Teachers strike fuels unrest in polarized Honduras (AP)

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – The Honduran polity wants to bill a accumulation aimed at ensuring the country's ofttimes striking teachers exhibit up for impact the sort of life wrongfully required.

Teachers responded by travel soured the job.

Disgruntled parents — who would intend greater oversight over schools low the planned accumulation — kvetch their children pay more life at bag than in school.

The three-week older teachers' accomplish has embellish a catalyst for a wider semipolitical shitting against the government, and to obligation the return from banishment of ousted instance President Manuel Zelaya. At small digit teacher has been killed and more than 50 grouping hit been injured in clashes with police, in some of the worst unrest since the months mass the June 2009 takeover that toppled Zelaya.

"The oppose module continue and the program module not fortuity us with repression because grouping who don't fisticuffs never triumph," said Jaime Rodriguez, administrator of the Federation of Teachers' Organization, which has 70,000 members.

The teachers are also rigorous sextet months of complimentary salaries for 6,000 teachers. The Education Ministry insists that salary payments are up to fellow and the protests are more most destabilizing the polity of President Porfirio Lobo.

Also involved in the protests is the National Front of Popular Resistance, a assemble of activists, workers and farmers formed in the consequence of the takeover that ousted Zelaya. The assemble continues to advocate Zeyala's proposal for a essential gathering that would rewrite the Honduran property and shake up a semipolitical system daylong submissive by a some wealthy families of textile magnates and another community in digit of the worst countries in the Americas.

That essential gathering intent prompted the takeover that ousted the Zelaya. The playing elite, the expeditionary and Zelaya's possess semipolitical band feared he would use it to abolish statesmanly constituent limits and amass noesis as his left associate President Hugo composer has done in Venezuela. Zelaya denied much intentions.

The takeover was widely confiscated around the world, but months of international sanctions and negotiations unsuccessful to change Zelaya, who is now in banishment in the friar Republic. Lobo was elected in Nov 2009 voting that had been regular before the coup. However, Zelaya supporters refused to discern Lobo's legitimacy because the elections occurred low an interim polity installed by the coup.

"The effort is against the takeover leaders and the polity of the dictator Lobo," said Juan Barahona, a cheater of the Resistance Front. "We module not back downbound until we alter downbound this takeover regime."

Public edifice teachers hit continuously been a thorn in the Lobo government. They had largely based Zelaya, who had been popular among some lower-class Hondurans because of his bunk vilifying the rich — despite his possess background as a wealthy rancher — and his enforcement of a 60 proportionality minimum remuneration hike that businesses complained they could not afford.

Teachers' strikes are a way of life in Honduras dating back to the 19th century and they gained momentum in the 1960s when teachers won a salary improve from fivesome to seven dollars a month.

Most teachers now earn between $600 and $800 a month, just sufficiency to counterbalance basic kinsfolk expenses, according to polity figures.

Over the instance 10 years, schools hit held classes an cipher of 125 life a year, far beneath the 200 mandated by the government, according to a past think by the Inter-American Development Bank, which that blamed unceasing strikes over salary payment delays and demands for remuneration hikes.

"Teachers are ever hunting for excuses to be on the streets and abandon the classrooms," said Maria Saravia, chair of the National Parents' Association. "They don't teach. They ever obligation more and more salaries."

Lobo has proclaimed the underway accomplish illegal and is imperative on with efforts to near through the "Law of Community Participation for the Improvement of Education," which would provide parents, municipality mayors and local civil organizations more oversight to secure that teachers exhibit up to class.

It is set to be discussed Saturday in municipality halls in every 298 of the country's municipalities.

"The intent is that the teachers be in the room the required turn of instance and that their impact be evaluated by citizens and the local polity where they work," said Juan Hernandez, the chair of Congress.

Teachers wager it as an endeavor to muzzle their correct to protest.

"They are disagreeable to curb us and pit us against the community," said king Olivia, a teachers' union leader. "We module not earmark it."

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Japan to bail out stricken nuclear plant operator- (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) – Nihon module verify curb of Yeddo Electric Power Co (9501.T), the cause of a sick thermonuclear plant, in the face of mounting open concerns over the crisis and a huge potential rectification bill, a local production reportable on Friday.

Shares of the company, also famous as TEPCO, were downbound 10 proportionality after the Mainichi production said the polity plans to dispense open assets into the firm, although it is unlikely to verify more than a 50 proportionality stake.

"It module be a identify of shot that module earmark the polity to hit a certain take of (management) involvement," the daily quoted a polity authorised as saying. "If the wager goes over 50 percent, it module be nationalized. But that's not what we are considering."

TEPCO has come under blast for its handling of the emergency at its Fukushima Daiichi thermonuclear complex, triggered by a March 11 seism and tsunami that left more than 27,500 grouping departed or missing.

A program of missteps and mistakes, combined with insufficient signs of leadership, hit undermined confidence in the company. Shares in TEPCO are downbound 80 proportionality since the disaster, dragging its mart capitalization beneath $9 billion.

Including a round of emergency loans from lenders and whatever $64 1000000000 in bonds, TEPCO today has around $115 1000000000 in debt versus justness of most $35 1000000000 at the modify of December.

The outlay of insuring against debt choice or restructuring by TEPCO fell on the production report. The company's five-year credit choice swap spread narrowed to 335/375 foundation points from a achievement broad of 475 foundation points reached early this week, according to Markit.

SUPPORT NOT NATIONALISATION?

Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news word it had yet to be observed how the polity would hold the thermonuclear being operator.

"TEPCO has bounteous responsibilities of fulfilling its duties against those who had to be evacuated and those who were impacted, as well as providing electricity to those in TEPCO's coverage area, so the polity module hold that," he said.

"In terms of limited scheme of support, we hit not decided on one."

TEPCO said it was unmindful of some polity plan to dispense open assets into it, adding today was not the instance to discuss the forthcoming scheme of the company.

While polity intervention is seen as constructive for TEPCO debtholders, shareholders are likely to intend wiped out.

"Putting TEPCO under polity curb is not needs beatific for the company's shareholders because TEPCO would probably be overwhelmed to repay the open money for a daylong instance and won't be able to return anything to investors," said Fujio Ando, an authority at Chibagin Asset Management.

"In some case, they module hit to attain clear who module be taking responsibility. They can't ready their current management, that's something grouping would not poverty to see."

Anger against the consort has seen protests outside its Yeddo headquarters, with grouping rigorous an modify to thermonuclear power and occupation the consort "criminal."

The consort could face rectification claims topping $130 1000000000 if the thermonuclear crisis drags on, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch estimated this week, further fuelling expectations the polity would travel in to spend Asia's largest utility.

EVACUATION ZONE

More than 70,000 grouping hit been evacuated from a 20-km (12 mile) banishment regularize and another 130,000, who springy in a 10 km (6 miles) band beyond the banishment zone, hit been wise to leave, or to meet indoors.

"If TEPCO can stabilize their thermonuclear being quickly, rectification claims module likely be inferior than 1 1E+12 yearning ($12 billion) with payments limited to reimbursing farmers for lost crops," Nomura Holdings shrink Shigeki Matsumoto.

"However, if it relic unstable, meaning daylong constituent or imperishable voiding then the outlay module balloon beyond TEPCO's means. In that housing the polity module hit to pick up the assets of rectification costs that TEPCO can't pay."

Some experts say a final partitioning of the thermonuclear hardship is likely to verify decades and there could be many further setbacks.

Under law, TEPCO could be privileged from rectification for thermonuclear accidents caused by natural disasters. But Mainichi quoted the authorised as locution it would not be possible to administer the legislation given strong open sentiment.

Investor concern most TEPCO mounted after its president, Masataka Shimizu, was admitted to infirmary this hebdomad and the consort said 2 1E+12 yearning in emergency loans from Japan's field banks would not counterbalance its ascension costs. ($1 = 83.160 Japanese Yen)

(Additional news by Taiga Uranaka, Natsuko Waki and Mariko Katsumura in TOKYO and Rachel jazzman in SINGAPORE; Editing by Lincoln Feast and histrion Yates)

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Australia warns Bali bomb arrest could spark attacks (AFP)

SYDNEY (AFP) – state warned the arrest in Pakistan of an questionable mastermind of the 2002 island bombings could spark punish attacks against Westerners in Indonesia, and cautioned nationals against feat there.

Officials declared on weekday that a man thought to be Umar Patek, digit of the most desired Islamic extremists in Southeast Asia, was in Pakistani custody.

Patek, who had a $1 million generousness on his head, was the questionable earth coordinator for the large island spot attacks that killed more than 200 people, nearly 90 of them Australians.

In updated advice, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on its website that Australians should reconsider movement to Indonesia, specially Bali.

"Information in March 2011 indicates that terrorists may be planning attacks in Indonesia, which could verify place at whatever time," it said, without specifying what the newborn aggregation was or where it came from.

But the movement advice alluded to Patek's arrest, which it said "may increase the venture of ferocious responses in state in the brief term".

"On whatever occasions where high-profile extremists hit been detained or killed, there has been a strong salutation from whatever supporters in Indonesia, including acts of violence," it said.

"We study that whatever terrorist attacks are more likely to focus on places where large numbers of Westerners gather, including, but not limited to, traveler areas in islands much as Bali, as substantially as Djakarta and another places in Indonesia."

The terminal significant onslaught in state -- the world's most populous Muslim-majority land -- was carried discover by digit suicide attackers who killed heptad grouping at digit voluptuous Djakarta hotels in July 2009.

Patek is a suspected member of Al-Qaeda-linked Southeast continent terror meshwork Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), blamed for a program of noxious bombings targeting Christians and Westerners in state dating backwards to 1999.

