Diplomat was to meet jailed terrorist

A Qatari diplomat was on his way to meet an imprisoned al-Qaida agent when he touched off a bomb scare by slipping into an airline bathroom for a smoke, officials said Thursday as they announced plans to send the diplomat home.
A State Department official and another person close to the matter say Mohammed Al-Madadi was going to meet Ali Al-Marri in prison. Consular officials frequently visit foreigners held in the United States to make sure they are being treated well.
Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, is serving eight years in prison after pleading guilty last year to conspiring to support terrorism. He was arrested after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, accusing him of being a sleeper agent researching poisonous gases and plotting a cyberattack.
The visit with such a high-profile prisoner suggests that Al-Madadi would have been very aware of terrorism concerns when he sneaked into the plane's bathroom for a smoke and, according to authorities, joked about lighting his shoe on fire.
The people who discussed the case did so on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
No explosives were found on the plane and authorities said they don't think Al-Madidi was trying to hurt anyone during Wednesday's scare. He enjoys diplomatic immunity from U.S. prosecution and will not be criminally charged, authorities said. The State Department official said Qatar had not yet informed the administration how they will handle the case.
Wednesday's scare came three months after the attempted terror attack on Christmas Day when a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner. The Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, went to the bathroom just before he allegedly tried to ignite his bomb in his seat. Since then, law enforcement, flight crews and passengers have been on high alert for suspicious activity on airplanes. That scare exposed major holes in the country's national security and prompted immediate changes in terror-screening policies.

David Mikael Taclino
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Kyrgyz opposition says it will rule for 6 months

