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Residents protest Peru tourism expansion

2008-02-10T08:38:00.000-08:00

Residents protest Peru tourism expansion

LIMA, Peru - Residents near Peru's southern highland tourist destinations are fighting two government proposals to expand private development around Machu Picchu and other historical sites, including the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco.
Protesters, who burned tires and blocked roads around Cuzco last week, are threatening more unrest if Congress does not reject the two proposed laws, said Hugo Gonzales, president of the department of Cuzco where Machu Picchu is located, on Saturday.

PeruRail suspended the only train service to Machu Picchu on Thursday after protesters closed roads and blocked access to public transportation. Tourists were transported out of the affected areas in police vehicles.

The proposed laws, one of which was already rejected but requires a second vote, would ease construction restrictions in Cuzco and allow for more hotels to be built near archaeological sites. The area between Cuzco and Machu Picchu is dotted with ancient Inca ruins. The second law is expected to be voted down as well.

Machu Picchu, ruins of a citadel built in the 1400s, is perched in the clouds at 2,430 meters (8,000 feet) above sea level on an Andean mountaintop.

Family, friends bid farewell to Ledger

2008-02-08T22:11:00.000-08:00

Family, friends bid farewell to Ledger

PERTH, Australia - Heath Ledger's family joined celebrities and other mourners Saturday to bid farewell to the actor at a memorial service in his Australian hometown that began with a haunting Aboriginal dirgeLedger's former fiancee, actress Michelle Williams, arrived along with his parents and sister at Penrhos College, where about 100 other mourners had gather to honor the 28-year-old "Brokeback Mountain" star who died of an accidental prescription drug overdose in his Manhattan apartment last month.

Williams, wearing dark glasses and a white dress with black trim, was not accompanied by Matilda, her 2-year-old daughter with Ledger.

Australian actress Cate Blanchett, who starred with Ledger in the Bob Dylan bio-flick, "I'm Not There," a role that earned her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress, was among the celebrities present.

Ledger's father Kim said the service will be followed by a private funeral in Perth. He appealed for privacy and did not disclose the time or location.

"The funeral will be very, very private and there will only be 10 people there, immediate family and nobody else," Kim Ledger told reporters earlier in the day.

"It's a pretty sad time. We're finding it difficult to cope by ourselves, let alone cope with everybody around the world," he said.

"Having said that, we do really appreciate the outpouring and the emotional support from all over the globe," he added.

Mourners at the high-security service filed through a screened side gate where two women dressed in black checked their identification.

Among the first to arrive at Penrhos College was Australian model Gemma Ward, a former girlfriend of the 28-year-old "Brokeback Mountain" star. Wearing dark glasses with a black top and skirt, Ward filed with other mourners through a screened side gate where two women dressed in black checked their identification.

Local musician Levi Islam told reporters outside that he opened the service in a theater by playing an ancient Aboriginal dirge with a didgeridoo, a traditional wind instrument.

Ledger's death on Jan. 22 drew outpourings of grief from New York to Hollywood to Perth, a small and remote city on the verge of the Outback in Australia's southwest.

Family members returned home from the United States this week to lay Ledger to rest following a memorial service in Los Angeles last weekend.

Williams, 27, and Ledger became a couple during filming of "Brokeback Mountain," in which the two costarred as husband and wife. Ledger was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in the film.

Venezuela denies oil assets frozen

2008-02-08T22:04:00.000-08:00

Venezuela denies oil assets frozen

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's top oil official accused Exxon Mobil Corp. of "judicial terrorism" on Friday, but said court orders won by the oil major do not amount to confiscation of $12 billion (8.3 billion euros) in assets. Exxon Mobil has gone after the assets of state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, in U.S., British and Dutch courts as it challenges the nationalization of a multibillion dollar (euro) oil project by President Hugo Chavez's government.

A British court last month issued an injunction "freezing" as much as $12 billion (8.3 billion euros) in assets.

But Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez said: "They don't have any asset frozen. They only have frozen $300 million" in cash through a U.S. court in New York. As for the case in Britain, PDVSA doesn't have "any assets in that jurisdiction that even come close to those sums" of $12 billion (8.3 billion euros), Ramirez said.

Ramirez called it a "transitory measure" while the state company, known as PDVSA, presents its case in New York and London. Exxon Mobil is also taking its dispute to international arbitration, which Venezuela has agreed to.

But Ramirez, who is PDVSA's president, said Exxon Mobil "hasn't respected the terms of the arbitration" and said Exxon Mobil's claims in the Venezuela nationalization dispute "don't even come close to half the sum of $12 billion claimed by them."

Exxon Mobil spokeswoman Margaret Ross said the company had no comment on Ramirez's statements.

Ramirez said the court cases "don't have any affect on our cash flow, don't affect our operational situation at all."

Ramirez said Exxon Mobil sued in New York, London and the Netherlands to dispute the terms under Chavez's nationalization last year of four heavy oil projects in the Orinoco River basin, one of the world's richest oil deposits.

"We don't have any decision by any court that's definitive," Ramirez said. "We have a preventative measure in a court in New York that we have a right to respond to, and we are going to."

He accused the Irving, Texas-based oil major of employing "judicial terrorism" and trying to generate "financial nervousness" around PDVSA.

Ramirez later accused Exxon Mobil of having other aims to undermine the Venezuelan government. According to a government statement, he said the company is trying to "create a situation of anxiety in our country, a situation of nervousness."

Commentators on state television said they believe there is a closeness between the company and Chavez's archenemy — President Bush's administration.

According to documents filed last month in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Exxon Mobil has secured an "order of attachment" on about $300 million (207 million euros) in cash held by PDVSA. A hearing to confirm the order is scheduled in New York for Feb. 13.

In a Jan. 24 "freezing injunction" by a British High Court, the court said that "until the return date or further order from the court," PDVSA "must not remove from England or Wales any of its assets which are in England or Wales up to the value of $12 billion (8.3 billion euros)."

The court also said that if PDVSA disobeys the order, it could be held in contempt of court and be fined or have assets seized.

The credit rating agency Fitch Ratings said the British court order would "have a minimum impact on the company's day-to-day operations, as well as its near-term credit quality and financial flexibility." The agency noted that most of PDVSA's assets are located in Venezuela and the United States, where the company has refineries.

But Fitch Ratings also noted that the outcome of the arbitration process with Exxon Mobil remains uncertain and that "a negative outcome of the arbitration could pressure the credit profile of PDVSA."

Other major oil companies including U.S.-based Chevron Corp., France's Total, Britain's BP PLC, and Norway's StatoilHydro ASA have negotiated deals with Venezuela to continue on as minority partners in the Orinoco oil project.

ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil, however, balked at the tougher terms and have been in compensation talks with PDVSA.

Ramirez said Venezuelan officials have had "very important meetings" with ConocoPhillips Chairman Jim Mulva and have made progress toward an agreement. "I think we're on a path to achieving it," Ramirez said.

Mo. gunman had past trouble with council

2008-02-08T08:31:00.001-08:00

KIRKWOOD, Mo. - Ten days after losing a free-speech lawsuit against this St. Louis suburb, a gunman stormed a council meeting, yelled "Shoot the mayor!" and opened fire, critically wounding the mayor, killing two police officers and three city officials. "Understand that this was an act of war by my brother. He had an actual person, or people, that he was in battle with. That this was not a random rampage," Thornton's brother, Gerald Thornton, told MSNBC outside City Hall Friday.

The city had ticketed Thornton's demolition and asphalt business, Cookco Construction, for parking his commercial vehicles in the neighborhood, said Ron Hodges, a friend who lives in the community. Thornton had said at previous meetings he received 150 tickets. The tickets were "eating at him," Hodges said.

"He felt that as a black contractor he was being singled out," said Hodges, who is black. "I guess he thought mentally he had no more recourse. That's not an excuse."

