Former cabinet minister Cauchon makes late entry into Liberal leadership race

OTTAWA - Former cabinet minister Martin Cauchon is making a late entry into the already crowded federal Liberal leadership race.
Cauchon submitted his nomination papers and $75,000 entry fee just hours before the party's registration deadline of midnight Sunday.
Assuming everything is in order and is verified by the party in the next day or two, Cauchon will become the ninth candidate seeking to lead the once-mighty party out of the political wilderness.
He is expected to officially launch his campaign later in the week, just in time for Sunday's first leadership debate in Vancouver.
Cauchon, who as justice minister spearheaded the move to decriminalize marijuana and legalize same-sex marriage, will likely position himself as a champion of progressive Liberalism amid a leadership field that has so far shown a pronounced rightward tilt.
He waded into the fray before Christmas, blasting front-runner Justin Trudeau for calling the Chretien-era long-gun registry a failure and urging leadership contenders to have the "backbone" to stick with traditional Liberal principles.
Cauchon retired from politics in 2004; his attempt at a comeback in 2011 in his old Montreal riding of Outremont was thwarted by Tom Mulcair, now NDP leader.
He will be the third candidate from Quebec in the current contest, along with Trudeau and fellow Montreal MP Marc Garneau, Canada's first astronaut.
The other candidates who've been officially confirmed by the party are: Vancouver MP Joyce Murray, former Toronto MP Martha Hall Findlay, Toronto lawyers George Takach and Deborah Coyne, retired Canadian Forces officer Karen McCrimmon and Ottawa lawyer David Bertschi.
Cauchon's last-minute entry could prove problematic. Trudeau, who launched his campaign in early October, is widely perceived to have a huge head start, both in terms of fundraising and recruiting supporters. The others have been stumping the country, drumming up support, since at least November.
Murray, who advocates one-time electoral co-operation with the NDP and Greens, has already established herself as the lone left-wing voice and has garnered support from some prominent progressive Liberals, such as former cabinet minister Lloyd Axworthy.
However, Cauchon is a respected figure in the party, particularly among Chretien loyalists, and still has time to make his mark during five crucial debates.
The contest will culminate with the election of a new leader on April 14.

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Ravens-Patriots redux for AFC title after New England beats Houston 41-28

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - Tom Brady became the winningest quarterback in post-season play, throwing for three touchdowns Sunday to beat Houston 41-28 and lift the New England Patriots into the AFC championship game.
Brady got his 17th victory, surpassing his childhood hero, Joe Montana, by throwing for 344 yards. Seldom-used running back Shane Vereen scored three times, twice on receptions.
If Brady can lead the Patriots (13-4) past Baltimore (12-6) in next Sunday's conference title game, then win the Super Bowl, he'll equal the 49ers' Hall of Famer for NFL championships.
The Patriots and Ravens are meeting for the AFC title for the second straight year. Baltimore, which stunned top-seeded Denver in double overtime Saturday, lost 23-20 at Gillette Stadium last January.
Houston (13-5) performed far better than in a 42-14 loss here last month. But the Texans couldn't slow down Brady.

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Thousands converge on Eiffel Tower in mass protest against gay marriage

PARIS - 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 kilometres (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 per cent of French favour legalizing gay marriage, according to a survey released Sunday, down from as high as 65 per cent 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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Angola: Stampede kills 13 at religious gathering

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The death toll in a stampede on New Year's Eve at a sports stadium in Angola has risen to 13, and some of the victims were children, Angolan media reported Wednesday.
Officials said about 120 people were also injured in the incident, which happened when tens of thousands of people tried to enter a stadium in the capital, Luanda, for a religious gathering, according to Angop, the Angolan news agency.
Faustino Sebastiao, spokesman for the national firefighters department, said those who died were crushed and asphyxiated.
The event in the southern African nation was organized by the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, an evangelical group founded in Brazil.
In western Africa, a crowd in Ivory Coast stampeded after leaving a New Year's fireworks show early Tuesday, killing at least 60 people and injuring more than 200.

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C. African Republic leader dismisses son

DAMARA, Central African Republic (AP) — The embattled president of Central African Republic has dismissed his son as the country's defense minister.
The move late Wednesday comes as President Francois Bozize faces a coalition of rebel groups who are seeking his ouster.
National radio announced that his son Francis Bozize will no longer be the defense minister.
Chief of Staff Gen. Guillaume Lapo is also leaving the government, according to the announcement.
Francois Bozize has been in power since 2003 and in the past month he has faced a growing threat as rebels have seized 10 towns across the north.
Bozize has announced he's willing to negotiate with the rebels but he said he will not leave office before his current term ends in 2016.

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Ivory Coast stampede survivors blame barricades

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — Survivors of a stampede in Ivory Coast that killed 61 people, most of them children and teenagers, after a New Year's Eve fireworks display said Wednesday that makeshift barricades stopped them from moving along a main boulevard, causing the crush of people.
Ivory Coast police said unknown people put tree trunks across the Boulevard de la Republique where the trampling took place.
"For security, because there were so many important people at the event, we closed certain main streets," said a police officer who was overheard briefing Ivory Coast President Alassane Outtara on the incident. The police officer said the tree trunks were put out unofficially by people who are not known.
"After the fireworks we reopened the other streets, but we had not yet removed the tree trunks from the Boulevard de la Republique, in front of the Hotel Tiana near the National Assembly (parliament) building," she said. "That is where the stampede happened when people flooded in from the other streets."
Ouattara ordered three days of national mourning and launched an investigation into the causes of the tragedy.
Two survivors, in interviews with The Associated Press, indicated why so many died in what would normally be an open area, the Boulevard de la Republique. An estimated 50,000 people had gathered near the Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium and elsewhere in Abidjan's Plateau district to watch the fireworks. As they streamed away from the show some encountered the blockades.
"Near the Justice Palace we were stopped by some people who put blockades of wood in the street," 33-year-old Zoure Sanate said from her bed in Cocody Hospital. "They told us we must stay in the Plateau area until morning. None of us accepted to stay in Plateau until the morning for a celebration that ended at around 1 a.m.
"Then came the stampede of people behind us," she said. "My four children and I were knocked to the ground. I was hearing my kids calling me, but I was powerless and fighting against death. Two of my kids are in hospital with me, but two others are missing. They cannot be found."
Another hospital patient, Brahima Compaore, 39, said he also was caught in the pile of people stopped by the roadblock.
"I found myself on the ground and people were walking on me," said Compaore. "I was only saved by people who pulled me onto the sidewalk."
Local newspapers are speculating that thieves put up the roadblocks so that pickpockets could steal money and mobile phones from the packed-in people.
Ouattara pledged to get answers. Some observers wondered why police did not prevent the tragedy.
"The investigation must take into account all the testimonies of victims," he said Wednesday. "We will have a crisis center to share and receive information."
Ouattara also postponed the traditional New Year's receptions at his residence, which had been scheduled for Thursday and Friday.
The leader of a human rights organization said that deadly incidents were predictable because the police and civil authorities had not taken adequate protective measures.
"The situation is deplorable," said Thierry Legre, president of the Ivorian League of Human Rights. "It is our first tragedy of 2013 but in 2012 we could already see possibility of such a tragedy because there are not adequate authorities patrolling our roads and waters."
Legre said the New Year's stampede "exposes our weak and dysfunctional civil protection system. This must be corrected immediately. The government cannot invite people to this kind of public gathering without taking adequate precautions to protect their safety and their lives."
He called on the government "to implement measures to avoid such tragedies in the future by reinforcing the civil protection system."
The government organized the fireworks to celebrate Ivory Coast's peace, after several months of political violence in early 2011 following disputed elections.
Just one night before the New Year's incident, there had been a big concert at the Felix Houphouet-Boigny Stadium where American rap star Chris Brown performed. That Sunday night event was for the Kora Awards for African musicians. No serious incidents were reported from that event.
In 2009, 22 people died and over 130 were injured in a stampede at a World Cup qualifying match at the Houphouet Boigny Stadium, prompting FIFA, soccer's global governing body, to impose a fine of tens of thousands of dollars on Ivory Coast's soccer federation. The stadium, which officially holds 35,000, was overcrowded at the time of the disaster.
Another African stadium tragedy occurred on New Year's Eve in Angola where 13 people, including four children, died in a stampede during a religious gathering at a sports stadium in Luanda, the capital.
Angop, the Angolan news agency, cited officials as saying Tuesday that 120 people were also injured. The incident happened on New Year's Eve when tens of thousands of people gathered at the stadium and panic ensued. Faustino Sebastiao, spokesman for the national firefighters department, says those who died were crushed and asphyxiated.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed "deep sorrow" at the heavy human toll and put "a medical team and all available logistical means at the disposal of the government," to help deal with the situation, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