Consolidating their victory after a bloody uprising, opposition leaders declared Thursday they would hold power in Kyrgyzstan for six months and assured the U.S. it can keep a strategic air base here — at least for now.
There were signs of instability, though, as deposed President Kurmanbek Bakiyev refused to relinquish power after the revolt, which left at least 75 people dead and hundreds wounded. As he spoke, gunfire broke out after nightfall in the capital, Bishkek.
With darkness descending, roving bands of armed marauders trawled the streets of the capital, despite warnings from the opposition leadership that looters would be shot.
Crowds gathering at the ransacked government headquarters earlier in the day angrily shouted anti-Bakiyev slogans. Still, the mood was subdued as residents came to terms with the scale of the violence unleashed against the mostly unarmed protesters by government troops a day earlier.
Newly appointed Kyrgyz security officials warned they would use every means to restore calm and bring an end to the nighttime lawlessness that terrorized Bishkek after Wednesday's clashes.
The former Soviet nation is home to a key U.S. military base supporting the fighting in Afghanistan that opposition figures have in the past said they wanted to see shut down. Kyrgyzstan also hosts a Russian military base and is the only nation where both Cold War foes have bases.
Roza Otunbayeva, a former foreign minister now heading the interim government, said there were no plans yet to review the lease agreement for the Manas air base, which runs out in July. She said her government would meet U.S. diplomats for talks in Bishkek.
"Give us time, it will take time for us to understand and fix the situation," Otunbayeva said.
U.S. military officials said Kyrgyzstan halted flights for 12 hours Wednesday, confining troops to the air base; they did not say if flights had resumed. Some 1,100 troops are stationed there, including contingents from Spain and France, in support of NATO operations in Afghanistan.
President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev discussed Kyrgyzstan before signing an arms treaty in Prague on Thursday.
Michael McFaul, Obama's senior director for Russian affairs, emphasized that the U.S. did not view the conflict as any kind of proxy struggle between the U.S. and Russia.
"The people that are allegedly running Kyrgyzstan ... these are all people we've had contact with for many years," McFaul said. "This is not some anti-American coup, that we know for sure. And this is not some sponsored-by-the-Russians coup, there's just no evidence of that."
Kyrgyzstan shares a 533-mile (858-kilometer) border with China and is a gateway to energy-rich Central Asian countries where the U.S., China and Russia are competing for dominance. China said it was "deeply concerned" about the violent uprising in its small western neighbor, echoing comments by the United States and Russia.
Otunbayeva said parliament had been dissolved and that she would head an interim government for six months before elections are called. She said the new government controlled four of the country's seven regions and called for Bakiyev to admit defeat.
"His business in Kyrgyzstan is finished," she said.
In a sign that Russia may lend its support to the opposition, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called Otunbayeva on Thursday. Any suggestion that Russia is backing the new leadership would add to the pressure on Bakiyev to step down.
Russia sent in 150 paratroopers to its base to ensure the safety of the 400 military personnel and their families there, Russian state media reported.
Bakiyev, who fled the northern capital for his stronghold in the south, told a Russian radio station that "I don't admit defeat in any way." But he also said he recognized that "even though I am president, I don't have any real levers of power."
"What has taken place is a veritable orgy carried out by armed groups and I do not believe this is a defeat for me," Bakiyev said.
He spoke from southern Jalal-Abad region, where Bakiyev's popularity is said to remain high — raising concerns he might try to secure his survival by exploiting the split between the more urban north and rural south.
It was unclear if Bakiyev has any armed forces under his command. However, Koshbai Masirov, a government loyalist and former governor of Jalal-Abad, said Bakiyev had addressed people in the region and he expected him to retain their support.
Meanwhile, the newly appointed interim defense minister, Ismail Isakov, said the armed forces had joined the opposition and would not be used against protesters.
"Special forces and the military were used against civilians in Bishkek, Talas and other places," Isakov said. "This will not happen in the future."
Since coming to power in 2005 amid street protests known as the Tulip Revolution, Bakiyev had ensured a measure of stability. But the opposition said it came at the expense of democratic standards and accused Bakiyev of enriching himself and his family.
Piles of ash and smoldering debris filled the street Thursday outside the monolithic government headquarters, known as the White House, where marauders set fire to ransacked goods and trash overnight.
Jubilant young men stood atop gutted vehicles outside the building. Nearby, youths piled onto an armored personnel carrier, victoriously holding their arms aloft.
Fading bloodstains were still visible outside the White House, where dozens were killed by armed troops a day earlier. Young boys scurried in and out of the building, carrying away looted carpets.
As afternoon approached, the crowds swelled. But a somber mood hung in the air as one-minute tributes for those killed in the violence punctuated speeches by politicians and opposition supporters.
As night fell, gunshots rang out around Bishkek, where rumors spread of an attempt by armed Bakiyev loyalists to sow panic. The city of 1 million was plunged into darkness, with hotels and homeowners afraid to turn on their lights for fear of attracting attention.
Throughout the day, many expressed a sense of uneasy wariness about the future.
"We have kicked out Bakiyev, the people have taken power into their own hands, but we have no plans for the future," said Abdykerim Sadykov, a 42-year-old teacher in the crowd outside the White House. "We will wait until the opposition hatches a plan."
On Thursday, details emerged of the composition of the interim Cabinet, which has been drawn from a broad spectrum of opposition leaders, whose differences in the past have undermined attempts to weaken Bakiyev.
One area of consensus was on the decision to repeal sharp increases in heating and electricity bills that provoked widespread anger and helped precipitate this week's violence.
Otunbayeva's announcement at a packed briefing that cheap utilities would be restored and the recent privatization of a power company annulled elicited cheers and clapping from supporters crowding the hall.
But beyond the issue of utilities, the new team of ministers may have trouble forging a united platform.
Azimbek Beknazarov, a populist taking over a broad justice portfolio, vowed that the incoming authorities would hunt down those responsible for Wednesday's deaths.
"We are looking for those people that gave the order to open fire on demonstrators," he said. "We must find these criminals, we will not allow anybody to open fire on their own people."

