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Egypt’s prosecutor general had issued a summons for the 82-year-old president Monday to be interrogated over corruption allegations from his three decade reign and violence against protesters during the 18-day uprising that forced him out of office. Dozens of demonstrators picketed the hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, denouncing the president and scuffling with supporters of Mubarak amid a massive security presence. Two Egyptian security officials said Mubarak arrived under heavy police protection to the main hospital. Two doctors in the hospital said he stepped out of his armored Mercedes, surrounded by security, and was admitted to the presidential suite in the pyramid-shaped building. Mubarak was forced to step down and hand over to the military on Feb. 11 after unprecedented mass protests demanded his departure. Mubarak has been suffering for a number of ailments and underwent gallbladder surgery in Germany in March last year. He has kept a low profile since he was ousted, living on his compound in Sharm el-Sheikh. He was banned from traveling and his assets have been frozen. Many of his senior aides have already either been questioned or detained pending investigations. On Sunday, Mubarak defended himself in a prerecorded message saying he had not abused his authority, and investigators were welcome to check over his assets. It was his first address to the people in the two months since he stepped down. Shortly after, the prosecutor general issued a summons for Mubarak to appear for questioning. Mubarak’s two sons are also due to appear before investigators and reportedly accompanied their father to the hospital. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in Middle East, News Desk | No Comments » A top NATO general retorted that the alliance was “doing a great job.” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said NATO’s actions were “not enough” to ease the pressure on Libya’s rebel-held city of Misrata, which has been subjected to weeks of bombardment by forces loyal to Qaddafi. Juppe said NATO must do more to take out the heavy weaponry that Qaddafi’s forces are using to target civilians. Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague agreed that the allies must “intensify” their efforts, but in a more diplomatic tone. French Defense Minister Gerard Longuet deplored that France and Britain carried “the brunt of the burden.” He complained that the reduced U.S. role—American forces are now in support, not combat roles in the airstrike campaign—has made it impossible “to loosen the noose around Misrata.” Longuet also criticized Germany, which is not taking part in the military operation, and said Berlin’s commitment to back the humanitarian effort for Libyans was “a second chance” at best. NATO Brig. Gen. Mark Van Uhm sharply rejected French criticism of the operation in Libya, saying the North Atlantic military alliance is performing well and protecting civilians effectively. He said the alliance was successfully enforcing an arms embargo against Libya, patrolling a no-fly zone and protecting civilians there. When it came to providing humanitarian aid to beleaguered Misrata, Britain, France, and Italy all said some aid was getting through without special military protection. The 27-nation European Union said over the weekend it was ready to launch a humanitarian mission in Misrata soon, with possible military support, if it received a request from the UN. Meanwhile, Libya’s former foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, was traveling to Doha, Qatar, to share his insight on the workings of Qaddafi’s inner circle, British offcials said. British officials said they hope Koussa’s trip to Doha, where Arab and Western leaders are meeting to chart the way forward in Libya, will give participants a better idea of how to force Qaddafi out of office. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in News Desk, North Africa | 3 Comments » More than 1 million civilians fled their homes and untold numbers were killed in the more than four-month power struggle between the two rivals. The standoff threatened to re-ignite a civil war in the world’s largest cocoa producer, once divided in two nearly a decade ago. Armed fighters still prowled the streets of Abidjan even after their leader Laurent Gbagbo was arrested by forces backing Ouattara. Residents said that most of the combat had ceased, though sporadic gunfire continued Tuesday. Gbagbo’s security forces have been accused of using mortars and machine guns to mow down opponents during the standoff. Gbagbo could be forced to answer for his soldiers’ crimes, but an international trial threatens to stoke the divisions that Ouattara will now have to heal as president. Ouattara cut short speculation that Gbagbo would be delivered to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, calling for an Ivorian investigation into the former president, his wife, and their entourage. Ouattara also called on his supporters to refrain from retaliatory violence and said he intended to establish a truth and reconciliation commission. France said Tuesday it would scale back its military force in Ivory Coast and give $580 million in aid to restore public services and boost the country’s economy. In Geneva, UN human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said the office had learned that an unspecified number of Gbagbo’s forces had been arrested. Gbagbo, who ruled the former French colony for a decade, was pulled from his burning residence by Ouattara’s troops Monday following fighting earlier in the day. The pro-Ouattara forces had received support by French tanks and helicopters. Gbagbo’s dramatic arrest came after days of heavy fighting in which French and UN helicopters fired rockets at arms depots around the city and targets within the presidential compound. