GOP's Huntsman for China Envoy Post Tap by Obama

President Obama today chose Utah Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. (R) as his choice for ambassador to China, tapping a moderate Republican governor to be his envoy to the world's largest country.

In a brief ceremony in the White House Diplomatic Room, Obama introduced Huntsman saying the importance of the posting reflects the fact that "China will have a crucial role in confronting all the major challenges" of the world,. "I believe there is much to be gained from a closer working relationship with China."

The announcement was made with Huntsman's large family, including wife Mary Kaye and parents, gathered in the room. He has seven children, including two adopted from China and India.

"What a beautiful family," Obama said as he walked in and saw Huntsman's family.

Huntsman, who was national co-chair of John McCain's presidential campaign, said he "never expected" to be receiving an appointment from the Democratic victor in the race. But when the president asks for service, he said, "that to me is the end of the conversation."

Huntsman, who speaks fluent Chinese, said first in Mandarin, then English, a Chinese saying: "Together we work. Together we progress."

Huntsman, 48, was mentioned this spring as a potential Republican contender for the White House in 2012, and Obama's former campaign manager recently suggested that he is a rising force in the GOP.

He was elected in November to a second term as Utah's governor, drawing 70 percent of the vote. He served in the George W. Bush administration as deputy U.S. trade representative from 2001 to 2004 and, for President George H.W. Bush, was ambassador to Singapore. He is an expert on China, and he speaks Mandarin Chinese fluently.

White House officials described Huntsman as having respect for China's tradition and called him an "unstinting advoate" for America's interestin Asia. They praised his record of service and said he will be able to be frank with the Chinese when the two countries disagree.

The news almost certainly forecloses the possibility that Huntsman will be a candidate for national office in 2012.

Huntsman, who has deep experience in the far east, was clearly positioning himself for a national bid -- casting himself as a common sense conservative on issues like the environment and health care.

He had also begun to build a national consulting team that included John Weaver, a former senior strategist to Arizona Sen. John McCain.

As governor, Huntsman has built an impressive record of economic recovery and growth. He has pushed for an overhaul of the state's health-care system, and he has lobbied for his party to do more on the environment. He has also promoted in Utah, a state where Republicans dominate, the power of bipartisanship.

"Most Americans are fed up with the idea that partisanship has stood in the way of progress," Huntsman said in an interview late last year.

David Plouffe, who managed Obama's presidential campaign, told U.S. News & World Report this month that Huntsman was "the one person in that party who might be a potential presidential candidate."

In an interview with washingtonpost.com's "Fix" last December, Huntsman urged bipartisan cooperation -- an early indicator, perhaps, of his willingness to sacrifice his governorship for a spot in a Democratic Administration.

"People work with people," said Huntsman. "Most Americans are fed up with the idea that partisanship has stood in the way of progress."

washingtonpost.com

Most Complex Hubble Repair Job Starts

Astronauts aim to fix camera in orbit for the first time ever

NASA TV

Astronaut Drew Feustel works in the shuttle Atlantis' payload bay at the start of Saturday's spacewalk to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.

msnbc.com staff and news service reports

updated 10:15 a.m. ET May 16, 2009

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Astronauts began what could be the most complex spacewalk of their mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope on Saturday, with an agenda that includes installing a new instrument and fixing an old one.

The shuttle Atlantis' crew was given an extra hour to sleep because the previous day's spacewalks were so long and difficult.

But scientists have said Saturday's work could be some of the most intricate of the mission. For the first time ever, spacewalkers John Grunsfeld and Drew Feustel will be attempting to fix a scientific instrument while in orbit. Before, Hubble repair crews have just swapped one instrument for another.

The effort to revive the Advanced Camera for Surveys, which was crippled by a short circuit two years ago, involves new tools and dozens of pieces that could fly around and do damage to Hubble.

Grunsfeld and Feustel are also tasked with putting in the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, an instrument that is designed to chart the web of material that serves as the largest-scale structure of the universe.

Saturday's outing was the third in a series of five spacewalks aimed at restoring and upgrading the 19-year-old Hubble's capabilities for a final time. On Thursday, Grunsfeld and Feustel installed a powerful new camera and a computer data unit, after struggling with a stubborn bolt. On Friday, a different team of spacewalkers put in new batteries and four brand-new gyroscopes. One additional set of gyros wouldn't fit in its mounting bracket, however, and the astronauts had to install a refurbished spare unit instead.

Because of the difficulties, Friday’s spacewalk was one of the longest in NASA history, lasting nearly eight hours. Mission Control told the weary crew members that they could sleep in and start Saturday’s spacewalk a little late.

Hubble chief scientist David Leckrone said he had a pet theory on “why things have been a little turbulent for the crew for two days in a row.”

“After seven years of not having people around, Hubble has lost its accommodation to people,” Leckrone said at a late Friday news conference. “It’s gone wild again. So we have to tame it. That will happen, I’m sure.”

Nearly perfect grade
Hubble’s deputy senior project scientist, Mal Niedner, said he was not concerned the astronauts had to resort to refurbished gyroscopes. They lack the latest anticorrosive wiring, but it’s “the difference between an A and an A-plus.” The unused new gyroscopes will be analyzed once they’re returned to Earth.

The difficulties that cropped up during the first two spacewalks were not the only things NASA had to worry about. Space is particularly littered in Hubble's 350-mile-high (560-kilometer-high) orbit, and Atlantis and its crew face a greater risk of being slammed by a piece of junk. As a precaution, NASA has a rescue shuttle on standby, ready to launch in just three days if necessary.

In all, five spacewalks are planned so that the observatory — beloved by astronomers and many others for its breathtaking views of the universe — will be at its apex while living out its remaining years. Scientists expect the upgraded Hubble to look back even further in time, to within 500 million to 600 million years of creation.

On Sunday, spacewalkers will take a crack at fixing the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. Monday's final spacewalk will focus on finishing the replacement of Hubble's batteries and its fine guidance sensors.

