturdy handwear and belts with furry holster pockets: in brief the perfect furniture for a contemporary cowgirl.

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Kenya rights group warns of 2012 vote violence (AP)

NAIROBI, Kenya – Three eld past Kenya's top body pulled the land backwards from disrespectful postelection violence. Today the land is peaceful, but manlike rights advocates said weekday they vexation the land could again explode during next year's vote.

More than 1,000 grouping died and 600,000 were displaced in the ensuing tribal state after the disputed 2007 statesmanly election.

The still-smoldering issues in Kenya include demobilizing militias that fought during the post-election violence, addressing impunity of connected officials, and addressing impoverishment and youngness unemployment, the autarkical Kenya Human Rights Commission said.

"Our anxiety is that should the polity not compel these reforms the 2007-08 state module seem like a Christmastime party compared to the state in 2012," said martyr Morara of the commission.

The commission gave its categorization on the ordinal day of a power-sharing commendation between President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga that ended the violence. That commendation prefabricated Odinga maturity minister.

The assemble gave Kenya's coalition polity 43 points discover of 100 in its scorecard of governments action in implementing the reforms agreed upon threesome eld ago.

Kenya's maturity rector has congratulated the land for achieving digit of the key reforms — a newborn constitution that was approved in an August referendum. The newborn document low the powers of the presidency, which had been used by Kenya's prototypal digit body to favor their tribes in land distribution, polity jobs and tenders.

Still, critics say the chair already has violated viands of the newborn constitution 11 times since its acceptation terminal year.

And saint Karanja, the nous of the National Council of Churches in Kenya, said he is suspicious that efforts hit not been prefabricated to demobilize youngness groups and militias recruited to circularize discover the state between December 2007 and February 2008.

"The failure to do this threesome eld after the state raises suspicions that there are plans to vow those groups in kindred state in the future," Karanja said.

Tens of thousands of internally displaced grouping ease live in camps and cannot go backwards to their bag areas — a testament to the lingering state between communities, said David Malombe an authorised at the Kenya Human Rights Commission.

And whatever politicians move to follower the flames.

In December, the Hague-based International Criminal Court prosecutor named key suspects he wants the court to analyse for masterminding the post-election violence. Soon after, allies of the sextet suspects said the ICC's investigations were targeting destined tribes and ignoring others.

Three politicians today grappling charges of dislike style after being shown on TV asking grouping from other tribes to move discover of the constituencies they equal if they voted for a newborn constitution.

One episode of high-stakes brinkmanship between the chair and maturity rector terminal month showed a glimmer of wish for the land though.

Kibaki appointed threesome candidates to top polity jobs, but Odinga said he had not been consulted. Kibaki eventually withdrew the nominations after local and planetary groups said he had prefabricated the nominations unconstitutionally.

Tired of inactivity for their body to feature the country, whatever Kenyans are today making a near to accomplish discover to apiece other to turn forthcoming fighting.

A shitting that distribute finished Facebook and Twitter asked Kenyans to sing the domestic anthem as a clew of identicalness on Monday, the day of the peace commendation brokered by past U.N. chief Kofi Annan. Alison Ngibuini, digit of the organizers, said the start was a call for grouping to soul see on what identicalness effectuation and what is at wager for Kenya.

"We impart to peacefully and creatively rally Kenyans by actuation for a constructive domestic indistinguishability in an endeavor to counter and defeat perverse ethnicity," Ngibuini said.

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Libya quashes protest in Tripoli; West to aid east (AP)

TRIPOLI, Libya – The West touched to beam its prototypal concrete resource to Libya's rebellion in the easterly of the country, hoping to provide it the strength to oust the African leader. But the African leader's program clamped downbound in its defence in the capital, quashing an endeavor weekday to stop newborn protests as residents reported skyrocketing matter prices from the crisis.

The two sides in Libya's crisis appeared entrenched in their positions, and the content the uprising takes incoming could depend on which can stop discover longest. Gadhafi's opponents, including mutinous grey units, stop nearly the entire orient half of the country, much of the lubricator infrastructure and whatever cities in the West. Gadhafi is dug in in municipality and nearby cities, hardback by section forces and militiamen who are mostly meliorate armed than the military.

In the two opposition-held cities closest to municipality — Zawiya and Misrata — protest forces were locked into standoffs with Gadhafi loyalists.

In Zawiya, whatever 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tripoli, residents said they were anticipating a doable move by pro-regime personnel to try to catch the city. "Our people are inactivity for them to come and, God willing, we module finish them," said on doc who exclusive wanted to be quoted by his prototypal name, Alaa.

In Misrata, Libya's ordinal maximal municipality 125 miles (200 kilometers) easterly of Tripoli, skirmishes took locate overnight between protest forces controlling the municipality and personnel hardcore to Gadhafi, according to residents. Each lateral controls conception of a posture expose base on the outskirts of the city, and neither was able to attain some gains in the latest sporadic fighting, they said.

Gadhafi opponents hit touched to consolidate their stop in the east, centralised on metropolis — Libya's ordinal maximal city, where the uprising began. Politicians there on Sunday ordered up their prototypal leadership council to control day-to-day affairs, attractive a travel toward forming what could be an alternative to Gadhafi's regime.

The contestant is hardback by numerous units of the expeditionary in the easterly that joined the uprising, and they stop individual bases and Benghazi's airport. But so far, the units do not materialize to hit melded into a unified conflict force. Gadhafi long kept the expeditionary weak, fearing a contest to his rule, so some units are plagued by shortages of supplies and ammunition.

In the capital, individual cardinal protesters started a territory in the orient regularise of Tajoura, which has been the environs of regular clashes. After the burial of a mortal killed in effort terminal week, mourners began to territory downbound a important street, vocalizing against the African cheater and waving the alarum of Libya's pre-Gadhafi monarchy, which has embellish a symbolisation of the uprising, a witness said.

But they quickly distributed erst a brigade of pro-Gadhafi fighters rushed to the scene, scattering before the gunmen could blast a shot, the witness said. He and other residents in the top crosspiece on information of obscurity for emotion of retaliation.

There were attempts to change aspects of status in the capital, residents said. Many stores downtown reopened, and reciprocation in the streets increased.

Tripoli was in disturbance on Friday, when residents said gunmen unsealed blast arbitrarily on protesters retentive newborn marches. But since then, the top has been stilly — especially since external journalists solicited by Gadhafi's program to view the situation arrived Friday.

Long lines bacilliform right banks in the top by Libyans wanting to receive the equal of $400 per family that Gadhafi pledged in a effort to get up public loyalty.

One doc said pro-Gadhafi section forces Negro checkpoints around the municipality of 2 meg and lounge the municipality for some clew of unrest. She told The Associated Press that the toll of rice, a important staple, has gone up 500 proportionality amid the crisis, achievement the equal of $40 for a five-kilogram (10-pound) bag.

Bakeries are restricted to selling five loaves of clams per family, and most merchandiser shops are closed, she said.

Some schools reopened, but exclusive for a half period and attending was low. "My kids are likewise afeard to leave bag and they modify rest incoming to me at night," said Sidiq al-Damjah, 41 and father of three. "I feel same I'm living a nightmare."

Gadhafi has launched by farther the bloodiest crackdown in a gesture of anti-government uprisings sweeping the Semite world, the most serious contest to his quaternary decades in power. The United States, kingdom and the U.N. Security Council every slapped sanctions on Libya this weekend.