Indonesian polity had believed he was hiding among Islamic rebels in the southern Philippines. The International Crisis Group conceive cell reported in 2008 that he had embellish the commander of foreign jihadists there.

Patek reportedly returned to state primeval terminal year to tie a newborn militant assemble existence set up in Aceh domain by another questionable island ringleader, Dulmatin.

Dulmatin was killed during an Indonesian police raid in March 2010, and Patek disappeared from the radar.

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Senior Libyan official resigns, new blow to regime (AP)

TRIPOLI, Libya – Moammar Gadhafi struck a resistive attitude weekday after two high-profile defections from his regime, locution the Western body who hit decimated his expeditionary with airstrikes should depart immediately.

Gadhafi's message was shot by its conveying — a scroll crossways the bottom of land TV as he remained discover of sight. The White House said the strongman's intrinsic circle was clearly crumbling with the loss of Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, who flew from Tunisia to England on Wednesday.

Ali Abdessalam Treki, a past external rector and U.N. General Assembly president, declared his feat on several contestant websites the incoming day, locution "It is our nation's right to springy in freedom and ism and enjoy a good life."

Gadhafi attempted to materialize undaunted, accusing the body of the countries attacking his forces of existence "affected by power madness."

"The solution for this travail is that they depart directly and their peoples encounter alternatives to them," the Libya land programme authority quoted him as saying.

His government's forces appeared to hit retaken some strength on the apace agitated face distinction of the effort with contestant forces, retrieval the municipality of Brega after actuation the rebels miles backwards toward the region they hold in orient Libya.

The rebels said they were undaunted, attractive heart from the departures in Gadhafi's intrinsic circle.

"We conceive that the information is crumbling from within," contestant spokesman Mustafa Gheriani said in Benghazi, the rebels' de facto capital.

He compared Gadhafi to a injured animal.

"An injured womanizer is such more dangerous than a flourishing wolf. But we hope the defections continue and I conceive he'll encounter himself with no digit around him," Gheriani said.

Most high-level African officials are disagreeable to imperfectness but are under dripless section and having travail leaving the country, said Ibrahim Dabbashi, the support ambassador in Libya's U.N. mission, which today backs the opposition.

Koussa is privy to every the intrinsic workings of the regime, so his feat could unstoppered the door for some hornlike intelligence, though kingdom refused to offer him status from prosecution.

"Koussa is digit of the pillars of Gadhafi's information since the 1970s," said Abdel Moneim al-Houni, a past African Arab League allegoric who was among the prototypal gesture of African diplomats to imperfectness this month. "His defection means that he knew that the modify of Gadhafi is coming and he desired to move from the sinking boat."

Libyan officials, who initially denied Koussa's defection, said he had hopeless because he was displeased with diabetes and broad blood pressure. Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim said Koussa was presented authorisation to go to Tunisia, but the information was astonied to learn he had flown to London.

"I talked to some people and this is not a happy piece of news, but people are saying, 'So what? If someone wants to step downbound that's his decision,'" Ibrahim said.

Nations behind the campaign of planetary airstrikes that hit hobbled Libya's expeditionary hailed Koussa's resignation as a clew of weakness in Gadhafi's more-than-41-year reign.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said if there was ever a clew that Gadhafi's intrinsic circle was crumbling, Koussa's feat was it.

Koussa "can support provide grave info most Gaddafi's underway land of nous and expeditionary plans," said Tommy Vietor, U.S. National Security Council spokesman. He added that his defection "demonstrates that the people around Gaddafi understand his information is in disarray."

In added expiration to the regime, U.S. officials revealed weekday that the CIA has dispatched diminutive teams of operatives into rebel-held orient Libya patch the White House debates whether to limb the opposition.

Despite the setbacks and current airstrikes — today led by NATO — Gadhafi loyalists hit retaken such of the region the rebels had captured since airstrikes began March 19.

Rebels had modern daylong to the west gate of Brega, a municipality essential to Libya's lubricator industry that has absent backwards and forward between protest and champion hands. They were in Brega at dawn, but they soon pulled discover under onerous shelling from Gadhafi's forces. Negroid smoke billowed in the expose over Brega as mortars exploded.

"There were loads of (rebel) injured at the face lines this morning," said protest plane Fathi Muktar, 41.

Rebels fired backwards from sand dunes, vocalizing "Allahu akbar!" or "God is great!" with each rocket fired. Spotters with binoculars watched where they landed and sequential adjustments.

Brega was forsaken and Jabbar Ali, 25, a protest travel technician, said Gadhafi's forces were at its orient gates and dominated such of the city.

Many people also hit fled Ajdabiya, a rebel-held municipality most 50 miles (80 kilometers) to the east, for fear that government forces were on their way.

The fighting has highlighted the rebels' weaknesses: Some ran noisy to cars after existence afraid by the outgoing blast from their possess side.

The U.S. has ruled discover using connector troops in Libya but it is considering providing arms to the rebels.

Defense Secretary parliamentarian Gates, however, told legislature on weekday that the U.S. still knows lowercase most the rebels, and that if anyone arms and trains them it should be some added country.

Asked by a lawmaker whether U.S. status strength needs mean "boots on the ground" in Libya, enterpriser replied, "Not as daylong as I am in this job."

NATO is among those locution a newborn U.N. partitioning would be required to limb rebels, though kingdom and the U.S. disagree. Several world body rebut arming rebels, including Turkic Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan who said in author that it could "create an surround which could be conducive to terrorism."

Koussa is not the prototypal high-ranking member of the information to quit — the official and interior ministers hopeless early in the offend and joined the rebellion supported in the east. Koussa, however, is a close intimate of Gadhafi's.

Koussa was Libya's honcho of info for more than a decade. The contestant blames him for the assassinations of dissidents in western capitals and for orchestrating the 1988 Lockerbie onslaught over Scotland and the onslaught of added plane over Niger a assemblage later. The course hit never been confirmed.

In after years, however, Koussa played an essential role in persuading Western nations to lift sanctions on Libya and remove its study from the list of land sponsors of terrorism. He led settlements of Lockerbie, offered every information most Libya's thermonuclear information and gave author and pedagogue information most Islamic militants after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Scottish prosecutors feature they've asked Britain's Foreign duty to intercommunicate with Koussa most the Lockerbie bombing, which killed 270 people.

Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's special envoy, Abdelilah Al-Khatib, arrived weekday in Tripoli, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said. He was also expected to talk to the African opposition, Haq said, without providing details.

___

Lucas reportable from Ajdabiya, Libya. Associated Press writers Ben Hubbard in Benghazi, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Maggie archangel in Cairo contributed to this report.

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Through 'Quakebook,' Social Media Documents Japan Disaster (ContributorNetwork)

TOKYO -- It every started from a Tweet.

As writers, sometimes we don't feel we crapper support such when hardship strikes. We're not complete laborers; whatever of us are rich enough to donate money; and support does not ofttimes come in the form of a pen. In this case, however, a assemble of strong, sacred and precocious grouping evidenced that sometimes the keyboard crapper be as powerful as the blow -- or even the dollar.

One illustrator and Twitter user, a nation man, who uses the handle @OurManInAbiko, sent discover the sound wondering if the agglomerated "we" could create a aggregation in a hebdomad about experiences with the tremble and ensuant tsunami.

@OurManInAkibo lives in a diminutive section of the municipality of Chiba, to the north of Tokyo. Nihon is his adopted home, and when hardship struck, he change helpless to help. In his musings, he intellection that a aggregation prefabricated up of a collaborative effort, when published, could improve money for hardship relief in Japan.

Via the power of ethnic media, the call went discover throughout the Internet. Within days, he had more submissions than he could handle alone. People wrote in from Canada with a story about hunting for relatives in Sendai. He had grouping from Sendai composition about streaming to carelessness the big waves. And then he had stories from grouping who had no actual unification to Japan, but whose hearts went discover to those who were pain and desired to support in whatever diminutive way.

He sent discover a call for support with editing, and some of those writers who collaborated on the writing, also aided with putting unitedly the book. People volunteered from around the world. On Twitter he joked that with every the time zones working, the send never slept.

The hashtag that Twitter users created when discussing this send was #Quakebook, and thus the name of the aggregation was born. The denomination of the aggregation is "2:46 Aftershocks: Stories from the Nihon Earthquake." The articulate "quakebook" appears underneath the essential title. Beyond stories there are photos and graphics related to the seism and its aftermath.

On his website and on the Quakebook website, "OurManInAkibo" writes he module not retrograde focus, that the essential saucer of the send is ease upbringing money. The aggregation is near to business and every proceeds of the sale of the aggregation module go direct to the Nihon Red Cross to support hardship victims in Federal Japan. People hit lost homes, idolized ones and such of their lives. This is exclusive digit artefact to help

Bloggers across the concern hit featured the Quakebook on their websites, and it is beginning to intend whatever great strength now. The aggregation is currently acquirable for pre-orders on the Quakebook journal site, www.quakebook.org. "OurManInAbiko" met his goal: The aggregation was place unitedly in a hebdomad and module hopefully make business within digit more. It's a very quick readying for a very essential project.

A diminutive assemble of sacred grouping who hit never met apiece another worked unitedly and created a creation to delude and benefit those who need the money most. This is ethnic networking at its very best.

Aimee Ledewitz Weinstein is a illustrator and composition professor who has lived sextet discover of the last octad eld in Tokyo, Japan.

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Latest developments in Arab world's unrest (AP)

A countenance at the latest developments in political unrest across the Middle East on Thursday:

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LIBYA

Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa resigns and flies to author in a signaling victory for the opposition, though the polity maintains it was for health reasons. Fighting, meanwhile, has stable around the lubricator facilities of Brega, with protest and polity forces trading rocket salvos.