The meeting had just started when the shooter opened fire, said Janet McNichols, a reporter covering the meeting for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The gunman killed one officer outside City Hall, then walked into the council chambers, shot another and continued pulling the trigger, said Tracy Panus, a St. Louis County Police spokeswoman. A witness said the gunman yelled "Shoot the mayor!" as he fired shots in the chambers, hitting Mayor Mike Swoboda. Officer Tom Ballman was shot in the head, McNichols said.

Then, the shooter went after Public Works Director Kenneth Yost, who was sitting in front of Swoboda, and shot Yost in the head, McNichols said.

As he fired at City Attorney John Hessel, Hessel tried to fight off the attacker by throwing chairs, McNichols said. The shooter then moved behind the desk where the council sits and fired more shots at council members.

"We crawled under the chairs and just laid there," McNichols told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday. "We heard Cookie shooting, and then we heard some shouting, and the police, the Kirkwood police had heard what was going on, and they ran in, and they shot him."

McNichols told the Post-Dispatch council members Michael H.T. Lynch and Connie Karr also were hit. She identified the gunman as Charles Thornton, whom she knows from covering the council.

The names of the victims would not be released until a news conference Friday morning, Panus said. Swoboda was in critical condition Friday morning in the intensive-care unit of St. John's Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur, hospital spokesman Lynne Beck said. Another victim, Suburban Journals newspaper reporter Todd Smith, was in satisfactory condition Friday, Beck said.

Yellow police tape circled the entire block that includes City Hall. An impromptu memorial was growing on the City Hall's steps, where balloons and flowers were placed in memory of the victims.

Thornton was often a contentious presence at the council's meetings; he had twice been convicted of disorderly conduct for disrupting meetings in May 2006.

The weekly Webster-Kirkwood Times quoted Swoboda as saying in June 2006 that Thornton's contentious remarks over the years created "one of the most embarrassing situations that I have experienced in my many years of public service."

The mayor's comments came during a meeting attended by Thornton two weeks after he was forcibly removed from the chambers. Swoboda had said the council considered banning Thornton from future meetings but decided against it.

In a federal lawsuit stemming from his arrests during two meetings just weeks apart, Thornton insisted that Kirkwood officials violated his constitutional rights to free speech by barring him from speaking at the meetings.

But a judge in St. Louis tossed out the lawsuit Jan. 28, writing that "any restrictions on Thornton's speech were reasonable, viewpoint neutral, and served important governmental interests."

Gerald Thornton said the legal setback may have been his brother's final straw. "He has (spoken) on it as best he could in the courts, and they denied all rights to the access of protection and he took it upon himself to go to war and end the issue," he said.

The police department's chaplain said law enforcers from several agencies were anguished over the shootings.

"They're all just so sad, shocked by this," said Father Robert Osborne of St. Peter Catholic Church. "This doesn't happen in Kirkwood."

Kirkwood is about 20 miles southwest of downtown St. Louis. City Hall is in a quiet area filled with condominiums, eateries and shops, not far from a dance studio and train station. Despite its reputation locally for serenity, the city has grappled in recent years with crimes that brought it unwanted attention.

Down the street from City Hall is the Imo's pizzeria once managed by Michael Devlin, who kidnapped 11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck in 2002 and held him for four years before authorities rescued him in January 2007. Also rescued was Ben Ownby, another teenager Devlin abducted just days before Devlin's arrest.

Those crimes got Devlin life terms on state charges, as well as 170 years behind bars on federal charges that he made pornography.

Brazil's carnival ends with gay ball

2008-02-06T08:52:00.000-08:00

Brazil's carnival ends with gay ball

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Revelers wrapped up Brazil's wild carnival bash with the popular Gala Gay ball Tuesday night on Rio de Janeiro's streets, littered with feathers and sequins after five days of partying. Thousands of onlookers gawked as men in glittering miniskirts, evening dresses, bead-studded lingerie and feathered headdresses shimmied down a wide avenue to the sounds of ABBA's "Dancing Queen," for a party that would last until dawn Wednesday.

After a week that saw everything from a scandal over a planned Holocaust-themed float — later nixed by a judge — to a samba queen's quest to set a world record for the most plastic surgeries, revelers spent Carnival's last hours dancing the samba behind street bands.

"It is just impossible to describe it," 30-year-old Dutch bank worker Alexander Milikan said as he took a break from the festivities on Ipanema beach. "There's street parties everywhere, everyone's dancing, it's amazing."

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent and pre-Easter praying and fasting for the world's largest Roman Catholic country. But most Brazilians will be glued to their televisions in the afternoon to learn the winner of the centerpiece of Rio's Carnival: the fiercely competitive Samba parade.

Early favorites included the samba "schools" Unidos de Tijuca, Grande Rio and Beija Flor, which has won four of the past five years but had its reputation marred by accusations that directors conspired to steal last year's championship by intimidating judges. An investigation yielded an inconclusive report.

"They tried to disqualify our parade in 2007, but we have shown that we have won in the most dignified manner possible," Beija Flor's director, who uses the single name Laila, told a booing crowd before the group's parade got started early Tuesday.

Jeers gave way to applause, however, as the group paraded opulent floats, ornate costumes and a topless beauty queen. Its dancers were encrusted in gold and wore masks and wings, in an allusion to ancient legends of the Amazon rain forest.

Actresses Lucy Liu and Monica Bellucci were among the international celebrities attending this year's Rio parade, and supermodel Naomi Campbell showed up for Carnival in the coastal city of Salvador.

Israel-Gaza fighting escalates

2008-02-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

Israel-Gaza fighting escalates

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israel launched airstrikes against militants firing rockets from the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and vowed to maintain a war "on all fronts" until the territory's Hamas rulers halt attacksVice Premier Haim Ramon said Israel would maintain its blockade of Gaza and reduce supplies of fuel, electricity and some food in an attempt to persuade Hamas to stop the rockets.

Lawmakers in Gaza, meanwhile, canceled a session of the Hamas-dominated legislature, fearing an Israeli attack. A day earlier, an influential Israeli lawmaker urged Israel to assassinate Hamas' political leaders.

Two Israeli toddlers, siblings aged 2 and 4, were lightly wounded when a Hamas rocket struck a home in Kibbutz Beeri, a collective farm about four miles from the Gaza border. The children had been playing outside.

Hamas also moderately wounded a 14-year-old girl and knocked out power in parts of the rocket-scarred Israeli town of Sderot with a barrage of rockets fired at border communities Tuesday and early Wednesday.

Gaza militants said Israel responded with several airstrikes overnight, but the military confirmed striking only once at militants who had just launched rockets. Hamas said four of its men were moderately wounded.

Israel indicated that it would not let up in its attacks.

"We need to understand there is a war in the south," Ramon told Israel Radio. "The war against Hamas has to be fought on all fronts."

Israel will continue to use the "economic weapon" against the Gaza Strip, said Ramon, a confidant of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's whose statements often reflect the prime minister's thinking.

Israel cut off virtually all shipments into Gaza three weeks ago after Hamas barraged Israel with rockets following an Israeli operation that killed 19 Gazans, most of them militants.

Hamas also took responsibility for a suicide bombing Monday in the southern Israeli town of Dimona. The Islamist group's first suicide attack in Israel in three years underscored its ability to hamper U.S.-backed efforts by moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to reach a peace deal with Israel by the end of the year.

On Wednesday, Abbas condemned the militants' rocket fire, but urged Israel to let supplies into Gaza.

"These rockets that are being fired at Israel must stop. It's pointless," he said at a news conference with Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik. "At the same time, Israel should not use these rockets as a pretext for collective punishment on Palestinians in Gaza. Israel must always allow humanitarian supplies and other needs to be provided to Gaza."