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Syria to discuss Brahimi peace proposals with Russia

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sent a senior diplomat to Moscow on Wednesday to discuss proposals to end the conflict convulsing his country made by international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, Syrian and Lebanese sources said.
Brahimi, who saw Assad on Monday and is planning to hold a series of meetings with Syrian officials and dissidents in Damascus this week, is trying to broker a peaceful transfer of power, but has disclosed little about how this might be done.
More than 44,000 Syrians have been killed in a revolt against four decades of Assad family rule, a conflict that began with peaceful protests but which has descended into civil war.
Past peace efforts have floundered, with world powers divided over what has become an increasingly sectarian struggle between mostly Sunni Muslim rebels and Assad's security forces, drawn primarily from his Shi'ite-rooted Alawite minority.
Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Makdad flew to Moscow to discuss the details of the talks with Brahimi, said a Syrian security source, who would not say if a deal was in the works.
However, a Lebanese official close to Damascus said Makdad had been sent to seek Russian advice on a possible agreement.
He said Syrian officials were upbeat after talks with Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy, who met Foreign Minister Walid Moualem on Tuesday a day after his session with Assad, but who has not outlined his ideas in public.
"There is a new mood now and something good is happening," the official said, asking not to be named. He gave no details.
Russia, which has given Assad diplomatic and military aid to help him weather the 21-month-old uprising, has said it is not protecting him, but has fiercely criticized any foreign backing for rebels and, with China, has blocked U.N. Security Council action on Syria.
"ASSAD CANNOT STAY"
A Russian Foreign Ministry source said Makdad and an aide would meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Mikhail Bogdanov, the Kremlin's special envoy for Middle East affairs, on Thursday, but did not disclose the nature of the talks.
On Saturday, Lavrov said Syria's civil war had reached a stalemate, saying international efforts to get Assad to quit would fail. Bogdanov had earlier acknowledged that Syrian rebels were gaining ground and might win.
Given the scale of the bloodshed and destruction, Assad's opponents insist the Syrian president must go.
Moaz Alkhatib, head of the internationally-recognized Syrian National Coalition opposition, has criticized any notion of a transitional government in which Assad would stay on as a figurehead president stripped of real powers.
Comments on Alkhatib's Facebook page on Monday suggested that the opposition believed this was one of Brahimi's ideas.
"The government and its president cannot stay in power, with or without their powers," Alkhatib wrote, saying his Coalition had told Brahimi it rejected any such solution.
While Brahimi was working to bridge the vast gaps between Assad and his foes, fighting raged across the country and a senior Syrian military officer defected to the rebels.
Syrian army shelling killed about 20 people, at least eight of them children, in the northern province of Raqqa, a video posted by opposition campaigners showed.
The video, published by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, showed rows of blood-stained bodies laid out on blankets. The sound of crying relatives could be heard in the background.
The shelling hit the province's al-Qahtania village, but it was unclear when the attack had occurred.
STRATEGIC BASE
Rebels relaunched their assault on the Wadi Deif military base in the northwestern province of Idlib, in a battle for a major army compound and fuel storage and distribution point.
Activist Ahmed Kaddour said rebels were firing mortars and had attacked the base with a vehicle rigged with explosives.
The British-based Observatory, which uses a network of contacts in Syria to monitor the conflict, said a rebel commander was among several people killed in Wednesday's fighting, which it said was among the heaviest for months.
The military used artillery and air strikes to try to hold back rebels assaulting Wadi Deif and the town of Morek in Hama province further south. In one air raid, several rockets fell near a field hospital in the town of Saraqeb, in Idlib province, wounding several people, the Observatory said.
As violence has intensified in recent weeks, daily death tolls have climbed. The Observatory reported at least 190 had been killed across the country on Tuesday alone.
The head of Syria's military police changed sides and declared allegiance to the anti-Assad revolt.
"I am General Abdelaziz Jassim al-Shalal, head of the military police. I have defected because of the deviation of the army from its primary duty of protecting the country and its transformation into gangs of killing and destruction," the officer said in a video published on YouTube.
A Syrian security source confirmed the defection, but said Shalal was near retirement and had only defected to "play hero".
Syrian Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim al-Shaar left Lebanon for Damascus after being treated in Beirut for wounds sustained in a rebel bomb attack this month.

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Tunisia seeks gold in former dictator's assets

On a crisp December morning in Tunis, a finance ministry official named Mohamed Hamaied was demonstrating the horsepower of maroon V-12 BMW on the runway of a national guard airfield. Beside him sat an agent for a potential buyer.
“You know, this is the same runway that Ben Ali fled from,” remarked another passenger, automotive expert Mourad Bouzidi, from the back seat.
The BMW is among the seized possessions of deposed Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and his inner circle that the government is selling to help fill depleted treasury coffers. But the sale of regime assets, which are often hard to track down and obtain, is not going to be enough. Long-term prosperity needs real reforms.
In Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, the fall of dictators has triggered a scramble for cash as new governments struggle to restore stability amid high expectations and damaged economies.
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In Tunisia, high unemployment has fueled labor strikes and rioting, which in turn provoke political squabbling. Last month, clashes in the rural town of Siliana between stone-throwing protestors and police – who fired birdshot – prompted some opposition politicians to demand Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali’s resignation.
Economic woes stem partly from last year’s revolution, which spooked tourists and foreign investors while the eurozone crisis hobbled key trading partners. But the roots of trouble go deeper, to a regime that spent years neglecting rural regions and letting unemployment rise while amassing great wealth for itself.
“Seemingly half of the Tunisian business community can claim a Ben Ali connection through marriage,” wrote then-US Ambassador Robert F. Godec in a June 2008 diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks, describing an extended family seen as “the nexus of Tunisian corruption.”
TIGERS AND FRENCH ICE CREAM
A year later, Mr. Godec got a taste of regime opulence when Ben Ali’s son-in-law and heir-apparent, Sakher El Materi, invited him for dinner at his seaside villa. Godec’s July 2009 cable notes an infinity pool, ice cream flown in from St. Tropez, and a pet tiger named Pasha.
Ben Ali and most of his family fled Tunisia in January 2011 as protests brought down his regime. Two months later, then-interim president Fouad Embazaa ordered the seizure of assets belonging to 114 top regime figures, including Ben Ali and his wife, Leila Trabelsi.
It’s unclear how much the assets – from cars, yachts, and palaces to major stakes in Tunisian companies – are worth. One estimate last September by a government commission put their total value at around $13 billion.
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Ben Ali’s personal wealth is even harder to gauge, with most of his assets believed to be stashed abroad, says acting finance minister Slim Besbes. Many countries that froze his assets last year have been slow to unfreeze them – the European Union only did so last month – while other legal challenges remain.
The two largest known concentrations of Ben Ali wealth outside Tunisia are around $65 million in Switzerland and $28 million in an account under Mrs. Trabelsi’s name at Lebanon’s central bank, says Mr. Besbes. But while governments are cooperating, Ben Ali and his family's lawyers are fighting back.
Ben Ali’s Beirut-based lawyer, Akram Azoury, argues that a March 2011 seizure of his client's assets was illegal and says Ben Ali has no assets in his name outside Tunisia. Those in the country “are limited, to my knowledge, to his personal residence and a bank account whose value I cannot estimate, contrary to what Tunisian authorities have told the public,” he said by e-mail.
BIG NEEDS
Meanwhile, Tunisia relies heavily on foreign money. Last month it borrowed $500 million each from the World Bank and African Development Bank.
The government has also begun liquidating regime assets: 1.2 billion dinar ($776 million) generated from asset sales helped pay for a 2.5 billion dinar ($1.6 billion) increase in this year’s budget.
Latest on the block are thousands of personal items, including cars, jewelry, and fine art, which went on sale this week at a ritzy hotel near Tunis. To oversee things, the finance ministry tapped Mr. Hamaied, an old hand in commerce.
One morning earlier this month, Hamaied and Mr. Bouzidi, the car expert, were at the national guard facility in Tunisia, giving a preview of cars to the buyer’s agent. There was Ben Ali’s Maybach town car, with massage seats in back, a mini-fridge stocked with Evian, and a yard of leg room. Nearby was a black Aston Martin bearing a small plaque that read, “Handbuilt in England for Sakher El Materi.”
The scout was drawn to the BMW, seized from a Trabelsi. Hamaied popped the hood so he could photograph the big V-12 engine. The odometer showed 2,587 kilometers (about 1,600 miles).
“They’re all like that; these cars didn’t roll much – just between La Marsa and Hammamet,” Hamaied said, naming chic beachside towns near Tunis. Then he proposed a test drive. The men got in, Hamaied gunned the engine, and the BMW tore down the runway as the needle shot to 100 kilometers per hour (about 60 miles per hour).
Authorities hope the sale, which will last at least a month, will generate about $13 million. The government says the proceeds will be spent on development projects.
Ultimately, however, Tunisia has more work ahead to revitalize the economy, says Antonio Nucifora, lead economist on Tunisia for the World Bank. It must reform laws such as those governing foreign investment and labor, cut red tape, and combat a lingering penchant for cronyism.
“At present it is connections that make the system work,” he says. “They need to change from a system based on privileges and connections to one based on merit and competition.

