Thousands march to protest Russia's adoption ban

MOSCOW (AP) — Thousands of people marched through Moscow on Sunday to protest Russia's new law banning Americans from adopting Russian children, a far bigger number than expected in a sign that outrage over the ban has breathed some life into the dispirited anti-Kremlin opposition movement.
Shouting "shame on the scum," protesters carried posters of President Vladimir Putin and members of Russia's parliament who overwhelmingly voted for the law last month. Up to 20,000 took part in the demonstration on a frigid, gray afternoon.
The adoption ban has stoked the anger of the same middle-class, urban professionals who swelled the protest ranks last winter, when more than 100,000 people turned out for rallies to demand free elections and an end to Putin's 12 years in power. Since Putin began a third presidential term in May, the protests have flagged as the opposition leaders have struggled to provide direction and capitalize on the broad discontent.
Opponents of the adoption ban argue it victimizes children to make a political point. Eager to take advantage of this anger, the anti-Kremlin opposition has played the ban as further evidence that Putin and his parliament have lost the moral right to rule Russia.
The Kremlin, however, has used the adoption controversy to further its efforts to discredit the opposition as unpatriotic and in the pay of the Americans.
Sunday's march may prove only a blip on what promises to be a long road for the protest movement, especially in the face of Kremlin efforts to stifle dissent. But it was a reunion of what has become known as Moscow's creative class, whose sarcastic wit was once again on display on Sunday.
"Parliament deputies to orphanages, Putin to an old people's home," read one poster. Another showed Putin with the words "For a Russia without Herod."
Putin's critics have likened him to King Herod, who ruled at the time of Jesus Christ's birth and who the Bible says ordered the massacre of Jewish children to avoid being supplanted by the newborn king of the Jews.
Russia's adoption ban was retaliation for a new U.S. law targeting Russians accused of human rights abuses. It also addresses long-brewing resentment in Russia over the 60,000 Russian children who have been adopted by Americans in the past two decades, 19 of whom have died.
Cases of Russian children dying or suffering abuse at the hands of their American adoptive parents have been widely publicized in Russia, and the law banning adoptions was called the Dima Yakovlev bill after a toddler who died in 2008 when he was left in a car for hours in broiling heat.
"Yes, there are cases when they are abused and killed, but they are rare," said Sergei Udaltsov, who heads a leftist opposition group. "Concrete measures should be taken (to punish those responsible), but our government decided to act differently and sacrifice children's fates for its political ambitions."
Those opposed to the adoption ban accuse Putin's government of stoking anti-American sentiments in Russian society in an effort to solidify support among its base, the working-class Russians who live in small cities and towns and who get their news mainly from Kremlin-controlled television.
Putin has turned his back on the new Internet generation in Moscow and other large cities, exacerbating a divide in Russian society that seems likely only to deepen in coming years.
Protests against the adoption ban were held Sunday in a number of other Russian cities, but in most places only a few dozen people took part. In St. Petersburg, about 1,000 people turned out to show their opposition to the law and to Putin. Some held up a poster that read "Don't play politics using children."
French actor Gerard Depardieu, who took Russian citizenship this month and considers Putin a friend, spoke out against the opposition in an interview shown Sunday on Russian state television. "The opposition has no program, nothing at all," the actor said, echoing Putin. "There are very smart people like (former world chess champion Garry) Kasparov, but that's only good for chess. And that's it. But politics are a lot more complicated."
The adoption ban also revived anger over the December 2011 parliamentary election, which independent observers said was won by Putin's party through widespread fraud. A column of marchers on Sunday held a banner calling for the State Duma, the elected lower house, to be disbanded.
"The Duma that now adopts these kinds of laws is illegitimate. It was formed with the theft of 100 million votes," said opposition leader Vladimir Ryzhkov, a former Duma member who lost his seat when independent members were ousted in 2007. "It doesn't have the moral or political right to adopt laws for us. The disbanding of the Duma and the overturning of the law: That's why people, including me, came out today."
At the end of the protest, marchers dumped the posters of Putin and parliament members in an industrial-sized trash container that had "for disposal" scribbled on it.
Sunday's protest had been authorized by the city government, which was one factor behind the high turnout. Several protesters were detained for what police said was violating public order, but all were later released. The Kremlin has sought to stifle dissent by imposing steep fines on those who take part in unauthorized protests and opening criminal investigations against popular protest leaders.
Just ahead of the weekend demonstration, Putin's spokesman sought to ease anger over the adoption ban by announcing that some of the dozens of adoptions already under way could go forward, allowing children who have already bonded with American adoptive parents to leave the country.
UNICEF estimates there are about 740,000 children not in parental custody in Russia, while about 18,000 Russians are on the waiting list to adopt a child. Since the law banning American adoptions was passed, Russian political and religious leaders have been encouraging Russians to adopt more children.

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Beaches, bombs and gangsters _ Corsica's dilemma

AJACCIO, Corsica (AP) — The bombs exploded across hundreds of miles of Corsican coastline, gutting two dozen villas nearly simultaneously on some of Europe's most beautiful — and valuable — land. Elsewhere on the same French island off the Mediterranean coast, a young man was shot to death in his car, his stepson wounded beside him.
The night of violence in early December epitomized the problems of Napoleon's native island today: Organized crime is gaining ground, spreading beyond the usual vices on the mainland to real estate, tourism and politics back home. And separatists, who extinguished themselves in a spasm of deadly infighting in the late 1990s, have come back with a vengeance, as they wage a desperate battle to prevent mob-dominated mass tourism from dooming their dreams of self-rule.
Corsican coastal land prices have risen as much as five times in as many years, and the number of tourists also has shot up as a once-exclusive haven for the wealthy and their yachts and private vacation homes became a destination for cruise ships and budget flights. Corsican mobsters — infamous in mainland France and the United States for their ties to gambling, nightclubs and drugs — saw a killing to be made back home.
Gang warfare over Corsican spoils and the separatist bombing campaign have created a climate of lawlessness, although the combatants have been careful not to turn the violence on the tourists themselves.
"The state has completely failed," said Dominique Bianchi, a former nationalist leader who recently stepped down as mayor of the southern village of Villanova. "In this world, there's only one thing that counts: how to divide the loot."
Shaken by the bombings, and the recent assassinations of a defense lawyer and community leader, the Paris government is making new promises to clean things up on an island where separatist sentiment has simmered ever since France officially took charge in 1769. Corsica has emerged as a jewel of French mass tourism only recently: More than 4.2 million tourists visited the island last year, compared to 2.4 million in 1992. The 2013 Tour de France, the world's premier cycling competition, will begin here — adding to the sense that Corsica has joined the big leagues as a top travel destination.
Complicating the challenge for France is what mainland officials describe as a code of silence — known as "omerta" — that also runs through areas of mafia-plagued southern Italy. Locals say it's fear, not omerta, that keeps people silent.
Of the 85 gangland killings and attempted assassinations in Corsica in the past eight years, only one case — a plot against a former nationalist turned president of Corsica's biggest soccer team — has ended in conviction.
Both the mob violence and the bombings claimed by militant nationalists have the same root, Corsicans say: the land.
Three-quarters of the coastline is untouched, the beaches and Mediterranean views achingly empty of a human presence just a 90-minute flight from Paris — as developers were scared off by gangland warfare and separatist militancy. "Where else could you go and have this kind of virgin land? It doesn't exist anymore," said Dominique Yvon, who is part of an anti-corruption group on Corsica.
Through the 1990s, the island was rocked by more than 1,000 separatist bombings of vacation homes and construction sites. For mainstream investors, France's Cote d'Azur, much more stable despite its own mob presence, was the place to be.
Then the separatists imploded in the late 1990s. And organized crime came home, seeing an opening to make new profits laundering drug money, much of it during three decades of heroin sales in the United States — spearheading the so-called "French Connection" drug ring — and on the Cote d'Azur, according to Thierry Colombie, who has written a book about the Corsican mob.
Most of the tourists who stayed overnight on the island in 2012 stayed in villas, many of them suspected of links to mob money, that popped up on the coastline when the bombing wave of the 1980s and 1990s finally ended. The number of cruise ship day visitors has also risen from 298,000 in 2001 to 1.1 million in 2011; they spend money in stores, restaurants and clubs before returning to their ships.
Each summer, the population of Corsica doubles from its 300,000 residents. Visitors pay a premium for ocean views and spend money in restaurants and nightclubs. They fly in by plane or sail into harbors like Ajaccio, outfitted for yachts and cruise ships. They come despite a murder rate about eight times higher than the rest of France, largely thanks to the fact that no tourists have been killed in Corsican gangland or separatist violence.
For most of the 20th century, the French government's driving focus was on ending nationalist sentiment, even as Corsica's problem with feeding the global criminal underworld grew. The "French Connection" brought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of heroin into the United States. And Corsican mobsters dominated the gambling and prostitution houses of Paris.
When the latest wave of gangland killings started, in 2006, the French government looked the other way, hoping the criminals would implode the way the nationalists had.
Then, at the end of 2012, when score-settling reached beyond established criminals to Corsica's mainstream political class, the government began to pay serious attention. First, a prominent defense lawyer was killed as he made his usual stop at a gas station on his way to work in Ajaccio. Next, a former nationalist with a uniquely powerful post as head of the chamber of commerce was shot as he closed up shop.
As president of the chamber of commerce, Jacques Nacer was in charge of the air- and seaports that are the island's link to the outside world, and the government money that keeps both up and running. Authorities have not said why they think he was gunned down, beyond noting that it was a professional killing.
More than 15 years ago, the chamber's president used the airport as a helicopter base for drug running between Africa and Europe. His successor was convicted in a fraud scheme involving government contracts.
The slain defense lawyer, Antoine Sollacaro, was best known for representing the nationalist who killed the island's highest ranking official, prefect Claude Erignac, in 1998. Police have offered no theories on his death, beyond noting that it had the same professional hallmarks as all of Corsica's gangland murders.
These killings finally caught the attention of France's top security and justice officials, who stood before the cameras to vow that this time, things would be different. "In Corsica, those who give the orders are known. Everyone knows and no one speaks," said French Interior Minister Manuel Valls.
Of course they don't speak, counters Raphael Vallet, a police investigator in Corsica. Most people can offer only rumors, and those who might know more can't look to the state's shield in France — which, unlike Italy and the United States, has no robust witness protection program for mobster turncoats.
"If you're dealing with someone who is capable of killing you at any moment and we say 'we can't protect you,' would you talk?" said Vallet. "Corsicans are no less brave than anyone else."
The Corsican city of Ajaccio was the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte, who left the island as a youth after deciding that greatness couldn't be attained there. Many others have made similar bets about their future on an island with few resources beyond its natural beauty. Among them, a preferred path has been criminal empire.
French government policy was — and remains — that Corsica is an integral part of the nation. Islanders, meanwhile, call the rest of France "the continent" and proudly speak their own Italian-inflected language that the Paris government once tried unsuccessfully to wipe out.
The bombings of Dec. 7 struck at 31 villas, all of them with absentee homeowners away on "the continent."
The nationalist FLNC, which announced its resurrection in a theatrical news conference in July complete with masks and guns, claimed responsibility on Dec. 19 and denied any collusion with organized crime, saying gangsters had "prospered in the shadow of the French state for decades."
The explosions appeared to have no links to the hit on the young man, whose death is believed to be the latest professional killing to go unsolved.
Bianchi, the former mayor, was once jailed for his links to the group and has since publicly renounced violence. But he, like many Corsicans, couldn't bring himself to condemn the bombings in a place they consider their homeland.
"Even if I don't approve, I understand. I understand because in the current climate of Corsica, where there is enormous land speculation, there is a revolt," he said. "We don't want their country ... to become a place just for rich retirees in the next 10 or 15 years. We don't want it to become another Cote d'Azur."