David Mikael Taclino
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Sex Pistols' former manager McLaren has died at 64

The former manager of the Sex Pistols and one of the seminal figures of the punk rock era, Malcolm McLaren, died Thursday, his son said. He was 64.
Joe Corre his father died of an aggressive form of cancer in Switzerland, declining to give the exact location.
"He was the original punk rocker and revolutionized the world," Corre told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "He's somebody I'm incredibly proud of. He's a real beacon of a man for people to look up to."
McLaren is best known for his work with the Pistols, whose violence, swearing, and antiestablishment antics shocked Britain and revolutionized the music scene. The band's chaotic career owed much to their manager's talent for self-promotion.
"Without Malcolm McLaren there would not have been any British punk," said music journalist Jon Savage, who wrote "England's Dreaming" — which chronicles the history of the group.
But McLaren, an art school dropout, was first known for his fashion, and the infamous clothes shop he opened on London's King's Road with his girlfriend Vivienne Westwood in 1971.
The shop changed its name and focus several times, operating as "SEX" and "World's End" and "Seditionaries" before Westwood and McLaren split, but its offbeat brand of clothing — alternating between Teddy Boy-style clothes and bondage gear — gave him a window on to the emergent punk music scene.
It was McLaren who gave the name Sex Pistols to the group of young men hanging out at his store and helped pick out front man John Lydon (soon known as "Johnny Rotten.") McLaren signed the group with EMI, and their first single, "Anarchy in the UK" came out in 1976.
The group would aggressively court controversy, becoming a household name after an expletive-packed appearance in a British television interview which drew a ban on the group's live performances in the U.K.
After being dropped by EMI for bad behavior, the group later signed with Virgin. Their second single, "God Save The Queen," whose title lyrics are rhymed with "fascist regime," was released during Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee celebrations — was an auditory assault on the monarchy which sparked widespread outrage and saw members of the band attacked in the street.
The controversy was no impediment to the groups' success, but the Sex Pistols fell apart during their U.S. tour, descending into acrimony and legal action. Their bassist, Sid Vicious, died of a heroin overdose in 1979 after he was accused of killing his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, in New York City in 1978.
Although the group had broken up after only one album, 1977's "Never Mind the Bollocks," their rebellious antics and raucous music would set the bar for the bands to come.
McLaren professed a certain indifference to the talent of the band he managed, saying it never occurred to him that the group could ever be any good.
"What occurred to me was that it didn't matter if they were bad," he told the Times of London last year.
Sylvain Sylvain, whose group proto-punk group the New York Dolls McLaren managed before the Sex Pistols, told the AP that McLaren knew how to anticipate a trend.
"He had that vision — maybe it came from the clothing," Sylvain said. "In the rag business you've got to be five to 10 years ahead of everybody."
Like Westwood, his former partner, who was knighted and is whose clothes have graced the Royal Courts of Justice and Buckingham Palace, McLaren eventually became a firmly entrenched part of the cultural establishment.
He helped create advertising campaigns for British Airways, went to Hollywood to make films alongside directors such as Steven Spielberg, and worked on shows with the BBC — the broadcaster which in the 70s had refused to play his group's songs. He even wrote for the New Yorker.
But McLaren still nurtured his rebellious edge. He made a stab at running for mayor of London, promising to set up a legalized brothel outside parliament. His son by Westwood, Corre, would continue the family tradition of blending shock with success, co-founding the lingerie chain Agent Provocateur, which sells its risque, high-end wares across the world.
And while McLaren also worked with Adam and the Ants and helped create the group Bow Wow Wow, his music career wasn't limited to management. He had a regarded solo career in which he blended genres and acted as a kind of music curator. In the early 1980s, he had key songs in hip-hop, including the hit "Buffalo Gals," and bringing different textures to the developing genre; in his career, he worked in electronica, pop — even opera.
McLaren is survived by Corre and his longtime partner Young Kim. In an e-mail, she wrote that the fashion, the movies — and the Pistols — were "all expressions of his art."
"McLaren will be sorely missed," she said. "He was a great artist who changed the world."
Corre said that while funeral arrangements have yet to be made, McLaren had wanted to be buried in north London's stately Highgate cemetery, near where he was born.