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in Africa, News Desk | No Comments » Such moves permitted Obama to save Pell grants for low-income college students, health research, and “Race to the Top” aid for public schools, among others. The full details of Friday’s agreement were released early Tuesday morning. They include a lot of one-time savings and cuts that officially “score” as cuts to pay for spending elsewhere, but often have little to no actual impact on the deficit. Conservatives like Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., believe the cuts “barely make a dent” in the country’s budget woes. He was also upset that most of the conservative policies added by Republicans were dropped from the legislation in the course of the talks. The White House rejected GOP attempts to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to issue global warming rules and other reversals of environmental regulations. Obama also forced Republicans to drop an effort to cut off Planned Parenthood from federal funding, as well as GOP moves to stop implementation of Obama’s overhauls of healthcare and Wall Street regulation. The cuts that actually will make it into law are far tamer, including cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can’t be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused spending authority from a program providing healthcare to children of lower-income families. Still, Obama and his Democratic allies accepted $600 million in cuts to a community health centers programs, $414 million in cuts to grants for state and local police departments, and a $1.6 billion reduction in the EPA budget. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said he will vote against the deal, along with Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind. and Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in Economy, News Desk | 6 Comments » Japanese nuclear regulators said they raised the rating from 5 to 7—the highest level on an international scale of nuclear accidents overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency—after new assessments of radiation leaks from the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant since it was disabled by the March 11 tsunami. The new ranking signifies a “major accident” that includes widespread effects on the environment and health, according to the Vienna-based IAEA. But Japanese officials played down any health effects and stressed that the harm caused by Chernobyl still far outweighs that caused by the Fukushima plant. The revision came a day after the government added five communities to a list of places people should leave to avoid long-term radiation exposure. A 12-mile radius already had been cleared around the plant. Japanese officials said the leaks from the Fukushima plant so far amount to a tenth of the radiation emitted in the Chernobyl disaster, but said they eventually could exceed Chernobyl’s emissions if the crisis continues. Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear physicist at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, said the revision was not a cause for worry, that it had to do with the overall release of radiation and was not directly linked to health dangers. He said most of the radiation was released early in the crisis and that the reactors still have mostly intact containment vessels surrounding their nuclear cores. Continued aftershocks following the 9.0-magnitude quake on March 11 are impeding work on stabilizing the Fukushima plant—the latest a 6.3-magnitude one Tuesday that prompted plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, to temporarily pull back workers. Officials from Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said that the cumulative amount of radioactive particles released into the atmosphere since the incident had reached levels that apply to a Level 7 incident. Other factors included damage to the plant’s buildings and accumulated radiation levels for its workers. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in Japan, News Desk | No Comments » Good morning! Random question of the day: With what products do you think generic brand is just as good as name brand? This is our daily (except for Sundays) open thread, where you can 1) answer my question, 2) talk about something else, or 3) say something truly encouraging to the commenter before you. Posted in News Desk, Watercooler Chatter | 32 Comments » President Alexander Lukashenko did not say what caused the explosion at the Oktyabrskaya subway station, but suggested outside forces could be behind it. The authoritarian leader, under strong pressure from the West over his suppression of the opposition, has frequently alleged outside forces seek to destabilize his regime. An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw heavily wounded people being carried out of the station, including one person with missing legs. Several witnesses said that the explosion hit just as passengers were stepping off a train about 6 p.m. The Oktyabrskaya station, where Minsk’s two subway lines intersect, was crowded with passengers at the end of the work day. The station is within 100 yards of the presidential administration building and the Palace of the Republic, a concert hall often used for government ceremonies. About five hours after the blast, Health Minister Vasily Zharko said 11 people were killed and 126 people were wounded, 22 of them severely. One