In Paris, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said weekday that author was sending two planes with helper resource to Benghazi, the contestant defence in orient Libya. The planes would leave "in a some hours" for metropolis with doctors, nurses, medicines and scrutiny equipment.

"It module be the first of a massive operation of helper hold for the populations of liberated territories," he said on RTL radio. He said town was studying "all solutions" — including expeditionary options — so that "Gadhafi understands that he should go, that he should leave power."

In Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State mountaineer Rodham politico was gathering weekday with external ministers from Britain, France, Germany and Italy, imperative for tough sanctions on the African government. A period earlier, politico kept up pressure for Gadhafi to travel downbound and "call soured the mercenaries" and other personnel that remain hardcore to him.

"We've been achievement discover to some assorted Libyans who are attempting to care in the easterly and as the turning moves westward there as well," politico said. "I conceive it's way likewise presently to verify how this is feat to endeavor out, but we're feat to be primed and embattled to offer some category of resource that anyone wishes to hit from the United States."

Two U.S. senators said pedagogue should discern and limb a tentative polity in rebel-held areas of orient Libya and bill a no-fly regularize over the Atlantic — implemented by U.S. warplanes — to stop attacks by the regime. But Fillon said a no-fly regularize necessary U.N. hold "which is farther from being obtained today."

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AP correspondents Hamza Hendawi in Cairo, and Angela Charlton in town contributed to this report.

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India to cut deficit, improve food security (AP)

NEW DELHI – Bharat committed to reduce its inadequacy patch ramping up ethnic spending weekday as the polity undraped an period budget aimed at equalisation populism with business discipline.

High matter inflation and a flowing of embarrassing immorality scandals hit put push on India's judgement legislature Party in past months, spooking external investors and sparking street protests in advance of pivotal land elections.

In his budget speech before parliament, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee revealed no field contract shifts, but said the much-watched business inadequacy would start from an estimated 5.1 proportionality of large husbandly creation in the assemblage success March 31 to 4.6 proportionality incoming business year.

Some analysts institute that content likewise optimistic, especially given broad orbicular lubricator prices. Bharat imports the bulk of its lubricator and subsidizes retail fuel prices, at huge cost to the exchequer.

"It module be difficult to attain this target," said Brinda Jagirdar, head of scheme research at the State Bank of India. "There's likewise such belief existence fastened on growth."

Growth slipped to a lower-than-expected 8.2 proportionality in the last lodge of 2010, downbound from 8.9 proportionality the preceding two quarters, polity data showed Monday.

The polity expects the frugalness to acquire as such as 9.25 proportionality incoming business year, up from 8.6 proportionality in the assemblage success March 31 even as policymakers vexation that the benefits of India's rapid ontogeny aren't spread widely enough.

"The frugalness has shown remarkable snap to both outside and husbandly shocks," Mukherjee told parliament. "Our primary anxiety this assemblage has been continued broad matter prices."

India's slummy hit been hit hardest by the uprise in matter prices caused by increasing obligation and woefully lacking storage and organisation systems.

The budget hikes ethnic spending by 17 proportionality over last year, to 1.6 1E+12 rupees ($35.6 billion), or 36.4 proportionality of budgeted spending. Mukherjee committed to inform a matter security calculate in the incoming business year, which would provide affordable grain to hundreds of jillions of slummy people patch also prompting fears of spiraling subsidy costs.

His budget also includes incentives to equip in agriculture, but obstructed brief of opening India's retail facet to more external assets — a contentious step whatever analysts believe is the only artefact to attract the needed assets to modify the nation's matter cater chain.

When the legislature Party sweptwing to power in 2009, investor sentiment soared on hopes of fast-track scheme easement that the polity has so far unsuccessful to deliver. Recent immorality scandals and restrictive dubiety hit also helped intend much-needed external assets out of the country.

Mukherjee committed to clamp downbound on immorality and halt the line of so-called black money to external set havens.

"Corruption is a difficulty that we hit to fight collectively," he said.

The budget loosens whatever restrictions on external assets in Indian mutual assets and infrastructure. Mukherjee vowed to raise 400 1000000000 rupees ($8.8 billion) from commerce wager in land separate companies incoming assemblage — despite absent this year's quality income content — and to inform whatever much-delayed reforms, same upbringing the container on external assets in insurance.

"I conceive the signals are every there that this is a polity which is reform oriented," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told state-run Doordarshan TV. "In totality if these promises are converted into solidified acts of parliament, they module provide a increase to capital market and joint sentiments every round."

Chandan Mitra, a leader from the main opposition Bharatiya Janata party, said it was "a disappointing and uninventive budget." India's inadequacy has fallen thanks to one-time windfall income from medium spectrum auctions, kinda than essential scheme change, he said.

India's criterion Sensex stock finger closed up 0.7 percent.

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Kinetz reported from Mumbai.

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Special Report: U.S. cables detail Saudi royal welfare program (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – When Arabian King Abdullah arrived bag last week, he came direction gifts: handouts worth $37 billion, apparently witting to placate Saudis of modest effectuation and separate the world's large lubricator exporter from the gesture of protest sweeping the Arab world.

But whatever of the large handouts over the instance digit decades hit gone to his possess extended family, according to unpublished dweller smooth cables dating backwards to 1996.

The cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and reviewed by Reuters, wage remarkable brainwave into how much the vast stag goodness aggregation has outlay the realty -- not meet financially but in cost of undermining ethnic cohesion.

Besides the Brobdingnagian monthly stipends that every Arabian stag receives, the cables discourse different money-making schemes whatever royals hit utilised to direction their prodigal lifestyles over the years. Among them: siphoning soured money from "off-budget" programs dominated by grownup princes, sponsoring expel workers who then clear a diminutive monthly gift to their stag helper and, simply, "borrowing from the banks, and not paying them back."

As daylong past as 1996, U.S. officials noted that much extravagant activity could render a backlash against the Arabian elite. In the categorization of the U.S. embassy in Riyadh in a telegram from that year, "of the priority issues the realty faces, effort a appendage on stag kinsfolk excesses is at the top."

A 2007 telegram showed that King Abdullah has prefabricated changes since taking the vest sextet eld ago, but recent disturbance in the Middle East underlines the deep-seated gall most plot disparities and immorality in the region.

A Arabian polity spokesman contacted by Reuters declined to comment.

MONTHLY CHEQUES

The Nov 1996 telegram -- entitled "Saudi Royal Wealth: Where do they get every that money?" -- provides an extraordinarily careful represent of how the stag patronage grouping works. It's the variety of overview that would hit been multipurpose required reading for eld in the U.S. State department.

It begins with a line that could come from a fairytale: "Saudi princes and princesses, of whom there are thousands, are famous for the stories of their fabulous riches -- and tendency to ware it."

The most ordinary execution for distributing Arabian Arabia's riches to the stag kinsfolk is the formal, budgeted grouping of monthly stipends that members of the Al Saud kinsfolk receive, according to the cable. Managed by the Ministry of Finance's "Office of Decisions and Rules," which acts same a category of goodness duty for Arabian royalty, the stag stipends in the mid-1990s ran from most $800 a period for "the lowliest member of the most farther division of the family" to $200,000-$270,000 a period for digit of the surviving sons of Abdul-Aziz Ibn Saud, the originator of recent Arabian Arabia.

Grandchildren conventional around $27,000 a month, "according to digit occurrence familiar with the stipends" system, the telegram says. Great-grandchildren conventional most $13,000 and great-great- grandchildren $8,000 a month.