Israel insists on an end to violence before it implements any peace agreement, but Abbas has had no control over Gaza since Hamas seized control there in June. Monday's bombers came from the West Bank, not Gaza, giving greater weight to Israel's demand that Abbas take stronger action against militants in the West Bank, too.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, relatives of Shadi Zghayer and Mohammed al-Herbawi said they learned from watching Hamas' Al Aqsa TV that the two were identified as the Dimona bombers. The two Hamas members in their 20s left home early Monday without saying where they were going, relatives said.

A farewell video of the two bearded bombers that Hamas released Wednesday showed them holding guns and standing in front of Hamas flags.

"I, the living martyr Mohammed Karim Mohammed Hijazi al-Herbawi ... sacrifice myself for the sake of God, for the sake of those who are besieged in Gaza, and in response to the crimes of the Zionist occupation," said the militant, who was wearing a green Hamas headband.

On Tuesday, Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the Israeli parliament's powerful Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said Israel should go after Hamas' political leaders, and not just its gunmen.

Israeli defense officials said they were considering stepping up their airstrikes to target Hamas political leaders in Gaza. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk to the media, said no decisions were immediately made.

However, Hamas lawmakers were taking no chances, calling off a meeting "because of the security situation in Gaza," said Iyad Qarra, media adviser to the legislature's speaker.

The Israeli economic blockade of Gaza has been compounded by Egypt's sealing of its border with the territory since Hamas' June takeover.

Late last month, militants tore down sections of Gaza's border with Egypt, enabling hundreds of thousands of Gazans to break out and buy supplies in an Egyptian border town. After 12 days of anarchy, Egyptian forces sealed the breaks on Sunday.

Israeli security chiefs have warned that Palestinian militants used the Gaza-Egypt border breach to slip out of Gaza, and could try to make their way from Egypt through a porous border into Israel. On Wednesday, Israeli leaders approved the construction of a border fence with Egypt.

The fence was originally proposed years ago, but was never built because of the cost, estimated at up to $270 million. Officials said designs for the wall should begin immediately, though it was not clear where the money would come from or when construction would begin.

US sees job cuts as economy cools

2008-02-02T07:34:00.000-08:00

US sees job cuts as economy cools

The US has seen the first decline in employment since August 2003, providing fresh evidence that the US economy could be entering a recession.
Employers cut 17,000 jobs from their payrolls in January, Labor Department figures showed. Economists had been expecting a rise of 80,000.

The US economy has slowed sharply in recent months as a housing market slump has dented consumer spending.

US interest rates have been cut twice in nine days to boost growth.

"Serious signs"

In a speech in Kansas on Friday, President George Bush acknowledged that the US economy was going through a rough patch and urged lawmakers in Washington to pass an economic stimulus package.

"Inflation's low. Productivity's high, but there are certainly some troubling signs, serious signs that the economy is weakening and that we've got to do something about it," Mr Bush said.

US Congress and the Bush Administration have agreed an economic stimulus package which would add $150bn in tax rebates.

The measure has already been passed by the House of Representatives but is still awaiting Senate approval.

Recession mode

The job losses were across all sectors of the economy including manufacturing and professional services.

"The economy is in recession mode," said Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland.

The unemployment rate fell to 4.9% from 5% in December, a two-year high, but overall the number of people in the labour force declined.

We should expect to see more bad news on the labour market

Nigel Gault, Global Insight

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates to 3% from 3.5% on Wednesday.

It followed an emergency unscheduled cut last week, when the Fed slashed the cost of borrowing by the largest amount in 25 years to prevent the economy from slowing further.

"We should expect to see more bad news on the labour market, at least through the middle of the year, before the heavy doses of monetary and fiscal stimulus begin to kick in," said Nigel Gault, an economist at Global Insight.

Injured captain winched off ship

2008-02-02T07:28:00.000-08:00

Injured captain winched off ship

A cargo ship captain who was seriously injured in a force 10 gale off the Isles of Scilly is in hospital after being rescued by helicopter.
The aircraft lifted six other people from the ship 70 miles off Land's End. Two of them had less serious injuries.

The three are believed to have been hurt when a giant wave hit the vessel and the cargo shifted.

Rescue attempts had to be abandoned overnight because of the extreme weather conditions and darkness.

After Saturday's successful mission, Chief Petty Officer Dave Rigg said: "We pitched up on scene. I got lowered down on to the deck, went in, assessed the three casualties first.

"They were all fairly stable so whilst I was doing that I called for my colleague from the Ambulance Service.

"He then assisted me getting them into the stretcher - we then got the casualties into the aircraft and made our way back."

He said the injured people told him they were hurt when a violent wave hit the boat.

"The cargo then shifted and bounced them across the bridge hitting obstacles, obstructions and each other, it was pretty frightening for them."

He said four uninjured people had been taken to a hotel.

Two of them, German tourists on their honeymoon, told the BBC it was very frightening.

The said it was good to be on dry land and described it as a "very special honeymoon".

The ship is now sailing towards Falmouth and is expected to arrive later on Saturday.

Henry Purbrick from Falmouth Coastguard said: "The coastguard tug has been tasked to go and stand by and escort them in.

"They will be anchored out side Falmouth because they've only got one anchor - they've lost an anchor at some stage.

"Then surveyors from Falmouth will go and survey the vessel and decide where they go from there."

'Pitch black'

During the first rescue attempt, a helicopter hovered over the ship for nearly an hour.

Flt Lt Jonathan Singh, the captain of the helicopter, said the conditions were "horrendous".

"It's obviously pitch black out there, it's extremely dark with no sort of cultural lighting at all at that distance from land," he said.

There were 31 passengers and crew on board the ship, the Horncliff, which had been travelling to Dover carrying a cargo of fruit from Costa Rica.

Falmouth Coastguard said the vessel, which lost about 90 containers of fruit in the storm, had suffered some damage and was listing slightly.

The Horncliff, a 12,887-tonne cargo ship which is flying the Liberian flag, was built in 1992.

Power cuts

Elsewhere in the UK the extreme weather conditions have left thousands of homes without power and caused chaos on the roads.

Blizzards swept across Scotland and northern England on Friday and winds reached 80 mph bringing down many trees.

The A66 in County Durham has now reopened after heavy snow trapped 200 drivers and passengers who had to be rescued.

About 1,600 homes remain without power in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

Experts have boarded the Irish Sea ferry Riverdance which beached off Blackpool after helicopters and lifeboats rescued the crew and passengers.

Fourteen crewmen were also flown to safety after their trawler, The Spinning Dale, was pushed into rocks off St Kilda in the Western Isles on Friday.

Police: New evidence in Holloway case

2008-02-01T07:45:00.000-08:00

Police: New evidence in Holloway case

ORANJESTAD, Aruba - Aruban prosecutors said Thursday that authorities are investigating new information in the Natalee Holloway case provided by a Dutch crime reporter.Information from reporter Peter R. de Vries "may help considerably" in resolving what happened to the American, who vanished during a May 2005 school vacation to the Dutch Caribbean island, the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

The statement did not specify the new material, but said it "may shed a new light on the mode" in which Holloway died and the "method by which her body disappeared."

An attorney for Joran van der Sloot, a Dutch man who was a suspect in the case, said it was irresponsible for prosecutors to make the announcement without describing their evidence.

"They act quite frankly like clowns," said Joseph Tacopina, a New York attorney. "If they have a resolution, they should bring a case and stop talking about cryptic information."

De Vries's Web site said the information was gathered through "an ingenious hidden camera tactic" and will be revealed in a Dutch television program Sunday. It said the reporter traveled to Aruba last week to inform authorities of his findings.

"The mystery of Natalee Holloway will be solved Sunday," De Vries said on the Dutch television show RTL Boulevard, which showed him meeting Natalee's mother, Beth Twitty, at an Amsterdam airport. "It was a big operation that we worked on for months."

De Vries had a testy exchange two weeks ago during a televised interview in the Netherlands with van der Sloot.