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Gay marriage protest converges on Eiffel Tower

PARIS (AP) — Holding aloft ancient flags and young children, hundreds of thousands of people converged Sunday on the Eiffel Tower to protest the French president's plan to legalize gay marriage and thus allow same-sex couples to adopt and conceive children.
The opposition to President Francois Hollande's plan has underscored divisions among the secular-but-Catholic French, especially more traditional rural areas versus urban enclaves. But while polls show the majority of French still support legalizing gay marriage, that backing gets more lukewarm when children come into play.
The protest march started at three points across Paris, filling boulevards throughout the city as demonstrators walked six kilometers (3 miles) to the grounds of France's most recognizable monument. Paris police estimated the crowd at 340,000, making it one of the largest demonstrations in Paris since an education protest in 1984.
"This law is going to lead to a change of civilization that we don't want," said Philippe Javaloyes, a literature teacher who bused in with 300 people from Franche Comte in the far east. "We have nothing against different ways of living, but we think that a child must grow up with a mother and a father."
Public opposition spearheaded by religious leaders has chipped away at the popularity of Hollande's plan in recent months. About 52 percent of French favor legalizing gay marriage, according to a survey released Sunday, down from as high as 65 percent in August.
French civil unions, allowed since 1999, are at least as popular among heterosexuals as among gay and lesbian couples. But that law has no provisions for adoption or assisted reproduction, which are at the heart of the latest debate.
Hollande's Socialist Party has sidestepped the debate on assisted reproduction, promising to examine it in March after party members split on including it in the latest proposal. That hasn't assuaged the concerns of many in Sunday's protest, however, who fear it's only a matter of time.
"They're talking about putting into national identity cards Parent 1, Parent 2, Parent 3, Parent 4. Mom, dad and the kids are going to be wiped off the map, and that's going to be bad for any country, any civilization," said Melissa Michel, a Franco-American mother of five who was among a group from the south of France on a train reserved specifically for the protest.
Support for gay marriage — and especially adoption by same-sex couples — has been particularly tenuous outside Paris, and people from hundreds of miles from the French capital marched Sunday beneath regional flags with emblems dating back to the Middle Ages, chanting "Daddy, Mommy."
If the French parliament approves the plan, France would become the 12th country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage, and the biggest so far in terms of economic and diplomatic influence.
Harlem Desir, the leader of Hollande's Socialist Party, said the protest would not affect the proposal's progress. The Socialists control Parliament, where the bill is expected to be introduced on Tuesday, with a vote following public debate at the end of January.
"The right to protest is protected in our country, but the Socialists are determined to give the legal right to marry and adopt to all those who love each other," he said. "This is the first time in decades in our country that the right and the extreme right are coming into the streets together to deny new rights to the French.

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Nepali charged with torture appears in UK court

LONDON (AP) — A British court on Saturday denied bail to a colonel in the Nepalese army facing charges of torture allegedly committed during the Himalayan nation's civil war.
Kumar Lama, 46, was arrested Thursday at a residential address in the English town of St. Leonards-on-Sea, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) southeast of London. He was later charged with intentionally "inflicting severe pain or suffering" on two individuals as a public official — or person acting in official capacity.
Britain's Metropolitan Police said the charges relate to one incident that allegedly occurred between April 15 and May 1, 2005, and another that allegedly occurred between April 15 and Oct. 31, 2005 at the Gorusinghe Army Barracks in Nepal. Scotland Yard has said that the arrest did not take place at the request of Nepalese authorities.
British authorities claim "universal jurisdiction" over serious offenses such as war crimes, torture, and hostage-taking, meaning such crimes can be prosecuted in Britain regardless of where they occurred.
Lama spoke only to confirm his identity when he appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Saturday. Two diplomats from the Nepalese embassy were in court for the short hearing, according to Britain's Press Association news agency.
The court heard that Lama has served in the Nepalese Army since 1984 and was in charge of the barracks at the time of the alleged offenses. The colonel is currently serving as a U.N. peacekeeper in South Sudan, having previously served in Sierra Leone and Lebanon, and he was due to return to Africa on Saturday after spending Christmas in England.
The case has touched off a diplomatic spat, with the Nepalese government summoning the U.K. ambassador in Kathmandu to protest. Britain's Foreign Office confirmed on Friday that Nepal's government summoned the U.K. ambassador in Kathmandu because it was upset over the arrest, but declined to comment further.
Thousands of people died and thousands were injured or tortured during Nepal's civil war, a decade-long conflict that ended in 2006.
Judge Quentin Purdy remanded Lama in custody pending a Jan. 24 court date.

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Missoni scion on small plane missing in Venezuela

ROME (AP) — Rescue crews used boats and aircraft on Saturday to search for a small plane that disappeared in Venezuela carrying the CEO of Italy's iconic Missoni fashion house and five other people.
But 24 hours after the BN-2 Islander aircraft disappeared from radar screens on its short flight from Venzuela's coastal resort island of Los Roques to Caracas, the capital, no sign of the plane had been found, officials said.
"We have no other news" about the plane carrying Vittorio Missoni, the head of the company; his wife, Maurizia Castiglioni; two of their Italian friends; and two Venezuelan crew members, said Paolo Marchetti, a Missoni SpA official. He spoke briefly to reporters as he left company headquarters in the northern Italian town of Sumirago on Saturday afternoon.
Missoni's younger brother, Luca, who is active in the family-run business, was reportedly traveling to Venezuela on Saturday to monitor search efforts.
"We're holding onto a glimmer of hope," said Oswaldo Scalvenzi , a relative of Elda Scalvenzi, one of the Missoni friends aboard the flight. "Until we can see the wreckage" hope will remain, Scalvenzi told Italian state TV on Saturday night.
The La Repubblica.it, website of the Rome newspaper said Venezuelan aircraft, motorboats and helicopters took off at dawn Saturday to resume the search for the missing plane, which had been suspended on Friday night. The Italian news agency ANSA, reporting from Rome, said a specialized ocean-searching naval vessel also was being deployed.
Vittorio Missoni is the eldest son of the company's founder, Ottavio, who at 91 still follows the business.
The Corriere della Sera newspaper reported that Ottavio and his wife Rosita were at their home in Italy, along with their daughter Angela, creative director of the company, waiting for information about the search. Rosita Missoni designs housewares for the company, and Angela's daughter, Margherita, has been infusing its classic designs with fresh appeal.
The Missoni fashion house, with its trademark zigzag and other geometric patterns in sweaters, scarves and other knitwear, is one of Italy's most famous fashion brands abroad.
Vittorio Missoni played a key role in marketing the Missoni family creations in Asia, especially in Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea as general director of marketing for Missoni SpA. He also spearheaded a push for the company's products in the United States and France. His efforts to expand the brand abroad led Missoni to be dubbed the company's "ambassador."
On Friday, Venezuela's Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said the plane was declared missing hours after taking off from Los Roques, a string of islands popular for scuba diving, white beaches and coral reefs, and where the Missonis and their friends were on vacation.
Vittorio Missoni has been described as an active sportsman and lover of the outdoors. He and his wife and their friends from northern Italy were scheduled to fly back to Italy on Friday, but their internal flight never made it to Caracas.
La Repubblica said the plane disappeared off radar screens shortly after takeoff from Los Roques on what was to been a 90-mile (140-kilometer) flight to the mainland.
The Missoni brand is scheduled to display its latest menswear creations at a fashion show in Milan later this month.
On Jan. 4, 2008, another plane returning to the Venezuelan mainland from Los Roques disappeared with 14 people aboard, including eight Italians. The body of the plane's Venezuelan co-pilot later washed ashore, but despite a search lasting weeks no other victims or the wreckage were found.
In 2009, a small plane returning from Los Roques with nine people aboard plunged into the Caribbean Sea, but all survived.

