News Headlines
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta becomes first US defense chief to visit Libya
TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrived in Tripoli Saturday, taking advantage of the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi in an eight-month civil war to become the first Pentagon chief to set foot on Libyan soil.
But Panetta has indicated that the U.S. will give more time to the Libyans to gain control of the militias that overthrew Gadhafi before determining how to help the fledgling government.
“The last thing you want to do is to try to impose something on a country that has just gone through what the Libyans have gone through,” said Panetta on Friday before landing in Tripoli.
“They’ve earned the right to try to determine their future. They’ve earned the right to try to work their way through the issues that they’re going to have to confront,” he said.
Panetta’s route into the city on Saturday took him past lush orange groves, carcasses of bombed buildings and the charred and graffiti-covered compound once occupied by Gadhafi. Flying from rooftops were the green, black and red flags, adorned with a star and a crescent, belonging to the new government. Amid the Arabic graffiti splashed across the walls of the compound was a short comment in English: “Thanx US/UK.”
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Payroll tax compromise set for Senate vote in rare Saturday session
WASHINGTON (AP) — Racing for the exits after a year of bitter battling, senators are voting on compromise legislation to extend a Social Security payroll tax cut and jobless benefits for just two months, setting the table for more fighting in February.
Top Democratic and GOP leaders opted for just a short extension after failing to agree on spending reductions large enough to cover a full year renewal of the 2 percentage point tax cut for 160,000 workers and weekly jobless payments averaging about $300 for millions of people who have been out of work for six months or more.
The legislation is a partial victory at best for President Barack Obama, who’s being forced to accept Republican demands for a swift decision on the fate of a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline that promises thousands of jobs.
Votes were slated for Saturday morning on the measure, along with a final tally to send a $1 trillion-plus catchall spending measure setting the day-to-day budgets of 10 Cabinet agencies. The House cleared the spending bill Friday and will return early next week to vote on the payroll tax measure.
In a statement, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer indicated Obama would sign the measure, saying it had met his test of “preventing a tax increase on 160 million hardworking Americans” and avoiding damage to the economy recovery.
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Egypt’s military, protesters clash in Cairo for second consecutive day; PM denies use of force
CAIRO (AP) — Egyptian soldiers clashed with hundreds of rock-throwing protesters in central Cairo for a second consecutive day on Saturday, hurling stones from rooftops and firing water from hoses in a crackdown that has left at least eight people dead.
The violence has brought to the fore the simmering tensions between security officers and activists demanding an end to military rule, and threatened to spark a new cycle of fighting after deadly clashes between youth revolutionaries and security forces in November that lasted for days and left more than 40 dead.
Early Saturday, hundreds of protesters hurled stones at security forces who have sealed off the streets around the country’s parliament building with barbed wire and large concrete blocks. Soldiers on rooftops pelted the crowds below with stones, prompting many of the protesters to pick up helmets, satellite dishes or sheets of metal to try to protect themselves.
Stones, dirt and shattered glass covered the streets between the two sides, while flames came out of the windows of a two-story building set ablaze near parliament, sending thick plumes of black smoke into the sky.
Witnesses said soldiers wielding wooden sticks and dressed in riot gear chased protesters through the streets, forcing them to retreat to nearby Tahrir Square, which served as the epicenter of the uprising that toppled longtime leader Hosni Mubarak in February.
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Tunisians remember impoverished town where self-immolation sparked year of democracy revolts
SIDI BOUZID, Tunisia (AP) — It was in this hardscrabble town in Tunisia’s arid interior that exactly one year ago the death knell sounded for the decades-old system of dictatorships across the Arab world.
With a desperate act of self-immolation, a 26-year-old fruit-seller in Sidi Bouzid unwittingly unleashed a year of turmoil that toppled at least three autocrats in a region once thought to be immune to democracy.
Tunisia’s new leaders are part of a festival for the revolution in Sidi Bouzid starting Saturday, to honor the vendor and the protesters whose indignance snowballed into a nationwide and then region-wide phenomenon.
The changes in the Arab world over the past 12 months cannot be overstated. A region synonymous with stagnant authoritarian republics and monarchies is suddenly rife with change — for better or worse.
The biggest winners so far appear to be the long-repressed Islamist parties, which didn’t always lead the revolts but in the subsequent elections in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco were the best organized and least tainted by the old regimes.
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Pope heads into busy Christmas season tired, weak, raising questions about future
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI seems worn out.
People who have spent time with him recently say they found him weaker than they’d ever seen him, seemingly too tired to engage with what they were saying. He no longer meets individually with visiting bishops. A few weeks ago he started using a moving platform to spare him the long walk down St. Peter’s Basilica.
Benedict turns 85 in the new year, so a slowdown is only natural. Expected. And given his age and continued rigorous work schedule, it’s remarkable he does as much as he does and is in such good health overall: Just this past week he confirmed he would travel to Mexico and Cuba next spring.
But a decline has been noted as Benedict prepares for next weekend’s grueling Christmas celebrations, which kick off two weeks of intense public appearances. And that raises questions about the future of the papacy given that Benedict himself has said popes should resign if they can’t do the job.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi has said no medical condition prompted the decision to use the moving platform in St. Peter’s, and that it’s merely designed to spare the pontiff the fatigue of the 100-meter (-yard) walk to and from the main altar.