Van der Sloot, who was among the last people seen with the missing American, threw wine at De Vries after the reporter challenged his credibility.

Prosecutors dismissed their case against Van der Sloot and two other suspects in December, saying that they lacked evidence to charge them or even to prove a crime was committed. Authorities have said the case could be reopened if new evidence surfaces.

Holloway, of Mountain Brook, Ala., disappeared the final night of her high school graduation trip to Aruba. She was 18 at the time.

She was last seen in public leaving a bar with Van der Sloot and two Surinamese brothers — Deepak and Satish Kalpoe hours before she was due to board a flight home. The three men have been repeatedly detained as suspects but denied any wrongdoing.

Old traditions live at Brazil's carnival

2008-02-01T07:39:00.000-08:00

Old traditions live at Brazil's carnival

NAZARE DA MATA, Brazil - As morning breaks over the rolling green cane fields, the 19-year-old sugar cane cutter takes an herbal bath and offers a prayer to indigenous and African spirits before transforming himself into something resembling an electric, Day-Glo lion from outer spaceJosenildo Estevao da Silva dons colorful pantaloons, hoists a rack of cow bells onto his back and tops off the outfit with a brilliantly sequined poncho and a screaming headdress of neon ribbons. Then he marches several miles down dirt roads to rehearse with hundreds of other lance-wielding revelers who will converge on the state capital of Recife Sunday.

"When I'm all dressed up I become a warrior. It's a very powerful feeling," says Silva, a member of Cambinda Brasileira, a group of Maracatu revelers founded in 1898.

The most visible manifestation of carnival occurs more than 1,000 miles to the south in Rio de Janeiro, where nationally televised samba parades have fans rooting for their favorite groups with a passion usually reserved for soccer teams.

But nearly every region of Brazil has its own carnival traditions. In recent years, a growing number of revelers turned off by the commercialism of Rio's grand spectacle have begun looking elsewhere, to states such as Bahia and Pernambuco, where more homegrown rhythms dominate the celebrations.

Perhaps none of these traditions has benefited as much from renewed attention as maracatu, a deeply secret, semi-religious ritual born among former slaves in the sugarcane fields of Pernambuco state, with roots stretching back to African and indigenous cultures.

"We have the most democratic carnival in Brazil. It's open to everyone and it's free. You don't have to sit in a stadium like in Rio or pay to party in a cordoned-off area like in Bahia," says Recife Mayor Joao Paulo Lima Silva, who for eight years has dressed up as a maracatu lance-bearer to kick off the party.

Anthropologists say the origins of the ritual are mysterious, a mixture of several traditions with the dancers fancying themselves warrior members of an Indian tribe for reasons that are not entirely clear.

The music of maracatu consists of improvised verses sung a capella and answered by the thundering of trumpets, trombones and host of percussion instruments — a very different sound from the drums of Rio's samba schools.

Maracatu was disappearing in the 1980s, and in 1989 only 11 groups remained in Pernambuco state.

But then an association was formed to promote the tradition, and authorities cracked down on violence by maracatu groups who would often attack their rivals to steal their costumes.

The number of groups grew to 112 as they admitted women and children. Women cannot perform as lance-bearers, but take on roles that had previously been performed by men in drag.

Maracatu also received a boost from popular musicians Chico Science and Nacao Zumbi, who dressed as maracatu lance-bearers in their video for "Maracatu Atomico," a huge hit on MTV Brazil. Science died in a car crash in 1997, after working to restore Brazilian music's reliance on traditional rhythms rather than American pop.

The success of that movement sent hordes of middle-class Pernambuco residents into rural areas and slums to study at the feet of long-forgotten masters, breathing new life into maracatu and other traditions.

But some say the growing popularity of maracatu is watering down the tradition.

"Some groups today have lost their religious link and a lot of the younger people no longer respect the rules. They are interested in the look (of the costumes) but have no interest in sustaining the meaning of the ritual," said Sumaia Viera, a researcher of traditional cultures at the Federal University of Pernambuco.

The groups themselves are secretive about their spiritual preparations, which include abstaining from sex for two weeks and imbibing special potions, including one made of sugarcane brandy and gun powder.

But many maracatu supporters welcome the newcomers.

"If you're going to be picky about who is going to dance, you're not going to have too many people dancing," says Manoelzinho Salustiano, vice president of the Association of Maracatus Baque Solto of Pernambuco. He says old-timers teach the new arrivals about the rituals, and "the more they learn about it the more interested they get."

Gravity: the 'Holy Grail' of physics

2008-01-31T08:06:00.000-08:00

Gravity: the 'Holy Grail' of physics

Isaac Newton wrote down his theory of gravity in 1689, and his equations are used to this day to send space probes to the outer edges of our Solar System.

So what could possibly be wrong with our understanding of it?

There are problems with Newton's theory, however. It doesn't quite describe the orbit of Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, and as Newton knew very well it has nothing to say about what the force of gravity actually is.

It took over 200 years and the genius of Albert Einstein to discover a deeper theory.

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity describes the force we see as gravity as being due to the bending and curving of space and time (or to be more accurate "space-time") by heavy objects like the Earth and Sun.

Curved space-time

This is a bizarre concept, but many of us use Einstein's theory every day when we jump in our cars and turn on the satellite navigation system.

Astonishingly, the fact that the Earth bends time has to be taken into account, otherwise our sat-navs would drift by 11km per day.

Einstein's theory of curved space-time beautifully predicts the orbit of Mercury, and much more extreme phenomena out in the Universe.

Perhaps the most extreme test of Einstein comes in the from of binary pulsars: two stars as massive as the Sun but squashed to the size of a city, orbiting each other thousands of times a second.

Einstein predicts that these exotic stars should spiral inwards towards each other as they release energy in the form of gravitational waves.

Changes in the violent dance of the binary pulsars have been observed at exactly the rate predicted by Einstein, but the gravitational waves themselves have yet to be seen.

This is the goal of the Ligo observatories near Seattle and New Orleans.

Gravitational waves as predicted by Einstein are one of the strangest phenomena in nature.

Broken theory

They are a travelling, stretching and squashing of space and time! If they exist, they will be passing through you right now as you read this, speeding up and slowing down your watch and stretching and squashing your head, fortunately by an amount less than the size of a sub-atomic particle.

So you don't feel them, but, remarkably, Ligo may see their effects. The observation of gravitational waves would be another remarkable triumph for Einstein, but even that will not satisfy physicists like myself.

This is because we know that there are places in the Universe where Einstein must fail. In the heart of black holes, giant suns collapsed to a single infinitely dense point, Einstein breaks down.

And even more crucially, back at the beginning of time, the Big Bang itself, Einstein's picture of space and time is no longer adequate. We physicists are therefore faced with a deep problem.

If we want to truly understand how, and maybe even why, the Universe began, then we must know what space and time looked like right back at the beginning.

Such a theory, if it exists, would be what is known as a quantum theory of gravity - a theory that supersedes Einstein and works not only in the world of planets, stars and galaxies, but also in the sub-atomic sized world of black holes and the very beginning of the Universe itself.

Murdered Mexican singer's group to tour

2008-01-29T03:08:00.000-08:00

Murdered Mexican singer's group to tour

MEXICO CITY - Members of the K-Paz de la Sierra band vowed to go ahead with a planned tour despite the murder of their lead singer, Sergio Gomez, who was killed Dec. 2 in the latest in a string of slayings of Mexican musiciansObviously, it is a big loss. Nobody is prepared for something like this, but it is a big motivation to carry on," vocalist Humberto Duran told reporters Monday. "We are not going to stand around with our arms crossed."

With Gomez's brother Juan taking over as the new lead singer, the group expects to go ahead with a planned tour of North and South America and possibly release a new album later this year.

His band mates also said they could hold a mass memorial concert for Gomez, who was famous for his up-tempo "Pasito Duranguense" rhythm.