David Mikael Taclino
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Slum disappears in Rio mudslide; 200 feared dead

They are all gone. The Evangelical church where worshippers were praying. A daycare center where kids were playing. The pizza parlor where a family was eating.
All were buried under a mountain of mud, garbage and stone when yet another landslide hit metropolitan Rio de Janeiro late Wednesday. This one swept through the Morro Bumba slum, engulfing as many as 200 people and 60 homes. Nothing was left behind but a massive crater of blackened, sodden earth and the remnants of flimsy brick shacks.
"I had just picked up my 10-year-old son from the day care. We walked down the hill to the street, and within 10 minutes, my community collapsed," said Patricia Faria, 28, crying as she watched heavy machinery dump the remains of her life into a waiting truck. "All I have left is what you see on me — and my son. Thank God, I have my son."
Rio state health secretary Sergio Cortes said it was hard to say how many people were buried in the latest slide. "A worse-case scenario is 200," he told The Associated Press. "We know that about 60 houses were buried."
Already 161 people have been confirmed dead in the heavy rains that began Monday in Rio, most of them swept away in landslides that roared through city slums built on steep, unstable hillsides.
The death toll surpasses that of flooding and mudslides in the southern state of Santa Catarina in 2008, which killed nearly 130 people and displaced about 80,000.
"In our experience, it's an instant death," Pedro Machado, undersecretary of Rio state's Civil Defense department, said of the victims buried by landslides.
Faria said she was certain people were buried inside the Morro Bumba slum's Assembly of God church, which collapsed during nightly services.
Clesio Araujo, 39, said he narrowly escaped the slide, leaving a pizza parlor just a few minutes before the earth gave way. He said a family was still inside.
The destruction was compounded because the slum is largely built atop an old garbage dump, making it especially unstable and vulnerable to the heavy rains, said Agostinho Guerreiro, president of Rio's main association of engineers and architects.
"It is very fragile soil. It couldn't hold. The houses came down, destroying the ones below them," Guerreiro told Globo TV. "It was a tragedy foretold."
The federal government announced an emergency fund of $114 million to help Rio state, where the slum is located, to deal with the mudslides and flooding.
But the money will be of little help to people who have no choice but to live in such precarious sections of the city, said Rosana Fernandes, 43, whose sister, brother-in-law and two young nieces were buried under the mud.
Holding a faded photo of the smiling family, she didn't bother holding back the tears as she explained what it is that leads families to live atop a landfill formed by decades of accumulated garbage.
"Yes, it was a dump. But people are desperate to have a home anywhere," she said. "What else were they going to do? Where else were they supposed to go? This is our reality. They knew the risks, but when you have no money, you have no choice," she said.
Rio officials said they are going to step up forced evictions of slum residents living in at-risk areas. Mayor Eduardo Paes announced that 1,500 families are going to be removed from their homes in at least two Rio slums, and that more evictions are likely.
Officials from Rio state's Civil Defense department said that at least 14,000 people were forced from their homes by the mudslides and that potential slides threatened at least 10,000 other houses in the city.
On Thursday, scores of rescue workers poked at the massive mountain of earth that slid down the hills of the Morro Bumba slum toward a paved road in Niteroi, Rio's sister city of 500,000 people across the Guanabara Bay.
Mounds of soil and garbage rose 40 feet (12 meters) high. A dozen dump trucks were lined up to carry off the debris. Hundreds of onlookers watched as firefighters carried at least four coffins out of the crater created by the slide.
Homeless residents sought shelter in two Evangelical churches just down the road from the slum, where water, food and clothing were handed out. Small children played and slept on dozens of mattresses laid out on church floors.
Niteroi recovery operations were moving slowly: The wet, steep terrain posed a continued threat to anyone trapped in the wreckage and to emergency crews as well, said lead firefighter Alves Souza.
"The work is very intense, given the fact that the volume of material we have here is very large," Souza said.
While it rained only lightly Thursday, the forecast was for heavier rains later in the day and throughout the weekend.