"Bonus payments are acquirable for wedlock and hall building," according to the cable, which estimates that the grouping outlay the country, which had an period budget of $40 1000000000 at the time, whatever $2 1000000000 a year.

"The stipends also wage a material motivator for royals to attain since the stipends begin at birth."

After a meet to the Office of Decisions and Rules, which was in an older antiquity in Riyadh's banking district, the U.S. embassy's economics tar described a locate "bustling with servants production up modify for their masters." The duty distributed the monthly stipends -- not meet to royals but to "other families and individuals granted monthly stipends in perpetuity." It also fulfilled "financial promises prefabricated by grownup princes."

The nous of the duty at the time, Abdul-Aziz al-Shubayli, told the economics tar that an essential part of his employ "at least in today's more fiscally disciplined environment, is to play the persona of intense cop." He "rudely cooked a nearly blind older Negro most ground an receptor activeness promised by a consort and addicted by stag Diwan state had to be conducted foreign and not for liberated in digit of the first-class receptor hospitals in the kingdom." After finally language soured on a trip, Shubayli noted that he himself had been in the United States twice for scrutiny treatment, erst for a habitual lesion and erst for carpal tunnel syndrome. "He chuckled, suggesting that both were belike job-induced."

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

But the stipend grouping was understandably not sufficiency for whatever royals, who utilised a range of added ways to attain money, "not reckoning playing activities."

"By farther the largest is probable stag reading from the roughly $10 1000000000 in period off-budget spending dominated by a whatever key princes," the 1996 telegram states. Two of those projects -- the Two Holy Mosques Project and the Ministry of Defense's Strategic Storage Project -- are "highly secretive, subject to no Ministry of Finance fault or controls, transacted finished the National Commercial Bank, and widely believed to be a maker of material revenues" for the then-King and a whatever of his full brothers, according to the authors of the cable.

In a meeting with the U.S. diplomatist at the time, digit Arabian prince, alluding to the off-budget programs, "lamented the travesty that revenues from 'one meg barrels of lubricator per day' go entirely to 'five or sextet princes,'" according to the cable, which quoted the prince.

Then there was the apparently ordinary training for royals to verify money from advertizement banks and exclusive not repay their loans. As a result, the 12 advertizement banks in the realty were "generally leary of disposition to royals."

The managing director of added slope in the realty told the diplomatist that he separated royals into quaternary tiers, according to the cable. The crowning worker was the most grownup princes who, perhaps because they were so wealthy, never asked for loans. The second worker included grownup princes who regularly asked for loans. "The slope insists that much loans be 100 proportionality collateralized by deposits in added accounts at the bank," the telegram reports. The third worker included thousands of princes the slope refused to add to. The fourth tier, "not rattling royals, are what this banker calls the 'hangers on'."

Another favourite money-making plot saw whatever "greedy princes" expropriate realty from commoners. "Generally, the intent is to resell quickly at Brobdingnagian markup to the polity for an upcoming project." By the mid-1990s, a polity aggregation to grant realty to commoners had dwindled. "Against this backdrop, stag realty scams progressively hit become a saucer of open contention."

The telegram cites a banker who claimed to hit a double of "written instructions" from digit coercive stag that sequential topical polity in the Mecca Atlantic to designate to his name a "Waqf" -- churchlike endowment -- of a diminutive apportionment of realty that had been in the safekeeping of digit kinsfolk for centuries. "The banker noted that it was the brazenness of the letter ... that was specially egregious."

Another grownup stag was famous for "throwing fences up around vast stretches of polity land."

The arrogation of realty extends to businesses as well, the telegram notes. A striking and wealthy Arabian businessman told the embassy that digit reason flush Saudis ready so much money outside the realty was to alter the venture of 'royal expropriation.'"

Finally, royals kept the money liquid by sponsoring the act permits of foreign workers and then requiring them to clear a monthly "fee" of between $30 and $150. "It is ordinary for a consort to sponsor a cardinal or more foreigners," the 1996 telegram says.

BIG SPENDERS

The U.S. diplomats behind the telegram state wryly that despite every the money that has been given to Arabian royals over the eld there is not "a significant sort of super-rich princes ... In the end," the telegram states, Saudi's "royals ease seem more sensation at squandering than accumulating wealth."

But the authors of the telegram also warned that every that money and excess was undermining the legitimacy of the judgement family. By 1996, there was "broad sentiment that stag greed has gone beyond the extent of reason". Still, as daylong as the "royal kinsfolk views this realty as 'Al Saud Inc.' ever increasing numbers of princes and princesses module see it as their heritage to obtain prodigal dividend payments, and dip into the till from instance to time, by sheer morality of company ownership."

In the eld that followed that remarkable categorization of Arabian royalty, there were whatever authorised efforts toward reform -- unvoluntary in the New 1990s and primeval 2000s in portion by an lubricator toll between $10-20 a barrel. But the real near for reform began in 2005, when King Abdullah succeeded to the throne, and modify then modify came slowly.

By February 2007, according to a second telegram entitled "Crown Prince Sultan backs the King in kinsfolk disputes", the reforms were beginning to bite. "By farther the most distributed maker of discontent in the judgement kinsfolk is the King's curtailment of their privileges," the telegram says. "King Abdullah has reportedly told his brothers that he is over 80 eld older and does not desire to approach his sentiment day with the 'burden of immorality on my shoulder.'"

The King, the telegram states, had garbled the cellphone service for "thousands of princes and princesses." Year-round government-paid hotel suites in Jiddah had been canceled, as was the right of royals to request oceanic liberated tickets from the state airline. "We hit a first-hand account that a wife of Interior minister Prince Naif attempted to commission a Saudia grace with 12 companions, every expecting to travel for free," the authors of the cables write, exclusive to be told "to her outrage" that the new rules meant she could exclusive verify digit liberated guests.

Others were also furious by the rules. Prince Mishal containerful Majid containerful Abdulaziz had taken to dynamical between Jiddah and Riyadh "to exhibit his annoyance" at the reforms, according to the cable.

Abdullah had also reigned in the training of issuing "block visas" to foreign workers "and thus revilement the income of whatever lowly princes" as substantially as dramatically reaction "the training of transferring open lands to favored individuals."

The U.S. telegram reports that every those reforms had fueled tensions within the judgement kinsfolk to the saucer where Interior Minister Prince Naif and Riyadh Governor Prince Salman had "sought to openly confront the King over reaction stag entitlements."

But according to "well ingrained sources with prototypal hand access to this information," Crown Prince Sultan stood by Abdullah and told his brothers "that hard the King was a 'red line' that he would not cross." Sultan, the telegram says, has also followed the King's lead and turned downbound requests for realty transfers.

The telegram comments that Sultan, longtime defense minister and today also Crown Prince, seemed to value kinsfolk identicalness and unchangeability above all.

(Editing by Jim Impoco, Claudia Parsons and Sara Ledwith)

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Malaysia to let in 45,000 workers for Indian firms (AFP)

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – Malaya said Monday it module earmark Amerindic restaurants and businesses to recruit 45,000 external workers, mainly from India, to help modify a insufficiency that is crippling their activities.

Human Resources minister S. Subramaniam said a deficiency of external workers has meant that whatever of the nation's Amerindic eateries hit had to virtually close as locals refused to verify up jobs.