Gomez had reportedly received death threats urging him not to appear in the capital of the western state of Michoacan, a hotbed of the drug trade, where he was tortured and strangled. Police have made no arrests in his killing.

K-Paz de la Sierra's album "Conquistando Corazones" ("Conquering Hearts") has been nominated for a Grammy in the best banda album category, and the musicians said Gomez's parents should attend the ceremony to accept any award his behalf.

A number of musicians' killings in recent years have been linked to a wave of organized crime violence terrorizing many parts of Mexico, including singers of so-called "narcocorridos," or drug ballads. Valentin Elizalde was murdered in November 2006 after his song "To My Enemies" became a drug lord's anthem.

But neither Gomez nor other more recent victims were known for narcocorridos; also killed in December was female singer Zayda Pena — who crooned about love and loss, not drugs and guns.

Brazil carnival star eyes surgery record

2008-01-28T07:58:00.000-08:00

Brazil carnival star eyes surgery record

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Brazilian model Angela Bismarchi will dance nearly nude ahead of a 300-person drum corps in next month's Carnival parade, hoping her sculpted beauty as a "percussion queen" will lead her samba group to the championship.But she has another goal in mind as well.

In preparation for Rio's five-day Carnival blowout in February, she's having her 42nd plastic surgery — closing in on the Guinness World Record of 47 surgical procedures held by 52-year-old American Cindy Jackson, who calls herself a "Living Doll" and now promotes her own skincare line.

"I always was vain," Bismarchi, 36, acknowledges at the medical clinic near Rio where her plastic surgeon husband has operated on her 10 times. "And for carnival, you have to feel especially pretty."

Just days before Brazil's Feb. 2-6 carnival begins, Bismarchi will have nylon wires implanted in her eyes to give them an Asian slant, in line with this year's theme of her samba group, Porto da Pedra: the centennial of Japanese immigration to Brazil.

Bismarchi's unabashed passion for plastic surgery has made her a celebrity in this image-mad country, where even the poor get surgical enhancements on the installment plan. Brazilians see no shame in touching up their bodies, which are routinely exposed at carnival and flaunted on the beach in thong bikinis so tiny they're called "dental floss."

Born poor in Rio, Bismarchi had her first cosmetic surgery in 1992 after her daughter was born. She was just 21, but said she was depressed after nursing caused her breasts to sag. So she had them lifted, adored the results, and became so fascinated with cosmetic surgery that her next two husbands were plastic surgeons.

"I put in a prosthesis and loved it. I was beautiful and sensual again," Bismarchi said, a striking figure at 6 feet — taller in white high heels — with long blond hair flowing over her white minidress.

Carnival has a special place in Bismarchi's career.

She first made headlines in 2000, when police tried to arrest her after she paraded partly nude with the Brazilian flag painted on her body.

"I became famous all over," she said. "The power of carnival is amazing."

Two years later, she paraded with the face of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva painted across her exposed body. Police released her after she explained it was a gesture to Silva's anti-hunger program.

A wardrobe malfunction at last year's carnival put Bismarchi back in the news — when her G-string broke and dangled from her waist, Porto da Pedra was threatened with a penalty for total nudity, forbidden under parade rules. But the resourceful Bismarchi hid from the judges behind the drum section, changed her tiny "sex cover" and finished the parade.

Today, Bismarchi promotes an exclusive line of sexy lingerie, gives beauty tips and responds to the 500 to 700 letters and e-mails she receives each day. To care for her famous figure, she does two and a half hours of exercise daily, takes dance lessons and spends hours tanning on the beach.

US network faces $1m nudity fine

2008-01-27T00:37:00.000-08:00

US network faces $1m nudity fine

US television network ABC may have to pay a fine of $1.4m (£707,000) for airing an episode of NYPD Blue which depicted female nudity.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said the 2003 show had "multiple, close-up views" of a woman's buttocks before the US watershed.

The FCC deems "sexual or excretory activities" shown in an "offensive" way before 2200 as indecent.

ABC has rejected the claims, saying the buttocks are not a sexual organ.

The proposed penalty has been imposed on all 52 of ABC's stations who broadcast the episode.

Indecency battle

The scene in the police drama, which ran from 1993-2005, shows a boy surprising a naked woman as she prepared to take a shower.

The FCC said it received several complaints about the sequence, which also showed one of the woman's breasts.

An ABC spokeswoman said that the programme was broadcast with parental warnings and that "the realistic nature of NYPD Blue's storylines was well-known to the viewing public".

The broadcaster has said it will appeal against the decision, which is the second largest indecency fine imposed on a broadcaster.

In 2006, the FCC imposed a $3.6m (£1.8m) against CBS for an episode of Without A Trace, which was settled for $300,000 (£152,000).

The FCC has waged a battle against TV indecency in recent years, with the US authorising a huge increase in fines.

Janet Jackson's breast exposure during the 2004 Super Bowl on live TV prompted the organisation to impose a fine of $550,000 (£278,000) on 20 CBS-owned TV stations.

The network has been embroiled in a long-running court battle against the penalty.

Cuba's Castro thought he was dying

2008-01-24T09:02:00.000-08:00

Cuba's Castro thought he was dying

HAVANA - Fidel Castro revealed Thursday that he thought he was dying when he fell ill in July 2006, and hastily made plans to give up power as doctors fought to save his life. When I fell gravely ill the night of the 26th and dawn of the 27th of July, I thought that would be the end," the ailing 81-year-old wrote in an essay published on the front page of state newspapers.

"And while the doctors fought for my life, the head aide of the Council of State read at my urging the text and I dictated the necessary arrangements," he wrote.

Castro has not been seen in public since July 31, 2006, when his secretary Carlos Valenciaga read a statement on government television that emergency intestinal surgery was forcing the island's unchallenged leader since 1959 to cede power to a provisional government headed by his younger brother Raul.

Though he stepped aside as president, Castro has retained his role as head of the island's supreme governing body, the Council of State.

A slate of newly elected Cuban lawmakers meets Feb. 24 and will choose a new Council of State from among its ranks, which include both Castro brothers. Fidel Castro wrote in December that he had no intention of clinging to power or standing in the way of a new generation of leaders, but has not said whether he wants to remain head of the council or permanently retire.

He is recovering in an undisclosed location and his condition and exact ailment are carefully guarded secrets.

Castro has looked gaunt and frail, but also upbeat and lucid in occasional recent official videos and photographs. Life on the island has remained little changed since he stepped down.

Thursday's lengthy essay, dated Jan. 22, mentioned a two and a half hour meeting last week with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Absent was a recreation of Castro's scrawled signature, which has been printed at the end of other recent writings.

Castro wrote that Silva, who describes Castro as his friend, decided to visit Cuba on the spur of the moment, even though "my health didn't guarantee him a meeting with me."

Colombia's Galeras volcano erupts

2008-01-18T08:50:00.000-08:00

Colombia's Galeras volcano erupts

BOGOTA, Colombia - A volcano erupted violently in southwestern Colombia Thursday, spewing ash miles into the sky and prompting the evacuation of several thousand people living nearby.There were no immediate reports of injuries or serious property damage after the 14,110-foot Galeras volcano began erupting about 8 p.m. and cascading lava lit up the night sky.

About 8,000 people live in areas near the volcano where Pasto's mayor ordered an evacuation but "most of the city is not in danger," Fernando Gil, director of Colombia's Seismological Network, told The Associated Press by phone.

"It's still erupting," Gil said more than two hours after its initial eruption.

Gil estimated that the ash cloud reached five miles into the air.

He called it the most severe eruption of Galeras since the volcano reactivated in 1989.

"Depending on the wind direction it's going to spread ashes over the entire area."

"Most of (Galeras') eruptions are violent and short," he noted. He said Thursday's eruption had produced some lava flows that did not extend far from the volcano's crater.