NASA hopes to get another five to 10 years of use out of Hubble once the Atlantis astronauts plug in all the new equipment. Atlantis' mission cost NASA more than $1 billion, one-tenth of what has been spent on Hubble over the decades.

This report includes material from The Associated Press and msnbc.com.

'Defeats Rebels' by Sri Lanka Army

The Sri Lankan president has declared a military victory over the Tamil Tigers after 26 years of bloody civil war.

The president did not say whether fighting was over

Speaking on a visit to Jordan, Mahinda Rajapakse said he would return home to a nation totally free from the "barbaric acts" of the rebel group.

However, fighting is still thought to continuing in a tiny area of the north-east where the Tigers' leadership is said to be cornered.

More than 70,000 people have died in the bitter war for a Tamil homeland.

See a map of the conflict region

The last weeks of the war have been marked by a growing chorus of international concern over the fate of Tamil civilians caught up in the intense fighting.

Sri Lanka says more than 18,000 civilians have left the conflict zone in the past 48 hours.

However, more remain inside a very small area where the Tamil Tigers may be preparing for a fight to the death.

The UN and Western governments have called on Sri Lanka to exercise restraint in its pursuit of a military victory over the Tigers.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has become the latest leader to speak out on the issue, declaring on Saturday that there would be "consequences" if Sri Lanka did not work to ensure an orderly end to the conflict.

'Humanitarian operation'

Speaking in Jordan, Mr Rajapakse said: "I am proud to announce... that my government, with the total commitment of our armed forces, has in an unprecedented humanitarian operation, finally defeated the LTTE militarily," the AFP news agency reported.

But the BBC's Charles Haviland, in the capital, Colombo, says a senior government spokesman in Jordan with the president could not confirm that fighting had ended in the north-east.

There are now concerns that the Tamil Tiger leadership is preparing for a last stand, our correspondent says.

The Tigers' leadership has said repeatedly that they will not surrender, and are thought to be keeping thousands of civilians as human shields.

There have also been reports that the Tigers are preparing a mass suicide in the face of a military defeat.

Earlier, Sri Lanka's defence minister told the BBC that the army was closing in on the remaining fighters for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam (the full name for the Tamil Tigers).

"We have restricted the LTTE to one square kilometre-like area, so we will mop up and seize the rest of the LTTE cadres and the leadership," Gotabhaya Rajapakse said.

He said the army did not know exactly where to find rebel leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran, but expressed confidence he would be tracked down.

"If he has not committed suicide then he should be there," Mr Rajapakse said.

Prabhakaran began the fight for a separate state for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils in the early 1970s, progressing into a violent civil war in 1983.

Tigers landlocked

The capture of the Tigers' last remaining stretch of coastline earlier on Saturday was hailed as a decisive breakthrough by Sri Lanka's army.

For the first time ever the rebels do not have sea access, and the army is "progressing" to clear remaining rebel-held land, Brig Udaya Nanayakkara said.

The Tigers once boasted a deadly and much-feared naval strike capability, often using boats to launch lethal attacks during the long years of their guerrilla campaign.

State TV showed images of explosions and plumes of smoke rising from close to the coastline, as well as images of celebrating troops in coastal areas.

The army said the scenes proved that the Tigers were blowing up their own caches of ammunition, but there is no independent confirmation of that claim.

news.bbc.co.uk

Myanmar - Aung San Suu Kyi's Democracy Face

(CNN) -- Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate now facing trial on charges of government subversion, has been the face of Myanmar's pro-democracy movement and the focus of a global campaign to free her.

Aung San Suu Kyi was first detained in 1989 after mass protests against the military government.

The 63-year-old has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years and is rarely allowed visitors, except her doctor. Her detention was scheduled to end May 27, until an American allegedly swam across a lake and sneaked into her house, violating the conditions of Suu Kyi's house arrest, according to the country's ruling military junta.

The American, John Yettaw, has been charged on two criminal counts: entering the country illegally and staying at a resident's home without government permission, according to a spokesman for Suu Kyi's political party.

Both charges carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

After Yettaw's visit, Suu Kyi was arrested and charged with government subversion. She faces up to five years in prison, if convicted.

Suu Kyi was born on July 19, 1945, the daughter of Aung San, who fought for Burma's independence from Britain and became the first prime minister of Burma, and of Khin Kyi, a diplomat and later ambassador to India.

Aung San was assassinated in 1947, and Suu Kyi grew up in Myanmar and India before moving to England during the 1960s to study at Oxford University. Myanmar, also known as Burma, has been under military rule since 1962.

Suu Kyi did not return to Myanmar until 1988, when her mother had a stroke. While there on September 24, 1988, Suu Kyi co-founded the National League for Democracy amid mass anti-government demonstrations. She was placed under house arrest the following July on charges of trying to divide the military, charges she denied.

Her party won over 80 percent of the legislative seats in 1990, but she was disqualified from serving because of her house arrest, and the military junta ignored the results.

It was during her house arrest that she won the Nobel Peace Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1991, and the Marisa Bellisario Prize, in recognition of women who promote peace and solidarity, in 1992.

During that time, she gained admiration for sometimes speaking over the wall of her garden to her supporters.

In an interview she gave to CNN in 1996, a year after she was released from house arrest, she said, "I always felt free even when I was under house arrest. There's no question of me not feeling free now. And the more restrictive the authorities are, the more clear it is that they know how much support we have."

She was again placed under house arrest on September 22, 2000. The following December, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in absentia.

After a brief release in May 2002, she was placed under house arrest again -- her most recent -- the next year, and authorities have extended it regularly. The country's law allows for a detention of five years without charges being filed, and that period ended at the end of May 2008, according to her lawyer Jared Genser. The government nevertheless extended the house arrest by a year.

In October 2007, clashes sparked by a huge fuel price increase imposed by the military junta erupted between pro-democracy demonstrators and government security forces, killing as many as 110 people, including 40 Buddhist monks.