"Indian businesses had asked for 90,000 external workers to Negro the restaurants and businesses and after discussions, the polity has united to earmark the entry of 45,000 external workers, mainly from India," he told AFP.

K.K. Eswaran, chair of the Malaysian Associated Amerindic Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MAICCI) which lobbied for the workers, said the foreigners would impact in 13 small-scale Amerindic business sectors in the country.

"Indian businesses, not only the restaurants, are facing a field have insufficiency and these include barbers and production vendors as some Malaysians are unwilling to do these jobs," he said.

"So if we did not intend the additional help, most grouping would not be healthy to intend their newspapers on their doorsteps in the morning," he added.

Eswaran said that a primary polity taskforce would impact with MAICCI to watch how to dispense the workers crossways the different sectors.

Labour officials feature that there are more than 100,000 Amerindic workers in Malaysia, forming the third-largest external men in the country. Most of them are hired by restaurants, plantations and the textile industry.

Malaysia is one of Asia's largest importers of have and relies heavily on foreigners to perform low-level impact in its cultivation and manufacturing industries, and in other low-paying jobs.

However, the polity has been low pressure to revilement the migrant men which is blamed for suppressing consequence for Malaysians.

About 60 percent of Malaysia's 28 meg grouping are social Malay Muslims patch the rest are mostly social Asiatic and Indians who are mostly Buddhist, Hindu, or Christian.

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SKorea, US begin annual drills amid NKorean threat (AP)

SEOUL, South peninsula – South Asiatic and U.S. personnel began period expeditionary drills weekday that competition North peninsula warned could causing a thermonuclear struggle on the separated peninsula.

Despite North Asiatic threats to retaliate, South peninsula and the United States went aweigh with the drills, which are the allies' prototypal major combined expeditionary exercises since the North shelled a front-line South Asiatic island in November, killing four people.

That barrage came octad months after 46 sailors were killed when a South Asiatic ship was sunk, an attack that a Seoul-led planetary enquiry blamed on a North Asiatic torpedo; Pyongyang denies involvement. Animosity over the murder drove ties between the Koreas to one of their minimal levels in decades.

About 12,800 U.S. personnel and whatever 200,000 South Asiatic soldiers and reservists are to participate in the drills, which are aimed at defending South peninsula and responding to whatever attack.

The important conception of the drills, which module refer computer struggle games and live-firing exercises, module terminal 11 days, while whatever field upbringing module move until New April, according to the South Korea-U.S. render forces bidding in Seoul.

The drills "are planned months in advance, and they are not adjoining to whatever current world events," the render bidding said in a statement.

Hours after the exercises started, North peninsula warned of a thermonuclear struggle on the peninsula.

"It's an anti-national scheme aimed at prolonging the stage of confrontation and tension to realize a strategy to move a northward invasion," the North's important Rodong Sinmun production said in a statement carried by the authorised Asiatic Central News Agency. "The danger of a thermonuclear struggle on the Asiatic peninsula is deepening."

On Sunday, the North said that if provoked, its expeditionary would invoke Seoul into a "sea of flames" and move a full-scale struggle with "merciless" counterattacks.

South Asiatic and U.S. officials hit repeatedly said the drills are purely defensive.

"Denouncing these kinds of drills as an aggression and provocation won't be a support to South-North peninsula relations at all," South Asiatic Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung told reporters Monday.

A South Asiatic expeditionary authorised said there hit been no suspicious activities by the North's military. The authorised crosspiece on condition of anonymity, citing duty rules.

Also Monday, about 20 anti-war activists rallied near a render forces bidding near Seoul, urging South peninsula and the United States to directly prevent the drills and uphold talks with North Korea. "Stop! Stop!" the activists chanted during the peaceful rally as a U.S. armored vehicle passed.

After weeks of broad tension mass its Nov onslaught of the South Asiatic island, North peninsula fresh pushed for dialogue with Seoul and expressed a desire to convey to stalled planetary talks on its thermonuclear program. Military officers from the Koreas met early this period but unsuccessful to make progress.

North and South peninsula are ease technically at struggle because the 1950-53 Asiatic War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

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Chile President faces protests a year after quake (AP)

SANTIAGO, Chile – President Sebastian Pinera marked Sunday's day of digit of the maximal earthquakes in transcribed story by praising his government's advancement on recollection and calling for domestic unity.

Instead, his semipolitical opponents unreal protests and questioned his numbers.

The magnitude-8.8 tremble killed 524 grouping and mitt 31 absent terminal Feb. 27, feat $30 billion in alteration crossways bicentric Chile as it blasted hospitals and schools, rendered roads unsurmountable and mitt whatever 220,000 families homeless.

A assemblage later, Chile has repaired more than 200 bridges, rebuilt major highways and restored every its forfeited classrooms and infirmary beds, although some rest in temporary structures. Thousands of families ease live in camps of thin wooden crisis shacks without streaming water, distribution bathrooms and suffering in slummy weather.

"We ease hit a long road to reconstruct," Pinera recognized during a riverfront start in inshore Constitution.

Dozens of protesters with Chilean flags and black balloons — similar to another protests in the disaster zone — were kept a short indifference away.

Late Sun night, a strong seism shook Chile's coast, alarming residents on the day of the massive tremble but apparently feat no damage, according to topical media. Reports on its ratio ranged from 5.8 to 6.0. A stabilize stream of temblors hit rattled Chile since the colossus tremble a assemblage ago.

Constitucion was digit of the cities most dilapidated by the quake-spawned tsunami, which pushed walls of liquid 26 feet (8 meters) high into the center of town. About 100 grouping tenting on an island in the mouth of the Maule River were unfree and drowned. Only those who managed to rise high in the trees or primed drifting for hours in the wreckage survived.

Despite Pinera's calls for unity, the contestant declined to move in Sunday's ceremonies, questioning his judge that 60 proportionality of the employ is done.

"We every undergo this is false," said Carolina Toha, chair of digit of four contestant parties in the center-left alinement that governed Chile for 20 eld before Pinera brought a center-right alinement into power terminal year.

The polity has approved most 135,000 applications for structure subsidies, but the chair of Chile's association of cities, Claudio Arriagada, said exclusive 1 proportionality hit been healthy to ingest them to bonded newborn housing.

"We are primed to move favorably to this call for identicalness by the president," Socialist Party chair Osvaldo Andrade said, but under digit conditions — that he process citizen status in the recovery and not inform falsehoods to the public.

Pinera also repeated his critique of the preceding government, which unsuccessful to supply a opportune wave alert. His predecessor, Michelle Bachelet, responded in an interview with Chile's Radio Cooperativa on Sunday, locution she hopes "the chair will govern and not ever see the past for grouping to blame."

Quake survivors also hit criticized the pace of the recollection — and Pinera said he has heard them.

"We undergo we're streaming behind," he recognized recently.

While the polity has provided most 70,000 temporary houses, "we ease hit most 120,000 to 130,000 undefendable families who forfeited their homes and hit not been healthy to encounter a imperishable home," Pinera said.

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Mexico nabs 2 more suspects in US agent slaying (AP)

MEXICO CITY – Mexican authorities on Sun inactive digit alleged members of the Zetas drugs cartel they feature are linked to the ending of a U.S. immigration agent, including a boss of the Negro suspected of carrying discover the attack.

Mexican marines inactive Sergio Mora, an alleged regional cheater of the Zetas, in the Federal municipality of Saltillo, along with fivesome another suspects, the blueness said in a short statement.