A 1993 eruption of the volcano, near the border with Ecuador, killed nine people, including five scientists who had descended into the crater to sample gases.

Scientists make human embryo clones

2008-01-17T08:36:00.000-08:00

NEW YORK - Scientists in California say they have produced embryos that are clones of two men, a potential step toward developing scientifically valuable stem cells.

The new report documents embryos made with ordinary skin cells. But it's not the first time human cloned embryos have been made. In 2005, for example, scientists in Britain reported using embryonic stem cells to produce a cloned embryo. It matured enough to produce stem cells, but none were extracted.

Stem cells weren't produced by the new embryos either, and because of that, experts reacted coolly to the research.

"I found it difficult to determine what was substantially new," said Doug Melton of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. He said the "next big advance will be to create a human embryonic stem cell line" from cloned embryos. "This has yet to be achieved."

Dr. George Daley of the Harvard institute and Children's Hospital Boston called the new report interesting but agreed that "the real splash" will be when somebody creates stem cell lines from cloned human embryos.

"It's only a matter of time before some group succeeds," Daley said.

Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk claimed a few years ago that he'd created such cell lines, but that turned out to be a fraud.

Dr. Samuel Wood, a co-author of the new paper and chief executive of Stemagen Corp. of La Jolla, Calif., said he and his colleagues are now attempting to produce stem cell lines from the embryos.

The work was published online Thursday by the journal Stem Cells.

Scientists say stem cells from cloned embryos could provide a valuable tool for studying diseases, screening drugs and, perhaps someday, creating transplant material to treat conditions like diabetes and Parkinson's disease.

But critics raise objections. The process "involves creating human lives in the laboratory solely to destroy them for alleged benefit to others," said Richard Doerflinger, spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Citing the earlier work in Britain, he also said that as a scientific advancement, the new work was "very limited."

Other objections to cloning include concerns about health risks and exploitation if large numbers of women are asked to provide eggs.

Those objections are one reason that an alternative route to stem cells made headlines last November. Scientists reported a relatively simple way to turn skin cells directly into stem cells. This direct reprogramming carries a theoretical risk of cancer for the recipients of tissue from these cells, however, and many scientists have urged that work continue on the cloning technique as well.

The cloning approach involves inserting DNA from a person into an egg, and then growing the egg into an embryo about five days old before extracting the stem cells. At that stage, the embryo is a sphere of about 150 cells.

In the new work, researchers took skin cells from Wood and another volunteer and produced three embryos with DNA matching the men's. Further DNA testing on one of these embryos strengthened the case that it was a clone, researchers said.

Japan PM hints against early election

2008-01-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

Japan PM hints against early election

TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda signalled Tuesday he was unlikely to call an early election despite gridlock in the divided parliament and falling poll numbers. In an almost unprecedented move, Fukuda's coalition last week used its power in the lower house to override the upper house's rejection of a bill to restart a naval mission supporting US-led forces in Afghanistan.

Elections "should come sooner or later," Fukuda told a news conference.

"But we should not affect the economy or people's lives by dissolving the parliament," he said, adding that the economy "is in a sensitive situation."

Fukuda also noted that Japan will host the summit of the Group of Eight major economies in July and a summit of African leaders in May.

"We will discuss very important issues at these two occasions. So I will make a decision by considering various elements," Fukuda said.

The opposition in July swept the ruling Liberal Democratic Party out of top spot in the upper house for the first time on a backlash after a series of scandals including mismanagement of the pension system.

Fukuda, a veteran political operator, took office in September after his predecessor Shinzo Abe resigned.

Public support for Fukuda's cabinet fell to 43 percent from 51 percent last month, while the disapproval rating jumped by 11 points to 44 percent, according to an opinion poll released by public broadcaster NHK on Tuesday.

It was the first time disapproval has topped support in NHK's survey since he took office. NHK conducted the survey during the weekend, covering 1,862 voters, of whom 61 percent gave a valid response.

The lower house does not have to be dissolved until September 2009 but the opposition says an election is needed to avoid a divided parliament.

The opposition renewed its call for a general election after Fukuda's coalition last week rammed through the bill resuming the Indian Ocean naval mission supporting US-led forces.

But Fukuda defended overriding the upper house, a drastic step not taken since 1951.

"If the government's intentions cannot be fulfilled, it will have a negative impact diplomatically. Frankly, I'm pleased to have avoided that situation," Fukuda said.

Investigators seek Air Canada jolt answers

2008-01-13T07:40:00.000-08:00

Investigators seek Air Canada jolt answers

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Investigators began assessing passenger accounts and flight data on Friday to determine what caused the violent jolting of an Air Canada flight that resulted in 10 people being sent to hospital after the plane was forced to make an unscheduled landing.Air Canada said all passengers and crew from flight 190 that were injured as the plane plunged midair and rocked severely above the Rocky Mountains early Thursday had been released from three Calgary hospitals.

The airline and a spokesman at Canada's Transportation Safety Board declined to speculate on the cause of the incident.

Safety board investigators interviewed passengers in Calgary, before the passengers went on to their designations on other flights. Flight 190, with 83 passengers and five crew on board, was en route to Toronto from Victoria, British Columbia, when the incident occurred about 30 minutes into the journey.

Safety board staff are "assessing the occurrence and they're drawing from expertise from across the country, by telephone, by conference call," board spokesman John Cottreau said.

"Once the assessment's done, they should have a better idea of what's needed" for an investigation, he said.

In 2006-07, air investigations took an average of 516 days to complete, according to the board's annual report.

The board has collected the flight data recorders, and they were expected to arrive at its engineering branch in Ottawa on Friday, Cottreau said.

In harrowing accounts, some passengers said the pilot of the aircraft, an Airbus A319, announced after the plane bucked in midair that he was flying the jet manually because the autopilot system was not working.

One theory advanced by commercial pilots in various media interviews is the possibility that severe turbulence was enough to disable the Airbus's computer-controlled flight system.

Airline officials would not comment.

Passengers spoke of people and dishes tossed around the cabin during the bucking, which they said lasted about 15 seconds.

The jet was diverted to Calgary International Airport, where it landed safely at 8:30 a.m. local time and was met by dozens of ambulances and firefighting equipment. Eight passengers and two crew were sent to hospital.

Suspect in slain NC Marine case spotted

2008-01-13T07:34:00.000-08:00

Suspect in slain NC Marine case spotted

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. - The key suspect in the brutal slaying of a 20-year-old pregnant Marine has been sighted outside of North Carolina, the sheriff said Sunday.The sighting by a member of the general public happened around midnight, said Onslow County Sheriff Ed Brown, who would not say where. He expressed hope that Marine Cpl. Cesar Armando Laurean would soon be in custody.

"I do feel comfortable that Mr. Laurean will be located," Brown said, adding that the evidence in the case "leads us to believe that he would be a dangerous and violent person if put in a corner."

On Saturday, authorities said they recovered what they believe to be the burnt remains of Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach and her unborn child from a fire pit in Laurean's backyard, where they suspect he burned and buried her body. Those remains have been sent to the state medical examiner's office in Chapel Hill for a formal identification.

Lauterbach disappeared sometime after Dec. 14, not long after she met with military prosecutors to talk about her April allegation that Laurean raped her. Naval investigators said Saturday the rape case was progressing and Laurean was under a protective order to stay away from Lauterbach.

Brown would not say specifically where Laurean was spotted, only describing it as a "transit" sighting. He declined to say whether Laurean was still in the black four-door pickup truck in which they believe he skipped town.

Brown said the FBI, federal Marshals, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation are hunting for Laurean. Sheriff's investigators at the scene are spending much of their time on developing evidence in the investigation, he said.

"While finding him is a main concern, the major concern is that we continue the investigation to clearly find the truth in what happened," he said.