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Russia's adoption ban exposes political rift

Russia's upper house of parliament today unanimously approved a ban on US citizens adopting Russian children, a highly charged move that appears to have prompted an unusual public split among government officials.
The Dima Yakovlev bill, named after one of 19 Russian children to die due to abuse or negligence at the hands of adoptive US parents in the past two decades, now goes to the Kremlin for President Vladimir Putin’s consideration. In his only comments so far on the anti-adoption measure, Mr. Putin said last week that it was "emotional but adequate," which is widely seen as an indication that he will sign it into law.
The legislation was originally framed as a tit-for-tat response to the Magnitsky Act, a US measure signed into law by President Barack Obama earlier this month that aims to punish officials connected to the 2009 prison death of Russian whistle-blowing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. But the Russian legislation has been amended beyond recognition by hardline lawmakers and now looks like a shotgun law to punish US citizens who become involved in almost any kind of non-business activity in Russia.
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Many experts think that Putin may yet act as the "voice of reason" and strip the ban on adoption out of the bill before he signs it.
"This whole discussion over the adoption ban has served the purpose of shifting public attention from the corrupt Russian officials targeted under the US Magnitsky Act to the problems of orphans and the dangers they face in foreign homes," says Nikolai Petrov, an expert with the Moscow Carnegie Center.
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"It's perfectly possible that Putin will ultimately adjust the adoption ban, but leave in place many of the other tough measures in this bill that haven't gotten much attention," Mr. Petrov says. Those measures include even harsher restrictions that would prevent any US passport holder from holding a leadership post in any Russian organization that is deemed by authorities to engage in politics.
The adoption ban has also become the focus of controversy and prompted a rare government split inside Russia. This week a liberal radio station leaked news of a memo by Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets warning that the proposed ban would violate Russian law and at least two treaties that Russia is party to. It would also overturn a bilateral accord on adoptions, negotiated between the United States and Russia, which came into force last month.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Education Minister Dmitry Livanov have also spoken out against the anti-adoption bill. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, voiced annoyance that the government’s internal disagreements were being aired in public, but still signaled support for the measure.
"Learning about official correspondence from the media is not always pleasant," Mr. Peskov told the Kommersant FM radio station yesterday. But "it would be a mistake to think that there is staunch opposition to the bill within government. On the contrary, there are many arguments in favor of it," he said.
Many Russians believe it is a national shame that thousands of children are adopted by foreigners each year. According to a public opinion survey published this week by the state-run Public Opinion Fund, 56 percent of Russians support the proposed adoption ban, while just 21 percent oppose it.
Pavel Astakhov, the Kremlin's children's rights ombudsman and a strong supporter of the ban, said in a letter to Putin published today that Russia could simply pull out of the bilateral agreement with the US and that the move would violate no Russian laws.
Meanwhile, about 130,000 Russians have signed a petition at the website of opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta asking the Kremlin to scrap the proposed ban.
In a sign that the ill will generated by the issue might snowball further, a petition posted at the White House's website, signed by over 54,000 Russians and Americans, urges President Obama to expand the so-called Magnitsky List by adding the names of all the Russian lawmakers in the two chambers who voted for the adoption ban. About 7,000 signed a petition calling for Obama to add Putin's name to the list.
Over the past two decades, about 60,000 Russian children have been adopted by US families. Of those, at least 19 died due to parental abuse or neglect. Each one of those cases ignited a firestorm of public outrage in Russia, and led to two suspensions of all foreign adoptions.
It also led to several efforts to tighten up Russia's once-lax foreign adoption process. Today, prospective parents are no longer able to arrange an adoption on their own, but must work through heavily regulated and fully accredited agencies, says Alyona Senkevich, a representative of Hand-in-Hand, one of fewer than 40 US-based adoption agencies still accredited to work in Russia.
"It's heartbreaking to think that we just signed the bilateral adoption agreement. . .. The main impact of this law (if Putin signs it) would be to strip Russian orphans of the right to be adopted abroad,” she says. “They will become the victims of political games."
Under Russian law, a child is not eligible for foreign adoption until the child has been rejected at least three times by prospective Russian adoptive parents— which usually happens for health reasons.
Albert Likhanov, president of the non-governmental Russian Children's Fund, says that the proposed ban would result in the approximately 1,000 orphans adopted each year by US families to be institutionalized instead of ending up in loving homes.
"I fully understand the wish of many Russians that our children would all be adequately cared for in Russia. But this is not the situation today, and a child cannot wait for everything to get stabilized," he says.
Mr. Likhanov said that Putin’s predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev, once pointed out that in 2008 alone there were 130,000 cases in Russia of violence against children and over 2,000 deaths.