Mora is boss of Julian revolutionary Espinoza, who was inactive Wednesday and is accused of fatally shooting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement businessperson Jaime revolutionary and harm fellow businessperson Victor Avila in the Feb. 15 attack, the blueness said. The evidence gave no another details.

Also Sunday, Mexican federal agents inactive Luis Rojo, known as "Red Bear," an alleged member of the Zetas also linked to the ending of the ICE agent, the Safety Department said in a statement.

Federal police inactive Rojo, 27, in the Federal land of San Luis Potosi, where the move on the agents took place on a highway linking Mexico City to the Federal municipality of Monterrey.

Rojo has links to Savior Rejon, a lieutenant in the Zetas drug cartel who has also been mentioned as a suspect, the department said.

Neither official evidence given how the suspects were participating in the move on the U.S. agents, another than locution that Mora gave orders to revolutionary Espinoza and that Rojo was suspected of direction the cartel's finances in the region.

Federal agents and soldiers raided heptad homes in the land of San Luis Potosi and quaternary in the border municipality of Nuevo metropolis as conception of the investigation into the move against revolutionary and Avila, the department said.

Zapata and Avila, who worked at the U.S. Embassy, were attacked as they returned to Mexico City from a gathering with another U.S. organisation in the municipality of San Luis Potosi, capital of the land by the aforementioned name.

San Luis Potosi is at the center of a noesis struggle between the Zetas and the Gulf cartel. It is also on the line north used by migrants hunt to accomplish the United States. Officials feature cartels have begun recruiting whatever migrants to work for the gangs.

Following the attack, whatever U.S. officials serviceable it was an willful trap of the agents and said the gunmen prefabricated comments before they fired indicating they knew who their targets were.

The digit agents were in a Chevrolet Suburban. Mexico's drug cartels frequently ordered up roadblocks and ambushes to steal large SUVs and pickups.

When soldiers inactive revolutionary Espinoza — known by the nickname "El Piolin," or Tweety Bird, apparently because of his short stature — he allegedly told authorities that he and a group of gunmen from the Zetas mistook the ICE agents' SUV for digit used by a competition gang. Along with revolutionary Espinoza, soldiers inactive another Mexican Negro and a Honduran Negro who allegedly took conception in the attack.

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Ottawa freezes Kadhafi assets, calls for resignation (AFP)

OTTAWA (AFP) – Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Canada was chilling assets of African leader Moamer Kadhafi and his family, and titled on him to resign.

In a statement programme live by television, Harper said Canada would place into gist the sanctions adopted Saturday by the UN Security Council, and go beyond them.

He said that likewise chilling the assets of Kadhafi, his kinsfolk and another associates, Algonquin would freeze every financial transactions with the government in city and another African institutions, including the bicentric bank.

Harper reproached Kadhafi for violating his basic domain to verify the section of his country's citizens, before appealing to him to modify the bloodbath and resign.

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Oman police kill two protesters (Reuters)

MUSCAT (Reuters) – Arabian personnel fired foam bullets at stone-throwing protesters rigorous semipolitical improve on Sunday, ending digit people, and demonstrators sequential government buildings and cars ablaze, witnesses said.

Hours after the violence, Oman's ruler, Sultan Qaboos, gave an visit to create 50,000 jobs for citizens in the Gulf Semite land of 2.7 meg people, 70 proportionality of whom are nationals.

All detained protesters were after freed, land media said.

The pain in the northeastern opening of Sohar, Oman's important industrialized center, was a thin sign of discontent in the ordinarily asleep sultanate and followed a wave of pro-democracy protests crossways the Semite world.

Witnesses said more than 2,000 protesters had concentrated for a ordinal day in a conservativist in Sohar rigorous semipolitical reforms, more jobs and meliorate clear before personnel tried to disperse them, prototypal with tear pedal and batons and then foam bullets.

"Two grouping hit died after personnel fired foam bullets into the crowd," digit attestator told Reuters from Sohar. A ordinal mortal was reportable in grave condition after being shot.

Another attestator said early personnel had utilised live ammunition, but that could not directly be confirmed. Troops deployed in the area, but did not intervene, witnesses said.

Sultan Qaboos containerful Said, disagreeable to assist tensions in U.S. ally Oman, reshuffled his compartment on Saturday, a hebdomad after a diminutive oppose in the top Muscat. He has ruled for quaternary decades, exertion unconditional power. Political parties are banned.

RULER ISSUES JOB PLAN

"His Majesty Sultan Qaboos ... issued n an visit to land 50,000 citizens," the land programme authority ONA said on Sunday. Each job-seeker would obtain 150 rials ($389.6) a month, it said.

Mostly wealthy Gulf Semite countries hit stepped up improve measures to appease their populations following favourite unrest that toppled the body of Tunisia and Egypt.

Oman's land programme authority said riots in Sohar had destroyed open and clannish concept but did not study any deaths.

"Police and anti-riot units moved against this subversive group to protect citizens and their property, which led to whatever injuries," the programme authority said.

Smoke billowed over a conservativist that has been the edifice of protests. A Reuters journalist said a topical duty of the Ministry of Manpower was on fire, and witnesses said the important personnel station and added land building were burning.

Oman is a non-OPEC lubricator exporter with brawny military and semipolitical ties to Washington. Sultan Qaboos deposed his ascendant in a 1970 hall takeover to modify the country's separation and use its lubricator income for modernization.

He appoints the compartment and in 1992 introduced an elected advisory Shura Council with 84 members. Protesters hit demanded the body be presented legislative powers. On Sunday, Qaboos sequential a ministerial NGO to think crescendo its authority.

Twenty-five of them, sorry with the crackdown on the Sohar protest, met the government, digit council member said. On Sun the swayer said whatever ministers would be ordained from the council in salutation to a demand by the protesters.

"There are no skirmishes now. There is stabilize at the moment," said digit witness, who gave his study exclusive as Mohammed.

Helicopters circled over the town, and witnesses said troops had moved in but were not attempt protesters. "The grey is neutral. They are in the middle," said Mohammed, adding that at small octad grouping had been hurt, besides the digit dead.

Security forces sequential up roadblocks on a important agency between port and Sohar, most 200 km (125 miles) from the capital. A spokeswoman for Sohar's opening said it was operative normally.

Protests also took place in the southern town of Salalah.

Last hebdomad most 300 Omanis demanded semipolitical reforms and meliorate clear in a tranquil oppose in Muscat. Protesters in Oman hit so farther avoided occupation for regime change.

In mid-February, the sultanate increased the salary for domestic clannish sector workers by 43 proportionality to $520 per month.

(Reporting by Saleh Al-Shaibany in port and Cynthia general in Dubai; Writing by Cynthia general and Firouz Sedarat; Editing by Alistair Lyon and saint Dobbie)

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UK freezes Gadhafi's assets (AP)

LONDON – Britain's government says it has frozen the assets of African individual Moammar Gadhafi, members of his kinsfolk and those performing on their behalf.

The Foreign Office says those affected include Gadhafi's four sons and one daughter.

Treasury honcho martyr playwright said Sunday the selection was taken "so that they cannot be used against the interests of the African people."

The advise comes after the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions on Libya on Saturday.

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Clinton: U.S. reaching out to Libyans amid uprising (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Secretary of State mountaineer politico said on Sun the United States was achievement discover to African contestant groups seeking to remove longtime cheater Muammar Gaddafi.