The junta said then that it had detained more than 2,900 people.

The government has scheduled elections for next year that they say will lead the nation toward democracy. Human-rights organizations have said the vote will merely extend military rule in the nation.

Terror Suspects, Obama to Resurrect Military Tribunals

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In a move that could reignite tensions with liberals in his own party, President Obama is planning on Friday to resume the Bush administration's highly controversial military tribunal system -- which Obama suspended his first week in office -- for some Guantanamo detainees, according to three administration officials.

As a senator, President Obama spoke against the Bush tribunal policy.

Some of the high-profile terror suspects who are being charged in the tribunal process include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

The administration officials stressed that the updated system will include expanded due-process rights for the suspects, which administration officials note is consistent with what Obama pushed for as a senator in 2006 in order to improve upon the widely criticized approach created by the Bush administration.

But those enhancements are not likely to calm the concerns of liberal groups, led by the ACLU, which are already furious about Obama's shift this week to block the release of photos showing prisoners allegedly being abused by U.S. personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU, called the expected new approach on military tribunals "fatally flawed" despite the changes.

"The military commissions are built on unconstitutional premises and designed to ensure convictions, not provide fair trials," Romero said in a prepared statement released earlier this week after speculation about the restart of military tribunals surfaced. "Reducing some but not all of the flaws of the tribunals so that they are 'less offensive' is not acceptable; there is no such thing as 'due process light.' "

Two of the administration officials said the president will also leave open the option of starting civilian trials on U.S. soil for some of the detainees. But that, too, is a fiercely debated issue on Capitol Hill because of concerns by lawmakers in both parties about where the terror suspects will be kept during such trials.

Obama suspended the tribunals by signing an executive order on his third day in office, the same day he signed an order closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, and said his administration would conduct a 120-day review of the process. That review comes due next week.

"The message that we are sending around the world is that the United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism," Obama said on January 22. "And we are going to do so vigilantly, we are going to do so effectively, and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals."

Eager to head off criticism from liberals, administration officials note that during the 2006 Senate debate over the Military Commissions Act, Obama called the Bush administration's approach "sloppy" and pushed for another version of the legislation with enhanced rights for detainees.

"Instead, we have rushed through a bill that stands a good chance of being challenged once again in the Supreme Court," Obama said on the Senate floor on September, 28, 2006. "This is not how a serious administration would approach the problem of terrorism."

Swat Valley Curfew - Pakistan Lifts

Pakistan's army has temporarily lifted a curfew in large parts of the Swat valley to allow civilians to flee the intense fighting against the Taleban.

The curfew is being suspended for eight hours during the day, officials say.

The needs of civilians who have fled are overwhelming the authorities

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has vowed the army would successfully clear the valley of militants who have largely controlled the area for months.

The UN says more than 800,000 people are living in harsh conditions in camps for those displaced by the fighting.

Thousands arrived after the curfew was eased at the weekend.

A further influx is expected on Friday as it is lifted in parts of the Swat valley from 0600 to 1400 (0100-0900GMT).

See a map of the region

About 150,000 civilians are trapped in the main city, Mingora, with gas, electricity and food increasingly scarce, the BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad says.

Residents told the AFP news agency that Taleban holding the city had mined roads and dug trenches around it.

Mountain retreat

Up to 15,000 troops have now been deployed in the Swat valley and neighbouring areas to take on up to 5,000 militants.

Military operations including artillery shelling of suspected militant hideouts in Swat and the neighbouring district of Lower Dir killed about 124 militants and left nine soldiers dead in the 24 hours before the curfew was relaxed, the army said.

An influx of more internal refugees is expected with the curfew's suspension

But a Taleban spokesman, Muslim Khan, says the militants have killed at least 37 soldiers in fighting since Wednesday, with just three of their fighters killed.

The BBC's M Ilyas Khan, in Karachi, says independent confirmation of these claims is difficult as the phone system across Swat is down and tens of thousands of mobile phones have gone dead because of a lack of electricity.

As the operation stepped up on Thursday, Pakistan's army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani visited troops on the frontlines - reportedly for the first time since the bombardment began.

He is now due to brief MPs behind closed doors on the ongoing operation.

Analysts in Pakistan believe the Taleban have been losing public sympathy since a video emerged in March showing militants flog a girl in Swat.

Statements by Maulana Sufi Mohammad, who brokered the failed peace deal between the government and Swat militants, have also caused political alarm across the country.

Displaced 'overwhelming'

The fighting is Swat has escalated this after weeks of low-level conflict between troops and militants.

The army opened a new front earlier this week by airlifting troops to Peochar, which is about 65km (40 miles) north-west of Mingora.

The army says it has made advances in the Peochar area, but militants say they have been successfully resisting, inflicting heavy casualties on government troops.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres has warned that the plight of displaced people could spark further conflict.

"If you are not able to cope with the challenges posed by overwhelming displaced... this population will become a huge factor of de-stabilisation," Mr Guterres said after visiting a camp for people displaced by the fighting.

The UN has called for a massive and urgent injection of emergency humanitarian aid.

The Pakistani government began its offensive in the Swat valley in late April.

In February, it had signed a peace agreement with the Taleban there, allowing Sharia law to be enforced, in a move sharply criticised by Washington.

But the militants then expanded into neighbouring districts, prompting the government to abandon the peace deal.

news.bbc.co.uk

Obama Gives Welcomes to Iran's 'Humanitarian' Release of Journalist

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- President Obama was "relieved" to hear that Iran released imprisoned Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi on Monday, the White House said.

Roxana Saberi records video in Tehran, Iran, in a photo taken in September 2003.

"We know that this has been a trying time for her family and friends, and he looks forward to welcoming her home to the United States," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters at a daily news briefing.

Gibbs added, "We want to continue to stress that she was wrongly accused, but we welcome this humanitarian gesture."