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Iraq: New protests break out in Sunni stronghold

 Large, noisy demonstrations against Iraq's government flared for the third time in less than a week Wednesday in Iraq's western Anbar province, raising the prospect of a fresh bout of unrest in a onetime al-Qaida stronghold on Syria's doorstep.
The rallies find echoes in the Arab Spring. Protesters chanted "the people want the downfall of the regime," a slogan that has rippled across the region and was fulfilled in Tunisia and Egypt. Other rallying cries blasted Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government as illegitimate and warned that protesters "will cut off any hand that touches us."
While the demonstrators' tenacious show of force could signal the start of a more populist Sunni opposition movement, it risks widening the deep and increasingly bitter rifts with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. If left unresolved, those disputes could lead to a new eruption of sectarian violence.
The car bombings and other indiscriminate attacks that still plague Iraq are primarily the work of Sunni extremists. Vast Anbar province was once the heart of the deadly Sunni insurgency that emerged after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and later the birthplace of a Sunni militia that helped American and Iraqi forces fight al-Qaida.
Today, al-Qaida is believed to be rebuilding in pockets of Anbar, and militants linked to it are thought to be helping Sunni rebels try to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The demonstrations follow the arrest last week of 10 bodyguards assigned to Finance Minister Rafia al-Issawi, who comes from Anbar and is one of the central government's most senior Sunni officials. He appeared before Wednesday's rally and was held aloft by the crowds.
Al-Issawi's case is exacerbating tensions between the Shiite-dominated government that rose to power following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and Iraq's Sunnis, who see the detentions as politically motivated.
"The danger is that the revolution in Syria is perpetuating Sunni opportunism and overconfidence in Iraq," said Ramzy Mardini, an analyst at the Beirut-based Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies. "Al-Maliki may have sparked a Sunni tribal movement that will attempt to harness and capitalize on the revolutionary spirit," he said.
Protesters turned out Wednesday near the provincial capital Ramadi, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad. The city and nearby Fallujah were the scenes of some of the deadliest fighting between U.S. troops and Iraqi insurgents.
Demonstrators blocked the main highway linking Baghdad with neighboring Jordan and Syria, just as they did at another protest Sunday.
Wednesday's protesters held banners demanding that Sunni rights be respected and calling for the release of Sunni prisoners in Iraqi jails. "We warn the government not to draw the country into sectarian conflict," read one. Another declared: "We are not a minority."
Al-Issawi, the finance minister, addressed the rally after arriving in a long convoy of black SUVs protected by heavily armed bodyguards. He condemned last week's raid on his office and rattled off a list of grievances aimed at al-Maliki's government.
"Injustice, marginalization, discrimination and double standards, as well as the politicization of the judiciary system and a lack of respect for partnership, the law and the constitution ... have all turned our neighborhoods in Baghdad into huge prisons surrounded by concrete blocks," he declared.
Large numbers of protesters also took to the streets in Samarra, a Sunni-dominated town 60 miles (95 kilometers) north of Baghdad, according to Salahuddin provincial spokesman Mohammed al-Asi.
Many Sunnis see the arrest of the finance minister's guards as the latest in a series of moves by the Shiite prime minister against their sect and other perceived political opponents.
Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, another top-ranking Sunni politician, is now living in exile in Turkey after being handed multiple death sentences for allegedly running death squads — a charge he dismisses as politically motivated.
Al-Maliki has defended the arrests of the finance minister's guards as legal and based on warrants issued by judicial authorities. He also recently warned against a return to sectarian strife in criticizing the responses of prominent Sunni officials to the detentions.
In a recent statement, the prime minister dismissed the rhetoric as political posturing ahead of provincial elections scheduled for April and warned his opponents not to forget the dark days of sectarian fighting "when we used to collect bodies and chopped heads from the streets."
Al-Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Moussawi, criticized al-Issawi's participation in the protest Wednesday.
"He can't be in the government and use the street against it at the same time. If he can't shoulder his responsibilities then he has to step down so that another person can take over," he said.
The political tensions are rising at a sensitive time. Iraq's ailing President Jalal Talabani is incapacitated following a serious stroke last week and is being treated in a German hospital. The 79-year-old president, an ethnic Kurd, is widely seen as a unifying figure with the clout to mediate among the country's ethnic and sectarian groups.
Also Wednesday, the United Nations mission to Iraq said its monitors have determined that a hospital that treated a member of an Iranian exile group who died this week at a refugee camp near Baghdad did not consider his health condition serious enough to warrant hospitalization when he arrived for treatment in November.
An organization representing the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq exile group on Monday accused Iraqi authorities of preventing 56-year-old Behrooz Rahimian from being hospitalized, and alleged that the U.N. failed to take sufficient steps to intervene. Iraq considers the MEK a terrorist group and wants its members out of the country.

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NewsWatch features Hyatt Hotel and The Michael Mondavi Family's "Canvas Art of Wine" iPad App on AppWatch

NewsWatch, a nationwide television show, recently aired a news segment about “Canvas Art of Wine”, a new app by Hyatt Hotels and the Mondavi Family. The segment aired as part of “AppWatch”, a weekly review of the top apps in the marketplace.

Washington, DC (PRWEB) December 26, 2012
NewsWatch, a nationwide television show, recently aired a news segment about “Canvas Art of Wine”, a new app by Hyatt Hotels and the Mondavi Family. The segment aired as part of “AppWatch”, a weekly review of the top apps in the marketplace.
Hyatt Hotels and The Michael Mondavi Family teamed up to create Canvas Wines, the signature wine brand of the hotel chain. The app allows users to take photos of their travels, share experiences, and mail customized postcards to their friends and family.
The Canvas Art of Living Postcard app offers the ability to create digital and print postcards to share with family and friends. Users can capture everyday moments or special occasions with the Canvas Art of Living Postcard app!
To download the app, users should visit http://www.canvaswines.com/living or at their next stay at a Hyatt, order a glass of Canvas wine. When they receive the glass of wine, the Hyatt Hotel bartender will provide a coaster that will include a QR code. This code will automatically direct a mobile phone’s web browser to the Canvas Wines website. From the site, users can download the Canvas Art of Living app and start sharing their many travel and wine experiences!
Once users have downloaded the app from either the iTunes Store or Google Play, they can select one of the many postcard designs inspired by Canvas Wines, upload a photo from their smartphone or take a new photo, create their own personalized headline and custom message, then send the card. All finished postcards are automatically saved to a user’s personal gallery.

A user’s digital postcards can be shared via email, text message or on Facebook. Users can convert their digital postcard into a printed postcard to share with family and friends. This customized postcard will be printed and mailed for just $1.99.
For more information or to download the “Canvas Art of Living” app, go to Canvas Wines.
NewsWatch is a weekly 30-minute consumer oriented television show that airs on the ION Network Thursday mornings at 5:30am across the nation. NewsWatch regularly features top travel destinations, health tips, technology products, medical breakthroughs and entertainment news on the show. A recent addition to NewsWatch, AppWatch is a weekly segment that provides viewers app reviews and game reviews of the latest and hottest apps and games out on the market for iOS and Android devices. The show airs in 180 markets nationwide as well as all of the top 20 broadcast markets in the country, and is the preferred choice for Satellite Media Tour and Video News Release Distribution.

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South Korea's president-elect promises 'new era of change'