David Mikael Taclino
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Emaciated children signal crisis in southern Sudan

Three-day-old Odong Obong lay in the hospital bed, his pencil-thin arms almost motionless and his shriveled, gaunt face resembling that of an elderly man.
Emaciated babies and young children throughout the ward bore the signs of hunger: exposed ribs and distended stomachs. Outside, old villagers reclined motionless in the shade, too frail to walk.
The U.N. calls this the "hungriest place on Earth" after years of drought and conflict, with aid agencies already feeding 80,000 people here. A doctor says the worst is yet to come.
Two years of failed rains and tribal clashes have laid the foundation for Africa's newest humanitarian crisis. The World Food Program quadrupled its assistance levels from January to March in the Akobo region of southeastern Sudan.
International aid agencies are bracing for the worst. Even if spring rains materialize this year, the harvest won't come in until fall.
"And if there is no rain, it will get worse," said Dr. Galiek Galou, one of three doctors at the hospital in this town on the border with Ethiopia.
"If you stay here for a week you'll have problems, even if you have money," he said. "There is nothing to buy."
Southern Sudan lies in a drought-prone belt of Africa, but the situation has been exacerbated by rising intertribal violence that claimed more than 2,000 lives in 2009. Because of the global financial meltdown, the government has fewer available resources.
The food crisis is also a legacy of a devastating north-south civil war of more than 21 years that left 2 million people dead and many more displaced. That conflict is separate from the war in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, which began in 2003 and has killed 300,000.
The aid groups Save the Children and Medair have canvassed the Akobo community for the past week, searching for the hungriest children. They found 253 who they classified as severely malnourished, meaning they will die without immediate intervention. The children are enrolled in a feeding program that relies primarily on fortified peanut butter.
Another 200 severely malnourished children are being fed in a separate program, said the U.N.'s Dr. Natalie Lewin.
At the hospital, one toddler who appears to be in the worst shape is 2-year-old Dhoah Thoan, whose skin hangs off his body in an alarming way. He has skinny arms and an oversize stomach but bright brown eyes. Two beds over is Nyagod Kuel, also 2. If he had not been brought in for treatment, he would have died, Galou said.
Nearby, Odong lies on colorful blankets under mosquito netting with his triplet brothers Opiew and Ochan. Their mother hovers at the side of the bed.
"The hunger situation is really bad," said Goi Juoyul Yol, 37, the town's top official, who graduated from the University of Kentucky. "You'll have a cup of grain for a family of five for two days."
A recent survey by Save the Children and Medair found that almost 46 percent of children in the region are malnourished. Lise Grande, the top U.N. official in southern Sudan, labeled the Akobo region as the "hungriest place on Earth." She noted that most humanitarian agencies regard a malnutrition rate of 15 percent to be an emergency threshold.
"This year 4.3 million people in southern Sudan will need some sort of food assistance," Grande said. "That could be as much as nearly half of the population in the south. When you have that many people who need food, you can see the dimensions of the crisis."
Sitting outside one of the hundreds of grass huts that have popped up in recent months as people flee violence and search for food was Kalang Nyot, 32. The mother of five said she walks for 12 hours three times a week to gather a small orange fruit called lalif. A grandmother stays behind and watches the children, but because she is so weak she can barely move.
Mohamed Nuh, an emergency program manager with Save the Children, said aid agencies will need to shift food out of Akobo because families are moving into the town center and away from farmland where they could plant crops, a situation that could begin a cycle of unending need.
"While they're here they just sleep and wait for the food distribution," he said. "The current strategy is not working."
But Akobo's town center showed one of the dangers of moving food away from a central area of accountability.
Among the wooden shops, one salesman had 60 bags of sorghum — a type of grain — for sale donated by the United States. The American flag and "USAID" are stamped on the bags, along with the words "Not to be sold or exchanged." But Deng Bichiaki was indeed selling them — food aid that was likely stolen for the black market.
"Our governments do not intend this to be sold. I must say I've never seen so many bags on one occasion," said Morten Petersen, a technical assistant to the European Commission who was visiting Akobo to see how much aid was needed.
Despite the apparent fraud, Petersen said he would report back that Akobo was suffering "a very severe problem that we will have to confront in coming weeks."
The town is part of an isolated region suffering from tribal warfare that has displaced almost 400,000 people.
Sudan's elections start April 13 and will include local as well as parliamentary and presidential polls in a three-day balloting. The vote is a crucial step in Sudan's 2005 north-south peace deal that ended the civil war and paves the way for a referendum that will allow southerners to decide whether to secede from the Muslim-dominated north.

David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
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