Saberi, 32, was convicted last month on espionage charges in a one-day trial that was closed to the public. She was sentenced to eight years in prison. She denies the charges.

Earlier, Saberi's father, Reza Saberi, said her release was imminent, and that he had signed paperwork.

"We are very happy with the news," he told CNN. "We were hoping for it."

Iran's state-run news agency IRNA, citing a judiciary spokesman, reported that the verdict against Roxana Saberi was "reversed in the appeal court and she is to be freed."

Her sentence has been changed to a two-year jail term suspended for five years, IRNA reported.

State-run Press TV, citing "officials close to the case," reported that the suspended sentence "will be automatically abolished if Saberi shows no unlawful conduct in the next five years."

"So, practically, she is free as of today," Reza Saberi said.

The family will return to the United States "as soon as we can make arrangements for the trip," he said.

The change came a day after Iran's court of appeals held a five-hour session on the case.

The court agreed with Saberi's lawyers that Iran is not at war with the United States -- and that therefore Saberi cannot be punished for cooperating with agents of a nation at war with Iran, according to her attorney Abdolsamad Khorramshahi.

Saberi was detained in January after initially being accused of buying a bottle of wine and working as a journalist without proper accreditation, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, an advocacy group.

Saberi has lived in Iran since 2003 and reported for international news organizations, including National Public Radio, the BBC and ABC News until her press credentials were revoked in 2006, the Committee to Protect Journalists said. She continued to file short news items, according to NPR.

"Without press credentials and under the name of being a reporter, she was carrying out espionage activities," Hassan Haddad, a deputy public prosecutor, told the Iranian Student's News Agency.

Authorities said Saberi confessed. Her father has said he thinks she was coerced into making damaging statements.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter last month to Tehran's prosecutor calling for justice in the cases of Saberi and another detained journalist, Hossein Derakhshan, state-run news agency IRNA reported. Derakhshan is an Iranian-Canadian blogger who has been imprisoned in the country since November.

Reporters Without Borders, a group that fights for journalists' rights worldwide, says Derakhshan was sentenced to four years in prison for disseminating the views of one ayatollah and for "publicity against the government."

Saberi went on a two-week hunger strike to protest her detention, but ended it last Monday after her parents visited her in prison and pleaded with her to stop, Reza Saberi told CNN.

At one point during the hunger strike, she was hospitalized and fed intravenously, her father said. "She was very desperate to get out. ... She was quite relieved to know that the whole world is supporting her."

Saberi's case has prompted denunciations from President Obama, as well as other U.S. and international officials.

The whole experience has been "very depressing" for her, and she has gone through a great deal of frustration, Saberi's father said Monday. "It will take some time before she can overcome it."

He added, "it's not the (Iranian) people -- they are very friendly. We don't understand why it happened."

Journalist advocacy groups welcomed Saberi's release.

"We are thrilled that Roxana Saberi has been released from prison and look forward to welcoming her home," said Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, in a written statement. "But this is also a moment to reflect on the difficult conditions that Iranian journalists endure every day. Several Iranian journalists remain jailed today. We urge they be given the same opportunity for judicial review that was afforded to Roxana Saberi."

"The appeal court's decision to free her can be used as a legal precedent for other journalists currently detained in Iran," said Reporters Without Borders in a statement. "The fact nonetheless remains that, despite her innocence, she is still regarded as guilty by the Iranian authorities. ... The sentence is still unjust, as is the ban on her working as a journalist in Iran."

Mainland Swine Flu Case, China Reports

(CNN) -- Mainland China reported its first case of swine flu -- a 30-year-old man "currently enrolled in a university in the United States," the country's ministry of health said.

A nurse wears a mask Monday at a hospital in the Chinese city of Chengdu.

The number of swine flu cases worldwide jumped over the weekend by more than 1,000, to 4,694 from 3,440 in 30 countries and territories, the World Health Organization said Monday, with 53 deaths from the sickness.

The Chinese patient, identified only by his surname Bao, flew from the United States to Japan on Thursday and from there to the Chinese city of Chengdu via Beijing, the ministry said on its Web site.

During the flight from the capital to Chengdu, he became feverish "accompanied with throat pain, coughing, stuffy nose and slight running nose," the ministry said.

He was hospitalized for "isolation and treatment," and his temperature returned to normal, the ministry said.

It confirmed Saturday that he had been suffering from the H1N1 virus, as the disease is officially known.

Most other passengers who were on Bao's flight from Beijing to Chengdu have been located -- in 21 different provinces -- and sent for medical observation, the ministry said.

China has asked that people contact the country's Centers for Disease Control if they flew with Bao either to Beijing or Chengdu, which is in Sichuan province.

China's first case of swine flu came last week in Hong Kong, a region that has a special legal status and that the WHO lists as a separate country in its H1N1 statistics.

The vast majority of deaths from swine flu have been in Mexico. To date 48 people have died there. Three have died in the United States, and one each in Canada and Costa Rica.

In the United States, the number of confirmed cases jumped to 2,532 from 1,639 on Saturday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday. Swine flu cases have been reported in 43 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Flu Exposes Flaws in Health Care System of Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Mexicans will do almost anything to avoid a public hospital emergency room, where ailing patients may languish for hours slumped on cracked linoleum floors that smell of sweat, sickness and pine-scented disinfectant.

AP – In this April 30, 2009, photo taken, an unidentified woman comforts her daughter at the naval hospital …

Many don't see doctors at all, heading instead to the clerk at the corner pharmacy for advice on coping with a cold or a flu.

So it's no surprise that when a dangerous new swine flu virus began to sweep across Mexico, many waited too long to seek medical help — more than a week on average, according to federal Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova.

These initial delays complicated treatment, possibly explaining why 48 of the world's 50 confirmed swine flu deaths occurred in Mexico.

It also made it more difficult for Mexico to recognize the outbreak for what it was. By the time Cordova announced a swine flu epidemic on April 23, the virus had already spread across the country and beyond.