South Korea’s President-elect Park Geun-hye signaled today the tough policy toward North Korea that she’s likely to pursue when she embarks on her five-year term as president in February.
She began the day after winning the presidential election by visiting the national cemetery, bowing before the grave of her father, Park Chung-hee, the long-ruling dictator who was assassinated by his intelligence chief in 1979.
“I will open up a new era of change and reform,” she scrawled in the visitor’s book, but soon she left no doubt she would mingle calls for inter-Korean dialogue with a firm stance against compromise.
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North Korea’s launch of a long-range rocket last week “showed how grave the security reality really is,” she said at her party headquarters after the visit to the cemetery. Yes, she says she wants to open talks with North Korea – but she also vowed to keep her “promise of a new era of strong national security.” Similarly, while calling for peace and reconciliation in Northeast Asia, she placed priority on dealing with the “security reality.”
Though Ms. Park is not as hardline as outgoing President Lee Myung-bak, in the view of analysts, she is still not going to revert to the Sunshine policy of reconciliation espoused by two Korean presidents before Mr. Lee’s election five years ago.
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“At the very least, South Korea will not funnel funds to support weapons programs with which North Korea will threaten the country that defends South Korea,” says Lee Sung-yoon, professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, in Boston, Mass.
That’s a reference to the hundreds of thousands of tons of food and fertilizer that South Korea shipped annually to North Korea during the era of the Sunshine policy. Moon Jae-in, Park’s liberal foe in Wednesday’s election, had promised to resume the shipments.
“She is under no illusions about Pyongyang,” says Nicholas Eberstadt at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. If she “can expound and implement a coherent policy for reducing the North Korean threat” while advancing the cause of Korean unification, “that would be a great service to her countrymen and to the world.”
Firmness under North Korean threats is seen as essential. “In principle she will be tough on North Korea,” says Cho Gab-je, a conservative editor who often comments on policy issues. “She will have some flexibility on policy,” he says,” but she will not follow the line of the Sunshine policy.”
THE NORTH KOREA CHALLENGE
At the same time, North Korea is expected to challenge her, militarily and rhetorically. “They usually try to test a new president,” says Choi Jin-wook, a senior official at the Korea Institute of National Unification. “They might make provocations before or after her inauguration.”
Many observers, including Mr. Choi, believe that North Korea fired its long-range missile last week as a deliberate attempt to intimidate voters into supporting Moon Jae-in as a candiate less likely to provoke a war. “People when they vote always think about North Korea,” he says.
But, instead of hurting Park, says Mr. Choi, North Korea accomplished “just the opposite, they helped Park.” The logic here is that voters, particularly the conservative older generation, cast their ballots for her as the most likely candidate to defend South Korea in a crisis.
Then too, Park is assumed to have quite a sophisticated understanding of North Korea. She is one of the few top-ranked conservative politicians who has been to Pyongyang.
“She is the first South Korean president who has already been to North Korea and met with Kim Jong-il ,” observes Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor who directed Asia affairs at the National Security Council during the presidency of George W. Bush. “She will have a more rational view on inter-Korean relations.”
In that spirit, says Mr. Cha, she will not be “blindly obsessed with a summit” as were the two liberal presidents from 1998 to 2008. Both President Kim Dae-jung and President Roh Moo-hyun went to Pyongyang for summits with Kim Jong-il that produced promising statements but did not end confrontation.
OTHER MAJOR ISSUES FOR SOUTH KOREA
While problems with North Korea dominate concerns here, however, Park has more to worry about when it comes to the stagnating economy, the rising gap between rich and poor Koreans, and the anger of young people unable to find jobs.
Park also faces a regional problem – the hostility of the Cholla region of southwestern Korea. Moon Jae-in won 90 percent of the votes there.
“She has talked about unifying the country so it would not surprise me if she pulled Cholla people into her cabinet – a sort of team of rivals,” says Cha.
Indeed, many analysts say that Park’s first priority will not be North Korea but reforming an economy in which the conglomerates increased their grip over Korean life substantially under President Lee.
“In terms of economic growth his policies have failed,” says Jang Ha-sung, a business professor at Korea University who has often criticized the conglomerates, known as chaebol. “He represented the so-called trickle down effect. He depended on the old model that was heavily dependent on the chaebol.”
The historical irony is that Korea’s conglomerates owe their success in large measure to the policies of Park’s father, Park Chung-hee, often credited with fostering Korea’s booming growth during his 18 years and 5 months as president.
Park, however, has promised “economic democratization” – with more opportunity for individual entrepreneurs and enterprises.
“Public opinion calls for some reform of the chaebol,” says Cho Gap-je. ”In a crisis, he observes, “creating jobs is the first priority.”

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In India, a Hindu nationalist rebuilds image with Muslim votes

The Hindu nationalist leader of the western state of Gujarat, known for his alleged role in the 2002 riots in which 1,000 Muslims were killed, won his fourth consecutive term as chief minister in a landslide on Thursday. The victory puts the controversial figure on track to be a strong contender for prime minister of India in 2014.
Despite the controversy surrounding Chief Minister Narendra Modi, he played a critical role in putting Gujarat on a path of consistent economic growth. His win also marks a major defeat for the Congress party, which came in a distant second with 61 seats in the general assembly, compared with his Bharatiya Janta Party(BJP)'s 118.
Mr. Modi stands out for many as a viable leader because of his recent record of good governance, development, and economic growth, coupled with the Indian Congress’s failure to effectively manage the country.
“It’s the vacuum of leadership that has India desiring a really strong leader who can take action and take this country forward,” says pollster Yahswant Deshmukh. “That’s why even a polarizing figure like Modi is being talked about and looked upon to give that kind of leadership.”
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The BJP's victory is "a message to everyone that development and good governance triumph over divide and rule politics," Modi posted on his Twitter feed.
Modi’s image is still marred by the bloody Gujarat riots, which put the city on edge and raised minority tensions in the Hindu majority state. Many politicians within his own party refuse to work with him, fearing he will taint their image. In 2005, the US State Department even denied him a visa.
But for a growing number of the more than 60 million people living in Gujarat, Modi’s record during his decade as chief minster has created a number of believers in his vision for the state – including Muslims.
Roughly 25 percent who cast their ballots for the BJP this election were Muslim, says Mr. Deshmukh, who polled more than 78,000 voters, including 7,000 Muslims as they exited voting booths across the state. That’s up from just 3 percent in 2007. While the majority of Muslims still vote for the Congress party, a growing number of young educated Muslims are opting for the BJP, says Deshmukh. They believe Modi is the most viable option for sustained growth and career opportunities in the state.
What’s not clear is how Modi’s success in Gujarat will translate to the rest of the country. Another question is whether he will be able to snag other minority voters, usually picked up by the Congress party.
Given Muslims' low literacy rates, low rate of employment in government jobs, and lagging per capita income across India, Sufi Saint Mehbubali Baba Saheb says life for the minority religious group is much better under Modi’s rule. A volunteer with the BJP, he points out that since the Gujarat riots, there has been no communal violence in the state. Some 10 percent of Muslims have government jobs and their per capita income is the highest in the country.
But not everyone is convinced.
Despite Gujarat having the third-highest growth rate in the country, 40 percent of children are still malnourished, and hundreds of thousands of Muslims live in slums because they can’t find affordable housing.
“Modi has very little to offer to India’s villages, to its agriculture sector and to the very large constituencies that make up Indian politics,” says political analyst Ashish Nandy, adding that Modi’s constituency is the middle class. “While the middle class may make up a significant portion of the country, over two-thirds of the Indian population does not fall in that category. I think that will be more his undoing than being [known as] a master of inciting a blood bath.”
While Modi may have a long road ahead in his bid to be the next prime minister, Milan Vaishnav of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says his success in these elections is a springboard into national politics and may force the US to rethink how it handles its official relationship with him.
“It would certainly be seen as awkward if US politicians were not at least cordial to Modi,” says Mr. Vaishnav. “You might not see a major change right away, but behind close doors, it’s very likely the US will start making steps to warm relations.”

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Estela de Carlotto hunts for Argentina's grandchildren 'stolen' decades ago