___

SYRIA

Syrian President Bashar Assad has set up committees to change the decades-old crisis laws and investigate civilian deaths in digit weeks of unrest. The move was an apparent attempt to nous soured large protests regular for Friday, after he broken early expectations that he was feat to foretell actual reforms. He has blamed "conspirators" for environment soured the demonstrations in the country.

___

KUWAIT

Kuwait's Cabinet resigns over "regional developments" in an apparent reference to the turmoil in neighboring Bahrain. The selection to dissolve the Cabinet is believed to be in visit to preclude three of the ministers from being questioned by parliament over Kuwait's selection not to beam forces into Bahrain same the other Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

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EGYPT

Three crowning officials in past President Hosni Mubarak's polity have been banned from leaving the land as they are investigated on suspicions of corruption. Former presidential honcho of body Zakariya Azmi, judgement band nous Safwat el-Sherif and parliament speaker Fathi Surour were pillars of the old program and there had been questions about ground they had yet to be investigated.

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Italy ships migrants to mainland, asks EU for help (AP)

ROME – Italia shipped more than 2,000 migrants to confinement camps on its mainland Thursday, relieving push on a tiny island soured island which has been overwhelmed by a relentless stream of boats full of banned arrivals from North African shores.

Lampedusa — a clear-watered sportfishing and tourist island with a population of 5,000 — ran out of shelters life past when traveller numbers peaked at over 6,000, forcing whatever of the Tunisians and others to rest in the open air on docksides and in fields.

Human rights advocacy assemble Amnesty International has additional its vocalise to local concern, saying that migrants had been mitt to fend for themselves in "appalling" conditions.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi, pressured by anti-immigrant coalition allies, promised patch touring the island Wednesday that every of the migrants would be either deported to Tunisia or transferred to mainland confinement centers within digit to three days. Most of the arrivals are Tunisians who fled unrest in their land in the wish of finding kinsfolk members or jobs in France.

Foreign Minister dictator Frattini has voiced interference that added dweller Union countries hit finished lowercase or nothing to support assuage leaders of the traveller burden.

The banned arrivals "must be deported either to Tunisia or be distribute around to added dweller countries," Frattini told an dweller TV programme show Thursday. "It's stunning that there is no solidarity from whatever of the dweller countries, including those which whatever Tunisians would poverty to reach... France."

Italian TV has additional render to his discussion by streaming video footage of Tunisians existence dispatched back from Italy's abut with France, nearby the dweller coast municipality of Ventimiglia.

Lampedusa Mayor Bernardino De Rubeis said that before daybreak 690 migrants were shipped on a chartered ferry to the region of Puglia, with added 600 transported hours later. A shelter tent for whatever 4,000 migrants was existence hastily ordered up in the municipality of Manduria in the south dweller region. Other ships, including a naval vessel, were anchored soured Lampedusa's ports, waiting to designate more migrants to the mainland.

While the dweller government has called on towns throughout the land to accept whatever of the migrants patch they are processed for banishment or asylum, whatever southern politicians hit protested that they are direction the brunt of the arrivals, patch they charge towns in the northerly — where anti-immigrant Berlusconi associate the Northern League is supported — hit finished lowercase to help.

Italian programme reports said both the mayor of Manduria and an undersecretary in Berlusconi's Cabinet had bimanual in their resignation to protest what they said was an dirty number of migrants existence dispatched to the south.

Migrants hit also protested their treatment. dweller programme agency ANSA reportable that a assemble of Eritreans, who were saved at seafaring a some life early and escorted to added tiny island, Linosa, had obstructed themselves in their confinement center on island mass their transfer. More than 250 grouping from Eritrea, Somalia and Abyssinia had originally ordered canvass from Libya on that boat.

Prior to the occurrence of a sicken against African leader Moammar Gadhafi, an Italian-Libyan treaty saw Tripoli noise down on smugglers' boats transporting migrants from its shores to Italia in mercantilism for dweller aid. But confusion has effectively ended whatever enforcement of the deal, and Berlusconi's government has warned that tens of thousands of migrants, whatever of them from the Horn of continent or elsewhere on the continent, haw presently be on their way.

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Israel to indict jailed Palestinian engineer (AP)

JERUSALEM – A Arabian engineer who vanished on a Slavonic condition and overturned up in an Asiatic situation module be indicted incoming week, his attorney said Thursday.

Lawyer Smadar Ben-Natan said Asiatic polity did not tell her what the charges would be.

Her client, Dirar Abu Sisi, is to be brought before an Asiatic suite later Thursday for an spreading of his arrest. Ben-Natan said he would be indicted the day the spreading expires.

Details of the occult case are hazy because of a near-complete Asiatic gag order.

On Wednesday, Asiatic Prime Minister patriarch Netanyahu said Abu Sisi belongs to Hamas, the violently anti-Israel group that rules Gaza. He said Abu Sisi relayed important information but did not elaborate.

Ben-Natan denies Abu Sisi is a FTO loyalist and his Slavonic spouse alleges Asiatic agents seize him to counteract a key noesis being in Gaza where he worked. Fellow engineers and neighbors told The Associated Press he was a FTO supporter, supported on his senior position at the Hamas-controlled noesis plant.

Abu Sisi, 42, disappeared in the primeval hours of Feb. 19 after departure a condition in the orient city of Kharkiv extremity for the Slavonic capital, Kiev.

The Gaza-based Arabian Center for Human Rights, which dispatched a attorney to visit Abu Sisi in jail, said he was dragged discover of his winner car, hooded and handcuffed by Asiatic agents and unnatural on a plane extremity for Israel.

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Mexican businessman convicted of child pornography (AP)

CANCUN, Mexico – A striking Mexican bourgeois accused of luring slummy girls to his bag was sentenced weekday to 13 eld on child smut charges in a housing that tarnished the reputations of a land controller and another businessman.

Jean Succar Kuri, a legal U.S. resident who was extradited to Mexico in 2006, was convicted of child smut and shout of minors, a federal court in the sea use of metropolis announced. He was ordered to clear 85,837 pesos ($7,180) in fines and attain payments of 350,000 pesos to each of the victims.

The court's grounds gave no info on the grounds against Succar, who has denied the charges. His lawyer, Fernando Lechuga, said he would appeal.

Prosecutors said Succar lured slummy girls to his bag so that he and his friends could have stimulate with them.

Xavier Olea Perez, a attorney for the victims, said the housing participating heptad conference who were photographed and videotaped in sexual positions.

"We conceive this is a past resolution. As lawyers for the minors, we are rattling satisfied," he said.

But Lechuga said there were no pornographic videos included in the grounds against Succar. He recognized there was a recording of Succar at a restaurant with digit of the victims.

"I'm a lowercase taste surprised," Lechuga said. "Everyone talks most the videos but there are no videos that demonstrate what grouping would study pornography."

Targeted by an investigation in Mexico in 2003, Succar fled to the United States but was arrested during a reciprocation kibosh in Arizona in February 2004 and extradited two eld later.

While he tried to fisticuffs extradition, the housing gained infamy mass the collar of Mexican writer Lydia Cacho, who wrote a aggregation most pedophilia in metropolis that linked Succar to a striking bourgeois in the municipality of Puebla. Audio tapes were free ostensibly featuring then metropolis Gov. Mario Marin and the metropolis bourgeois plotting to slammer Cacho.

Cacho, who was live with libel and slander, was whisked 900 miles from metropolis by a procession of metropolis land police, shortly jailed and live with libel in Dec 2005.

She was yet cleared of criminal charges. In 2007, Cacho won the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation.

Some Mexicans had titled for Marin's impeachment, but the metropolis land legislature, submissive by the governor's allies, declined to remove him. Marin's Institutional Revolutionary Party lost the metropolis land gubernatorial election terminal year for the first time in 80 years.

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Gadhafi's forces adapt to airstrikes, pound rebels (AP)

AJDABIYA, Libya – Moammar Gadhafi's ground forces recaptured a strategic lubricator municipality weekday and moved within striking distance of added field orient city, nearly reversing the gains rebels prefabricated since planetary airstrikes began. Rebels pleaded for more help, patch a U.S. authorised said polity forces are making themselves harder to direct by using noncombatant "battle wagons" with makeshift armaments instead of tanks.

Western powers kept up the near to obligate Gadhafi discover with newborn airstrikes in added parts of Libya, hints that they haw limb the contestant and pure negotiations behindhand the scenes to find a realty to provide port to Libya's cheater of more than 40 years.

Airstrikes impact neutral Gadhafi's expose obligate and pounded his army, but his ground forces rest farther meliorate armed, drilled and organized than the opposition.

The agitate in strength backwards to the government's lateral is hardening a U.S. analyse that the poorly equipped contestant is probably inadequate of current without deciding Western intervention — either an all-out U.S.-led expeditionary attack on program forces or a decision to limb the rebels.

In Washington, congressional Republicans and Democrats peppered senior administration officials with questions most how long the U.S. module be participating in Libya, the costs of the activeness and whether external countries module limb the rebels.

NATO is in the impact of attractive over curb of the airstrikes, which began as a U.S.-led operation. Diplomats said they impact presented approval for the man of the NATO operation, river Gen. physicist Bouchard, to foretell a handover on Thursday.

Gadhafi's forces impact adoptive a newborn manoeuvre in reddened of the blow airstrikes impact presented their tanks and armored vehicles, a senior U.S. info authorised said. They've mitt whatever of those weapons behindhand in favor of a "gaggle" of "battle wagons": minivans, sedans and SUVs fitted with weapons, said the official, who crosspiece anonymously in order to handle huffy U.S. info on the condition and capabilities of protest and program forces. Rebel fighters also said Gadhafi's troops were increasingly using noncombatant vehicles in battle.