witness, Alexei Kiklevich, said at least part of the station’s ceiling collapsed after the explosion. Political tensions have been rising in Belarus since December, when a massive demonstration against a disputed presidential election sparked a harsh crackdown by police in which more than 700 people were arrested, including seven presidential candidates. Lukashenko, who was declared the overwhelming winner of the disputed Dec. 19 election, has run Belarus, a former Soviet republic, with an iron fist since 1994. He exercises overwhelming control over the politics, industry and media in this nation of 10 million, which borders Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltic nations. Belarus’ beleaguered opposition has been largely peaceful for years, with only a few clashes with police. In July 2008, a bomb blast at a concert attended by Lukashenko injured about 50 people in Minsk. No arrests in the case were reported. But Lukashenko said Monday that the subway blast could have been connected to that bombing. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in Europe, News Desk | No Comments » Even as the African Union delegation arrived in the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi, crowds of protesters gathered to demonstrate their opposition to any dealmaking while Qaddafi remains in power. They said they had little faith in the visiting African Union mediators, most of them allies of Qaddafi. Three of the five African leaders who came preaching democracy for Libya seized power in coups. Abdul-Jalil, a former justice minister who split with Qaddafi and leads the Benghazi-based Transitional National Council, said the proposal “did not respond to the aspirations of the Libyan people” and only involved political reforms. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini strongly backed the rebel demand for Qaddafi’s immediate departure and said he doubted anyway that the Libyan leader would have abided by the cease-fire after he broke more than one pledge before to halt violence. The AU sought a suspension of three weeks of international airstrikes on Qaddafi’s forces, that have prevented them from overpowering the vastly weaker rebel forces. The secretary general of NATO, which took over control of the international air operation over Libya from the United States, welcomed any efforts to resolve the conflict. He said it had become clear it would not be decided on the battlefield. Qaddafi’s forces, meanwhile, battered the rebel-held city of Misrata and its Mediterranean port with artillery fire, despite the African Union delegation’s assurance that Qaddafi had accepted their cease-fire plan at a meeting late Sunday in Tripoli. A doctor who lives in the city said the shelling began overnight and continued intermittently throughout the day Monday. An Algerian member of the AU delegation had said there was discussion in the meeting with Qaddafi of the demands for his exit, but he refused to divulge details. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in News Desk, North Africa | No Comments » Democrats closed the program to new students in 2009, phasing it out, but when Republicans took the majority in the House of Representatives this year, Boehner pressed hard to reopen the program. He introduced the SOAR (Scholarships for Opportunity and Results) Act that reopened the program for another five years, allowing new students in and upping the scholarships from $7,000 per child to up to $8,000 to $12,000 per child, depending on grade level. The act includes provisions for the 216 students who had been accepted into the program in 2009 but were barred after Democrats closed the program. The voucher bill is the only measure Boehner has introduced as speaker. . . . MORE >> Posted in Education, News Desk | 8 Comments » Spending for the the first 10 days of intervention, March 19 through Mark 28, was $550 million, officials said late last month. About 60 percent was for munitions. The remaining costs were for the “higher operating tempo” of U.S. forces and of getting them there. At the time of the handoff to NATO, officials had estimated they’d see added costs of about $40 million over the following three weeks as U.S. forces reduced their mission to providing refueling, intelligence, and other support, according to Defense Department spokeswoman Navy Cmdr. Kathleen Kesler. But rather than $40 million over three weeks, the cost was $58 million over seven days, according to the new figures. The $608 million estimate is the spending through April 4, or for 17 days of the mission, the most recent figure available. Officials also revised an earlier statement on what the figure includes. They said previously it was only the added expense of the operation and did not count other costs, such as paychecks for U.S. sailors, airmen and other forces because they would have been deployed somewhere in the world anyway. But on Monday officials said the number does include pay and other normal deployment costs. Officials didn’t explain what caused the higher-than-expected rate of spending. It’s possible at least part is due to the fact that the full transition to NATO went a little slower than expected. There was no breakdown available Monday for how the $58 million was spent from March 29 through April 4. The Associated Press contributed to this report.Mubarak hospitalized in Red Sea resort
France and Britain: NATO action ‘not enough’ in Libya
Ivory Coast leader: All fighters must disarm
Budget plan details show few real cuts
Japan upgrades nuclear crisis severity to match Chernobyl
Whirled Views 04.12
Blast in Belarus subway kills 11 people
Libyan rebels reject AU cease-fire proposal