Mexico's big cities have fancy private hospitals stocked with modern equipment and staffed with U.S. board-certified specialists. Americans increasingly come to Mexico for good care at low prices. The best of the public system is world-class too, with top doctors at elite centers for specialized diseases.

But Mexico's everyday public hospital system is in crisis.

Some patients suspected of having swine flu told The Associated Press that public hospitals turned them away or forced them to wait for hours for treatment even after the government declared a national emergency.

Those who sought help before the alert — often arriving with headaches, high fevers and difficulty breathing — encountered baffled doctors who had not been warned to watch for a new virus.

Mexicans navigate a patchwork of public and private hospital systems. There are hospitals for government employees and hospitals for workers enrolled in government health plans through private employers. Most patients have to go to a hospital tied to a specific agency.

"If someone is sick, he can't simply say, 'I'm going to the doctor' or 'I'm going to the hospital,' because it depends on whether he has Social Security or if he has to go to another institution," said Dr. Malaquias Lopez Cervantes, a leading epidemiologist at Mexico's National Autonomous University.

"And if he comes (to the wrong hospital), somebody is going to tell him that he doesn't have the right to be treated."

While access to health care is a right enshrined in the Mexican constitution, millions of Mexicans have no health insurance at all.

Mexico spends only 6.6 percent of its gross domestic product on health care — less than half the U.S. figure. No country in the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development puts a smaller share of public money into its health care system.

That means the hospitals serving most of Mexico's 44 million poor are often crowded, ill-equipped and staffed with harried, underpaid staff working for a dizzying array of bureaucracies.

It's so crowded, confusing and bureaucratic that the poor are more likely to head for a pharmacy, hoping to find a cheap remedy for "gripe" (pronounced GREE-pay) — a word that can cover anything from a mild cold to a deadly flu.

Most pharmacies dole out antibiotics and a host of other powerful drugs without a prescription. That encourages Mexicans to self-medicate, relying on a counter clerk's suggestion, dosing themselves with whatever worked the last time they had a fever and waiting a day or two to see what happens.

Some pharmacies even drum up business by tacking a doctor's office onto the side — offering basic checkups for as little as 25 pesos ($2) — still roughly half a day's pay for a minimum-wage worker.

In Mexico City's working-class Padierna neighborhood, Dr. Oscar Aguilera sees patients in a small office at the back of a discount pharmacy, with an open-air waiting room behind a row of graffiti-tagged taco stands.

Even in normal times, most of his patients come in with a cold or a flu. Most now show no signs of swine flu, he said, but "20 percent show some symptoms and we send them to the hospital."

Following the public alert on April 23, fear has driven patients to his office even at the slightest symptom.

Mexicans with flu symptoms might have sought better care far earlier if the public health care system had done the same kind of flu surveillance common in the U.S. and other developed nations.

Mexico keeps close watch on dangerous tropical diseases such as dengue, but epidemiologists pay less attention to flu, just one class of viruses contributing to Mexico's 23 million annual cases of respiratory illness.

Mexican doctors "really were not trained thinking of the existence of influenza" as a specific threat, Lopez Cervantes said.

In all of 2008, Mexico's official epidemiological bulletin reported only 151 confirmed cases of flu. By comparison, U.S. officials ran tests that confirmed nearly 40,000 flu cases last season. Mexico has about a third the population of the United States.

Barack, Miley move up; baby names Emma, Jacob rule

WASHINGTON – Barack and Miley move up, but the classics still rule. Emma is the top baby name for girls, Jacob for boys.

AP – FILE - In this April 23, 2009 file photo, U.S. singer and actress Miley Cyrus arrives for the British …

Emma's surge to the top in 2008 ended Emily's 12-year reign as the No. 1 baby name for girls, the Social Security Administration announced Friday.

Jacob held onto the boy's crown for the 10th straight year.

Barack may have been the man of the year in 2008 as Obama won the White House, but the president still trails the king. Barack moved up a record 10,126 places to No. 2,409. Elvis is still in the building, though he slipped from 673 to 713.

In the midst of last year's election, Isha Kallay of suburban Washington wanted to name her newborn son after the future president. But she feared that Barack would become too popular, especially if he won.

"That's why I named my baby Obama because I wanted my baby to have a special name that other people don't have," Kallay said from her home in Lanham, Md.

Baby naming experts said Americans are pulled by sometimes conflicting impulses when choosing names for their children. They gravitate toward the popular, wanting their child to fit in. But many also want their child's name to be unique, so they don't have to share it with four other kids in class at school.

Many turn to the Bible; others turn to TV.

Emma debuted in the top 10 in 2002, the same year that Jennifer Aniston's character on "Friends" gave the name to her TV show baby. In the latest lineup, Emma was followed by Isabella, Emily, Madison and Ava.

"They might want to emulate the stars, but if they do, the name can't be too far out," said Jennifer Moss, author of "The One-in-a-Million Baby Name Book" and founder of Babynames.com.

"You don't see many Apples," she said, referring to name actress Gwyneth Paltrow gave her daughter. There aren't many Gwyneths, either.

Miley, as in popular teen singer Miley Cyrus, moved up 152 spots to No. 127. But her stage name, Hannah — as in Hannah Montana — fell from No. 9 to No. 17.

Michelle continued a steady 20-year slide, falling from No. 94 to No. 103. But that could change now that Michelle Obama is first lady. The names of the Obama daughters, Sasha and Malia, were in the 300s.

The top five boys names remained unchanged from 2007. Jacob was followed by Michael, Ethan, Joshua and Daniel. Alexander joined the top 10 at No. 6 while Andrew dropped out.

The Social Security Administration started compiling name lists in 1997. The agency offers lists of baby names dating to 1880. The agency's Web site includes the top baby names by state.

New girl names in the national top 1,000 included Isla (623), Mareli (718), Milagros (731), Dayami (750) and Nylah (821).