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Bulgarians celebrate Epiphany with an icy dip

SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Thousands of young men are plunging into icy rivers and lakes across Bulgaria to retrieve crucifixes cast by priests in an old ritual marking the feast of Epiphany.
By tradition, a wooden cross is cast into the water and it is believed that the person who retrieves it will be freed from evil spirits.
In the central city of Kalofer, 350 men in traditional dress waded into the icy Tundzha River with national flags. Led by the town's mayor and encouraged by a folk orchestra and homemade plum brandy, they dance and stomp the rocky riverbed.

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Falklands again? Why Argentina's Kirchner keeps pushing the issue with Britain.

Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner relaunched her offensive over the Falkland Islands today, a move that coincides with the 180th anniversary of Britain’s allegedly illegal usurpation of the South Atlantic archipelago.
President Kirchner published an open letter to British Prime Minister David Cameron in British newspapers imploring him to respect a United Nations resolution that calls on the two countries to negotiate sovereignty of the Malvinas, the name for the islands in Spanish.
Britain has repeatedly refused to enter into talks and a spokesman for Mr. Cameron responded by saying he will “do everything to protect the interests of the islanders.”
But Kirchner's move forms part of a broader leadership pattern that has seen the nationalist president take on so-called vulture funds, demonize the International Monetary Fund, and echo Hugo Chávez’s anti-neocolonial discourse.
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'NATIONAL AND POPULAR'
Though Britain may take the view that Kirchner is beating a dead horse, the Falklands are a long-standing national cause for Argentina and are written into its constitution. Today's letter represents what are described here in Argentina as "Nac & Pop" policies.
"Nac & Pop" stands for national and popular, the way Kirchner defines her government. She casts reclaiming the Falklands, over which Britain and Argentina fought a short war in 1982, as a South American struggle against neocolonialism.
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Britain recently named a slice of Antarctica over which Argentina also has a claim "Queen Elizabeth Land," a move branded by a source at the Argentine presidential palace as “provocative and childish.”
“If it occurs to the British Empire to attack the Falklands, Argentina won’t be alone this time,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said last year. With President Chávez’s future uncertain due to recent health concerns, Kirchner could be trying to position herself as the leader who replaces him as the resounding voice of the South American left.
Kirchner also made a stand over the Falklands at the UN’s decolonization committee last year, and sanctioned a controversial TV commercial showing an Argentine field hockey player training for last summer’s London Olympics in Port Stanley, the islands’ capital.
The populist methods sit well among her supporters, who parade “The Malvinas are Argentine” flags at government rallies. And given that Kirchner's approval rating has dipped to roughly 35 percent – a decline of about 30 percent – in opinion polls since her reelection in October 2011, playing the Falklands card is viewed by some analysts as a way to halt that slide.
BEYOND THE FALKLAND ISLANDS
Aside from the Falklands, Kirchner’s debt reduction plan – accompanied by interventionist economic policy – and push for social inclusion are the pillars of her national and popular policies.
Next week, the Fragata Libertad – a ship embargoed in Ghana by an American-based holdout creditor that is demanding payment after having rejected debt exchanges on the back of Argentina’s 2002 default – will arrive at Mar del Plata, a city in Buenos Aires province.
Kirchner will be there to receive it. In her bid to reestablish Argentina’s economic sovereignty, she accused an American judge of “judicial colonialism” after he recently ruled that the holdout creditors should be paid.
The economy and the Falklands are both essential to Kirchner’s "Nac & Pop" strategy, and are likely to continue to be used for political gain.

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Libyan cop in Benghazi kidnapped

Abdelsalam al-Mahdawi, the head of Benghazi's criminal investigation department, was kidnapped on his way to work today by gunmen at an intersection in Libya's second largest city.
Benghazi was the heart of the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi in 2011, and since then it has failed to bring the militias that fought on the side of the revolution – some Islamist, some not – under any kind of government control. They remain armed and often a law unto themselves in the city. Criminal gangs, spawned from militias, are also at work.
The list of potential suspects is long, particularly since Mr. Mahdawi's personal background isn't immediately clear. Was he someone who served Mr. Qaddafi's regime at one point, and is being targeted for revenge? Could it be a personal or family dispute? Could his investigations of militias and/or criminals be the reason for his kidnapping? A simple matter of kidnap-for-ransom? All are possible.
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But what's likely is that sorting out what's happened to him will be confusing, subject to completing claims, and difficult for any neutral observer trying to get at the truth to figure out. That's been the pattern in violent incidents in Benghazi not just since the war ended, but before.
The attack on the US facility in Benghazi in September that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead is still not fully understood. Meanwhile, today's assault is the second attack on a senior police official in Benghazi since November, when Benghazi police chief Farraj al-Dursi was assassinated outside his house. Mr. Dursi, who served under Qaddafi's government, was appointed police chief during a shuffle of security in the city after the attack on the Americans in September.
One long-standing murder in Benghazi is taking a troubling turn.
Abdel Fateh Younes, a commander of rebel forces, was abducted and murdered in the city in July 2011. Gen. Younes defected from his long-standing stalwart support of Qaddafi that February and was abducted after being called back from the front of that civil war. What happened next remains uncertain.
Shortly after his murder, Mustapha Abdel Jalil, then head of Libya's Transitional National Council and himself a former minister in Qaddafi's government, insisted Younes was killed by agents of Qaddafi. Others in the rebel government in Benghazi said Younes' arrest had been sought on suspicion he was working as a double agent for Qaddafi. In the immediate aftermath, a civil war within a civil war in Benghazi looked possible, with angry loyalists of Younes demanding justice.
Mr. Jalil was a hero of the revolution for being one of the earliest defectors from Qaddafi's regime and for successfully navigating international intrigue and competing agendas domestically in winning NATO support for the rebellion. In December, he was threatened with a military trial for allegedly ordering the murder of Younes. Among the charges against Jalil were "undermining national unity."
Is there good reason to suspect him? It's unclear, as with so much else in Libya these days. The proposal to try Jalil in a military court, however, was clearly worrying. On Dec. 19, the military tribunal organized to try Jalil resigned and the case was thrown back to prosecutors. To top it all, one of the judges investigating Jalil was murdered in Benghazi last year.
What does all this mean? Hard to say. But the ongoing chaos and bloodshed, at high political levels in Libya, is not a positive sign.