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Independents more than GOP conservatives may be critical to Huntsman’s presidential bid
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Republican Jon Huntsman’s presidential fortunes may have little to do with his party’s conservatives.
If there is a path to success for the former Utah governor in the nomination race, it is likely lined with independents, a key voting bloc in New Hampshire and other early voting states that allow unaffiliated voters to help select the next Republican nominee.
The former Utah governor has bet big on New Hampshire, where he’s devoted virtually all his time and energy in recent months. And polling suggests he may be on the rise, thanks largely to tens of thousands of independents likely to vote in New Hampshire’s Jan. 10 Republican primary.
“I’m no longer the margin of error candidate, so we’ve got to start describing ourselves in different terms,” Huntsman told The Associated Press last week after a Suffolk University survey put him in third place with 13 percent among likely New Hampshire GOP primary voters. “Maybe the surging candidate is more appropriate.”
While the extent of any momentum is difficult to ascertain from one survey, pollsters note that Huntsman fares better than most of his rivals with independents, who represent about 40 percent of the New Hampshire electorate. Each state has its own rules, but unaffiliated voters are welcome to participate in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary and the subsequent South Carolina contest.
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US activist Lori Berenson heads to NY for holidays after Peruvian court OKs travel
LIMA, Peru (AP) — Paroled U.S. activist Lori Berenson was headed for New York early Saturday after a Peruvian court ruled she and her toddler son could travel there for the holidays, airport security officials said.
Peru’s ATV television showed video of Berenson and her 2 1/2-year-old son, Salvador at the airport in front of a ticket counter late Friday and said she was flying to New York.
Reached by cell phone, Berenson refused to comment.
But airport security officials told reporters she was flying directly to New York on an overnight flight.
A three-judge appeals court on Wednesday overturned a lower court judge’s ruling denying Berenson permission to travel, said Guillermo Gonzalez, spokesman for Peru’s judicial system.
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Pa. deputy attorney general: ‘Sad day’ given inaction at PSU after report of child sex-assault
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A graduate student waited a day after allegedly seeing a child being sexually assaulted on Penn State’s campus before telling his supervisor, football coach Joe Paterno.
Paterno waited another day before calling the university’s athletic director, who looped in a school vice president.
“It was a Saturday morning and I didn’t want to interfere with their weekends,” Paterno told a grand jury this year, recalling the unusual visit from graduate assistant Mike McQueary.
McQueary said he had seen former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky doing something “extremely sexual” with a young boy in a locker room shower.
On Friday, McQueary testified at a preliminary hearing for two Penn State officials — athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz — accused of covering up the story. He offered the most detailed public account yet of the child sex abuse allegations that have upended the university’s football program and the entire central Pennsylvania campus.
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Prosecution to present its case against young soldier accused of leaking nation’s secrets
FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) — The prosecution is laying out its charges against the young soldier blamed for the largest leak of classified material in American history in a case that may hinge on whether the U.S. government overzealously stamped “secret” on material posing no national security risk.
The long-awaited military court case against Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, the accused source for the WikiLeaks website’s trove of U.S. military and diplomatic secrets, is moving ahead. The defense requested that the presiding officer, Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, step aside because of alleged bias. Almanza, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and Justice Department prosecutor, rejected the request and refused to suspend the hearing pending an appeal.
Manning, a one-time intelligence analyst stationed in Baghdad, is accused of leaking hundreds of thousands of sensitive items including Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, State Department cables and a classified military video of a 2007 American helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 11 men, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver.
The Obama administration says the released information has threatened valuable military and diplomatic sources and strained America’s relations with other governments.
Friday was Manning’s first appearance in public after 19 months in detention. He appeared slight but serious in his Army camouflage fatigues and dark-rimmed glasses, taking notes during the proceedings and answering straightforwardly when called upon by Almanza.
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Bonds walks: Sentenced to house arrest, Barry Bonds stays free while appealing conviction
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Eight years of being investigated for steroid allegations ended for home run king Barry Bonds on Friday with a 30-day sentence to be served at home. No more — and maybe less.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston immediately delayed imposing the sentence while Bonds appeals his obstruction of justice conviction. The former baseball star was found guilty in April not of using steroids, but of misleading grand jurors.
Even without prison time, the case has left its mark on the seven-time National League MVP. His 762 career home runs, and 73 homers in 2001, may forever be seen as tainted records, and his ticket to baseball’s Hall of Fame is in doubt.
Bonds declined to speak in court. Well-wishers hugged the 47-year-old in the hallway courtroom after the hearing was over, and a smattering of fans cheered him as he left the courthouse. It was a marked departure from his initial court appearance four years ago, when guards had to clear a path for Bonds to get through dozens of onlookers to his SUV.
“Whatever he did or didn’t do, we all lie,” said Esther Picazo, a fan outside the courthouse. “We all make mistakes. But I don’t think he should’ve gotten any kind of punishment at all.”
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