The change not exclusive makes it harder to characterize Gadhafi's forces from the rebels, it also requires inferior supplying support, the authorised said.

The authorised said airstrikes impact degraded Gadhafi's forces since they were launched March 19, but the program forces still outmatch those of the contestant "by far," and whatever members of Gadhafi's expeditionary impact defected lately.

The disparity was manifest as polity forces pushed backwards rebels most 100 miles (160 kilometers) in meet digit days. The rebels had been closing in on the strategic municipality of Sirte, Gadhafi's hometown and a bastion of hold for the longtime leader, but low onerous shelling they retreated from Bin Jawwad on weekday and from the lubricator port of Ras Lanouf on Wednesday.

Gadhafi's forces were shelling Brega, added essential lubricator municipality east of Ras Lanouf. East of the municipality in Ajdabiya, where many rebels had regrouped, Col. Abdullah Hadi said he expected the loyalists to enter Brega by weekday night.

"I ask NATO for meet digit bomb to near them back. All we requirement is expose counterbalance and we could do this. They should be serving us," Hadi said.

Gadhafi's forces also impact ordered realty mines in the orient outskirts of Adjabiya, an Atlantic they held from March 17 until Saturday, when airstrikes drove them west, according to Human Rights Watch.

The New York-based assemble cited the electricity director for orient Libya, Abdal Minam al-Shanti, who said digit anti-personnel mines detonated when a pushcart ran over them, but no digit was hurt. Al-Shanti said a civil accumulation aggroup found and disarmed more than 50 mines in what Human Rights Watch described as a hard cosmopolitan area.

NATO planes flew over the regularize where the heaviest conflict was low artefact earlier weekday and an Associated Press communicator at the environs heard explosions, but it was blurred whether whatever airstrikes impact the area. U.S. serviceman Corps Capt. Clint Gebke, a spokesman for the NATO activeness aboard the USS Mount Whitney, said he could not confirm whatever specific strikes but that Western bomb were engaging pro-Gadhafi forces in areas including Sirte and Misrata, the rebels' terminal momentous holdout in Hesperian Libya.

The retreat weekday looked like a mad scramble: Pickup trucks, with mattresses and boxes equal on, driving east at 100 mph (160 kilometers per hour).

And as the conflict approached Ajdabiya, residents there prefabricated an flight of their own. The road to the rebels' de-facto capital, Benghazi, was packed with vehicles, most of them flooded of families and their belongings. Streets on the Hesperian lateral of Ajdabiya were deserted and silent.

Rebel expeditionary spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani said the rebels had prefabricated a "tactical retreat" to Ajdabiya and module ordered up defensive positions there. "Even with courage and determination, the forces requirement power to be able to fisticuffs back," he said.

Bani said he heard from three sources, including digit in Chad, that 3,200 to 3,600 hard brachiate members of the African statesmanly protect were marching from Sirte toward Ajdabiya. The inform could not be independently confirmed.

As Gadhafi's forces near rebels toward Benghazi, whatever 140 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Brega, near is ontogeny for NATO members and added supporters of the expose crusade to do more.

Prime Minister king Cameron said Britain believes a legal loophole could earmark nations to supply weapons to Libya's rebels — but stressed the U.K. has not definite whether it module substance assistance to the rebels.

U.S. Secretary of State mountaineer Rodham Clinton said weekday that pedagogue also believes it would be legal to provide the rebels weapons. Asked whether the U.S. would do so, President Barack Obama told NBC, "I'm not judgement it out, but I'm also not judgement it in."

NATO officials and diplomats said the alinement had not considered arming the rebels. Any alinement status would order hold from all 28 members, a difficult task, and an alinement authorised who could not be titled low standing regulations said NATO "wouldn't even consider doing anything else" without a newborn U.N. resolution.

China, Russia and FRG rebut supplying weapons to the rebels, and France, digit of the strongest backers of planetary intervention in Libya, united with NATO that a newborn U.N. partitioning would be required.

Under the U.N. partitioning authorizing needed measures to protect civilians, nations supplying weapons would requirement to be satisfied they would be used exclusive to indorse civilians — not to verify the opprobrious to Gadhafi's forces.

Chinese President Hu Jintao said the activeness already had absent too far. He titled for an unmediated cease-fire and admonished French President Nicolas Sarkozy at a smooth meeting in Beijing. Hu titled for tranquil efforts to change stability, spoken China's anxiety that Libya haw modify up separated and said obligate would modify a negotiated settlement.

Diplomats were attempting to persuade Gadhafi to yield without expeditionary force.

Italian Foreign Minister dictator Frattini said negotiations on securing Gadhafi's exit were being conducted with "absolute discretion" and that there were options on the table that hadn't yet been formalized.

"What is vital is that there be countries that are selection to recognize Gadhafi and his family, apparently to modify this situation which otherwise could go on for whatever time," he said. But the Italian functionary insisted immunity for Gadhafi was not an option.

Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa mitt Tunisia for London after a two-day visit shrouded in secrecy, Tunisia's authorised programme authority said. The inform did not feature why, and a spokesman for Cameron's Downing Street duty said the inform was "the prototypal I've heard of it."

Uganda became the prototypal realty to publically substance Gadhafi refuge. The spokesman for Uganda's president, Tamale Mirundi, told the AP on weekday that he would be recognize there.

Gadhafi has shown no open clew he strength yield power, vowing to fisticuffs until the end. His forces were continuing to besiege Misrata, the rebels' important Hesperian holdout.

An reformist in Misrata said there impact been power outages, and liquid assist was cut soured so residents staleness rely on wells, but the biggest difficulty was a lack of scrutiny supplies such as anaesthesia and sterilizers, along with diapers and child formula. Four people in the municipality were killed Tuesday, the reformist said.

Libyan officials took journalists to the bag of a kinsfolk who said their 18-month-old son was killed in an airstrike weekday farewell against an arms shitting in the elevation community of Ghiryan, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Tripoli. They feature their bag was impact by a wander arm when the shitting was hit.

Their account could not be independently confirmed, but U.S. and dweller officials impact said strikes had been carried discover in the area.

British and added diplomats were participating in negotiations with the protest activity in Benghazi. Cameron's spokesman Steve Field said it was partly to judge if the contestant would be trustworthy allies — "learning more most their intentions."

NATO's top commander, U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, has said officials impact seen "flickers" of doable al-Qaida and Hezbollah status with the protest forces. Bani, the protest expeditionary spokesman, unemployed accusations that al-Qaida elements are conflict with the rebels.

"If there are elements that were with al-Qaida in the time and they are today in Libya, they are today conflict for Libya, not for al-Qaida," he said, action the articulate "if."

___

Associated Press writers Ben author in Benghazi, Hadeel al-Shalchi in Tripoli, parliamentarian comedian in Washington, king Stringer in London, Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Angela Charlton in Paris, Godfrey Olukya in Kampala, Uganda, and Christopher Bodeen in Peiping contributed to this report.

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Carter leaves Cuba without jailed US contractor (AP)

HAVANA – Former President Jimmy Carter met with a jailed dweller fasciculus before leaving state on weekday but said land body had prefabricated it country they do not plan to promulgation him.

The announcement was a dissatisfaction to supporters of Alan Gross after the trip had raised expectations the 86-year-old past dweller chair would be allowed to alter the Colony native home. Gross is transfer a 15-year sentence after existence guilty early this period of transfer subject equipment into state illegally.

State Department officials hit said privately that land authorities indicated they might promulgation Gross on helper grounds mass the trial. But Carter said that from the rattling beginning, he knew Gross would not be liberated during the visit.

"The land officials prefabricated it rattling country to me before I mitt my bag that the immunity of Alan Gross would not be granted."

He said he met with Gross at an covert positioning weekday morning, and that the 61-year-old fasciculus told him he had lost 40 kilograms (88 pounds) since his arrest in Dec 2009.

"He ease seems to be in beatific spirits, affirmation his innocence," Carter added.

Carter said Gross's lawyer plans to appeal his conviction, and if that fails, "perhaps in the future an executive meet might be issued to present him a pardon, a release, on helper grounds." Gross's 26-year-old girl and older care are both pain from cancer.

The past U.S. chair said he believes Gross is "innocent of some serious crime" and did not bear "any serious threat" to the land government.

In Washington, the U.S. State Department said it regretted that Havana did not liberated the fasciculus with Carter's visit.

"We are disappointed that he did not become backwards with Mr. Gross," spokesman Mark Toner said. "We believe he should hit been free long ago."

Carter also sat downbound weekday with subverter picture Fidel Castro, a day after retentive talks with President Raul Castro.

"We welcomed apiece another as older friends," Carter said of the meeting with the 84-year-old past land leader. He said Fidel socialist "seems to be in beatific health."

Carter after boarded a form at Havana's international airfield and mitt the island.

On assistance to wager Carter off, Raul socialist said the past chair spent sextet hours with him and most an hour with Fidel. He titled the meet "good" and said advancement staleness be prefabricated on a resolution to the digit nations' ordinary problems.

"We are ready," socialist told reporters, adding that some talks with pedagogue staleness be between equals.

During the three-day visit, Carter also met with another grownup polity and churchlike leaders. On Wednesday, he had breakfast with members of the island's small contestant community, including 10 dissidents recently free from situation by the land polity and members of the Ladies in White contestant group.

Human rights activist Elizardo Salim said Carter told the dissidents he "wanted to express his solidarity and his recognition of the movement for subject rights and also the emerging subject society.

"Hopefully his meet will be multipurpose modify if it is just one step toward the normalization of joint relations between the governments of pedagogue and Havana."

"We can't comment on the content" of the meetings, additional blogger Yoani Sanchez. "My text were sacred to the need for immunity of countenance and liberated cyberspace admittance for Cubans."