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Amid bloodshed and chaos, Syrian wages a war for neutral reporting

While Syria's state-run news outlets run a steady stream of reports about "terrorists" and international conspiracies against President Bashar al-Assad, opposition activists roll out their own endless barrage of footage highlighting atrocities and destruction by regime forces, with little in the way of context.
With media access difficult or impossible in most of the country and no tradition of balanced journalism, reliable, objective coverage of Syria is scarce. Cairo-based Syrian activist and media entrepreneur Rami Jarrah, on the cusp of launching a radio station inside Syria, is trying to fix that – but he is starting from scratch. By providing Syrians with rational, fair reporting, he hopes to help them avoid the worst of the uncertainty in the aftermath of this conflict – now in its 22nd month – when it ends.
"When someone comes in and wants to work with us, and wants to do it to help Syria, you have to convince them that the way you do that is by being neutral," says Mr. Jarrah during an interview at the Cairo headquarters of New Media Association (ANA), which he co-directs.
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One of the major problems with Syrian troops, he insists, is not that most of them are "criminals," but that they simply "don’t know what’s going on" – and the same could be said of many of those in the extreme opposition.
Meanwhile, the international community is foundering amid attempts to understand what is happening on the ground. Because reporters have an easier time accessing opposition sources and visiting opposition-controlled areas, international coverage of Syria has been skewed, Jarrah argues.
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"You aren’t seeing any media coverage of Damascus and Latakia," where the government is still strong, both because reporters are not granted access and because "those who support Assad think they should not speak to journalists, that the media is trying to weaken the country," he says.
And coverage of the opposition isn't very fair either, he says, claiming that Western reporters "are only going in with the extreme opposition," such as Al Qaeda-linked groups like Jabhat al-Nusra, which the US recently designated a terrorist organization. Jarrah says reports about the prevalence of such groups are "over-exaggerated" because they sell more copy.
PRISON, PSEUDONYMS, AND FLIGHT
Born in Cyprus to Syrian dissident parents and raised in London, Jarrah was working toward a degree in journalism in Dubai when he visited Syria for the first time in 2004. He was arrested upon landing, accused of espionage, slapped with a three-year travel ban, and forced to remain in a country where he was initially unable even to read the language, although he spoke it fluently.
During the initial protests in early 2011, he was beaten, tortured, and released only after admitting to being a "terrorist." Left jobless after refusing to attend a pro-government rally, he became well known in the dissident community under the pseudonym Alexander Page for getting information to Western media outlets through his blog. His fluent English, training in journalism, anti-regime stance, and contacts all led to frequent requests for interviews in Western media. He granted them, but never revealed his real name.
In October 2011, Jarrah was tipped off that the pseudonym had been traced to him and fled the country with his wife and young daughter through Jordan to Cairo, where he has been since, working to get media equipment into Syria and get reliable information out. Last month, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression awarded him the 2012 International Press Freedom Award for his work supporting a network of independent journalists in Syria.
Now he is in Cairo, getting a media organization off the ground that he hopes will serve as a source for balanced reporting by Syrians and for Syrians. Much bloodshed could have been avoided, but much can still be saved, if appeals are made to Syrians’ critical thinking abilities, not their fears or sectarian and religious affiliations, he says – and objective reporting can do that.
NO AGENDA OTHER THAN OBJECTIVITY
Jarrah has high hopes for Radio ANA. A trial version is already available online and it will be available on satellite in late January, although the official launch isn't until June 10. The station will broadcast out of Aleppo’s Bustan Al Qasr district and eastern Damascus.
Radio ANA has 16 reporters inside Syria, all of whom his organization has worked with over the past year and trained in technical skills – six in Damascus and one or more in other major cities. It also has a wider network of hundreds of citizen journalists it can tap for further information and on-the-ground coverage of events in cities other than those where staff reporters live.
The Cairo staff of the organization, who come from all across Syria, make every possible effort to verify the information from the citizen journalists by cross-checking information and paying close attention to location identifiers like dialects and landmarks spotted in videos, Jarrah says.
Although ANA intends to continue providing reporting on Syria to the international community, Radio ANA is setting out to be the first Syrian non-regime radio station broadcasting from within Syria without a particular agenda – other than objectivity. The ultimate aim, as Jattah stressed throughout the interview, is to produce an informed Syrian population, necessary if the country is to be rebuilt with the freedoms for which the opposition is fighting.

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Good Taliban, Bad Taliban? Pakistani commander's killing exposes blurry lines

The US drone killing of Pakistani Taliban commander Maulvi Nazir threatens to unleash new anti-government violence against the country’s weak government or civilian targets, and expose fractures in the country’s military and security forces, analysts say.
Mr. Nazir was traveling in a car in troubled South Waziristan, bordering Afghanistan, Thursday, when his vehicle was hit by a missile, according to media reports. He and six other Pakistanis believed to be militants were killed.
The attacks highlight the convoluted interconnections among insurgent factions in Pakistan, some of whom are focused on fighting US forces in Afghanistan, others of whom seek to topple Pakistan’s government. Still other groups target Indian forces. Many of the factions are backed or financed by military and intelligence agencies in Pakistan, who have differing agendas themselves.
The killing was confirmed by Pakistani intelligence officials in the nearby city of Peshawar who spoke on condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Mr. Nazir, who survived a suicide attack in November reputedly organized by rival Taliban commanders, was considered to be pro-government, a rare stance among Pakistani Taliban. He had agreed in the past to restrain his fighters from targeting Pakistani government forces, instead focusing efforts on the Taliban-led anti-US insurgency in Afghanistan. That had led some to label him a “good" Taliban.
With his killing, however, some analysts say his successor and followers may now turn their guns on civilian and military targets within Pakistan.
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“Such [drone] attacks are not the first ones to have occurred and they have definitely created rifts between the Pakistani military and the likes of Maulvi Nazir-led Taliban,” says Mehreen Zahra Malik, an Islamabad-based columnist who recently visited Wana, the town in South Waziristan where Nazir was based.
Adding to the problem is widespread outrage among most Pakistanis toward US drone strikes. The government and military have harnessed that anger to pressure Washington. The “Good Taliban” forces increasingly suspect these attacks are being carried out with the consent of the Pakistani security establishment, Ms. Malik says.
“There is nothing to say the 'Good Taliban' won't also turn their guns on the Pakistani state in the coming days, which is definitely something the Pakistan Army would like to avoid,” Malik adds.
Other experts believe targeting Nazir could be part of a larger strategic alliance between Pakistan and the US, a relationship that has been strained by the 2011 secret US raid that killed Osama bin Laden without the knowledge of the government. The 2011 “Salala Incident” in which NATO aircraft killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at a post on the Afghan border also prompted anger toward Washington.
“By taking out the leadership of those Taliban based in Pakistan and fighting in Afghanistan like Maulvi Nazir, both countries can increase the pressure on the Taliban for talks because they will be in a stronger position,” says Ayesha Siddiqa, a defense analyst who has authored two books on the Pakistani military.
Some fear the drone attacks may end up backfiring.
“This drone attack belies the conventional wisdom... Why will the US target a militant close to the Afghan Taliban and antagonize those it wants to bring on the table for peace talks in?” says Fahd Husain, a noted columnist for the several leading Islamabad newspapers.

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Could gang-rape protests mark beginning of an age of activism for India?

The large-scale protests triggered by the gang rape of a 23-year-old student in New Delhi has renewed debate over the rise of a new urban middle-class activism in India.

The strength and longevity of those protests, sustained as they were over several weeks and undeterred by police water cannons and teargas, took many by surprise. Student activism has generally been on the decline since the early 1990s, when the economy was liberalized, and the Indian urban middle-class is notorious for itspolitical apathy.

But the recent protests, coming on top of 2011’s massive anticorruption movement led by Gandhian activist Anna Hazare, has some commentators heralding a new social mobilization – one that is fueled by frustration with what is seen as an increasingly corrupt and out-of-touch political system, energized by a new generation of youth, and aided by both old and new media.

“A generation has come of age that has [previously] been linked to a class and an ethos that was supremely indifferent to anything but their own self-interest – consumption and making money,” says Aditya Nigam, a political scientist and senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. He points out that this generation grew up in the 1990s, a period of economic liberalization that saw rising prosperity but also increased corruption – there have been several high-profile scams in recent years – that was perpetrated with impunity.

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Demographics are certainly a factor in the recent protests. More Indians are entering the middle class– anywhere between 70 million and 150 million, depending on the definition of middle class – and more now live in the cities.

They form the spine of support for the Aam Aadmi Party, launched in October by Hazare’s former deputy Arvind Kejriwal. This segment is believed to have contributed to the recent reelection of controversial right-wing leader Narendra Modi, who courted what he called the “neo-middle-class” in the state of Gujarat.

There is a “new force on the Indian political landscape,” wrote a commentator in a leading business daily. “The middle class has sensed that its period of political irrelevance is over, with its numbers growing at a phenomenal pace.”

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India’s population is also disproportionately young, a feature that is associated with both increased productivity and social unrest. The median age in India is now 25, while the median age of a national politician is closer to 60 – a generational and cultural gap that has been on display in the past few weeks as political and civic leaders have blamed sexual violence on everything from English education to short skirts.

The generational shift is evident to Arjun Bali, a 42-year-old filmmaker who turned up with his toddler for a women’s rights protest in an upscale neighborhood in Mumbai on New Year’s Day. Mr. Bali said he was no stranger to protests – he had attended many as a college student. “The generationborn in the 1980s, they don’t know have the baggage or the fears” from, say, the Emergency, he says, referring to the period in the early 1970s when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi suspended elections and suppressed civil liberties.

Another young protester, Pallavi Srivastava, personifies that difference. Like generations of middle-class Indians before her, the urban planner left the country to study in the United States in 2003, but unlike her predecessors, she chose to return after eight years because of improved economic opportunities and the chance to be a part of a society in the making. “Things are in flux here,” she says, holding a placard that reads, ‘I pledge to use public transport.’ “There’s a lot of energy, but what this nation is going to be, nobody knows yet.”