Estela de Carlotto isn't like most grandmothers. Instead of easing herself into retirement and enjoying the slower pace of life it affords, she remains a dogged workaholic.
Every weekday she rises early without fail in order to make the 70-mile round trip from her hometown of La Plata to an office in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires.
"I had other ideas about what I'd be doing with my life, such as being with my children," she says, smiling. "I'm an elderly person who has had four children, and I now have 13 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. So I thought I'd be spending time with them. But life gave me another direction."
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Since 1989 that direction has involved being a "professional" grandmother: As president of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo), she is the most visible face of one of South America's largest human rights organizations.
Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times, the Abuelas group has members whose lives read like the pages of a horror novel. Born out of the atrocities committed during the country's last military dictatorship (1976-83) – which was backed by the United States – the group comprises mothers whose daughters and daughters-in-law were abducted and killed by the military regime for their leftist views.
But the armed forces had a perverse rationale. Women who were pregnant were kept alive until they gave birth. Their newly born children were then forcibly adopted by other families and given false identities: The military's aim was to ensure that they didn't grow up with the same political orientation as their murdered mothers.
The Abuelas are still searching for some 500 "stolen babies" – their grandchildren – who have grown up unaware of who they are (so far, 107 children, now adults, have been "returned" to their biological families thanks to DNA testing).
Of all the South American nations that lived through a dictatorship, Argentina is the only country that had a systematic plan involving the abduction of babies.
Ms. Carlotto's own daughter Laura was kidnapped in 1977 and killed in 1978 after she'd given birth to a son in captivity named Guido, after his grandfather. The body of Carlotto's daughter was returned to her by the armed forces, one of the few bodies returned to parents.
Despite more than 30 years of searching, Carlotto has never found her grandson. So what stops her from admitting defeat and making herself comfortable in her favorite armchair?
"Strength is love, you see," Carlotto answers. "They [the military] killed my daughter. I won't forget her, and I want truth and justice. I'm looking for a grandchild, too, which is also motivated by love, so there's no way I can stop doing what I'm doing."
The Abuelas president meets me at the group's central Buenos Aires headquarters. She enters the interview room with slow, considered steps. But when she sits down and fixes her gaze, her sharpness and determination are undeniable.
Carlotto, who used to be headmistress at a school, says she feels comfortable in her role and all that it entails, from having to deal with the emotional fallout of a nieto (grandchild) who has come to the Abuelas with doubts about his or her identity to meeting heads of states or being invited to functions by human rights groups around the world.
She also recognizes that what she does isn't for everyone. Other grandmothers have either found their grandchildren or want to take a back seat role. Or they simply don't have the energy that Carlotto continues to show. (Mariela Belski, executive director of Amnesty International Argentina, calls her a "tireless, committed, and persistent fighter for human rights, and the struggle's most emblematic voice.")
"There aren't any more grandmothers that want to do the work that I do because I dedicate 24 hours a day to it," she says. "There were grandmothers that didn't want to become president or couldn't because of work commitments. I was able to retire because of my husband's work. So I had the time but also the character – I have a leadership personality."
Carlotto's teaching career has clearly helped in her work. Both she and the rest of the Abuelas have had to help nurture and then rebuild a polarized Argentine society licking its wounds from years of horrific crimes after the return to democracy in 1983.
The Abuelas president admits that "we've done a lot of teaching" over the years. Her organization tirelessly campaigned against laws from the 1980s and '90s that pardoned most of the dictatorship's henchmen (the laws were repealed in 2003). It also set up a DNA bank (the world's first) in 1987 to help find missing grandchildren, and it continues to take an active role in ongoing human rights trials against former military officials.
Carlotto talks with utter poise. Wearing her trademark pearl earrings, she comes across as an eloquent and elegant señora, forced by her circumstances to relive a terrible past.
"Estela has an utterly sweet character," says Guillermo Perez Roisinblit, one of the 107 grandchildren (now an adult) who have discovered their real identities through Abuelas. "And all this despite the troubles she's had to deal with in her life, including the kidnap and murder of her daughter Laura and the nearly 34-year search for her grandson Guido.
"Yet despite all this, she still wants to help other grandmothers with the same spiritedness as ever, and without succumbing to hatred, resentment, or a desire for revenge."
Being a public figure isn't always easy, Carlotto says, but the warmth that people show her in the street helps her keep going. Sometimes people want to have their photo taken with her, she adds, as if she were a film star (in fact, her life was made into a movie last year, "Verdades verdaderas," or "Real Truths," directed by Nicolás Gil Lavedra).
Despite the affection that a large part of Argentine society feels toward her and the Abuelas, there are still people who want to silence her bold voice, especially those with links to the dictatorship. On Sept. 20, 2002, in the early hours of the morning, Carlotto was home alone in her house in La Plata when it was peppered with gunshots fired from a speeding car. She was unharmed, but the attempted murder now means she has a policeman at her door 24 hours a day, and she travels with bodyguards.
"Look, I'm not afraid," Carlotto says defiantly, "firstly because the worst has already happened to me: My daughter was killed. And secondly because the bullets they tried to fire at me are the same that killed my daughter. The same people didn't fire them but they showed the same murderous mind-set."
Times are changing, however. The nature of the Abuelas organization is different now, she says. A father and a grandchild are now involved in the day-to-day running of it. It's the latter and his fellow "brothers and sisters," as she refers to them, who will continue the search until all 500 are found, she says.
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In October, Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo celebrated its 35th anniversary with speeches, laughter, and music at a Buenos Aires theater. The group has come a long way since those perilous first few years when its members were unsure of what they were doing and where it would lead – and when showing any sort of defiance of military rule was a highly dangerous activity.
"Sadness is something we'll have buried deep within us forever," Carlotto says, "but we're able to appreciate our achievements. Every grandchild that we find is giving freedom to someone who was living as a slave, so that they can recover their rights, their identity, their history, and their family.

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Syria fires more Scud missiles as refugee projections climb

• A daily summary of global reports on security issues.
The head of NATO condemned the Syrian government's return to firing Scud-type missiles yesterday, saying they were "acts of a desperate regime approaching collapse."
NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that surveillance captured evidence of the firing of fresh rounds of missiles yesterday morning, Reuters reports, while American officials confirmed independently to The New York Times that the Scud missiles had resumed after an apparent lull from their initial use last week.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem denied the reports as "untrue rumors," according to the Times.
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CBS reports that a half-dozen Scuds were fired overnight from an Army base near Damascus toward a nearby rebel base.
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Gen. Rasmussen's comments were echoed in the worries of Syrian rebel chief Salim Idris, who told CBS News that he is "very afraid" President Bashar al-Assad will resort to firing chemical weapons using Scuds. He said his contacts still with the regime said that the Syrian Army is preparing to use the missiles in the rebel-controlled northwest.
There is not much additional concrete information about the use of Scud missiles in Syria, CBS notes, because they are "mobile" and it is "hard to pinpoint from where they were fired." They are also not very accurate.
CNN reports that analysts believe that the Assad regime has as many as 400 Scud missiles on hand.
Rasmussen cited the past 24 hours' events today as he defended the NATO deployment of Patriot antimissile systems along the Syrian-Turkish border.
"The fact that such missiles are used in Syria emphasizes the need for effective defense protection of our ally Turkey," he told reporters today, according to Reuters. "The recent launch of missiles has not hit Turkish territory but of course there is a potential threat and this is exactly the reason why NATO allies decided to deploy Patriot missiles in Turkey, for a defensive purpose only."
In a move heavily criticized by Syria, Iran, and Russia, NATO recently approved the placement of an American, Dutch, and German Patriot antimissile system along the border of NATO member Turkey. The deployment of the battery requires troops to operate the missiles, as well – the US is sending 400 to the area, according to The New York Times.
Meanwhile, the United Nations revised its refugee projection numbers again – at least the fourth time it has done so – bringing the estimate up to 1 million in the next six months, according to a separate New York Times report.
Panos Moumtzis, the UN regional coordinator for Syrian refugees, said the new forecast was based on the fact that 2,000 to 3,000 Syrians are fleeing across national borders every day. Mr. Moumtzis added that the number of refugees could reach 1.85 million if there were a mass exodus from the country, the Times reports.
Radhouane Nouicer, the UN humanitarian coordinator for Syria, said yesterday that "there are nearly no more safe areas where people can flee and find safety."
The UN is seeking $1 billion for refugees outside Syria and $519 million to boost its aid provisions for 4 million people inside Syria – 20 percent of the country's population.