Debuting among the boys were Aaden (343), Chace (655), Marley (764), Kash (779) and Kymani (836). Beckham debuted at 893, perhaps a nod to the British soccer star, David Beckham, who now plays for the Los Angeles Galaxy.

___

Associated Press News Researcher David Goodfriend contributed to this report.

Obama: Send Me Credit Card Legislation This Month

WASHINGTON – Send me a bill that stops credit card companies from taking advantage of consumers, and do it by month's end, President Barack Obama is demanding of Congress.

AFP/Getty Images/File – A woman holds her credit cards. President Barack Obama plans to back Democratic lawmakers in "pusing …

But there's no guarantee lawmakers will deliver by Memorial Day, and the banking industry is fighting back.

"Americans know that they have a responsibility to live within their means and pay what they owe," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday. "But they also have a right to not get ripped off by the sudden rate hikes, unfair penalties and hidden fees that have become all too common."

Legislation known as the Credit Card Holders' Bill of Rights has passed the House and awaits action in the Senate, possibly in the coming week.

"You shouldnt have to fear that any new credit card is going to come with strings attached, nor should you need a magnifying glass and a reference book to read a credit card application. And the abuses in our credit card industry have only multiplied in the midst of this recession, when Americans can least afford to bear an extra burden," the president said.

The House measure would prohibit double-cycle billing and retroactive rate increases, and prevent companies from giving credit cards to anyone under 18.

Obama wants to sign the legislation by Memorial Day. "There is no time for delay. We need a durable and successful flow of credit in our economy, but we can't tolerate profits that depend upon misleading working families. Those days are over," he said.

Railing against what he said was "abuse that goes unpunished," the president stressed the need "to strengthen monitoring, enforcement and penalties for credit card companies that take advantage of ordinary Americans."

Credit-card executives say the new restrictions could backfire on consumers, making it harder for banks to offer credit or put credit out of reach for many borrowers. They also contend that the new rules ordered by the Federal Reserve beginning next year address many of the consumer-protection concerns expressed by the president and members of Congress.

The bill's boosters are tapping into public anger over corporate excesses and the conduct of companies receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money.

Obama spoke to the public's frustration with credit cards."

"Instead of fine print that hides the truth, we need credit card forms and statements that have plain language in plain sight, and we need to give people the tools they need to find a credit card that meets their needs," he said.

Morning Fog Brings relief for California. Fire Crews

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – A cool sea breeze and thick morning fog provided some relief Saturday for crews battling the wildfire that has destroyed scores of homes along the California coast and forced thousands to evacuate.

AP – A DC-10 aerial tanker makes a retardant drop on an unburned area as efforts to fight the Jesusita fire …

There was still a threat that dry inland wind could return to stoke the flames again.

The fog rolled in from the ocean early Saturday and blanketed the lower elevation areas of the fire.

"It wasn't expected," said Sarah Gibson, Santa Barbara county public information officer. "It was a nice, thick, wet flow."

However, the fog was expected to burn off by midmorning, and the National Weather Service issued a wind advisory warning that wind could gust to 20 to 25 mph in the Santa Ynez mountain range.

Humidity is expected to remain low in the higher slopes although not as low as in previous days.

"It's better than before but it's still of concern," Gibson said.

More than 30,000 people have left the area and authorities urged 23,000 others to be ready to leave at a moment's notice.

The blaze was only 10 percent contained as of Friday night, after charring more than 13 square miles and destroying about 80 homes as it menaced this celebrity enclave and other coastal towns.

The blaze has been fanned by the area's "Sundowners," fierce local wind that sweeps down the mountain slopes from north to south and out to sea.

"When the air is coming off of the ocean the humidity is fairly high and it pushes the fire back away from the community," Santa Barbara County Fire Chief Tom Franklin said. "But the (sundowner) prediction is still there. The winds could surface, change back around and blow the fire back downhill."

The weather service said the sharp north-to-south pressure gradient creating the wind was expected to weaken but remain strong enough to produce gusts through Saturday, and possibly until Sunday morning.

The fire was raging along a five-mile-long front above normally serene coastal communities.

"There will be a point in the incident when I will have cautious optimism but I'm not there yet," Joe Waterman, the overall fire commander from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said Friday.

About 80 homes have been destroyed in neighborhoods on ridges and in canyons that rise up the foothills above the north edge of Santa Barbara.

The city and adjacent communities are pinched between the coast on the south and the rugged mountains on the north, putting them in the path of the sundowner wind.

The Santa Barbara area has long been a favorite of celebrities. Oprah Winfrey has an estate in Montecito, where Charlie Chaplin's old seaside escape, the Montecito Inn, has stood since 1928. A ranch in the mountains that Ronald and Nancy Reagan bought became his Western retreat during his presidency.

Some 3,500 firefighters were on the scene along with 428 engines, 14 air tankers and 15 helicopters. A DC-10 jumbo jet tanker capable of dumping huge loads of retardant began making runs on the fire Friday afternoon.

Officials said 11 firefighters had been injured to date, including three who were burned in a firestorm Wednesday. They were reported in good condition at a Los Angeles burn center.

The cause of the blaze, which broke out Tuesday, remained under investigation.

Desperation in Pakistani Hospitals, Refugee Camps

MINGORA, Pakistan – Civilians cowered in hospital beds on Saturday and refugees looted U.N. supplies — all of them desperate for relief from the fighting that has engulfed a northwestern valley as troops and warplanes try to drive out Taliban militants.

AP – Children line up to receive food in a refugee camp near Mardan, in northwest Pakistan, Saturday, May …

The prime minister, directing millions of dollars to help the residents of a region where backing for the central government has sometimes been tenuous, described the offensive launched this week as a "war of the country's survival" but said the military alone could not be victorious in the Swat Valley.

The army "can only be successful if there is support of the masses," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who authorized the Swat offensive on Thursday, told a news conference after an emergency Cabinet meeting.

Further south, a suspected U.S. missile strike killed nine people, mostly foreigners, in another militant stronghold near the Afghan border, officials said. The identities of the victims were not immediately unclear.