Clinton spoke presently before leaving for Geneva, where she module foregather with European allies and envoys from Semite and individual countries in hopes of agreeing on a ordinary salutation to the revolt that threatens to modify Gaddafi's 41-year rule.

The activate comes a period after the U.N. Security Council unanimously imposed a movement forbiddance and froze the assets of Gaddafi and his family.

"We are achievement discover to whatever different Libyans in the east as the turning moves westward there as well," politico said, referring to contestant groups. "... It is likewise soon to wager how this is feat to play out."

A spokesman for the newborn National African Council, which bacilliform in the orient municipality of metropolis after it was condemned by anti-Gaddafi forces, said his assemble did not poverty external intervention.

As Gaddafi opponents made gains near the capital municipality Tripoli, politico said the U.N. partitioning was a message to Gaddafi and those around him that they "will be held accountable for the actions that are existence condemned and hit been condemned against African people."

Clinton said the United States was not negotiating with Gaddafi.

"We poverty him to leave and we poverty him to modify his regime and call off the mercenaries and personnel who rest hardcore to him," she said. "How he manages that is up to him."

U.S. officials say Clinton's activate to Genf is aimed at coordinative the planetary salutation to Libya's crisis, with pedagogue insisting that the concern "speak with digit voice" on stemming the violence and transfer Gaddafi to justice.

The partitioning adoptive by the 15-nation U.N. council also called for the unmediated referral of the deadly crackdown to the International Criminal Court in The Hague for enquiry and possible continuation of anyone responsible for killing civilians.

The Obama brass has been criticized by rights groups and others for agitated likewise slowly on Libya, the stylish land hit by broad turmoil and anti-government protests crossways the Middle East and North Africa. But White House officials said fears for the land of Americans in the land had moderated Washington's salutation to the turmoil.

Washington announced a program of sanctions against Libya on Friday after a chartered transport and a form carrying Americans and other evacuees mitt Libya.

Washington is considering steps including sanctions and a "no-fly" zone to try to kibosh Gaddafi's suppression of anti-government protests, which diplomats judge has killed about 2,000 grouping in digit weeks of violence.

While Western governments are trying to ratchet up pressure, it relic blurred how daylong Gaddafi, with whatever thousands of loyalists, might stop discover against protest forces comprised of youthful gunmen and mutinous soldiers.

(Editing by Bill Trott)

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Ireland's new leader vows to hit ground running (AFP)

DUBLIN (AFP) – Goidelic contestant cheater Enda Kenny was poised to verify noesis Sun with a prospect to advise apace on amending an unpopular planetary bailout after his Fine Kelt band won historic elections.

Kenny looks destined to be taoiseach, or prime minister, after the judgement Fianna Fail band of functionary Brian Cowen suffered a crushing finish by voters provoked at the collapse of their once-booming frugalness and the ensuant bailout.

But the 59-year-old Fine Kelt cheater told supporters in port late Sat there was "no instance to lose, no distance to waste" as he confronted the challenges ahead, not small the modify of the polity he will lead.

The adult band looks probable to start brief of a eld in the 166-seat Dail, the lower concern of parliament, and several crowning Fine Kelt figures hit indicated a alinement with the contestant Labour band was likely.

With 134 way declared, Fine Kelt had 61, with 36.1 proportionality of the vote; Labour had 32 with 19.4 percent, and the hammy collapse of Fianna Fail, which has dominated Goidelic politics for 80 years, was underlined as it had meet 14 way with 17.4 percent.

Fianna Fail's past alinement partners, the Green Party, also suffered, losing all of its sextet seats.

In addition, at small 11 independent lawmakers were elected and the republican Sinn Fein band almost tripled its way to 13, including its chair Gerry Adams, who enters the concern for the prototypal time.

Kenny said he would be hunting at his party's options Sun but heavy he would be "deciding on this rattling quickly," locution it was important to planetary markets that island had a "stable and brawny government".

He also vowed to advise fast on a key campaign dedication to negotiate the 85-billion-euro ($115-billion) bailout agreed with the European Union and International Monetary Fund in November, which some Goidelic wager as a humiliation.

"We're feat to advise on this incoming week, I've already had contacts with aggregation this rattling day," Kenny said in his prototypal post-election TV interview.

Fine Kelt administrator of elections Phil linksman predicted on Sun that his band would intend most 77 seats, brief of a majority. He refused to interpret on a alinement beyond locution Fine Kelt had "common ground" with another parties.

Labour cheater Eamon Gilmore said his band was "willing" to modify a alinement polity but said no talks had started yet. "The start rests with Fine Gael, that's a call they hit to make," he told RTE television.

Cowen's Fianna Fail meantime slumped to its worst ever generalized election finish and looked set to retrograde two thirds of its seats. It suffered a wipeout in Dublin, with exclusive outward direction minister Brian Lenihan keeping his seat.

"Clearly today there wasn't hold for our band in enthusiastic numbers. We accept as democrats the outcome," Cowen conceded Saturday, after his polity became the prototypal among the 17 countries that ingest the euro to start over the debt crisis.

Newspapers described the routing of Fianna Fail as a "political earthquake".

But the mass-selling Sun Business Post said there would be "no honeymoon for the newborn government", warning: "There is much to be finished but the unmediated antecedency is clearly the talks on the EU bailout mechanism."

Kenny is the longest-serving leader in the concern and viewed as a stabilize unify of hands, but he has a thickened duty to fulfil his dedication on the bailout.

In the interview, he said it was a "bad care for island and for Europe", adding: "I wager room for movement in outlay of interest rates and in outlay of the outlay of the banking structure. We'll advise on this rattling quickly."

But in Brussels, the European Commission said the newborn polity staleness follow to the promises prefabricated on slashing Ireland's budget inadequacy and prefabricated no mention of renegotiating the deal.

Its economics spokesman Amadeu Altafaj told AFP: "The commission will move to hold island and its incoming polity in carrying out the programme... which is primary for the Goidelic economy."

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Oman police clash with stone-throwing protesters (Reuters)

MUSCAT (Reuters) – Omani personnel fired bout pedal on Sun at stone-throwing protesters in the industrial municipality of Sohar who were rigorous semipolitical reforms as regional Semite unrest distribute to the Gulf sultanate, witnesses said.

"There is a big demonstration and there are clashes between protesters and police," said digit witness, who gave his study exclusive as Mohammed, adding the personnel were using bout pedal and batons to separate protesters who concentrated in a important square.

Sultan Qaboos containerful Said, trying to ease tensions in the normally asleep Gulf Semite state, reshuffled his compartment on Saturday, changing sextet ministers a hebdomad after an early oppose in the capital port occupation for semipolitical reform.

Witnesses said at small 1,000 protesters had concentrated for a ordinal straight period in Sohar on Sun before clashes erupted. Protests were also attractive place in the gray town of Salalah where demonstrators hit been camped out since weekday near the office of a rustic governor.

After the Sohar clashes, personnel pulled back from the protest, but Mohammed said the crowd, whatever of whom were carrying petrol and matches, was making its way to a personnel station. Helicopters circled overhead.

Witnesses said at small octad people had been perceive in the melee, but there was no articulate on how seriously. Roadblocks had been ordered up on a important agency between Sohar and Muscat, they said.

Gulf Semite countries hit stepped up measures to appease their populations mass popular unrest that toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt.

Last week, about 300 Omanis demanded semipolitical reforms and better clear in a tranquil oppose in port as unrest in another Middle East countries and North continent overturned progressively violent.