Budget deal revives D.C. school voucher program
Pentagon puts Libya costs at $608 million
The mass rally in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square was the biggest by protesters in weeks. A smaller group of more than 1,000 marched on the Israeli Embassy, angered by strikes on the Gaza Strip earlier in the day, and pushed for Egypt’s new rulers to close the mission and stop Egypt’s natural gas exports to Israel. The generals have promised Egyptians greater freedom of expression but at the same time have sought to reassure Israel and its ally the United States that the fall of Mubarak would not mean an anti-Israeli turn in Egypt’s foreign policy. In the past, Mubarak’s security forces strictly prevented any protests from getting anywhere close to the embassy. Soldiers Friday allowed the demonstration to get nearer than others in the past. At the same time, officers at the checkpoint tried to convince the crowd to disperse. Some of the protesters were members of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, who earlier in the day had been leading anti-Israel chants among the crowds in Tahrir and burned an Israeli flag there. In Tahrir Square, chants and banners Friday directly criticized the military’s Supreme Council, headed by Defense Minister Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, a former Mubarak loyalist. Trying to assuage the public anger, the military appeared to be trying to accelerate prosecutions. Authorities announced Thursday that Mubarak’s former chief of staff, Zakariya Azmi, had been detained for questioning on corruption allegations, the highest-ranking member of his regime to be arrested so far. The army denies it is protecting the ousted president. But so far, there has been no move against Mubarak or his son Gamal, who was widely seen as his choice as successor. Since his ouster, Mubarak and his family have been under house arrest at a presidential palace in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, their assets frozen. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in Middle East, News Desk | 1 Comment » At least that is what Democrats want Americans to believe. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Friday morning that leaders of the two parties have agreed on a $38 billion spending cut for the ongoing fiscal year. But Democrats are balking at a Republican demand to defund abortion provider Planned Parenthood. . . . MORE >> Posted in Congress, News Desk | 41 Comments » British Rear Adm. Russell Harding, the deputy commander of the NATO operation, said in the past, only forces loyal to Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi had used heavy armored vehicles. Harding says the military situation between Libya’s eastern coastal towns of Brega and Ajdabiya remains fluid, with the two sides engaged in a series of advances and retreats, making it difficult for pilots to distinguish between them. NATO jets attacked a rebel convoy between these two towns Thursday, killing at least five fighters and destroying or damaging a number of armored vehicles. The strikes, including an attack earlier this week, provoked angry denunciations of NATO by the rebels. At the same time, NATO officials have expressed frustration with the Libyan insurgents, who now view the alliance, whose mandate is limited to protecting civilians in Libya, as their proxy air force. Harding said Friday that NATO jets had conducted 1,500 sorties in the eight days since the alliance assumed overall command from a U.S.-led force, targeting Qaddafi’s anti-aircraft missile defenses, T-72 tanks, and ammunition dumps. The attacks also targeted Qaddafi’s loyalist forces in the besieged city of Misrata, where rebels continue to hold out. Despite the attacks on anti-aircraft sites, Qaddafi’s forces still pose a danger for NATO warplanes. They retain radars and surface-to-air missiles, as well as automatic cannons and shoulder-launched missiles that can hit planes at altitudes up to 5,000 meters. Over the past week, Qaddafi’s forces had switched tactics by leaving their heavy armor behind and using only light trucks armed with heavy machine guns and fast-firing anti-aircraft cannons on the front lines between Brega and Ajdabiya. These have proven very effective in disrupting repeated rebel attempts to push west toward Tripoli, but Qaddafi’s forces have not been able to to drive the rebels back to Benghazi or establish a solid front line in that sector. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in News Desk, North Africa | 4 Comments » Gasoline was scarce again, and long lines formed at stations. Stores that had only recently restocked their shelves sold out of basics Friday and were forced to ration purchases again. Still, the latest quake did far less damage, generated no tsunami, and largely spared the region’s nuclear plants. Some slightly radioactive water spilled at one plant, but the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi complex reported no new problems. The latest tremor, the strongest since the day of the tsunami, cut power to more homes, though it was quickly restored to many. About 950,000 households were still without electricity Friday evening, said Souta Nozu, a spokesman for Tohoku Electric Power Co. Six conventional plants in the area were knocked out, though three have since come back online and the others should be up again within hours, Nozu said. But with power lines throughout the area damaged, it was not clear whether normal operations would be restored, he said. Several nuclear power plants briefly switched to diesel generators but were reconnected to the grid by Friday afternoon. One plant north of Sendai briefly