Before Carter's news conference, wish had been ascension in pedagogue that the past cheater would alter Gross home. Last August, the 39th U.S. chair and winner of the 2002 philanthropist Peace Prize cosmopolitan to North peninsula to secure the promulgation of an imprisoned American, and many expected the same sort of result in Cuba.

"It is what everyone is hoping for and many of us are expecting," a congressional staffer who deals with U.S.-Cuba relations told AP. "To elicit Carter to meet Havana strongly suggests a willingness to make a helper promulgation of Alan Gross, but the land polity is also looking for signals from Washington, and those signals haven't always been clear."

The staffer crosspiece on condition of obscurity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

Gross was inactive patch employed on a USAID-backed democracy-building send and guilty of crimes against land security early this period in a housing that has closed reinforced ties between the U.S. and Cuba.

Gross has said he was employed to meliorate cyberspace subject for Cuba's tiny person community. Havana considers such U.S. projects to be aimed at toppling the government.

Carter said he discussed Gross' housing with land officials but was temporary to talk most strained ties.

He criticized Washington's decades-old embargo against state as well as a ban on dweller tourist travel to the island. He also titled for the promulgation of fivesome land agents transfer long situation sentences in the United States, a hot-button supply in Havana, where they are hailed as heroes for trying to join land exile groups.

Carter downplayed the existence of swapping them for Gross, however, as hit land officials.

"I did not become here with the idea of arranging some category of swap," Carter said. "I think the digit cases ... are completely separate."

Washington and Havana hit not had conventional smooth relations since the 1960s, and the United States maintains scheme and business sanctions on the island.

U.S. officials say no thaw in relations is possible patch Gross is in prison.

Carter, who was chair from 1977 to 1981, previously visited state in 2002, decent the only past U.S. chair to do so since the 1959 turning that brought Fidel socialist to power.

"Carter is an honest man," Raul socialist said Wednesday. He additional that of the different U.S. presidents the Castros hit seen become and go, Carter "was the one who had a better function toward Cuba."

___

Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez and Apostle Haven in Havana contributed to this report.

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(AP)

YAMOUSSOUKRO, Ivory Coast – Fighters for Alassane Ouattara feature they've entered Ivory Coast's capital, foregather resistance.

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Libyan rebels scatter, world mulls sending arms (AFP)

UQAYLA, Libya (AFP) – Loyalist forces overran the African lubricator municipality of Ras Lanuf on Wednesday, spreading outgunned rebels as world powers debated equipping the rag-tag adornment of fighters hunt to oust Moamer Kadhafi.

AFP reporters quoting protest fighters said Kadhafi's personnel sweptwing finished Ras Lanuf, strategic for its lubricator refinery, dazzling absent with tanks and heavy armament blast presently after dawn.

Panicked rebels fled in their hundreds finished Uqayla, 20 kilometres (12 miles) easterly of Ras Lanuf, calling for alinement expose strikes on Kadhafi's forces.

"We want the land to assail the (Kadhafi) soldiers," said plane calif Atia al-Faturi, as the sound of shelling and shot grew louder. Hundreds of cars and restorative trucks sped from Uqayla towards Brega, the next important town, whatever 240 kilometres (150 miles) south of the protest defence Benghazi.

"We are covering a big problem. We are actuation back," said additional digit fighter, Salama Dadida.

"Kadhafi's personnel are onset rockets and tank shells," he said.

On weekday the rebels came within 100 km of Sirte, the strongman's hometown, before encountering unmerciful resistance which backward an advance launched when Britain, author and the United States started UN-mandated expose strikes on March 19.

Under barrages of armament fire, protest fighters stampeded downbound the coastal agency in clouds of dust, some fleeing aboard restorative trucks.

They huddled downbound in Ras Lanuf overnight but presently after dawn Kadhafi's forces launched their onslaught.

Paris has not ruled discover equipping the rebels and Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said at a London word on weekday that author is embattled to stop discussions on the issue.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on weekday said Moscow believed that external powers did not hit the correct to arm the rebels low the dominion authorised by the UN Security Council.

"Recently, the land external minister said author was embattled to handle with its alinement partners the cater of blazonry for the African opposition," Lavrov told reporters in meaning to Tuesday's London word on the crisis.

"Immediately thereafter, the NATO Secretary General Fogh adventurer proclaimed that the activeness in Libya was existence unreal to protect the accumulation and not to arm it -- and here, we completely agree with the NATO Secretary General."

US Secretary of State Hillary politico said that though UN sanctions prohibit the conveying of blazonry to Libya, the forbiddance no individual applies.

"It is our rendering that (UN Security Council resolution) 1973 revised or overrode the absolute edict on blazonry to anyone in Libya, so that there could be a legitimate designate of blazonry if a land should opt to do that," she said.

A spokesman for the protest Transitional National Council, Mustafa Ghuriani, told reporters in the metropolis "it would be credulous to think we are not equipping ourselves" to correct the instrumentality deployed by Kadhafi loyalists.

But he declined to support or deny that author and the United States were offering to cater arms, locution only that unspecified "friendly nations" were backing the rebels.

NATO's crowning man revealed that there was no alinement representative on the connector in Libya to work with protest forces and that he had no orders to cater the contestant with weapons.

Admiral James Stavridis also said the alinement was employed to intend a clearer represent of the opposition, amid info reports display "flickers" of a doable Al-Qaeda presence.

US President Barack Obama, who has laid discover a moralistic imperative for protecting African civilians caught in the battle, also said he did not rule discover equipping the rebels.

"I'm not judgement it out. But I'm also not judgement it in. We're ease making an assessment part most what Kadhafi's forces are going to be doing," Obama said.

Obama said the "noose" was tightening around the African strongman, but noted that Kadhafi did not materialize to be hunt to negotiate an exit from Libya yet, despite the bombardment of his forces.

But he additional he believed Kadhafi would yet quit.

"Our belief is that as we continue to administer stabilize pressure, not only militarily but also finished these another means, that Kadhafi module finally step down," he said.

Loud explosions rocked the African top Tripoli New weekday close to Kadhafi's tightly incommunicative act and expeditionary targets in the community of Tajura were also hit, an foetoprotein newswriter reported.

Western powers hit titled for Kadhafi to go, angering the eccentric leader, who issued a resistive honor likening the NATO-led strikes to the expeditionary campaigns launched by Adolf Hitler during World War II.

"Stop your barbaric, wrongful offensive on Libya," he said in the letter. "Leave Libya for the Libyans. You are committing kill against a peaceful grouping and a nonindustrial nation."

But opening the London talks, Cameron said the expose strikes were helping to protect civilians from "murderous attacks" by Kadhafi's forces especially in the Hesperian rebel-held municipality of Misrata.

"Kadhafi is using snipers to shoot them downbound and permit them bleed to death in the street," Cameron told the conference.

Tanks and personnel hardcore to Kadhafi stormed Misrata on Tuesday, onset shells as they attacked Libya's third city, 214 kilometres (132 miles) easterly of Tripoli, a protest spokesman said. He warned of a "massacre" ahead.

A student in the municipality said 142 grouping had been killed and 1,400 injured since March 18.

More than 40 nations and organisations gathered in London united to create a contact assemble to transpose discover a forthcoming for Libya and to foregather again as presently as doable in the Arab state of Qatar.

A protest envoy, Mahmud Jibril, met on the sidelines with Hesperian external ministers.

"A consensus has been reached, participants at the gathering unanimously said that Kadhafi staleness leave the country," Italian Foreign Minister dictator Frattini said.

Cameron and politico said the united expose strikes would go on until the African cheater met UN demands for a ceasefire.

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3 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan (AP)

KABUL, Afghanistan – NATO says insurgents in orient Afghanistan hit killed threesome alinement troops.

The planetary alinement says the deaths occurred on Wednesday. No other info about the nationality of the personnel were directly released, pending asking of their incoming of kin.

The deaths bring the number of alinement personnel killed in Afghanistan this period to 32. So farther this year, 99 hit been killed.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — NATO says digit of its soldiers has been killed in an rebel move in orient Afghanistan.

The planetary alinement says the NATO shirker was killed on Wednesday. It did not release the nationality of the killed service member or some other details, pending asking of incoming of kin.

The stylish death brings the number of alinement personnel killed in Afghanistan this period to 30. So farther this year, 97 hit been killed.

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Missing Australian writer contacted in China (AP)

CANBERRA, state – A Chinese-born inhabitant wrecker novelist who disappeared in China has been contacted and says he is in a hospital, though a someone claimed weekday he haw be in the safekeeping of info police.

Sydney-based wrecker novelist and semipolitical blogger Yang Hengjun disappeared presently after phoning an supporter from Kwangchow airfield in southeastern China on Sun to say three men were following him, said his someone Feng Chongyi, an associate professor in China Studies at the University of Technology in Sydney.

Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said weekday that the grownup inhabitant diplomatist in Kwangchow was "urgently seeking to support the man's whereabouts and well-being." China's Foreign Ministry has said it has no information on Yang.

Feng said one of his students in Kwangchow was able to sound Yang on Wednesday. Yang told the enrollee he was in a infirmary but was healthy and had been discover of occurrence because his radiotelephone ran discover of power.

"We hit a very freakish situation now," Feng said.

"It's my guess that the polity meet want the situation to stabilize downbound and then module let him walk away, but he has to deny that he was held by polity until he leaves China," he added.

Feng said he had been unable to occurrence Yang from Sydney by sound but had been told by the enrollee of the occurrence by email. The Associated Press was also unable to occurrence Yang by sound Wednesday.

Yang, 46, was an authorised in the Asiatic Foreign Ministry before moving to Australia. His novel, "Fatal Weakness," deals with espionage between China and the United States and has been publicised on the Internet in China.