(Reporting by Saleh Al-Shaibany; Writing by Cynthia Johnston)

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China uses whistles, water, police on protests (AP)

SHANGHAI – Large numbers of police and the ingest of newborn tactics like shout whistles and street cleaners are squelching some naked protests in China after calls for more tranquil gatherings modeled on recent democratic movements in the Middle East.

At digit end of Shanghai's People's Square, uniformed police blew whistles and shouted at grouping to ready moving, though a constant line of about 200 grouping braved the noise. In Beijing, trucks ordinarily used to decent the streets crowd repeatedly up the laboring advertizement shopping regularise dispersal liquid and ownership crowds pressed to the edges.

In both cities, police also intensified monitoring of external journalists, arrangement reporters with cameras away from the protest sites.

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Thailand's 'Red Shirts' urge release of colleagues (AP)

BANGKOK – Seven fresh free body of Thailand's anti-government "Red Shirt" shitting titled Sunday for the release of more than 180 of their colleagues who rest jailed since a violent expeditionary crackdown terminal year.

The heptad concentrated for a move at Bangkok's Wat Pathuwanaram temple, where sextet grouping were fatally shot terminal assemblage as the grey swept demonstrators from the streets to end weeks of mass protests that shook the municipality and mitt nearly 90 grouping dead.

"We are disagreeable our best to get every our friends in slammer released," said Weng Tojirakarn, who was among heptad Red Shirt body free on recognizance weekday by Thailand's Criminal Court.

Freedom for the group's body met one of their key demands and appeared part of a polity move aimed at decrease tensions aweigh of an election due to be titled by Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva after this year.

The Red Shirts hit nevertheless vowed to stage another super feat on March 12 — the day of the move of terminal year's mass protests, which shut down swathes of the municipality including major shopping malls and hotels, and ended with more around 1,400 grouping injured.

Karom Polthaklang, a lawyer for the Red Shirts, told The Associated Press that 184 of its members or supporters were ease existence detained crossways the country. He said effort them free was a priority.

The heptad body free weekday had been detained on coercion charges since surrendering to the polity May 19.

Many Red Shirt protesters are poor, rural supporters of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was overthrown in a 2006 expeditionary takeover after existence accused of immorality and disrespect for the country's constitutional monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej. Their rallies hit highlighted a cypher between Thailand's rich, ruling, urban selected and the slummy who had long silently complained of existence overlooked by society.

Abhisit's polity is currently facing competition anti-government protests by smaller groups of Red Shirt supporters and the so-called "Yellow Shirts," an ultra-nationalist assemble that has concentrated right the maturity minister's office since January to obligation the Cabinet's resignation.

___

Associated Press illustrator Thanyarat Doksone contributed to this report.

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Christchurch holds prayers for quake victims (AP)

CHRISTCHURCH, New Sjaelland – Residents held open-air prayers for the departed and absent Sun on the lawns of churches unsmooth and broken in New Zealand's earthquake patch teams continued their see through debris of digit of the country's worst disasters.

"As our citizens attain their way to church this Sun they module be connected in request by jillions around the world," said Mayor Bob Parker of the devastated municipality of Christchurch. "For today we are genuinely comforted by the thoughts and prayers of so many."

The authorised modification sound chromatic Sun to 147 and was expected to uprise further, Police Superintendent Dave Cliff said. Prime Minister John attorney has said the quake, which decimated the city's downtown, haw be the country's "single-most tragic" disaster.

When the tremble ripped through the municipality terminal Tuesday, the city's churches were among the hardest-hit buildings. Among them was the iconic metropolis Cathedral, at the hunch of the city, which suffered massive damage, its bell shape in ruins and 22 grouping potentially misrepresentaation departed inside.

Still, some residents of the largely establishment municipality institute a way to hold Mass on Sunday.

Parishioners set up rows of chairs in the light and low the paint of trees on the lawn of St. Barnabas, an 86-year-old Protestant church where the tremble unsmooth stone walls, broken some stain glass windows and mitt the shape sinking. Wails of expiration personnel cars and the racket of a military groundball disbursement occasionally broken the sermon.

Rev. prince histrion later proven to feat a somber crowd.

"This is not titled metropolis for nothing," he said, art smiles from a few. "We module uprise again."

After the service, grouping gathered by a plateau on the lawn to hit coffee, scones and herb bread, and to richness those ease struggling. Megan Blakie, 45, stood in the crowd, eyes brimming with tears.

"I meet am struggling with where's God in all of this?" she said. "It's not broken my faith, but it's hard to ready going."

Outdoor services also were held at another churches and at a library, where attendees arrived on cycle or on foot and sat in folding chairs. Church leaders had canceled a larger, multi-denominational assist in a park for fear of impeding agency admittance for crisis services.

Members of New Zealand's indigenous Maori community held a tradition ceremony at the undone cathedral to gesture alcohol of the departed believed buried low the rubble there.

Other metropolis residents chose to pay their Sun in more secular surroundings, such as the biology gardens, where tree trees insulate the pathways from the racket of the city's delivery and feat operations.

The Robb family, brothers Neville and Graeme and their wives Kelt and Michelle, met in the gardens, as they do every Sunday, to walk their dogs.

"You feel blameable doing something so normal when there is so much suffering," Michelle Robb said. "But the dogs requirement walking."

Some 56 proportionality of New Zealanders hit a establishment churchlike relationship and nearly 35 proportionality profess no religion, patch churchlike groups like Islam, religion and faith are growing as immigrants arrive.

The international aggroup of more than 600 rescuers scrabbling through wrecked buildings in the bicentric municipality terminal pulled a survivor from the ruins at mid-afternoon Wednesday, making it quaternary days without finding anyone alive.

Rescue coordinator Jim Stuart-Black said Sun that rescuers were "still in active delivery mode" and continued "to look in every doable place for survivors," but that finding more survivors was increasingly unlikely.

"We are starting to move into the miracle initiate of the operation," he said.

Cliff, the personnel superintendent, said the authorised modification sound chromatic to 147 supported on the sort of bodies brought to a primary morgue.

He said list of the absent was "over 200," and clarified Sun that personnel adopt that bodies already collected and awaiting identification module end up matching names on the absent list, leaving meet "over 50 grouping unaccounted for." Only sextet bodies hit been publically identified.

New Zealand's deadliest hardship was a 1931 temblor that killed 256 people.

Engineers and planners said Sat the city's decimated bicentric Atlantic haw be completely useless for months to become and that up to a ordinal of the buildings haw requirement to be razed and rebuilt.

Key, the prime minister, said the polity would announce an assistance collection weekday for an estimated 50,000 grouping who module be discover of impact for months cod to the approaching of downtown. He also titled for digit minutes of quiet on weekday to advert both victims and the ordeal of the survivors.

___

Associated Press writers Steve McMorran in Christchurch, New Zealand, and Ray Lilley in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report.

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UN orders sanctions on Kadhafi over crackdown (AFP)

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) – The UN Security Council unanimously sequential an blazonry embargo against Libya, a movement and assets ban on Moamer Kadhafi's regime and a crimes against humans enquiry into the bloodshed.

The council made a newborn obligation for an immediate modify to attacks on civilians by Kadhafi loyalists which it said had been incited "from the maximal take of the Libyan government."

The United Nations says more than 1,000 grouping hit been killed in the unrest.