lost the ability to cool its spent fuel pools, but quickly got it back. At a plant in Onagawa, some radioactive water splashed out of the pools but did not leave a containment building, Tohoku Electric said. Thursday’s quake prompted a tsunami warning of its own, but it was later canceled. A 79-year-old man died of shock and a woman in her 60s was killed when power was cut to her oxygen tank, national fire and disaster agency spokesman Junichi Sawada reported Friday. The third death was an 85-year-old man, according to a doctor at the Ishinomaki Red Cross Hospital. The epicenter of Thursday’s temblor was in about the same location as the original 9.0-magnitude tremor, off the eastern coast and about 40 miles from Sendai, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in Japan, News Desk | No Comments » Good morning! Random question of the day: What qualities do you think are essential to look for in a spouse? This is our daily (except for Sundays) open thread, where you can 1) answer my question, 2) talk about something else, or 3) say something truly encouraging to the commenter before you. Posted in News Desk, Watercooler Chatter | 125 Comments » One certainty from the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race: Voters showed up. Almost 1.5 million Wisconsinites voted in the election, about a 70 percent increase from the historical norm. Voters turned out in large numbers for the usually ignored Wisconsin Supreme Court race on April 5 because it had become a proxy battle over the legislation that curtailed the power of Wisconsin’s public sector unions. Before the legislation passed, conservative Supreme Court Justice David Prosser expected an easy reelection over Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg, the liberal-backed candidate. But now Kloppenburg holds a paper-thin advantage over Prosser for the ten-year term, though the result remains too close to call. She claimed victory, but her unofficial 204 vote advantage out of almost 1.5 million votes cast will likely trigger a recount, something . . . MORE > > Posted in National, News Desk | 78 Comments » The Labor Department said Thursday the number of people seeking benefits dropped 10,000 to 382,000 in the week ending April 2. That’s the third drop in four weeks. The four-week average of applications, a less volatile measure, declined to 389,500. The average is just 1,000 above a two-year low that was reached three weeks ago. Applications near 375,000 are consistent with a sustained increase in hiring. Applications, which reflect the pace of layoffs, peaked during the recession at 659,000. The number of people seeking benefits has fallen for several months. The four-week average has dropped by 28,750, or nearly 7 percent, in the past eight weeks. At the same time, companies are adding more employees. Employers added a net total of 216,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said last week, and the unemployment rate fell from 8.9 percent to 8.8 percent. Private employers added more than 200,000 jobs in both February and March, the biggest two-month gain since 2006. Still, the number of applications could move higher in the coming weeks. Toyota Motor Corp. has said that it may temporarily shut down its North American plants later this month. That’s because of a shortage of parts from Japan, where the earthquake and tsunami have disrupted production. Other auto companies may also suspend production, which could cause temporary layoffs and a spike in applications for unemployment benefits. The number of people collecting benefits also dropped. The total dipped slightly to 3.7 million during the week ending March 19, one week behind the applications data. That’s the lowest total since October 2008. But that doesn’t include millions of people receiving aid under the emergency unemployment benefit programs put in place during the recession. Overall, 8.5 million people received unemployment benefits in the week ending March 19, the latest data available. That’s down sharply from the previous week, when nearly 8.8 million people collected benefits. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in Economy, News Desk | 4 Comments » Announcers on Japan’s public broadcaster NHK told residents along the northeastern shore to run to move ground and away from the shore. An hour and a half after the quake, Japan’s meteorological agency lifted the tsunami warning. Officials at the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant said there was no immediate sign of new problems caused by the aftershock. Japan’s nuclear safety agency says workers there have retreated to a quake-resistant shelter in the complex. No one there was injured. Officials say Thursday’s aftershock hit 30 miles under the water and off the coast of Miyagi prefecture. Buildings as far away as Tokyo shook for about a minute. OUR EARLIER REPORT: Japanese police raced Thursday to find thousands of missing bodies before they completely decompose along a stretch of tsunami-pummeled coast that has been largely off-limits because of a radiation-leaking nuclear plant. Nearly a month after a 9.0-magnitude earthquake generated the tsunami along Japan’s northeastern coast, with 12,600 confirmed dead and more than 15,000 people are still missing. Many of those may have been washed out to sea and will never be found. In the days just after the March 11 disaster, searchers gingerly picked through mountains of tangled debris, hoping to find survivors. Heavier machinery has since been called in, but unpredictable tides of radiation from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex have slowed progress and often forced authorities to abandon the