ROLE OF THE MEDIA

The protest she attended was organized through Facebook. Social media has been instrumental in mobilizing young outrage – Internet penetration is relatively low in India, but the bulk of the 135 million people online are under the age of 35. Still, the old media, especially English television news channels, have also played their part with wall-to-wall coverage: By contrast, a rally Tuesday of more than 1,000 slum-dwellers protesting the demolition of their homes as well as corruption in a government housing plan barely got any coverage.

In earlier years, Indian television largely presented the public as a mob, says Arvind Rajgopal, a media studies professor at New York University. “There was always this fear of law and order being violated but now the public is assumed to be on the side of the good,” he says.

“There is a simmering sense of injustice that the media is building on,” he adds, empowering "the sense that moral authority lies outside the political institutions.”

India has a history of effective social movements – the anti-Narmada dam movement of the 1980s, for example – but these have been mass movements dominated by the left.

The new activism isn’t allied to any political party, and whether it will be sustainable or effective without a unifying agenda or without reaching across caste and class barriers remains unclear.

Some have already criticized the recent protests for being incoherent and even displaying an authoritarian impulse – a charge also levied at the Anna Hazare movement.

“Their demands are very basic and undemocratic, they want immediate justice and have no understanding of democratic processes and constitutional requirements,” says Flavia Agnes, a lawyer and veteran women’s right activist with the group Majlis.

Those demands have included punishing rape with castration or the death penalty and fast track courts to try those cases – measures that women’s groups don’t necessarily support. Death penalties may deter reporting of the crime – most rapes go unreported, it is believed – and may cause the rapist to murder the victim, say many women’s activists. Ms. Agnes also opposes fast track courts, which she says is more likely to lead to “fast track acquittals.”

Only about 25 percent of rape cases resulted in convictions in 2010, and conviction rates were less than 10 percent in some states last year.

“What is needed are nonsensational, small measures,” says Agnes. “Getting women better access to the police station, getting the medical reports done sensitively.”

POTENTIAL TO BE TRANSFORMATIVE

Still, observers like Nigam believe the new movement has the potential to be transformative, even if it is temporary. Unlike the upper-caste youth protests of the late 1980s against affirmative action for lower castes in colleges, the present movement is not about “defending privilege” so much as “more general issues of governance and what is generally perceived to be a collapse of the rule of law and mechanisms of justice,” he notes. “The middle class is no homogenous and unchanging entity.”

Even Agnes believes that the protests are largely positive. Her group’s support program for rape victims has gotten new attention and a senior police officer recently called her for ideas to encourage women to walk into his police stations.

Meanwhile, one state party has pledged not to field candidates with rape charges – a third of national legislators have criminal charges against them, including two with rape charges.

“For some reason, this rape has caught the national imagination,” Agnes says. “If that means the government and police cannot ignore this issue anymore, that’s a good thing.”

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On cusp of new year, Chavez's health keeps Venezuleans fixated on future

Dec. 31 is typically a time to recap the biggest events of the year. But in Venezuela this year, news that President Hugo Chavez has suffered “new complications” after surgery on Dec. 11 has kept Venezuelans anxiously fixated on what’s to come in 2013.
In downtown Caracas, an annual free concert in Plaza Bolivar to welcome the New Year has been canceled, government officials said. They instead called on Venezuelans to unite in prayer for the prompt recuperation of President Chavez, according to the Venezuelan daily El Universal.
President Chavez underwent surgery in Cuba on Dec. 11 for a recurrence of cancer. Since then, the nation has been faced with uncertainty about his chances for recovery, whether he’ll be able to attend his Jan. 10 inauguration – after winning a fourth presidential election in October – and if not, who will be Venezuela’s new president.
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That uncertainty increased a notch after Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro went on television to say the following (translated into English by VenezuelanAnalysis): “Nineteen days after having undergone his surgical intervention, President Chavez’s state of health continues to be delicate; he has presented complications that are being attended to with treatment that is not without risk.”
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Venezuela is, of course, not alone in looking at what lies ahead in 2013. US President Barack Obama and US Congress are scrambling to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff,” as they try to hammer out an agreement on taxes for the wealthy and budget cuts. And across the world, as the Monitor wrote in a round-up, nations are hoping that in 2013 they can bridge such political divides, some of them deadly. Venezuela, in hoping for more unity, was included on that list. But for now it is a nation holding its breath.
David Smilde, a guest blogger for the Monitor, told the Associated Press that the fact that Nicolas Maduro, the nation’s vice president, traveled to Cuba to personally meet with the president in recent days is itself telling. “The situation does not look good. The fact that Maduro himself would go to Cuba, leaving Hector Navarro in charge, only seems understandable if Chavez’s health is precarious,” said Mr. Smilde, who runs a blog on Venezuela for the Washington Office on Latin America.
The trip likely gave Mr. Maduro a chance “to be able to talk to Chavez himself and perhaps to talk to the Castros and other Cuban advisers about how to navigate the possibility of Chavez not being able to be sworn in on Jan. 10,” Mr. Smilde said. “Mentioning twice in his nationally televised speech that Chavez has suffered new complications only reinforces the appearance that the situation is serious.”
If Chavez does not recover, there are many questions about what is next for the oil-rich, Andean nation that has been dominated by Chavez since he took office in 1999.
According to the Venezuelan constitution, translated into English by the BBC, here is what should happen:
Article 231: The president-elect shall take office on January 10 of the first year of their constitutional term, by taking an oath before the National Assembly. If for any reason, (they) cannot be sworn in before the National Assembly, they shall take the oath of office before the Supreme Court.
Article 233: (...) When an elected President becomes absolutely absent prior to inauguration, a new election...shall be held within 30 days.
Article 234: When the President is temporarily unable to serve, they shall be replaced by the Executive Vice-President for a period of up to 90 days, which may be extended by resolution of the National Assembly for an additional 90 days.
But recently, a Chavez ally and head of the national assembly, Diosdado Cabello, said that the inauguration should be delayed – a move that the opposition has declared unconstitutional and casting doubt on what will happen. In the meantime, all of the problems that face Venezuela are on hold, as another guest blogger for Caracas Chronicles describes in his own personal experience here.
Chavez and his government, however, are trying to maintain a semblance of order – with Maduro sending out New Year’s greetings and avoiding mention of the radical changes that could await the nation in the year to come.
“Commander Chavez wanted us to transmit a special end of year greeting to Venezuelan families, who are gathered together over this period throughout the country; in particular he wanted to send a warm embrace to the children of Venezuela, and remind them that they are always in his heart," he said. "The embrace was extended to all of our people, so that they see in the year 2013 with love; a year which should bring the greatest of happiness to our homeland, as well as the definitive consolidation of our independence and national unity.

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Egypt's opposition still hopeful, despite many defeats

When a controversial constitutional draft went to a vote earlier this month, the Egyptian opposition was, as usual, in disarray.
It waffled for weeks between boycotting the referendum and calling for a no vote. When it finally chose the latter only days before the first round of voting on Dec. 15, it was too late to overcome the Muslim Brotherhood and their salafist allies’ strong campaign for a "yes."
But the backlash facing President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood for rushing the constitution through without input from the opposition has given his opponents new hope for electoral success.
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“The divisions are a thing of the past now and we have Mr. Morsi to thank for that,” says Mostafa El Guindi, who was an independent member of the now-dissolved parliament and played a role in organizing the main facets of the opposition into a new coalition, the National Salvation Front.
“The marriage between ElBaradei and Hamdeen Sabahi is now fact,” he says, referring to two politicians with often clashing policies. That the Nobel prize winner and former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, and Hamdeen Sabahi, the leftist candidate who came in a surprising third in June’s presidential elections, have come together shows the strength of the determination to create a united front against the Brothers.
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This gives the opposition new hope heading towards parliamentary elections which, according to Egyptian law, must happen within two months of the approval of the constitution.
REJECTING POLITICAL GAMES
But there are also those who say the opposition has only itself to blame for its failure to chip away at the electoral successes of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Many people wanted to vote no in the referendum about the constitution, but they were looking for a good reason to do so,” says Fady Ramzy, who runs the think tank Messry. “The problem is that the opposition doesn’t have a political product to sell. They should have spent their time convincing people that this constitution is [a waste] for any number of reasons, and that we should do a better job. Because what we have now is just a bunch of nice words with no mechanism to hold those in power to the promises contained in the constitution. Instead, the opposition chose to make a lot of noise about the influence of sharia in the new constitution.”
Mr. Ramzy’s assertion was echoed by voters in some of the districts in the Nile Delta last week. Most Egyptians voting "yes" cited a desire for stability as their main reason, while most "no" voters had very specific reasons to be against the constitution. Among them were the absence of a minimum wage in Egypt –wages are instead linked to productivity – or the fact that free health care is subject to a "certificate of poverty," which many see as humiliating.
Not a single voter cited the role of sharia, or Islamic law, as a reason to vote either for or against the document, despite the fact that both sides had campaigned mainly on this issue.
“The religious factor is decreasing with every election,” says Ramzy. “People realize that political games are being played with religion, and they are starting to refuse being put before the choice of voting for or against Islam.”
DISILLUSIONED BY DEMOCRACY'S SLOW PACE
There is also a growing belief that Egypt’s chaotic path since the overthrow of Mubarak in February 2011 was perhaps an inevitable one.
For all the criticism of the opposition, “it is unreasonable to expect Egypt to have a healthy political landscape just two years after the fall of a dictatorship,” political activist Alfred Raouf says.
“We need at least five years to get to that point, especially with a Muslim Brotherhood that is not really intent on having a diverse political landscape, but rather wants to take the place of the NDP,” he says, referring to Mubarak's former National Democratic Party.
Writing in the Egypt Independent this week, Mr. Raouf said that even if the revolutionaries had been the ones to assume power, they would have "quickly oppressed the people." What happened instead – military rule followed by a landslide for the Muslim Brotherhood – “seems to most people like a catastrophic outcome to a very hopeful revolution," but is actually "the best course for the revolution,” Raouf wrote.
Nevertheless, Raouf, a founding member of ElBaradei’s Dostour (Constitution) party, sees an opportunity for the opposition to make inroads in the next parliamentary elections, even if the current opposition coalition dissolves before then.
Mostafa El Guindi believes the opposition has a chance to win a majority in parliament. But Raouf is more conservative. “I think we have a good chance of getting 45 percent of the seats in parliament, up from around 30 percent, provided there is no rigging,” he says.
What worries him most is voter turnout, which is lower with every election or referendum.
“It suggests that people no longer believe in democracy because they don’t see it helping them in their daily lives.