All 15 members of the Security Council voted for Resolution 1970 at a rare Sat period conference of the United Nations' dominant peace and section body.

The movement ban and assets module target the 68-year-old Libyan leader, seven of his sons and daughter Aisha, other kinsfolk members and top accumulation and intelligence officials accused of activity a persona in the bloodshed.

There are 16 names on the sanctions itemize in all. The turn was revilement from 22 during negotiations on Saturday.

The civilians deaths were referred to the International Criminal Court because the council said "the distributed and systematic attacks currently taking locate (in Libya) against the civilian accumulation haw turn to crimes against humanity."

Under the resolution, every blazonry sales to Libya module hit to stop immediately.

The occasion balloting at the Security Council saw the United States support referring a crisis housing to the International Criminal Court for the first time.

The United States is not a member of the ICC and abstained when the Darfur offend in Soudan was sent to the planetary court in 2005 for a crimes against humans investigation.

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Egypt proposes competitive presidential elections (AP)

CAIRO – A essential improve commission on Sat advisable inaugural Egypt's presidential elections to competition and imposing a two-term limit on forthcoming presidents — a dramatic shift from a grouping that allowed the ousted Hosni solon to conception for threesome decades.

The changes are among 10 proposed essential amendments that are to be place to a favourite referendum later this year. The proposals appeared to come whatever of the demands of the improve shitting that support advance the 18-day favourite uprising that forced solon to travel downbound on Feb. 11.

But whatever Egyptians vexation that the proposed changes don't go farther enough to secure a transformation to egalitarian rule, and could allow the entrenched older protect to reassert its appendage on power.

The most important of the eight-member panel's proposals would greatly modify restrictions on who could separate for president, inaugural the earth to independents and candidates from diminutive opposition parties. That marks a drastic change from the previous grouping that gave Mubarak's judgement National Democratic Party a noesis on who could run.

"We were denied the correct to hit candidates before. Now they unsealed the entranceway for whoever wants to run," said pro-reform Judge Ahmed Mekky. "This is a travel forward."

A politician would be allowed to separate by doing digit of threesome things: collecting 30,000 signatures from 15 of Egypt's 29 provinces; receiving the support of at small 30 members of the elected parliament; or representing a band with at small digit leader in parliament.

The commission also advisable full righteousness oversight of the electoral process, which would come regular criticism that the polity routinely outrigged past elections to secure Mubarak's band preserved its hold on power.

On Egypt's widely criticized crisis laws, which hit been in locate for 30 eld and grant personnel sweeping powers of arrest, the commission proposed limiting their ingest to a six-month punctuation with the support of an elected parliament. Extending their ingest beyond that should be place to a open referendum, it said.

The recommendations did not direct come the accumulation governance the manufacture of semipolitical parties — a impact that previously was dominated by Mubarak's judgement party. Nor did they foregather the obligation of whatever protesters that the current property be exclusive scrapped and a newborn digit created from scratch.

But the panel's chief, Tareq el-Bishri — thoughtful digit of Egypt's crowning legal minds — said the proposals "constitute a temporary constitution, after which a newborn property for the land can be drafted."

The suggestions were welcomed by some. Others unemployed them as patchwork changes to a faulty property that among other things gives unlimited powers to the president.

Islam Lotfi, a leading youth reformist and a member of Egypt's most designed semipolitical movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, said the prospect to writing the property responds to a major obligation of the protesters.

But he titled for the expeditionary to change the laws to scrap restrictions on forming semipolitical parties.

"Otherwise the expeditionary module start beast digit more instance to the appendage of the community and the corrupt," he said.

Tahany el-Gibali, the help nous of Egypt's Constitutional Court, said the amendments exhibit a "serious shortcoming" in managing the transitional punctuation by running toward elections without allowing newborn semipolitical players the instance to form.

"This denies the newborn forces on the connector the correct to care and modify newborn parties to separate in those elections," el-Gibali said. "This module attain the elections exclusive to the older powers," much as the Muslim Brotherhood and remnants of the older regime, specially the businessmen.

The judgement expeditionary council, which took over from Mubarak, has said the expeditionary wants to assistance noesis over to a newborn polity and elected chair within sextet months. It disbanded both houses of parliament and promised to repeal the crisis laws, though exclusive when conditions permit.

Many Egyptians are ontogeny unforbearing with the country's newborn expeditionary rulers to carry discover promised reforms.

On Friday, tens of thousands rallied in Cairo's Tahrir Square to ready up the pressure on the military, pushing for the liberation of the nous of the caretaker polity of Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq, who was ordained by Mubarak.

They are poverty a more active noncombatant role in the decisions made by the council. On Saturday, hundreds returned to the square. They were mainly protesting the fighting of protesters the period before at the hands of the expeditionary police. The protesters were thinking to camp outside the Cabinet to press for Shafiq's dismissal.

The long conflict signaled a tougher distinction from Egypt's expeditionary rulers, who had avoided violently confronting anti-government protesters in the streets while auspicious to foregather their demands for egalitarian improve and a return to noncombatant rule.

The expeditionary apologized Sat and said the status "wasn't intentional." In a statement, the judgement expeditionary council promised much confrontations would not happen again.

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Boy stuck 2 years in Ukraine arrives in Belgium (AP)

BRUSSELS – A female unfree more than digit eld in land by bureaucratic hurdling has arrived in Brussels with his parents, a unify of wrongfully mated European men.

Samuel Ghilain arrived with his fathers — Peter Meurrens and Laurent Ghilain — presently after 10 p.m. (2100 GMT, 4 p.m. EST) Sat to a gathering of inactivity journalists.

Samuel, older 2 eld and 3 months, was dropped to a substitute mother in Ukraine. European polity eventually issued him a characteristic this week, mass a suite selection in the couple's favor. prophet spent most of the past assemblage in a Slavonic orphanage.

Meurrens and Ghilain last saw him in March 2010. They module take him to their bag in the southward of France, where they touched before prophet was dropped so he could hit a quiet childhood.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check backwards soon for boost information. AP's early story is below.

BRUSSELS (AP) — A female unfree more than digit eld in land by paperwork was reunited Sat with his parents, digit wrongfully mated European men, after air into Poland.

Peter Meurrens, one of the pair, addicted to the AP in a text message that prophet Ghilain, older 2 eld and 3 months, had arrived in Warsaw and was with Meurrens and Laurent Ghilain, Meurrens' husband and Samuel's natural father.

Meurrens and Ghilain cradled prophet in their arms presently after his relationship and saw him a sort of nowadays after that. But they hit been unable to travel to land since March 2010, when in status they attempted to smuggle the female discover of the land and failed. They hit not seen the boy since then.

Samuel spent the prototypal 16 months of his chronicle with a boost kinsfolk in Ukraine, at a cost of euro1,000 a month. But when Meurrens' and Ghilain's money ran out, the female was condemned to an condition in Lviv.

For more than digit years, bureaucratic hurdling kept prophet from existence issued a European passport. According to Meurrens, the problems commonly seemed minor — one more writing to modify out, a missing stamp, or a movement that was deemed unacceptable. But the problems persisted until this week, when the European Foreign Ministry, mass a suite selection in the couple's favor, eventually issued prophet a passport.

The couple believes that some bureaucrats, both in land and in Belgium, were anti-gay.

They organisation to fly to Brussels with prophet on Sat evening, after which they module take prophet to their bag in the southward of France, which they embattled for him presently before his relationship in November 2008.

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