search, especially within a 12-mile evacuation zone around the plant. Recent progress at the plant appears to have slowed the release of radiation into the ocean. Early Wednesday, technicians there plugged a crack that had been gushing contaminated water into the Pacific. Radiation levels in waters off the coast have fallen dramatically since then, though contaminated water continues to pool throughout the complex. A floating island storage facility to hold the radioactive water arrived at the port near Tokyo on Thursday and will soon head to Fukushima. Radiation in the air, soil, and water in Fukushima prefecture has also been declining since Saturday, and police spokesman Ryoichi Tsunoda said a small team resumed the search there a day later. But the operation dramatically increased on Thursday, when 330 police and 650 soldiers fanned out, wearing protective gear from head to toe. They are concentrating on areas between six and 12 miles from the plant. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the government is studying ways to allow residents in the evacuation zones to return briefly to check on their homes and retrieve any possession that may be left, but they would have to be escorted and wear protective gear. The government has said it may expand the evacuation zone due to concerns about longer-term radiation exposure as the crisis wears on. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in Japan, News Desk | No Comments » Forces allied with Ivory Coast’s internationally recognized president Alassane Ouattara have stormed the gates of Laurent Gbagbo’s home but are fearful of killing the entrenched leader and stoking the rage of his supporters. Some 46 percent of Ivorians voted for Gbagbo in the November election that unleashed political chaos. Wednesday began with the boldest attempt yet to penetrate Gbagbo’s inner sanctum as fighters loyal to Ouattara made it as far as the gate of the presidential mansion he has occupied for the last decade. They attacked it with a barrage of fire, and residents reported hearing concussive blasts. They breached the property’s perimeter only to be forced to retreat in the face of the heavy artillery unleashed by the ruler’s inner circle of guards. Amid the fighting late Wednesday, French troops rescued the Japanese ambassador and seven others after fighters attacked them. In a video provided by the French military, the forces are seen rappelling from a helicopter with night vision goggles. Ouattara has pleaded with the international community for months to intervene and remove Gbagbo by force, arguing he wouldn’t leave any other way. Despite losing the election, Gbagbo still controls the Ivorian army and has repeatedly used its arsenal of heavy artillery to attack areas of Abidjan where people voted for his opponent. Security forces are accused of opening fire with a mounted machine gun on a group of unarmed women and lobbing mortars into a market. Finally on Monday, United Nations attack helicopters acting on a U.N. Security Council resolution bombarded six arms depots in Abidjan—including a cache inside the presidential compound. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in Africa, News Desk | No Comments » In a sign of the depth of the Obama administration’s concern about the political earthquake that has shaken the region, this was Gates’ third trip to the area in the past month. He has echoed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cautioning of authoritarian Arab governments on the risks of moving too slowly in response to peaceful protests for political freedom. Saudi Arabia views the threat of a nuclear strike from Iran as a far larger issue than the drive for political freedoms in Egypt and elsewhere. Although Gates said he and Saudi King Abdullah did not discuss the decision to send Saudi troops into Bahrain last month, the contest for influence in that majority-Shiite country was an important subtext to Gates’ visit. The United States is selling Saudi Arabia military hardware to upgrade the kingdom’s defenses against Iranian missiles. The unrest in Bahrain has played out against the region’s deep rivalries between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Protesters from Bahrain’s Shiite majority have demanded that the kingdom’s Sunni minority rulers grant them equal rights and a political voice. Saudi Arabia, a largely Sunni nation, has rushed to the aid of Bahrain, while other Gulf countries have accused predominantly Shiite Iran of meddling in Bahrain’s affairs by trying to stir Shiite unrest there. U.S. relations with the Saudi ruling family have been strained for months, dating to the uprising in Egypt and President Barack Obama’s call for longtime U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak to give up his presidency. Saudi leaders saw this as the United States abandoning a reliable friend with close military and diplomatic ties stretching over decades—not unlike the U.S.-Saudi alliance, which has the added dimension of American dependence on Saudi oil. Gates has acknowledged tensions in the relationship with the Saudis but insists it remains a strong partnership. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Posted in Middle East, News Desk | 7 Comments »In new protests, Egyptians challenge army rulers
Blame game on budget
NATO: No apology for hitting rebels
A half-million homes lack power after new earthquake in Japan
Whirled Views 04.08
Dead even
Fewer people sought unemployment aid last week
7.1 earthquake rattles tsunami-ravaged Japan
France rescues Japanese ambassador in Ivory Coast
Gates tries to soothe Saudis rattled by unrest
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