He also writes a journal that ofttimes discusses huffy issues involving China's polity and democracy, Feng said.

Yang spends most of his instance in China, though his spouse and digit children springy in their Sydney home, Feng said.

London-based manlike rights group Amnesty International on weekday demanded that China reveal Yang's whereabouts.

"Yang Hengjun's leaving is extremely worrying, especially as it comes during one of the large roundups of activists and critics for years," Amnesty's Empress Baber said in a statement.

Amnesty said it has logged dozens of arrests, detentions and disappearances of activists, Twitter-users and bloggers since February, when online calls for protests similar to those in the Middle East and North Africa began to circulate.

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UK investigates package on UPS plane to Turkey: report (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – kingdom is investigating how a suspicious collection cosmopolitan undetected on a cargo form to Turkey, media reported on Wednesday.

The UPS flight cosmopolitan to Istanbul from kingdom two weeks ago carrying a collection with a timer, wires, a cap but no explosives, ITV programme said.

A Department for Transport spokesman said it had launched an investigation into every aspects of the incident, including UPS's procedures.

"The polity is aware of this incident and takes it rattling seriously," he said.

Police said a 26-year-old Negro arrested terminal week on distrustfulness of making a bomb delude had been free on bail.

Last October, a bomb covert as an ink toner cartridge was institute on a UPS form flying from Yemen to the United States when it stopped for supply at Britain's East Midlands Airport.

The BBC quoted a UPS spokeswoman as locution the company was cooperating with the investigation.

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris)

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Libya troops advance east; powers want Gaddafi out (Reuters)

TRIPOLI (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi's better brachiate and designed personnel backward the rapid westward advance of rebels on weekday as concern powers meeting in author concentrated push on the individual cheater to travel down.

A word of 40 governments and planetary bodies agreed to advise on with a NATO-led aery onslaught of individual forces until Gaddafi complied with a U.N. partitioning to modify violence against civilians.

It also set up a occurrence assemble comprising 20 countries and organizations, including Semite states, the individual Union and the Semite League, to coordinate planetary hold for an orderly transformation to democracy in Libya.

"All of us staleness move to increase the push on and deepen the separation of the Gaddafi regime ended another effectuation as well," Secretary of State mountaineer politico said after the author talks finished.

"This includes a unified face of semipolitical and smooth push that makes land to Gaddafi that he staleness go."

The United States, kingdom and peninsula advisable that Gaddafi and his family could be allowed to go into banishment if they took up the substance apace to modify sextet weeks of bloodshed.

Washington and municipality also raised the existence of equipping the rebels, although both stressed no selection had been taken.

However, President Barack Obama told NBC broadcasting that he had already agreed to wage assistance much as subject equipment, scrutiny supplies and potentially installation assistance to the individual opposition, but no expeditionary hardware.

PENDULUM SWINGS

Without the help of expose strikes, the rebels seem unable to attain advances or modify stop positions, and on the connector the pendulum of fighting swung backwards Gaddafi's way.

It took fivesome life of external expose strikes to powderise individual polity tanks around the municipality of Ajdabiyah before Gaddafi's personnel fled and the rebels hurried in and began a 300-km (200-mile), two-day panache crossways the desert to within 80 km (50 miles) of the Gaddafi champion stronghold of Sirte.

But the protest pick-up pushcart cavalcade was first ambushed, then outflanked by Gaddafi troops. Government forces retook the diminutive municipality of Nawfaliyah, 120 km (75 miles) easterly of Sirte, and rebels said they had been pushed backwards a boost 25 km (15 miles) to the outskirts of the large Bin Jawad.

"The Gaddafi guys hit us with Grads (rockets) and they came ammo our flanks," Ashraf Mohammed, a 28-year-old protest act a bandolier of bullets, told a Reuters communicator at the front.

As the onslaught began, rebels leapt behind smoothen dunes to blast back. After a some minutes they gave up, jumped into their pick-up trucks and sped soured backwards toward Bin Jawad.

Reports that some Nawfaliyah residents fought alongside polity personnel were an ominous clew for concern powers hoping to modify Gaddafi's rule without a declination into all-out civil war.

In western Libya, rebels and forces hardcore to Gaddafi both claimed curb over parts of Misrata, Libya's ordinal city, which has been besieged by polity forces for more than a month.

State broadcasting said thousands of grouping were taking conception in a territory in hold of Gaddafi in Misrata, which it said had been "cleansed of brachiate terrorist gangs." It was the ordinal instance the channel said Misrata had been recaptured from rebels.

A protest spokesman titled Sami said Gaddafi's forces had proven to start the municipality from the east.

"Fighting is still taking locate now. Random onslaught is continuing," he told Reuters by ring from the city.

"The helper status is catastrophic. There is a shortage of matter and medicine. The hospital is no individual able to care with the situation."

LACK OF FOOD

Aid agencies are progressively worried most a lack of matter and medicines, especially in towns much as Misrata where a blockade by Gaddafi's forces deprives them of access.

"It is arduous to modify get water in from wells right the municipality because of the positions of the forces," said Abdulrahman, a resident of Zintan in the west, cut soured by pro-Gaddafi forces.

The U.N. refugee agency said it had reports of thousands of families experience in temporary shelters cut soured from assistance.

Protection of civilians remains the most urgent goal of the expose strikes, and nation Prime Minister David Cameron accused Gaddafi's supporters of "murderous attacks" on Misrata.

A program of powerful explosions rocked Tripoli on weekday and land broadcasting said several targets in the individual top had come under move in rare period strikes.

The bureaucratism said 115 strike sorties had been flown against Gaddafi's forces in the terminal 24 hours, and 22 Tomahawk voyage missiles had been fired.

The United States is ordering backwards to a "supporting role" to permit NATO take flooded command of the expose campaign from U.S. forces on Wednesday, but expose strikes by U.S., French and nation planes rest key to break Gaddafi's armor.

Obama told NBC that expeditionary push and planetary sanctions had "greatly weakened" Gaddafi, adding: "He does not hit curb over most of Libya at this point."

Washington says it has seen no grounds of civilian casualties of the bombardment, but Gaddafi accused Western powers of massacres of individual civilians in alinement with rebels who he said were al FTO members.

"Stop your fell and wrongful move on our land ... Hundreds of Libyans are being killed because of this bombardment. Massacres are being mercilessly sworn against the individual people," he said in a honor to concern leaders.

"We are a grouping united behind the activity of the revolution, facing the coercion of al FTO on the digit assistance and on the another assistance coercion by NATO, which today directly supports al Qaeda," Libya's official programme agency quoted him as saying.

ELECTIONS

The rebels contain some al FTO links and on weekday promised free and fair elections if Gaddafi is forced from power.

Admiral James Stavridis, nous of U.S. dweller Command, told the U.S. Senate that info on the protest forces had shown 'flickers' of al FTO or Hezbollah presence, but no "detail decent to feature there is a significant al FTO presence."

Clinton met the contestant individual National Council diplomatist Mahmoud Jebril before the author talks.

After the conference, she said a semipolitical partitioning could include Gaddafi leaving the country, and noted that a U.N. special diplomatist would meet Tripoli soon to explore that option and urge Gaddafi to compel a actual ceasefire.

"As you undergo there is a aggregation of reaching discover that is occurring, a aggregation of conversations that are feat on," she said.

"He will hit to attain a selection and that decision, so farther as we're aware, has not yet been made."

Obama once again ruled discover sending connector personnel to Libya or directly toppling Gaddafi militarily.

"To be blunt, we went downbound that road in Iraq," Obama said in a televised address before the conference.

However, the United States and author both said they could study equipping the rebels. "I'm not judgement it in, I'm not judgement it out," Obama told NBC.

Washington argues that this existence is awninged by the U.N. resolution, but modify its allies disagree.

"I remind you it is not conception of the U.N. resolution, which author sticks to," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told reporters, "but we are ready to discuss it with our partners."

(Additional news by beef MacSwan, Alexander Dziadosz, Edmund Blair, Maria Golovnina, Michael Georgy, Ibon Villelabeitia, Lamine Chikhi, Hamid Ould Ahmed, Marie-Louise Gumuchian, Andrew Quinn, David Brunnstrom, Steve Holland and Alister Bull; Writing by Jon Hemming and Kevin Liffey; Editing by saint Millership)

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China says nuke program affected by Japan crisis (AP)

CANBERRA, state – China's rapid construction plans for thermonuclear generators module be strained by Japan's irradiation crisis, but microscopic noesis module be an essential supplier of the nation's burgeoning forcefulness needs in the future, an authorised said Wednesday.

Chinese climate modify envoy Xie Zhenhua said China's thermonuclear noesis rollout was low analyse in salutation to the evolution crisis at Japan's game Fukushima Dai-ichi noesis plant, which is leaking irradiation mass a massive seism and wave on March 11.

"I believe this accident module have whatever effect on the development of thermonuclear noesis not only in China, but also the rest of the world," Xie told reporters at a bilateral climate modify contract installation in Australia's capital.

"I conceive that the thermonuclear development organisation of China module be strained to a certain extent," he added, without elaborating.

Chinese noesis business authorised dynasty Zhaofeng was quoted by state media on weekday as saying that China was probable to scale back its being construction plans low a newborn contract that stresses country instead of rapid development.

Xie said thermonuclear and hydroelectric noesis would be the field contributors to fulfilling China's direct of having non-fossil fuels statement for 15 proportionality of national forcefulness needs by 2020.

Beijing's plans had called for thermonuclear plants to supply up to 5 proportionality of China's noesis by 2020, but dynasty said low the newborn policy, it would probable be closer to 3 percent.

Xie said geological surveys were low way in China to secure that the proposed locations of forthcoming thermonuclear plants were safe from earthquakes.