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US ex-marine to be released from prison after violating Mexico's strict gun laws

The American ex-Marine who has been holed up in a Mexican prison in one of the most dangerous regions along the US-Mexico border is reportedly going to be released today, in time to return home for Christmas.
Jon Hammar's crime: He carried an antique gun across the border from Texas that his family says he was planning to use on a hunting trip in Costa Rica. But en route he passed through Mexico, where despite record levels of violence, such arms are prohibited without permission from the Mexican government.
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Republican lawmakers rallied around Mr. Hammar's case, circulating photos of him chained to his jail bed. Some even called for Americans to boycott travel to Mexico until his release.
Hammar’s case came to light at a sensitive time in the gun-control debate. News broke on his August arrest in the wake of the Newtown tragedy, where an American took the lives of 20 elementary school students ages 6 and 7 last week, as well as six adults at the school and his mother.
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The Newtown shooting has sparked sympathy around the world but generated renewed criticism from south of the border, where politicians point the finger at the US, saying lax gun laws have contributed to Mexican drug violence.
Mexican law professor John Ackerman, writing in The Huffington Post, said this week that among the 60,000-plus death toll in Mexico, there are many innocent victims, including children. Regarding Newtown, he writes, “The National Rifle Association (NRA) should be applauded for its willingness to 'offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.' But the discussion should be guided just as much by the plight of Mexican children as by the fears of suburban mothers.”
MEXICAN GUN LAWS
Hammar’s case has highlighted the stark difference between American and Mexican gun laws.
Hammar's mother, Olivia Hammar, told CNN that her 27-year-old son has been behind Mexican bars since August, after he stopped for gas in Matamoros, the notorious border town across from Brownsville, Texas, en route to Central America.
He was driving with a friend in his Winnebago, and the car carried four surf boards, according to Mrs. Hammar. But he also packed an antique shotgun passed down from his great-grandfather, CNN reports.
He has been in jail for four months but his family only took the case public recently.
Hammar reportedly declared the weapon with US border agents and then Mexican officials, and Republican lawmakers lobbying for Hammar’s release have said he was given “bad” information by US officials about the laws in Mexico, where gun laws are, at least on the books, prohibitive.
Guns are as easy to buy on the black market here like any illegal good, but unlike in the US, Mexican citizens who seek to legally own a weapon must apply for one through the country’s department of defense. There are no gun stores; all weapons are purchased through the government, after extensive background checks.
But this case also carries a certain amount of irony.
Over the six years of former President Felipe Calderon's administration, when the "Drug War" hit a fever pitch, drug traffickers have been documented using all manner of weaponry, from grenades, to so-called “matapolicias” or “police killers,” to monster “narco” tanks.
Some of those weapons, ammunition, and defense mechanisms are confiscated and their owners arrested. But with impunity rates at over 90 percent, most of the perpetrators go free.
But the one sitting in Mexican jail for four months was this young American carrying an antique shotgun. And while he did break Mexican law, his plight also highlights the extreme challenges facing the Mexican justice system, as drug traffickers – probably this very second – are employing combat-style weapons with little fear of getting caught, let alone languishing in jail.

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Japanese firms set spending record in buying up foreign assets

In the late 1980s, when Mitsubishi Estate bought Rockefeller Center and Sony snapped up Columbia Pictures, the Western media were full of stories of Japan’s imminent global economic domination. "Japan as No. 1" was a best-seller, and US autoworkers dramatically took sledgehammers to Japanese imports.
But by the end of 2012, Japanese corporations will have bought more foreign companies, spending more in dollar terms, than they did at the height of the '80s bubble economy. No one, however, seems to be taking notice.
The silence speaks to how a country as well-known for cute pop culture as for cutting-edge technology – and which powerful corporations once feared as a foreign predator – is now seen as down on its luck, struggling to recover from disaster. This perception – along with the fact that foreign takeovers are far more frequent, there are more global powerhouses, and Japanese cars are built around the globe – has allowed Japanese firms to go on an unprecedented spending spree overseas without any of the backlash seen decades ago.
“Japan has gone from being the 'exotic' in the 1960s, to a 'threat' in the 1980s, to just being a part of a rich, cosmopolitan human existence,” says Devin Stewart, senior fellow at the Carnegie Council and former director of the Japan Society in New York. “People learn about Japan and its culture nowadays because it is an important part of the world as we know it. It's a place people relate to.”
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In 1990, at the height of the asset bubble in Tokyo, "Japan Inc." made 463 acquisitions of foreign firms. This year, the total is set to top 500 for the first time, with a record total spend of more than 7 trillion yen ($83 billion). IT giant Softbank’s $20 billion takeover of Sprint Nextel Corp., announced in October, will be the biggest foreign takeover ever undertaken by a Japanese company.
The acquisitions this time around are spread across a wide range of industries, rather than the trophy buys of prime real estate that unnerved America during the days of Japan’s roaring bubble economy.
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“There was a slightly indiscriminate hue to Japanese buying in the late '80s, and companies have learned to be more sophisticated, rather than appearing to be carrying around large wads of cash in their back pockets,” says Yuuichiro Nakajima, head of Crimson Phoenix, a cross-border mergers and acquisitions advisory firm with offices in Tokyo and London.
OVERLOOKING A KEY POINT
Japan’s financial institutions, their fingers burned badly by the bursting of the bubble that left them with massive, unrecoverable loans, survived the worldwide crash of 2008 relatively unscathed, having taken a more cautious approach than their Western counterparts. Indeed, it was Japanese investment bank Nomura that bought large chunks of Lehman’s European and Asian businesses after the bankruptcy of the US institution in 2008 that triggered the global financial crisis.
Commentary on Japan often points disparagingly to its shrinking population and domestic market, the challenges of recovering from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and its enormous national debt, which at well over 200 percent of GDP is outranked globally only by Zimbabwe. However, it’s often overlooked that the country’s overseas assets exceed its foreign liabilities by around $3 trillion.
“It seems strange, but Japan is also the world’s biggest creditor nation and has acquired very large overseas assets over the past 30 years. It gets a very good return on these, providing income of 14 to 15 trillion yen ($166.5 to $178.5 billion) a year,” points out Masayuki Kichikawa, chief Japan economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) in Tokyo. “It is this which helps protect Japan from financial crisis, despite the huge government debt.”
And Japan's activity is often overshadowed as the world fixes its eyes on Japan's giant eastern neighbor. “In some ways China has taken the place of the Japan of yesteryear: It has huge firepower and is buying across multiple sectors,” suggests Mr. Nakajima. “And, with China, many of these buyers are state-owned, bringing into question whether the motivation behind acquisitions is strictly profit.”
Yet even China, which almost certainly will displace the US as the world’s economic powerhouse, doesn’t evoke the fear Japan once did.
“But despite the differences between Japan, which was and is a democratic ally, and China, which is not an ally and is nominally communist, the fear about China today seems tame compared with the hysteria about Japan in the 1980s,” says Mr. Stewart of the Carnegie Council. “Back then, Japan was 'taking over the world.' Perhaps people are just more sophisticated about the world and know China faces enormous challenges, as all countries do.”

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Tanks deploy to Egypt's presidential palace amid lull in deadly protests

• A daily summary of global reports on security issues.

After a night of violent protests across Egypt that left at least five dead and hundreds injured, Egyptian tanks deployed this morning to protect the presidential palace, marking the first time since Mohamed Morsi's power grab that the military has gotten involved.

Reuters reports that at least seven tanks and 10 armored personnel carriers from the Republican Guard, the military unit tasked with protecting the government organs, now surround the palace. The Republican Guard is ordering all demonstrators to leave the palace environs. The unit's commander, Gen. Mohamed Zaki, told the state news agency that "The armed forces, and at the forefront of them the Republican Guard, will not be used as a tool to oppress the demonstrators."

Reuters notes that small numbers of protesters against and supporters of President Morsi remain in the area around the palace, but have largely been limited to shouting at each other from afar.

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The lull stands in sharp contrast to last night, when thousands of Egyptians from both sides took to the streets and engaged in violent clashes, resulting in several deaths – Agence France-Presse reports that five people were killed, while Reuters puts the toll at seven – and hundreds of injuries. The Monitor reported last night that protesters and supporters clashed with rocks, firebombs, and the occasional gun around the palace, in a conflict that both sides see as an extension of the Tahrir Square protests last year that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

Pavement is broken up into makeshift missiles, Molotov cocktails are thrown, and fireworks are fired horizontally at the other side. At one point, a protester runs through the anti-Morsi crowd shooting in the air with a handgun. The pro-Morsi crowd appears to be firing teargas canisters, something usually reserved for the police forces....