The army said it killed as many as 55 more Taliban fighters in Swat on Saturday.

Encouraged by the United States, Pakistan's leaders launched the full-scale offensive this week to halt the spread of Taliban control in districts within 60 miles (100 kilometers) of the capital. Pakistan's army is fighting to wrest Swat and neighboring districts from militants who dominate the adjoining tribal belt along the Afghan frontier, where U.S. officials say al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden is likely holed up.

But the fighting has caused the flight of hundreds of thousands of terrified residents, adding a humanitarian emergency to the nuclear-armed nation's security, economic and political problems. The government is appealing for international aid to ease the plight of the multitude of weary, traumatized people who have abandoned their homes in search of safety.

Witness accounts indicated that scores of civilians have already been killed or injured in the escalating clashes in Swat and the neighboring Buner and Lower Dir districts.

Even the medics are gone: Only three doctors remained Saturday at the hospital in Swat's main town, Mingora — all of them working at full stretch.

Riaz Khan, a 36-year-old schoolteacher, his wife and two daughters occupied four of the beds, shrapnel wounds on their arms and their legs bandaged. Khan said his other two daughters were killed three days earlier when a mortar shell hit their home near Mingora.

"We buried our daughters on Thursday when the army relaxed the curfew," he told an Associated Press reporter. "We reached the hospital only with great difficulty."

Nisar Khan, one of the three doctors left, said about 25 war-wounded were among the 100 patients.

Taliban militants seized much of the area under a peace deal, even after the government agreed to their main demand to impose Islamic law in the region.

U.S. officials likened the deal to a surrender. Pakistani leaders said the agreement's collapse had opened the eyes of ordinary citizens to the extremist threat.

The army says it is reinforcing the 12,000 to 15,000 troops in Swat as they take on 4,000 to 5,000 militants, including small numbers of foreigners and hardened fighters from the South Waziristan border region.

On Saturday, an AP reporter saw jet fighters flying over Mingora and later heard explosions from further up the valley.

The military said its helicopter gunships attacked militant hideouts in Mingora and killed 15 fighters. An estimated 30 to 40 more died in smaller clashes elsewhere, the statement said. Four soldiers were wounded.

Provincial Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain blamed the Taliban for the deaths of innocents.

"The militants are using civilian population as a human shield and they have dug trenches in civilian areas," Hussain said at a news conference in Peshawar. He said they were firmly in control of Mingora.

However, officials have given no details of civilian casualties, apparently for fear of a public outcry that could make it hard for the army to press ahead.

South Waziristan has been the scene of numerous suspected American missile attacks in recent months, including Saturday's strike in the Tabai area.

Two intelligence officials said several missiles struck a disused hospital building, killing six foreign militants, and a tunnel in a nearby mountain, killing three local fighters.

The officials said field agents were still trying to determine the identity of the victims and whether they were affiliated with al-Qaida. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly to the media.

Just south of the war zone, around the city of Mardan, crude camps have mushroomed. On Saturday, the desperation of the refugees was laid bare with television footage showing dozens of men making off with blankets and tins of cooking oil. A policeman thumped one looter with his rifle butt while a man wearing a T-shirt bearing a U.N. logo urged others to return their loot.

"When people are desperate, it's hardly surprising that things like this happen," said Ariane Rummery, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency.

The agency has registered some 150,000 people fleeing the latest fighting. Pakistani and U.N. officials say the total number displaced may reach half a million.

___

Associated Press writer Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan and an AP reporter in Mingora who was not identified for security reasons contributed to this report.

Four British Soldiers Killed in Single Day

LONDON (Reuters) - Four British soldiers have been killed in a single day while on patrol in southern Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence said on Friday.

It was the armed forces' worst loss of life in one day since June 2008.

The four died in three incidents on Thursday in Helmand, one of the most violent areas in the country and a heartland of the Taliban movement.

One of the deaths was already announced on Thursday.

The latest deaths bring the number of British soldiers to have been killed in action in the country this year to 20.

The MoD said two soldiers, one from the 1st Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles and the other from 173 Provost Company, 3rd Regiment, died in a suicide attack in Gereshk.

The NATO-led force in Afghanistan said that 16 Afghan civilians died in the same attack and 30 Afghan civilians were wounded.

"With heavy heart we report another extremely sad situation, where lives of our courageous soldiers have been sacrificed for the greater good of the Afghan people," said spokesman for Task Force Helmand, Lieutenant Colonel Nick Richardson.

Earlier the MoD said a soldier with The Rifles 2nd Battalion had died in an explosion while travelling in a "Jackal" patrol vehicle near Sangin in Helmand.

In a third incident on Thursday, Corporal Sean Binnie, 22, from the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland, died from a gunshot wound suffered during a patrol with the Afghan National Army near Musa Qala in Helmand.

The deaths bring the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001 to 157, the MoD said.

That is approaching the 179 British troops killed during the 5-year war in Iraq, from where Britain is now withdrawing.

(Reporting by Stefano Ambrogi and Tim Castle)

uk.reuters.com

U.S. Jobless Rate Hits 8.9%, but Pace of Losses Eases

The American economy lost another 539,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate leapt to 8.9 percent, the government reported Friday, yet the deterioration was slightly milder than expected, buoying hopes that better days are approaching.

Ken James/Bloomberg News

Angelica Gomez, a bookkeeper who has been out of work for five months, left, gets information from the unemployment insurance phone bank at the Employment Development Department office in Sacramento, Calif., Wednesday.

“The labor market is still very weak, but it looks like the most intense spate of weakness is probably behind us,” said Michael T. Darda, chief economist at the research and trading firm MKM Partners. “Less bad is always a prelude to good. It’s going to take some time for this economy to get back on its feet, but we might be closer to the recession ending.”

Investors on Wall Street appeared to buy into that message, sending stock prices higher on Friday.