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Happy new year, Cairo?

I'm back in Cairo after well over a year away, and my first thought was that little has changed.
Getting out of Cairo airport is still a chaotic mess of taxi and hotel touts, though easy to navigate if you know the drill. Traffic was worse than I'd have expected for midday on Saturday, but Cairo zahma hardly has a predictable rhythm anyway. Parts of the city are always one flat tire away from being turned into a parking lot.
As I pulled into my old haunts, one thing that struck me was the apparent absence of the over-the-top commercialization of Christmas I was used to when I lived here years ago. Friends agreed, saying shops and hotels had reined in their use of the holiday, on the reasoning of "why take a chance?" Referring to bearded President Mohamed Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood as "Morsi Claus" was apparently de rigeur, however, in certain activist and secular circles.
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But enough with first impressions. Egypt had a tumultuous 2012 that was disillusioning, to put it mildly, for many of the young revolutionaries who supported the January 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak. While you can't see the economic pain of the past year by walking the streets of Cairo, just a few early conversations with friends and acquaintances make it clear that it's very real. In the fashionable districts of Cairo, shopkeepers say business is down. In more working class neighborhoods, the guys selling vegetables or clothing say likewise. Men who paint houses or fix plumbing say work is less steady, with customers putting off non-essential work.
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And while in my few brief conversations with Egyptian contacts the focus has been disappointment with the new Muslim Brotherhood-backed constitution, or anger at Morsi and the Brothers' apparent accommodations to a military hierarchy that has cast a shadow over Egyptian politics for a generation, it is economic conditions that will make or break the emerging new Egyptian political order in 2013.
The two, of course, are not mutually exclusive. While Morsi has spoken of a need to restore a battered Egyptian economy, neither he nor anyone else has been better able to provide stability or bread than the military was when it was running Egypt from February 2011 until June of this year.
On one level, they can be forgiven. The past year has seen certain post-Mubarak assumptions (or hopes) seriously ruptured. A popular Egyptian view of the military as protector of the nation was eroded. In February, more than 70 people died following a soccer match in Port Said at which security, the responsibility of the army, was conspicuous by its absence.
There was an elected parliament, one packed with Islamists, the results of which were later annulled. There was a presidential election that pitted President Morsi against former Mubarak Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq that saw Morsi walk off with the spoils. Neither option was enticing to Egypt's young revolutionaries, and in Morsi's victory – which was made possible by the Brotherhood breaking a promise not to run a candidate for president – there was evidence that the Islamist movement could not be taken at its word.
And, of course, there were clashes between protesters at Tahrir and at the presidential palace in Cairo, in the industrial towns of the Nile Delta, and once again in Port Said, along the country's economically vital Suez Canal. The constitution, which Egyptians were promised would be written by a truly representative body, was rushed through by Morsi and his allies over serious opposition towards the end of the year. When it came time for Egyptians to vote on it, it passed – but with less than 40 percent of the Egyptian electorate participating, many voters having lost hope that the political process was going to deliver anything of any tangible value to them or their families.
ATTEMPTS NOT MADE
While fixing Egypt's economic problems would be the work of years under even the best of circumstances, serious attempts to address how the national budget is administered, rampant corruption that makes being either a simple wage-earner or an entrepreneur a minefield, or the heavy-hand of the military in business, were not made. The average Egyptian was financially worse off at the end of 2011, and worse off still at the end of 2012. This simple reality is how Egyptians are judging recent events, and why so many of them are so deeply worried.
Now the country is less than two months away from electing a new parliament, extending a period of political uncertainty. A new political reality will be created by that election – the fifth national vote in two years – and will lead to more political uncertainty as factions in parliament are formed, and Egyptian politicians test the new rules of the game. Local and foreign investors will stay on the sidelines for awhile yet, hoping for some clarity as to the new rules –clean ones or dirty ones, new ways of doing business or the same old rent-seeking of the past – before they put any more skin in the game.
Meanwhile, Egyptians are watching, and worried. The Egyptian pound plunged to an eight-year low against the dollar in the past month, and the Egyptian government's foreign reserves now stand at about $15 billion, less than half of what they were at the time of Mubarak's ouster. That exchange rate – and the soaring interest the Egyptian government pays on international borrowing – has a host of implications for the subsidized bread, cooking fuel, and gasoline that millions of Egyptians rely on.
A random walk through Cairo can't show how finely poised Egypt's situation is. But if you stop to talk for a few hours, you can feel it.
It's the economy, stupid, as a US political hack had it 20 years ago. And it's the economy that Egypt needs to focus on in 2013.

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Any end in sight? Syrian conflict enters third calendar year

• A daily summary of global reports on security issues.
The Syrian civil war entered its third calendar year with rebel forces displaying increased military prowess but still lacking adequate weapons and organization to gain a decisive edge over government forces.
At the outset of 2012, many observers predicted it would be President Bashar al-Assad's last year, but now in 2013 the conflict appears locked in a stalemate with alarming fatality rates.
According to UK-based opposition group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 85 percent of the roughly 45,000 Syrians they estimate have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011 were killed in 2012. CNN reports that United Nations envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi expects that number to climb.
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"Do not expect just 25,000 people to die next year – maybe 100,000 will die," he said earlier this week. "The pace is increasing."
The opposition Local Coordination Committees told CNN that at least 136 people were killed yesterday, the first day of the year, alone. There were clashes in eight provinces, the heaviest in and around the capital of Damascus and Aleppo.
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Aerial bombardments by the Syrian Air Force have been responsible for many of those 45,000 fatalities. In rebel-controlled northwestern Syria, a strip of land running between Aleppo and the Turkish border, rebel forces have made it a priority to take over aviation facilities to rob the Air Force of its ability to bomb the area. They consider the regime's air power its "main threat" because they can do little to stop attacks by helicopters and jets, even in territory they hold on the ground.
Today they launched an offensive against a military airbase near Taftanaz in northwestern Syria, which they have attempted to take before, Associated Press reports. Reuters reports that the base has more than 40 helicopter landing pads, a runway, and aircraft hangars.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, which the US designated a terrorist organization last month, is involved with the assault on the Taftanaz base, according to Reuters.
Yesterday, fighting near Aleppo's international airport prompted a halt to all flights in and out of the city, which is Syria's commercial hub and largest city. Rebels have also been staging assaults on three other airports in Aleppo province, according to AP, including a military helicopter airbase closer to the Turkish border.
Agence France-Presse reports that the rebel attacks forced the closure of the commercial airport in Aleppo. Rebels have warned that they consider both military and civilian aircraft legitimate targets because they believe civilian flights have been used to supply the military.