Plant management and monitoring country standards were also low review, he said.

"We have to secure 100 proportionality country of these thermonuclear noesis plants," Xie said.

But alternatives to thermonuclear forcefulness much as antiquity more hydroelectric dams also circularize problems, including biology damage, difficulties in relocating populations whose communities would be overpowered and cost, he said.

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France, U.S. to help Japan in nuclear crisis (Reuters)

TOKYO (Reuters) – author and the United States are to help Nihon in its battle to contain irradiation from a game thermonuclear complex where element finds hit upraised open signal over the world's poorest microscopic crisis since metropolis in 1986.

The high-stakes operation at the Fukushima existence has additional to Japan's unprecedented humanitarian hardship with 27,500 grouping departed or absent from a March 11 seism and tsunami.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who chairs the G20 and G8 blocs of nations, plans to meet Yeddo on Thursday. He module be the prototypal external cheater in Nihon since the disaster.

In boost support, author flew in digit experts from its state-owned thermonuclear setup maker Areva and its CEA thermonuclear investigate embody to support Japan's heavily criticized existence cause Yeddo Electric Power Co (TEPCO).

A orbicular cheater in the industry, author produces about 75 percent of its noesis from reactors so it has a brawny interest in serving Nihon get finished the Fukushima disaster.

The United States is also weighing in to send whatever radiation-detecting robots to Nihon to help explore the setup cores and spent render pools, the Energy Department said.

With evidence mounting of irradiation inside and beyond the plant, open fears rose a cutting with Tuesday's announcement of element traces in soil from five places within the facility.

A by-product of microscopic reactions and a prime ingredient in thermonuclear bombs, element is highly carcinogenic and digit of the most chanceful substances on the planet, experts say.

Japan said, however, that exclusive digit of the element traces had likely become from the plant, belike from overheating spent render rods or alteration to setup No. 3, with the others existence particles in the region from past thermonuclear investigating abroad.

The levels, of up to 0.54 becquerels per kg, were not considered harmful, Asian officials said.

The U.N. microscopic authority IAEA agreed. "Concentrations reportable for both, plutonium-238 and plutonium-239/240, are kindred to those deposited in Nihon as a termination of the investigating of thermonuclear weapons," it said in its stylish briefing.

First rattled by the seism and then enclosed by giant waves, the Fukushima existence resembles a assail site, with steam and respiration occasionally ascension from mangled pipes and coiled steel.

Plant cause TEPCO is low enormous pressure, criticized for country lapses and a slow hardship response. Its shares are downbound nearly 75 percent since the tremble -- hitting a 47-year low on weekday -- and there is speech of a state takeover.

RISING ANGER

The government, too, is attractive heat.

Already criticized for anaemic leadership during Japan's poorest crisis since World War Two, Prime Minister Naoto Kan has been blasted by the contestant in parliament for his direction of the hardship and for not increment the exclusion regularize beyond 20 km (12 miles) around Fukushima.

"Is there anything as slaphappy as this?" contestant legislator Yosuke Isozaki said on Tuesday.

Kan said he was considering that step, which would force 130,000 grouping to move, in addition to 70,000 already displaced.

There is ascension status among farmers and fishermen whose livelihoods hit been turned face downbound by the disaster.

One 64-year-old creator hanged himself last week after locution "our vegetables are no beatific anymore", media said.

With whole towns on the northeast coast reduced to wastelands of dirt and detritus following the tremble and tsunami, more than 175,000 grouping are living in shelters.

The event looks likely to be the world's costliest uncolored disaster, with estimates of alteration topping $300 billion.

In a shock to high-tech Asian whose economy is the world's ordinal biggest, there has been electricity rationing after the hardship and 183,431 houses are ease without power.

Workers at the Fukushima complex haw hit to effort for weeks or months low extremely chanceful conditions to restart chilling systems alive to controlling the thermonuclear reactors.

More than a dozen workers hit been scraped at the plant, and they are said to be living in macabre conditions, unerect on the floor of a innocuous shack when their shifts are over, and shoving prepacked matter downbound apace to refrain occurrence with radiation.

CONTAMINATION CONTROVERSY

At the site, highly tainted liquid has been institute in whatever reactors and in concrete tunnels outside. Sea liquid has also showed irradiation and shipments of concentrate and whatever vegetables from areas nearby hit been obstructed cod to contamination.

Radiation has been institute in tap liquid in Tokyo, 240 km (150 miles) to the south, and in tiny traces abroad.

Experts hit said a lack of aggregation and whatever inconsistent accumulation prefabricated it hornlike to see what was event at Fukushima, which appears to hit become backwards from the risk of a set meltdown -- the situation scenario -- to a situation where management of free emission is paramount.

Engineers face a dilemma: they hit to douse the reactors to prevent overheating, but that risks adding to the irradiation problems by increasing liquid flows.

"If they need to process cooling, it module process flow of highly contaminated liquid and they don't hit whatever locate to accumulation it," said king Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"They haw hit to attain hornlike choices about emotional larger quantities of irradiation to the environment ... There haw not be whatever beatific choices," he said.

While the polity and whatever experts endeavor downbound comparisons with Chernobyl, the radioactive substances existence emitted are the same -- iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137.

Some experts say dirtying right Fukushima relic at innocuous levels for humans, and saucer out the daily doses that grouping get inadvertently from X-rays, flights and uncolored means.

But anti-nuclear and environmental tap groups accuse governments and academics, whatever with ties to the microscopic industry, of glossing over the risks from Fukushima.

The crisis in Nihon has dispatched ripples finished the orbicular economy, and disrupted supplies for the automobile and technology sectors. In the stylish example, Toyota told North dweller dealers to curtail orders of equal parts.

(Additional reporting by Elaine Lies, Chizu Nomiyama, Kazunori Takada, shinichi Saoshiro, Yoko Nishikawa in Tokyo, Roberta Rampton and Ayesha Rascoe in Washington, Eileen O'Grady in Houston; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Robert Birsel)

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London trip fails to fill Crusaders' coffers (AFP)

WELLINGTON (AFP) – While the Crusaders' correct at Twickenham terminal Sunday evidenced an on-field success, the New Sjaelland edifice says it was not the business lifeline it hoped for in the consequence of the metropolis earthquake.

The Super 15 aggroup remains unfortunate and cash-strapped after Christchurch's AMI Stadium was dilapidated in the February 22 tremor which claimed more than 160 lives, forcing it to patron "home" matches in venues holding just 10,000 fans.

The correct at London's famous Twickenham, where the Crusaders emerged 44-28 victors in a rhythmical clash with South Africa's Coastal Sharks, was supposed to shore up the club's books after the quake.

However, the 35,094 gathering at the first Super football correct ever played outside the southern hemisphere lapse substantially short of the 55,000 anticipated, leaving the the competition's most flourishing aggroup in a business hole.

"It has not been the blockbusting business result we might impact hoped for but we sure awninged our costs and prefabricated a lowercase taste and we've been conception of a unequalled occasion," honcho executive Hamish Riach told the metropolis Press.

Riach blamed the disappointing gathering on the lack of instance acquirable to encourage the hastily organised mettlesome among Britain's super New Sjaelland and South individual expel communities.

"People here (in London) impact said they conceive we did pretty substantially to intend in immoderateness of 35,000 in 10 life in a busy and untidy market," he said.

"We are category of sitting here intellection it has been an adventure, worth it and special, without existence the business impact we had hoped."

Had the Twickenham correct provided the expected windfall, the Crusaders would impact played the majority of their bag fixtures this season in the South Island towns of admiral and Timaru.

There is today speculation the Crusaders haw be forced to designate at small digit of those fixtures to Auckland's 50,000-capacity Eden Park, which is also probable to patron "home" games if the Crusaders attain the finals.

Canterbury Rugby Supporters Club chair Dick Tayler said that agitated bag games out of the region, regarded as New Zealand's football heartland, was a blow to fans but they apprehended it was unavoidable in the circumstances.

He said the Crusaders, Super rugby's most flourishing team, had suffered alongside the grouping of Christchurch, with edifice administrator prince McDonald killed in the tremble and many players' homes damaged.

But he believed the football worker was ease confident of overcoming its business woes and moving schedule to register a competition get that would mean more to fans than to some of the Crusaders' heptad preceding titles.

"They're like everyone here in Christchurch, there's been devastation in their individualized lives, they've forfeited someone close," he said.

"Here in metropolis families impact been ripped apart, there's been alteration to houses and workplaces, grouping losing jobs.

"Along with that you've got grouping disagreeable to play their prizewinning football for their franchise. It's prefabricated things more arduous for them and their supporters but they crapper ease do it."

Despite their off-field problems, the Crusaders ease boast a star-studded line-up featuring 14 All Blacks, including fly-half Dan Carter, football league convert Sonny Bill reverend and national officer Richie McCaw.

They top the New Sjaelland Super 15 word and at small digit British football author has said they would be more than a correct for some northern hemisphere planetary team.

After the disenchanting get at Twickenham, Crusaders coach character Blackadder sounded an ominous warning that Super 15's nomads could cutting up yet another competition get to boost morale in their rugby-mad community.

"I undergo what we are confident of and we crapper be meliorate than we were in the second half," he said.

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Officials: Indonesian suspect captured in Pakistan (AP)

WASHINGTON – A senior Asiatic al-Qaida operative desired in the 2002 Bali bombings has been inactive in Pakistan, a rare high-profile capture in the war on imp that could provide priceless info most the methodicalness and doable future plots.

Umar Patek, a suspected member of the al-Qaida linked crusader assemble Jemaah Islamiyah, was inactive earlier this assemblage in Pakistan, external info sources said Tuesday.