There is nothing uplifting about the mood here tonight, which seems eons away from the jubilant crowds in Tahrir on Feb. 11, 2011, the night Mubarak stepped down. Just before the fighting started, the crowd beat up a salafi passerby (a conservative Muslim), despite his protestations that he was “not with the Brotherhood.” A minivan stuck in traffic was attacked on the suspicion that it was carrying Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

If any comparisons are made with the uprising that brought down Mubarak last year, it is with the infamous “Camel Day,” when Mubarak supporters and police attacked the peaceful pro-democracy protestors in Tahrir Square.

The Monitor noted that Essam al-Arian, head of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party, last night on Al Jazeera called the protests “the last battle of the revolution against the counterrevolution.”

A presidential aide told AFP that Morsi would address the current crisis in a speech later today, though no time was given. But as the Monitor's Dan Murphy wrote last night, there have been no indications from Morsi or the Brotherhood that they are backing down from plans to hold a referendum on the rushed, Islamist constitution on Dec. 15.

Egypt's sputtering transition from a military-backed, secular dictatorship to, well, something else, has now hit its rockiest point in the nearly two years since it began. Morsi's spokesman and backers have not offered any specific compromise. His Vice President Mahmoud Makki today addressed the nation, saying a referendum scheduled for Dec. 15 will move forward. Gehad el-Haddad, a senior adviser for the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brotherhood's political wing, summarized Mr. Makki's remarks as "No moving of Referendum date, no cancellation of Constitutional Declaration. Crowds do not dictate course of country, elected bodies do." ...

Michael Hanna at The Century Foundation is worried, and fears that Morsi has been emboldened by his successful role in brokering a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel last month.

"If approved in a hastily called referendum, that slipshod [constitution] will bound Egypt's political future and institutionalize its crisis. With a significant portion of the country's judges declaring a strike in response to Morsy's declaration and dueling protesters mobilizing on opposing sides, Egypt's flawed transition now risks tipping into outright civil strife and prolonged instability," he writes. "Rather than using his burnished reputation as a regional leader to forge a more consensual and stable transition back home, Morsy capitalized on the favorable international political climate by making an untenable and unjustifiable power grab that has plunged Egypt into crisis."

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Syrian refugees decamp for tough life in Jordan's cities

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of her chilly, unfurnished home, a Syrian widow explains how she sneaked out of Jordan's Za'atari refugee camp. It cost 50,000 Syrian pounds, about $700, to pay someone from outside to sneak her past the camp's security. She was allowed to pay half up-front, and had a relative in Jordan who could lend her the money.

From there she found an apartment in an urban slum: two dark, bare concrete rooms, crawling with damp. She says she lives mostly off her neighbors, who are also Syrian refugees. One of them found her a television in the garbage, and now it sits in the corner, tuned to a Syrian opposition TV station showing ghastly images of the war against Bashar al-Assad's regime back home. When a sheikh came through the neighborhood giving charitable donations to refugees, she spent hers paying off her debts.

Asked if she is glad she left Za'atari, she gestures at her surroundings.

"To live this way? It's not worth it," she says. "I will go back to Bashar, and die as a martyr. That would be much better than here, and dying in this situation."

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Though much attention has been paid to the camp, refugees in Jordan's cities outnumber those in Za'atari at least 3-to-1. And while camp life is hard, urban refugees have problems of their own.

They have to pay rent, for one thing – often on apartments that are in terrible condition, and freezing in the winter. To stay fed and housed, urban refugees need jobs, and Jordan already has 30 percent unemployment. Without work permits, refugees are vulnerable to exploitation, and many end up working for next to nothing.

Interviewees in Jordan's poor neighborhoods describe scrounging for assistance: traveling around the city and waiting in long lines to register with charities or the UN, or to pick up occasional food packages, or gifts of furniture. For those who sneaked out of the camp, accessing even the most basic services seems impossible, because they lack proper identification.

"I always encourage people in Za'atari not to leave the camp," says Massara Srass, head of the Syrian Women's Organization, which provides assistance to refugees in Amman. "The problems you will face outside of Za'atari are bigger than in Za'atari."

WAYS OUT OF CAMP

There are lots of ways out of Za'atari. Some 6,000 refugees have voluntarily returned to Syria. For some others, the government employs a system of kefala, or sponsorship: Syrians who can find a Jordanian citizen to vouch for their whereabouts and welfare can leave the camp. They call it being "bailed out."

But kefala, government and UN sources say, is reserved for refugees with humanitarian issues like illness, or those with relatives in Jordan. Since the camp opened, roughly 6,000 people have been bailed out, according to the government's spokesman for Syrian refugee affairs, Anmar Hmoud.

But in the camp, stories abound that kefala can be bought, for prices ranging from $70 to $1,400. Officials say that's not so.

"What's happening now: Some Jordanians, and most of them are criminals ... try to convince the Syrians, if they give them 500, 1,000 [Jordanian] dinars, they can bring them out of the camp in a legal way," says police department spokesman Mohammed al-Khatib.

Refugees described different ways of sneaking out of the camp: Some paid visiting workers to help them escape; others simply slipped around the fence at moments when security was lax. Most are fully aware they've gamed the system, but others seem to actually believe they've been let out legally. One woman said she had bought a kefala from a taxi driver at the entrance to one of the transit camps – but the document she produced was a photocopy of a blank kefala form, which did not have the name of a sponsor on it.

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In early November, police reported breaking up a smuggling ring that was bringing refugees out of the camp. At the time, Mr. Hmoud told the partially state-owned "Jordan Times" that 4,000 people had been taken out illegally – but that number might be low. Estimates of the number in the camp are rough at best, but of the 60,000 refugees who have entered, around half remain.

CAMP LIFE

Za'atari was opened to take some of the strain off Jordan's cities, which were overflowing with refugees. At the start, it was a bleak place: baking during the day, freezing at night, and ravaged by dust.

Today, conditions have improved. The dust problem has abated. Many of the camp's residents have been moved from tents into trailers. Heating systems, insulation, blankets and clothes are being distributed. Lines at the distributions are long, and refugees still complain bitterly of the cold, but the atmosphere is less dire.

The food, too is a subject of complaint, but the UN provides basic caloric needs, and the main street of the camp is now a thriving avenue of makeshift shops selling clothing, household goods, produce, and homemade food to those with a little cash. There are three hospitals, five clinics, and a 4,000-capacity school.

And there has been a trickle of refugees returning to Za'atari from the cities. Their number is still far fewer than those leaving: a handful a day, Hmoud says. But it may grow, as winter stretches refugees' thin budgets.

"People will always complain about the camp, but ... it provides people with protection that they don't otherwise have," says Andrew Harper, the Jordan head of the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR. "Winter works both ways: It's going to be tough in the camp, but it's also going to be tough living in an unheated apartment [in a city]. So as we bring in more and more support in the camp, you'll have more and more people coming in."

But at the moment, UN officials say the majority of refugees are still happier to be outside – and there are signs that that outflow is shifting some of the burden of assistance back onto local communities. The number of people outside continues to increase, and the refugees who have been here longer are exhausting the meager resources they came with. The UN and its partners are now distributing regular cash assistance to some 4,600 families, and emergency supplements to about 1,000 more.

But for the refugees who have sneaked out of Za'atari, getting access to that aid can be a major problem. When refugees sneak across Jordan's borders at night, the police confiscate their identification papers. Those who are bailed out are supposed to be able to get their documents back, but those whose kefala is irregular often have nothing.

"If I left my home in flames and escaped to here, how am I supposed to be able to give them my passport?" she asks. "These people that have papers ... get assistance straight away … but those of us who are really in need can’t get anything … because we don’t have the right documents!"

On Tuesday, the Jordanian government announced that it would soon start giving ID cards to Syrian refugees, which they could use to access services. Announcements in local newspapers asked Syrians to come and register at their local police stations. Details of the plan are still sparse, so it is not clear whether another ID will help those most in need, or just be one more hurdle that urban refugees will need to leap.

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