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Indian court may suspend lawmakers facing crimes

Indian lawmakers facing sexual assault charges against women could be suspended from office if the country's top court rules in favor of a petition submitted following a gang-rape and murder that shocked the country.
Six state lawmakers are facing rape prosecutions and two national parliamentarians are facing charges of crimes against women that fall short of rape, said Jagdeep S. Chhokar, an official with the Association for Democratic Reforms, which tracks political candidate's criminal records.
The petition will be heard Thursday and comes as police prepare to formally charge six suspects in the gang-rape and killing of a student in the capital two weeks ago.
The Dec. 16 rape triggered outrage across the country and sparked demands for stronger laws, tougher police action against those accused of sexual assault and a sustained campaign to change society's views on women.
As part of that campaign, Chief Justice Altamas Kabir agreed to hear a petition from retired government administrator Promilla Shanker asking the Supreme Court to suspend all lawmakers from the national and state legislatures who are facing prosecution for crimes against women.
She also asked the court to force the national government to fast-track thousands of rape cases that have languished in India's notoriously sluggish court system for years.
In the past five years, political parties across India nominated 260 candidates awaiting trial on charges of crimes against women, he said. Parties ran six candidates for the national parliamentary elections facing such charges, Chokkar said.
"We need to decriminalize politics and surely a serious effort has to be made to stop people who have serious charges of sexual assault against them from contesting elections," said Zoya Hasan, a political analyst.
On Wednesday morning, several thousand women held a silent march to Gandhi's memorial in the capital in memory of the victim, holding placards demanding "Respect" and "Justice." Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit joined the women for a prayer session for the victim. The Gandhi memorial is a common protest site.
On Tuesday, the government set up a task force to monitor women's safety in New Delhi and to review whether police were properly protecting women. The government had set up two earlier bodies to look into the handling of the rape case and to suggest changes in the nation's rape laws.
The rape of the 23-year-old university student on a bus has horrified many in the country and brought unprecedented attention to the daily suffering of women here, who face everything from catcalls and groping to rapes.
Six men arrested in the case were to be formally charged Thursday with kidnapping, rape and murder, said Rajan Bhagat, the New Delhi police spokesman. Police have said they would push for the death penalty in the case.
Police were awaiting findings on a bone test conducted on one of the suspects to confirm whether he is a juvenile or an adult, which could affect the charges against him.
The Bar Association of lawyers last week decided against defending the six suspects because of the nature of the crime, although the court is expected to appoint attorneys to defend them.
Media reports say 30 witnesses have been gathered, and the charges have been detailed in a document running more than 1,000 pages. Police also have detained the owner of the bus used in the crime on accusation he used false documents to obtain permits to run the private bus service.
The family of the victim — who died Saturday at a hospital in Singapore — is struggling to come to grips with the tragedy.
"She was a very, very, very cheerful little girl and she was peace loving and she was never embroiled in any controversies like this. I don't know why this happened to her," her uncle, Suresh Singh, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
The family of the victim, whose name was not revealed, called for stronger rape laws to prevent such attacks from happening again and demanded swift — and harsh — justice for woman's assailants, Singh said.
"If the government can't punish them, give the rapists to the people. The people will settle the scores with them," he said.

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EU leaders in Norway to pick up Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO, Norway (AP) — European Union leaders on Sunday hailed the achievements of the 27-nation bloc, but acknowledged they need more integration and authority to solve problems, including its worst financial crisis, as they arrived in Norway to pick up this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Conceding that the EU lacked sufficient powers to stop the devastating 1992-95 Bosnia war, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that the absence of such authority at the time is "one of the most powerful arguments for a stronger European Union." Barroso spoke to reporters with EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and the president of the EU Parliament, Martin Schulz, in Oslo, where the three leaders were to receive this year's award, granted to the European Union for fostering peace on a continent ravaged by war. Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland will present the prize, worth $1.2 million, at a ceremony in Oslo City Hall, followed by a banquet at the Grand Hotel, against a backdrop of demonstrations in this EU-skeptic country that has twice rejected joining the union. About 20 European government leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, will be joining the ceremonies. They will be celebrating far away from the EU's financial woes in a prosperous, oil-rich nation of 5 million on the outskirts of Europe that voted in 1972 and 1994 in referendums to stay out of the union. The decision to award the prize to the EU has sparked harsh criticism, including from three peace laureates — South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Adolfo Perez Esquivel from Argentina — who have demanded the prize money not be paid out this year. They say the bloc contradicts the values associated with the prize because it relies on military force to ensure security. The leader of Britain's Independence Party, Nigel Farage, in a statement described rewarding the EU as "a ridiculous act which blows the reputation of the Nobel prize committee to smithereens." Hundreds of people demonstrated against this year's prize winners in a peaceful torch-lit protest that meandered through the dark city streets to Parliament, including Tomas Magnusson from the International Peace Bureau, the 1910 prize winner. "This is totally against the idea of Alfred Nobel who wanted disarmament," he said, accusing the Nobel committee of being "too close to the power" elite. Dimitris Kodelas, a Greek lawmaker from the main opposition Radical Left party, or Syriza, said a humanitarian crisis in his country and EU policies could cause major rifts in Europe. He thought it was a joke when he heard the peace prize was awarded to the EU. "It challenges even our logic and it is also insulting," he said. The EU is being granted the prize as it grapples with a debt crisis that has stirred deep tensions between north and south, caused soaring unemployment and sent hundreds of thousands into the streets to protest austerity measures. It is also threatening the euro — the common currency used by 17 of its members — and even the structure of the union itself, and is fuelling extremist movements such as Golden Dawn in Greece, which opponents brand as neo-Nazi. Barroso acknowledged that the current crisis showed the union was "not fully equipped to deal with a crisis of this magnitude." "We do not have all the instruments for a true and genuine economic union ... so we need to complete our economic and monetary union," he said, adding that the new measures, including on a banking and fiscal union, would be agreed on in coming weeks. He stressed that despite the crisis all steps taken had been toward "more, not less integration." Van Rompuy was optimistic saying that EU would come out of the crisis stronger than before. "We want Europe to become again a symbol of hope," he said. The EU says it will donate the prize money to projects that help children in conflict zones and will double it with EU funds. The European Union grew from the conviction that ever-closer economic ties would ensure century-old enemies like Germany and France never turned on each other again, starting with the creation in 1951 of the European Coal and Steel Community, declared as "a first step in the federation of Europe." In 60 years it has grown into a 27-nation bloc with a population of 500 million, with other nations eagerly waiting to join, even as its unity is being threatened by the financial woes. While there have never been wars inside EU territory, the confederation has not been able to prevent European wars outside its borders. When the deadly Balkans wars erupted in the 1990s, the EU was unable by itself to stop them. It was only with the help of the United States and after over 100,000 lives were lost in Bosnia was peace eventually restored there, and several years later, to Kosovo.

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Romanian exit polls: center-left gov't wins vote

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Romania's center-left government won a clear victory in Sunday's parliamentary elections, according to exit polls. The result could inflame the personal rivalry between the nation's top two officials and bring yet more political upheaval. The prime minister's governing alliance had about 57 percent of seats in the 452-seat legislature, according to a poll published after elections on national television TVR. Coming in second was a center-right group, allied to President Traian Basescu, which polled over 18 percent. A populist party headed by a media tycoon won about 13 percent, according to the poll. First results are expected Monday. Basescu and Ponta are bitter rivals after the government tried to remove Basescu from office in an impeachment vote in July, a bid that failed as too few people voted to make the election valid. Basescu has indicated he won't appoint the 40-year-old Ponta again, calling him a "compulsive liar" and saying he plagiarized his doctoral thesis. Ponta says Basescu is a divisive figure who overstepped his role as president by meddling in government business. "We won a clear majority, a majority recognized by our adversaries who have to accept the rules of democracy," Ponta said after the vote. "I assure them we will treat the opposition with the respect that we did not get when we were in opposition." Ponta became prime minister in May, the third prime minister this year, but his appointment brought a bitter battle with Basescu, whose mandate expires in 2014. Basescu could nominate someone else, but his choice would have to be approved by Parliament. If his candidate fails in two rounds of voting, Parliament could be dissolved. As he voted, Basescu again accused the government of the former communist country of failing to devote itself to democratic reforms. He said Romania must continue its "path toward the West" and show the world it is "headed toward Brussels, not Moscow, and Washington, not Beijing." For his part, Ponta said he remains committed to leading Romania to a better future. Many Romanians are fed up with the power struggle between the top two leaders, especially as the country remains one of the poorest and most corrupt members of the European Union. Romania is enduring deep austerity cuts in return for a €20 million ($26 million) bailout to help its foundering economy. Sunday's vote was hampered by heavy snow and authorities asked the army and the defense ministry to help clear roads closed by blizzards. About 250 polling stations were prevented from opening on time, officials said. Turnout was more than 30 percent three hours before the polls closed. Heavy rain was falling in Bucharest early Sunday, but it eased off later. Valentina Lupan, an architect voting in Bucharest, said she was determined to cast a ballot, despite the bad weather. "People will go and vote even if there's snow and rain because they've had enough," she said. "We've had enough of being insulted and humiliated. We want a normal life." Besides the failed bid to impeach Basescu, the country has seen three prime ministers and Cabinets this year and huge anti-austerity protests. The EU and the U.S. criticized the government for failing to respect the rule of law and of ignoring constitutional rules during the impeachment attempt. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe monitored Sunday's vote.