Authorities on Saturday issued an arrest warrant on murder charges for Laurean, 21, of the Las Vegas area. They believe he fled Jacksonville before dawn on Friday after leaving behind a note in which he admitted to burying her body, but said Lauterbach cut her own throat in a suicide.

Citing what he described as a violent confrontation inside Laurean's home — which he said left blood spatters on the ceiling and a massive amount of blood on the wall — Brown has challenged Laurean's assertion Lauterbach killed herself and asked him to come forward to defend his claims of innocence.

Authorities received the note from Laurean's wife, whom Brown has said is cooperating with authorities. Her family has described her as "heartbroken."

Lauterbach's mother reported her daughter missing Dec. 19. She had been placed on "unauthorized absence" status by the Marine Corps and was listed that day as a "missing person at risk" in a national law enforcement database.

Colombian rebels detail hostage location

2008-01-10T06:47:00.000-08:00

Colombian rebels detail hostage location

CARACAS, Venezuela - Colombian rebels on Wednesday provided a pickup location for two women they have held hostage for years, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said, and the Colombian government gave him the green light to launch a rescue mission.Chavez said the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, sent him the coordinates to pick up Clara Rojas — an aide to former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt — and former congresswoman Consuelo Gonzalez. A previous Venezuelan-led mission to free the hostages failed just over a week ago.

"This morning we received the coordinates there in the Colombian mountains where Clara and Consuelo are," Chavez said during a televised speech. "Hopefully, Clara and Consuelo will be free in the coming hours."

Colombia's government responded promptly, saying it was agreeing to the mission. Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo said his government would "provide all the necessary guarantees" so the hostages can "return home as soon as possible."

He said the mission would be overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos met Wednesday night with Red Cross representatives in Bogota to discuss security guarantees, and later said the mission would likely be completed by sundown Thursday.

"We think that's sufficient time" to finish the operation, he said.

Cuba's ambassador to Venezuela would be the only foreign government representative on the Venezuelan-led mission, Santos said.

Earlier, Santos told RCN television that San Jose de Guaviare, a town in a FARC-dominated zone of eastern Colombia, would be the operation center for the mission, and that two helicopters had been authorized for the pickup.

Barbara Hintermann, head of the Red Cross in Bogota, said she hoped the hostages would be reunited with family members Thursday night.

Chavez said Venezuela was ready to send the helicopters with Red Cross officials to Guaviare state.

"Hopefully early tomorrow, the Venezuelan helicopters with the Red Cross will leave from some point in Venezuelan territory to look for these two Colombian patriots and finally attain their freedom," he said.

Chavez did not explain how he obtained the coordinates.

Chavez's statements came after an earlier mission failed to obtain the release of Rojas and Gonzalez, along with a 3-year-old Colombian boy named Emmanuel — the product of a relationship between Rojas and a guerrilla fighter.

The guerrillas accused Colombia's military of sabotaging the promised handoff, saying they couldn't release the hostages due to military operations.

But the U.S.-backed government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said the guerrillas backed out of the deal brokered by Chavez because they didn't have the child hostage as they'd claimed.

Results of a Colombian DNA test later proved Emmanuel has been in a Bogota foster home for more than two years, rather than held captive in the jungle.

A Colombian official said Wednesday that a second DNA analysis by the University of Santiago Compostela in Spain confirmed the boy in the foster home was indeed Emmanuel.

The official with the prosecutor's office spoke on condition of anonymity. The laboratory is expected to officially announce the results by week's end.

Gonzalez's daughter, Patricia Perdomo, told state television in Venezuela that she looked forward to her mother's release.

"We are very happy, very content knowing that — God willing — my mother could be free tomorrow," she said.

The FARC are holding some 46 high-profile hostages — including three American defense contractors and the French-Colombian Betancourt — hoping to swap them for hundreds of jailed rebels.

Rojas was kidnapped in February 2002 while campaigning with Betancourt in a FARC-dominated region of southern Colombia. Gonzalez was abducted by the FARC in September 2001 near the city of Neiva.

A corpse, a check, a bizarre NYC crime

2008-01-09T23:33:00.000-08:00

A corpse, a check, a bizarre NYC crime

NEW YORK - Detective Travis Rapp has seen his share of corpses, but this was new: two men wheeling a rigid, pale body down a Manhattan street in a red office chair, drawing a crowd of suspicious onlookers.
Looking out the window of the restaurant where he was having lunch, Rapp initially assumed "it was a mannequin or a dummy," he said. "I thought it was a joke, honestly."

A closer inspection showed that it wasn't. The man was dead, and two of his friends had hauled his corpse to a store to cash his $355 Social Security check, police said. They were arrested before they could get the money.

The bedraggled suspects, David J. Dalaia and James O'Hare, were scheduled to appear in court Wednesday night. Police said the men, both 65, were petty criminals with long histories of heroin addiction and arrests dating to the 1960s.

The trouble began Tuesday when Dalaia and O'Hare tried to cash Virgilio Cintron's check at a store in Hell's Kitchen on their own, police said. The man at the counter told them that Cintron had to be present to cash the check, so they went back to his apartment, which one of the suspects shared with the dead man.

Cintron was apparently undressed when he died, sometime within the previous 24 hours. Police said Dalaia and O'Hare proceeded to dress him in a faded T-shirt, pants they could only get up part way, and a pair of Velcro sneakers. They threw a coat over his waist to conceal what the pants couldn't cover, police said.

They then put him on the office chair and wheeled the corpse over to the check-cashing store.

The men left Cintron's body outside, went inside and tried to cash his check, authorities said. The store's clerk, who knew Cintron, asked the men where he was, and O'Hare told the clerk they would go and get him.

At about the same time, Rapp spotted the men and confronted them as they were trying to haul the body into the store. He said that even after he identified himself as a police officer, O'Hare told him, "I have to get my friend in here. I have to cash his check."

He ordered the men to back away from the victim. They feigned surprise when paramedics declared him dead, Rapp said.

"When they said, 'Your friend is dead,' they said, 'Oh my God, he's gone?'"

The scene played out on a busy Manhattan street as several people watched.

"I saw this guy sitting in this chair with his head back. He looked very dead," said Victor Rodriguez, 38, who was working at a nearby restaurant when he saw the commotion outside. "He looked very sick. His eyes were closed. He wasn't moving."

Little is known about Cintron, 66, who apparently died of natural causes. An autopsy proved inconclusive, the medical examiner's office said, and his body hadn't been positively identified as of Wednesday afternoon.

Relatives told police that he had recently been hospitalized for Parkinson's disease. Police said his rap sheet was long, with arrests for burglary, assault and drugs. Locals said that Cintron and O'Hare often frequented a food pantry down the street.

A telephone number listed for Cintron at the apartment he shared with O'Hare went unanswered. Police said they didn't have an address for Dalaia or attorney information for him or O'Hare.

Regardless of what happens to the defendants, they can take solace in the fact that they fooled one onlooker with the dead man disguise.

"He went in regular clothes. I didn't even know he was dead. I thought he was alive," said Gerit Ahemed, a clerk at a nearby deli.

Feds: 2nd NJ escapee caught in Mexico

2008-01-09T23:30:00.000-08:00

Feds: 2nd NJ escapee caught in Mexico

ELIZABETH, N.J. - Authorities in Mexico City on Wednesday captured the second of two inmates who made a daring escape last month from a New Jersey jail, a U.S. marshal said.

The apprehension of Otis Blunt came less than a day after federal and local authorities captured his accused cohort, Jose Espinosa, in a basement apartment a mile from the jail in Elizabeth. Also Wednesday, authorities revealed that it took guards 20 hours to notice that the inmates had escaped from the most fortified section of Union County jail.

Blunt was expected back in New Jersey soon, Marshal James T. Plousis said. There were no formal extradition proceedings because Blunt has been declared an "undesirable" in Mexico, he said.

Blunt was found by marshals and Mexican authorities at a "$10-a-night hotel," Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow said. Blunt was arrested without incident and had no weapon, Plousis said.