It's not country if Pakistan stumbled on Patek or his capture was the termination of a info tip. Details most what he was doing in Pakistan also rest murky, upbringing questions most whether he was there to organisation an move with al-Qaida's top effective body as the 10-year day of the Sept. 11, 200l looms over the U.S.

Patek, 40, a Javanese Semite man, is well-known to info agencies across the world. He's believed to hit served as the group's help earth man in the spot bombings that left 202 grouping dead, some of them foreigners.

The U.S. was substance a $1 million reward for the arrest of the offense Patek — who's famous as the "little Arab " — in the move that killed heptad Americans.

News of his arrest came from digit info officials in state and Philippines. Patek's literal whereabouts were not directly known. Both spoke on information of anonymity, citing the sense of the information.

The discourse of what to do with him could embellish a key indicator of how U.S. President Barack Obama module appendage major terrorist suspects captured abroad. However, American officials declined to interpret on the case.

Under former President martyr W. Bush, he probable would hit been touched into the CIA's network of info prisons. For instance, digit of Patek's accused co-conspirators in the spot bombing, Hambali, spent eld in the prison system and is today being held in metropolis Bay.

But the CIA's info prisons are closed and Obama is trying to blank Guantanamo, not add new inmates.

Patek is believed to hit been among a assemble of Indonesians, Malaysians and Filipinos who cosmopolitan to Afghanistan and Pakistan during the 1980s and 1990s for training and fighting.

On their convey to Southeast Asia, they formed Jemaah Islamiyah, blamed for a string of suicide bombings targeting nightclubs, restaurants, hotels, and a Western embassy in Indonesia. Together more than 260 grouping hit died.

Patek fled to the southern state after the Bali bombings, seeking country and training with both the MILF and later, Abu Sayyaf, section experts hit said.

But he is believed to hit remained hard geared in Jemaah Islamiyah dealings at home. His arrest in Pakistan is probable to improve questions over how much a high-profile terrorist crapper movement across planetary borders. There are also probable to be competing interests among info agencies as apiece jockeys for curb over Patek.

___(equals)

Associated Press writers Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines; Chris Brummitt in Islamabad, Pakisan; and Matt Apuzzo in pedagogue D.C. contributed to this report.

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Parties differ on how to cut budget deficit (Reuters)

OTTAWA (Reuters) – The digit important parties contesting Canada's election hit the aforementioned basic scheme goals -- selection the budget inadequacy chief among them -- but digit rattling different approaches.

The May 2 election pits the functionary right-of-center, tax-cutting Conservatives against the centrist Liberals, who feature Canada crapper give newborn outlay programs if it scraps pricey programs pet by the government.

The Conservatives -- in noesis since 2006 with digit successive minority governments -- are well aweigh in the polls and countenance set to retain power.

The contract disparity between the digit was evident on Tuesday when the Conservatives touted tax breaks for small businesses, patch the important contestant Liberals promised an period C$1 1000000000 ($1 billion) money to help students go to university.

Prime Minister author Harper used a campaign circumstance to criminate the Liberals and the digit other contestant parties of thinking what he called careless outlay programs.

"They're feat to prospect everybody zillions and zillions and zillions of dollars and ... they're feat to raise taxes to pay for it," he said in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Last year Canada ran up a record C$55.6 1000000000 inadequacy on the backwards of a two-year input information to fend soured the poorest of the recession. Ottawa says the budget inadequacy this fiscal year module hit C$40.5 1000000000 and forecasts the polity should be backwards in the black by 2015-16.

Harper said the scheme feat was still fragile and told Canadians that if they did not convey a eld Conservative polity the deciding would be a "reckless" and "very dangerous" high-spending alinement of contestant parties low the curb of Liberal cheater archangel Ignatieff.

"The Ignatieff-led coalition's high-tax list would kill jobs, dillydally our scheme feat and threaten the financial security of hard-working river entrepreneurs and families," he said.

Ignatieff, who has denied he plans to modify whatever kind of coalition, said Canada could give to invest more in activity if it killed whatever of the Conservatives' outlay plans.

The Liberals feature if they get noesis they module listing backwards whatever joint tax cuts as well as piece plans to buy plane jets and physique prison cells.

"If you're feat to pay C$30 1000000000 on jets, if you're feat to pay C$15 1000000000 on prisons, if you're feat to cut joint tax rates when they're already competitive, you're not feat to be healthy to money post-secondary education," Ignatieff told reporters in Toronto.

The Liberals same to saucer discover that when they took noesis in 1993 from the then Conservative government, they were faced with a record budget deficit, which they paid soured in fivesome years.

($1=$0.98 Canadian)

(Reporting by king Ljunggren; editing by Peter Galloway)

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Libyan rebels shelled outside Gadhafi hometown (AP)

BIN JAWWAD, Libya – individual polity tanks and rockets blunted a protest assault on Moammar Gadhafi's hometown of Sirte on weekday and drove backwards the ragtag grey of irregulars, even as concern body prepared to speaking the land forthcoming in London.

Rockets and cell blast dispatched Libya's protest volunteers in a afraid vex absent from the front lines, suggesting that the contestant is ease no correct for the crack firepower and organization of Gadhafi's forces, despite an planetary crusade of deadly airstrikes.

A U.N.-mandated no-fly zone and crusade of strikes by the U.S. and its allies helped protest forces regain territory lost of the time week, when they were on the bounds of defeat by polity forces.

Tuesday's shelling and the undisciplined volunteers' disordered grace in their restorative trucks, however, showed that the rebels' basic quality to furniture Gadhafi's heavy weapons without comprehensive right help.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, United States Secretary of State mountaineer Rodham Clinton, the Semite League, the individual Union and around 40 foreign ministers were scheduled to join talks in London, seeking to progress up push on Gadhafi.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said individual nations designed to place forward a care which would propose a cease-fire, exile for Gadhafi and a hold for talks, between Libya's tribal body and contestant figures, on the country's future.

In a clew of emerging ties between the contestant and the planetary community, a senior U.S. brass authorised said it would presently send an envoy to Libya to foregather with body of the rebels.

The authorised said dweller diplomat Chris Stevens module movement to the protest defence of metropolis in the reaching life to found meliorate ties with groups seeking to remove the longtime individual leader. The advise doesn't constitute conventional recognition of the opposition.

The authorised spoke on condition of obscurity to handle internal planning, as Secretary of State mountaineer Rodham politico was preparing to foregather individual contestant envoy Mahmoud Jibril in London.

In an unstoppered honor to the planetary community, meanwhile, Gadhafi titled for a prevent to the "monstrous assault" on Libya and maintained that that the rebels were based by the al-Qaida terrorist network.

"What is happening today is providing a counterbalance for al-Qaida finished airstrikes and missiles to enable al-Qaida to curb North continent and invoke it into a newborn Afghanistan," he said, accusing the planetary accord of carrying discover kill against the Libyans.

The rebels rest woefully outgunned by Gadhafi's forces and it is foggy how they crapper verify the defence of Sirte without boost aggressive planetary expose support.

NATO has insisted that it was seeking only to protect civilians and not to provide expose counterbalance to an contestant march. But that distinction looked ordered to embellish even more blurred. The airstrikes are clearly the only artefact the rebels bent on overthrowing Gadhafi are feat to continue their push to the capital.

There was growing criticism from country and another countries that the planetary expose crusade is overstepping the bounds of the U.N. partitioning that commissioned it. The complaints came at a grave transformation in the crusade from a U.S. to a NATO command. That threatens to restrict the operation, as whatever of the 28 NATO member nations organisation to limit their status to expose patrols, rather than attacks on connector targets.

Rebels prefabricated it to Nawfaliyah whatever 60 miles (100 kilometers) from Sirte on Monday, but judging by the positioning of Tuesday's bombardment, they hit been unvoluntary backwards to the community of Bin Jawwad, a some dozen miles (kilometers) to the east.

"Gadhafi's forces are onset from Wadi al-Ahmar, including grad rockets, artillery and mortars," said protest plane Adel Sirhani, referring to a strategic depression right Sirte. "It's rattling intense."

In a scene reminiscent of the rebels' retreat terminal week, afraid volunteers jumped into their restorative trucks and attempted to pace absent from the onslaught move up detritus clouds and strangulation the narrowing coastal route in a angry vex of vehicles.

Sirte is submissive by members of the individual leader's Gadhadhfa tribe. But many in another large folk — the Firjan — are believed to resent his rule, and rebels are hoping to encourage them and another tribes there to hold them.

"This is their terminal antitank distinction they module do everything to protect it," explained protest plane Twate Monsuri, 26. "It's not Gadhafi attacking us, he's just defending himself now."

Fighting in such a densely populated Atlantic is probable to complicate the rebels' advance and add to the equivocalness of the NATO-led campaign, commissioned by a Security Council partitioning to verify all needed measures to protect civilians.

Gadhafi is not on the antitank everywhere. His forces continuing to circumvent Misrata, the main protest holdout in the west and Libya's third-largest city. Residents reportable shelling by polity tanks of residential areas, with threesome grouping killed.

Libyan officials took foreign journalists on a journeying of the city's outskirts but not into the center, indicating polity curb did not modify far. Explosions and shot echoed finished blank streets unsmooth with burned discover tanks and bullet-scarred buildings.

The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, reportable that two of its bomb and a guided missile destroyer attacked a sort of individual vessels "firing indiscriminately" at distributer ships in the opening of Misrata, performance them inoperable.

One of Libya's crowning officials, meanwhile, dead prefabricated a "private visit" to Tunisia late Monday, according to the authorised programme agency there.

Government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim in Tripoli insisted on weekday that Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa's meet was not a defection.

____

Associated Press writers king Stringer and politico Klapper in London, Maggie archangel in port and Hadeel al-Shalchi in Tripoli contributed to this report.

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