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Georgia details nuke black market investigations

BATUMI, Georgia (AP) — On the gritty side of this casino resort town near the Turkish border, three men in a hotel suite gathered in secret to talk about a deal for radioactive material. The Georgian seller offered cesium, a byproduct of nuclear reactors that terrorists can use to arm a dirty bomb with the power to kill. But one of the Turkish men, wearing a suit and casually smoking a cigarette, made clear he was after something even more dangerous: uranium, the material for a nuclear bomb. The would-be buyers agreed to take a photo of the four cylinders and see if their boss in Turkey was interested. They did not know police were watching through a hidden camera. As they got up to leave, the police rushed in and arrested the men, according to Georgian officials, who were present. The encounter, which took place in April, reflected a fear shared by U.S. and Georgian officials: Despite years of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the fight against the illicit sale of nuclear contraband, the black market remains active in the countries around the former Soviet Union. The radioactive materials, mostly left over from the Cold War, include nuclear bomb-grade uranium and plutonium, and dirty-bomb isotopes like cesium and iridium. The extent of the black market is unknown, but a steady stream of attempted sales of radioactive materials in recent years suggests smugglers have sometimes crossed borders undetected. Since the formation of a special nuclear police unit in 2005 with U.S. help and funding, 15 investigations have been launched in Georgia and dozens of people arrested. Six of the investigations were disclosed publicly for the first time to The Associated Press by Georgian authorities. Officials with the U.S. government and the International Atomic Energy Agency declined to comment on the individual investigations, but President Barack Obama noted in a speech earlier this year that countries like Georgia and Moldova have seized highly enriched uranium from smugglers. An IAEA official, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to comment, said the agency is concerned smuggling is still occurring in Georgia. Four of the previously undisclosed cases, and a fifth — an arrest in neighboring Turkey announced by officials there — occurred this year. One from last year involved enough cesium-137 to make a deadly dirty bomb, officials said. Also, Georgian officials see links between two older cases involving highly enriched uranium, which in sufficient quantity can be used to make a nuclear bomb. The AP's interviews with the two imprisoned smugglers in one case suggested that the porous borders and the poverty of the region contributed to the problem. The arrests in the casino resort of Batumi stand out for two reasons: They suggest there are real buyers — many of the other investigations involved stings with undercover police acting as buyers. And they suggest that buyers are interested in material that can be used to make a nuclear weapon. "Real buyers are rare in nuclear smuggling cases, and raise real risks," said nuclear nonproliferation specialist Matthew Bunn, who runs Harvard's Project on Managing the Atom. "They suggest someone is actively seeking to buy material for a clandestine bomb." The request for uranium raises a particularly troubling question. "There's no plausible reason for looking for black-market uranium other than for nuclear weapons— or profit, by selling to people who are looking to make nuclear weapons," Bunn said. ______________ Georgia's proximity to the large stockpiles of Cold War-era nuclear material, its position along trade routes to Asia and Europe, the roughly 225 miles (360 kilometers) of unsecured borders of its two breakaway republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the poverty of the region may explain why the nation of 4.5 million has become a transit point for nuclear material. Georgian officials say the radioactive material in the five new cases this year all transited through Abkhazia, which borders on Russia and has Russian troops stationed on its territory. Abkhazia's foreign ministry said it has no information about the Georgian allegations and would not comment, but in the past it has denied Georgian allegations. Russia maintains that it has secured its radioactive material — including bomb-grade uranium and plutonium — and that Georgia has exaggerated the risk because of political tension with Moscow. But while the vast majority of the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal and radioactive material has been secured, U.S. officials say that some material in the region remains loose. "Without a doubt, we are aware and have been over the last several years that not all nuclear material is accounted for," says Simon Limage, deputy assistant secretary for non-proliferation programs at the U.S. State Department. "It is true that a portion that we are concerned about continues to be outside of regulatory control." U.S. efforts to prevent smuggling have prioritized bomb-grade material because of the potential that a nuclear bomb could flatten a U.S. city. But security officials say an attack with a dirty bomb — explosives packed with radioactive material — would be easier for a terrorist to pull off. And terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, have sought the material to do so. A study by the National Defense University found that the economic impact from a dirty bomb attack of a sufficient scale on a city center could exceed that of the September 11, 2011, attacks on New York and Washington. The U.S. government has been assisting about a dozen countries believed to be vulnerable to nuclear smuggling, including Georgia, to set up teams that combine intelligence with police undercover work. Limage says Georgia's team is a model for the other countries the U.S. is supporting. On Jan. 6, police arrested a man in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, and seized 36 vials with cesium-135, a radioactive isotope that is hard to use for a weapon. The man said he had obtained the material in Abkhazia. In April, Georgian authorities arrested a group of smugglers from Abkhazia bringing in three glass containers with about 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of yellowcake uranium, a lightly processed substance that can be enriched into bomb-grade material. "At first we thought that this was coincidence," said Archil Pavlenishvili, chief investigator of Georgia's anti-smuggling team. "But since all of these cases were connected with Abkhazia, it suggests that the stuff was stolen recently from one particular place. But we have no idea where. " Days later, more evidence turned up when Turkish media reported the arrest of three Turkish men with a radioactive substance in the capital, Ankara. Police seized 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of cesium-135, the same material seized in January in Tbilisi. Georgian officials said the suspects were residents of Germany and driving a car with German plates, but that the material had come from Abkhazia. Turkish authorities said the men had entered Turkey from Georgia. Information provided by German authorities led to the arrest in June of five suspects in Georgia with 9 vials of cesium-135 that looked very similar to the vials seized in January. The Batumi investigation started after the arrest of two men in the city of Kutaisi in February 2011 year with a small quantity of two radioactive materials stolen from an abandoned Soviet helicopter factory, according to Georgian officials. The men said that a businessman, Soslan Oniani, had encouraged them to sell the material. Police interviewed Oniani and searched his house, but found insufficient evidence to arrest him, according to officials. Still, they kept monitoring him through phone taps and an informant. Georgian officials say Oniani was a braggart, who played on his relationship with his cousin, Tariel Oniani, a well- known organized crime boss convicted in Russia of kidnapping. Early this year, Soslan Oniani started talking about a new deal. Through surveillance and phone taps, police learned of the meeting in Batumi and monitored it. While no money passed hands, the men discussed an illegal deal, which is sufficient for prosecution in Georgia. Tests by Georgian authorities later revealed that one lead cylinder held cesium-137, two strontium-90, and the fourth spent material that was hard to identify. All are useful for making a dirty bomb, although the material in the cylinders alone was not enough to cause mass casualties, according to data provided by Georgian nuclear regulatory authorities. The arrested Turks denied knowing they were negotiating for radioactive substances. They claimed to be musical instrument experts, who had come to Batumi seeking to buy violins. A skeptical interrogator asked them if they were familiar with the famed instrument maker Stradivarius. One man said he had never heard of him. The two Turks and the seller, Oniani, were convicted in September in a Georgian court, according to officials, and sentenced to six years in prison each. _______________ The Georgian smuggling cases suggest that the trade in radioactive materials is driven at least in part by poverty and the lingering legacy of Soviet corruption in a hardscrabble region. Georgian officials say that because of U.S. backed counter-smuggling efforts, organized crime groups seem to have concluded that the potential profit from trade in these materials doesn't justify the risk. But individuals sometimes conclude they can make a quick buck from radioactive material. For instance, in one newly disclosed case last year, authorities arrested two Georgian men with firearms, TNT and a lethal quantity of cesium-137. One was a former Soviet officer in an army logistics unit, who told police that at the end of his service in the early 90s, he had made a second career stealing from the military. "He openly said: 'I was a logistics officer and my second duty was to steal everything possible," according to Pavlenishvili. The man kept the cesium for years before he and a relative tried to sell it last year to a Georgian undercover officer. He did not try to sell the weapons or explosives. Poverty and corruption also appear to have played into three smuggling incidents in 2003, 2006 and 2010 that involved bomb-grade highly enriched uranium. In 2003, an Armenian man, Garik Dadaian, was arrested when he set off a radiation detector provided by an American program at a checkpoint on the Armenian-Georgian border. Days later, the man was released and returned to Armenia under murky circumstances. Dadaian's name resurfaced in 2010 on a bank transfer slip in the pocket of the two smugglers arrested with highly enriched uranium. The men had obtained the material from Dadaian and were offering it as a sample of a larger quantity. Police say forensic analysis suggests the uranium may have come from the same batch seized in 2003. Russian investigators suspected Dadaian got the nuclear fuel from a manufacturing plant in Novosibirsk, Russia, where several disappearances of material have been documented. Pavlenishvili said Dadaian bribed prosecutors to win his release and take some of the uranium. The two smugglers in the 2010 case were Sumbat Tonoyan, a dairy farmer who went bankrupt, and Hrant Ohanian, a former physicist at a nuclear research facility in the Armenian capital of Yerevan. The AP interviewed both at a prison about 25 miles (40 kilometers) outside Tbilisi, where they are serving sentences of 13 and 14 years. In separate interviews, each man blamed the other for the idea of smuggling uranium, and talked of financial hardship. Ohanian said his daughter needed urgent medical care that he couldn't afford, and Tonoyan said a bank had seized his house after his dairy factory collapsed. "I didn't have a job and I couldn't pay the bank," he said in Russian through an interpreter. The men also claimed they believed the material they were selling was to be used for scientific work, not nefarious purposes. Ohanian said a Georgian contact, who was also arrested, told him relations with Moscow were so bad that Georgian scientists could not get the uranium they needed from Russia on the open market. "I feel guilty because I behaved like an idiot," he said. "I should have known and I would never do something like this again."

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