"We will interview him extensively to find out how long he's been there and how he got there," Plousis said.

The Rev. Al Sharpton's visit this week to Mexico City indirectly helped in the arrest. Plousis said. Sharpton said he had been contacted by acquaintances of Blunt to try to arrange his surrender.

"There's no question Mr. Sharpton raised public involvement," Plousis said, adding that authorities had received several tips.

In a statement, Sharpton said, "I wish I could have been on hand to assure Mr. Blunt's safety but clearly his calling me to where he was helped lead to the conclusion that it did, and I hope that justice for all parties will be served."

Romankow's office said Blunt and Espinosa used photos of bikini-clad women to hide holes they dug through the cinderblock walls of their adjoining cells in a high-security unit before escaping.

The escape, and Blunt's flight, echoed the plot of the movie "The Shawshank Redemption," in which the main character uses posters of women to conceal his escape tunnel and eventually flees to Mexico.

The inmates left a cheeky note thanking one of their guards for helping them, although authorities have said there was no evidence the guard did so. The guard, Rudolph Zurick, committed suicide Jan. 2.

When asked by reporters whether he felt bad about Zurick's suicide, Espinosa said, "It wasn't my fault."

Blunt, 32, was awaiting trial for robbery and weapons offenses at the time of the escape. Espinosa, 20, was awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to manslaughter in a 2005 drive-by shooting.

Authorities now believe the men escaped about 9 p.m. on Dec. 14 by squeezing through the hole onto a third-floor rooftop, then leaping over a 25-foot-high fence topped with razor wire. But guards didn't raise an alarm until 5 p.m. Dec. 15; the inmates had piled sheets under their blankets to make it appear they were sleeping.

A continuing investigation into the breakout has found no evidence that guards knowingly assisted the prisoners, Romankow said.

"At most we're looking at negligence by corrections officers," Romankow said.

In outlining miscues at the jail, Romankow said that Blunt swiped a steel valve wheel from a standpipe in an area that should have been locked, and that the inmates made a lot of noise for about two weeks while using the approximately 10-pound implement to bash the cinder blocks between their cells and on an exterior wall.

A re-enactment created "extremely loud" noise, but it remained unclear whether other noise — perhaps from passing trains — obscured the sounds, he said.

Debris from the smashed cinder blocks was flushed down the toilet, Romankow said.

Once outside the jail's perimeter, Romankow said the men went in separate directions. Espinosa, who sprained his ankle, walked north, hailed a cab at the nearby train station, and stayed in a motel before holing up in the apartment.

Authorities got a tip about Espinosa's whereabouts, and he surrendered without incident.

Also arrested in the apartment was a 19-year-old woman, Odalys Cortez, who authorities said formerly lived in Elizabeth but had moved to Pennsylvania while Espinosa was jailed. Cortez was charged with resisting arrest; it was unclear whether she would face other charges.

New security measures have been instituted since the breakout, the first since the jail opened in 1986, and more will be installed, acting jail director Gary Hilton said. Head counts, for instance, are now taken with inmates standing, he said.

Report: Feds probe Internet suicide

2008-01-09T23:28:00.000-08:00

Report: Feds probe Internet suicide

LOS ANGELES - A federal grand jury has issued a subpoena to MySpace.com in a probe stemming from the suicide of a Missouri teenager who received cruel messages on the networking site that turned out to be a hoax, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors are considering charging a mother in the girl's neighborhood with defrauding MySpace by creating a false account that she, her daughter and a teenage employee used to fool 13-year-old Megan Meier into believing she was communicating with a 16-year-old boy, the Los Angeles Times said on its Web site, citing unidentified sources.

It said its sources insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.

Megan, of suburban St. Louis, hanged herself in October 2006 after receiving cruel messages from the fictional boy she had befriended online, including one saying the world would be better off without her.

The neighborhood woman, Lori Drew, has denied creating the account but acknowledged being aware of it. She also has denied sending any messages to Megan or being aware of the unkind messages.

Prosecutors in Missouri declined to charge anyone because no laws appeared to apply to the case.

A Missouri state panel formed by Gov. Matt Blunt after the suicide met for the final time Tuesday and said it would recommend making certain types of harassment a felony, such as if anyone 21 or older harasses people 17 and younger.

Several grand jury subpoenas issued last week included one to MySpace and others to witnesses, the Times reported.

Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, told the AP he could not comment on grand jury matters, which are secret.

Lori Drew's attorney Jim Briscoe told the AP that the Drews had not been subpoenaed, and that he did not know of anyone else who had received a subpoena.

"I do not know if it's true," he said of the report.

MySpace officials had no immediate comment.

Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and professor at Loyola University Law School, told The Associated Press that if the government convened a grand jury it would be trying to create a case in which MySpace would be the victim of a fraud — meaning the person who perpetrated the fraud could be prosecuted.

"The whole case is curious," she said, and could raise First Amendment issues of free speech.

The Times reported that its sources said federal prosecutors in Los Angeles believe they have jurisdiction because MySpace is based in Beverly Hills.

Police: Dad threw 4 children off bridge

2008-01-09T23:24:00.001-08:00

Police: Dad threw 4 children off bridge

BAYOU LA BATRE, Ala. - A day after reporting his four young children were missing, a shrimp fisherman broke down and confessed that he threw them off an 80-foot-high bridge to their deaths, authorities said Wednesday.

Lam Luong, 37, was charged with four counts of capital murder, and divers searched the murky waters for the bodies of the youngsters, who ranged in age from a few months to 3 years.

Luong had a drug habit and had argued with his wife, Ngoc Phan, before taking the children, said Phan's brother-in-law, Kam Phengsisomboun.

Luong's girlfriend, who was living in a hotel in nearby Gulfport, Miss., figured into the couple's argument on Sunday and then on Monday morning, family members and police said.

Authorities said they believe Luong then drove Monday to the two-lane Dauphin Island bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway, stopped at the highest part of the span and threw the youngsters over the side.

Luong and his wife reported the children missing Monday. He initially told police that he had given the kids to his girlfriend and that she failed to return them, investigators and family members said.

But authorities said they found holes in his account, and he later changed his story.

Missing and presumed dead were 4-month-old Danny Luong; 1-year-old Lindsey Luong; 2-year-old Hannah Luong; and 3-year-old Ryan Phan. Phan is not the man's biological child, but Luong raised him from infancy, authorities said.

About 70 people in boats and helicopters searched water as deep as 55 feet. The search area covered 100 square miles because the current might have swept the children away, Sheriff Sam Cochran said.

The search was called off late Wednesday afternoon when dense fog rolled in, completely obscuring the bridge. It was to resume in the morning, weather permitting.

Luong was scheduled to appear in court Thursday. District Attorney John Tyson said he did not believe Luong had a lawyer.

Luong came to Alabama from Vietnam in 1984 and worked as a shrimper, Phengsisomboun said. The couple lived with Phan's mother at Bayou La Batre, a fishing village 20 miles southwest of Mobile with a large Southeast Asian community.

Phengsisomboun said the couple had recently moved back to the area from Hinesville, Ga.

The family initially feared he had traded the children to support his drug habit, Phengsisomboun said. Luong had a crack habit and had run through an insurance settlement from an auto accident, he said.

Phengsisomboun said he was later told by investigators that a witness had seen someone throw a bundle from the bridge and then saw three children in a nearby car.

Authorities in Mobile confirmed Luong had a history of drug abuse but had no details.

He was arrested in October in Hinesville on a crack-possession charge. The case has not been acted on by a grand jury.

Phan, 23, was in seclusion Wednesday morning at her mother's brick home, the front porch cluttered with children's shoes.

Some family members and friends held out hope that the children weren't dead.

"I just pray for the kids, that they are still alive," said Van Lam, a family friend who was at a market with Phan's mother Wednesday afternoon.