In Washington, President Obama called the increase in unemployment a “sobering toll” of the recession and warned of more job losses ahead. He said that a recovery could take months or years, but that the moderation in the rate of declining jobs was encouraging.

“The gears of our economic engine do appear to be slowly turning once again,” Mr. Obama said. “Step by step, we’re beginning to make progress.”

Coming a day after the Treasury pronounced American banks healthier than many analysts had anticipated, the Labor Department’s monthly snapshot of the job market presented the clearest evidence to date that the nation’s economic free fall appears to have been arrested. The acute shock that began last fall as the investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, followed by several other prominent institutions, appears to be relenting. Panic is no longer the dominant motif of American commercial life.

“It’s a confirmation that we’re in the early stages of a turn,” said Ethan Harris, co-head of United States economic research at Barclays Capital. “We’re getting further and further removed form the confidence shock of last fall.”

But others emphasized that the easing of dire worry, while unambiguously positive, does not mean the economy is close to regaining vigor. The economic crisis may have merely given way to something more familiar and milder, yet still miserable for tens of millions of people: a continued slog through the longest, deepest recession since the Great Depression, with demand for goods and services weak and jobs exceedingly hard to find.

“This is really horrible in any normal context,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. “This isn’t recovery. It’s a slowing recession. In any other time other than the recession we’re in, we’d be appalled by these numbers.”

The numbers for April looked good only in comparison with recent months, with February’s data revised to show a net reduction in jobs of 681,000 — down from an initial drop of 651,000 — and March revised from an initial loss of 663,000 to 699,000.

The slightly less awful jobs report for April appeared to reflect a moderate slowdown in the pace of layoffs, but not a sudden predilection among businesses to hire. The April data was bolstered by a surge of government hiring in preparation for the 2010 Census, while private payrolls actually dipped by 611,000.

Most experts contend that significant hiring will proably take many more months if not years to emerge. Businesses are expected to cut an additional two million jobs before the economy begins growing again and the unemployment rate begins to ebb, probably sometime in 2010. Any recovery that takes hold is expected to be long and faltering, though economists expressed hope that the worst losses were ending.

It is often said that the labor market is a lagging indicator, meaning it tends to improve long after other aspects of the economy trend up. But the job market also happens to be the piece of the economy that is most important to ordinary people, and now particularly so, making such pronouncements cold comfort in many households.

After years of borrowing against soaring home prices and tapping cheap credit cards to spend in excess of incomes, millions of Americans have been forced to live within the confines of what they bring home from work. Since the recession began in December 2007, 5.7 million jobs have disappeared from the economy. In recent months, wages have stopped growing. This retrenchment chokes off the spending power needed to generate demand for more employees at factories, shopping malls and offices.

“We’re seeing fewer people employed, and those who are employed aren’t seeing their earnings power increase,” Mr. Baker said. “It’s tough to see where a recovery can come from.”

But those with more optimistic outlooks put the emphasis on the massive, government-led initiatives under way aimed at bolstering demand for goods and services, and thus increasing the need for workers.

nytimes.com

Obama Plans $17bn Budget Savings

President Barack Obama has said he aims to cut $17bn (£11bn) from next year's US government budget, saying he had found examples of "stunning" waste.

A total of 121 existing government spending schemes will either see their funding reduced or cut completely.

President Obama said the cuts were necessary but not easy

He added that he hoped to halve the government's budget deficit by the end of his first term in office.

President Obama said a lot of money was currently being spent "inefficiently and ineffectively" by federal agencies.

The resulting savings are relatively minor compared with the government's fiscal woes House Republican Leader John Boehner

"At this difficult time for our nation, we can't accept business as usual," he said.

"We must create a government for the 21st Century that is more efficient."

President Obama added that some of the cuts would not be easy, but that they were necessary.

"We can no longer afford to leave the hard choices for the next budget, the next administration - or the next generation," he said.

'Diverse cuts'

The planned $17bn of savings represents 0.5% of the approved $3.4tn budget for 2010.

President Obama said the 121 schemes he was targeting for savings were diverse, ranging from a weapons system to a Department for Education office in Paris that would now close, and the end of some healthcare subsidies.

"These savings, large and small, add up," said President Obama.

However, senior Republicans complained that the spending cuts did not go far enough.

"The resulting savings are relatively minor compared with the government's fiscal woes," said House Republican Leader John Boehner.

bbc.co.uk

Somali Pirates Seize Dutch Boat with 8 Crew: Group

Last year, though, was the worst on record for Somali piracy with 42 boats taken.

Analysts say the presence of several dozen warships, from the United States, Europe, China, Japan and others, has had a limited success, bringing some captures but also pushing the pirates into a wider zone of operations.

"Navies have had some success in their primary aim of disrupting piratical activity, and the success rate for pirate attacks has dropped from around one in three to about one in four," said expert Roger Middleton, of the Chatham House think tank.

All analysts agree, however, that the only long-term solution is to bring peace onshore to Somalia, which has suffered civil conflict since 1991.

"Naval or police action cannot provide any long-term solution to piracy in Somalia," Middleton added in a paper.

Another Somalia expert, Ken Menkhaus, concurred with that in his analysis of the piracy phenomenon.

"The Somali piracy epidemic is unquestionably an onshore crisis demanding an onshore solution," he said.

"Naval operations to interdict and apprehend pirates will help, but cannot possibly halt the daily quest of over a thousand gunmen in such vast waters when the risks are so low, rewards so high and alternatives so bleak in desolate Somalia."

reuters.com

Pakistan Launches Air Strikes in Swat Valley

Civilians are trying to escape fighting in Pakistan's Swat valley as government troops step up their offensive against Taliban militants after the collapse of a peace deal in the region.

Military helicopters and warplanes were pounding suspected Taliban positions in Swat on Thursday.

Residents of Mingora capital of Pakistani troubled Swat valley flee, 07 May 2009

Authorities temporarily relaxed their curfew in the region, and provincial officials were bracing for a flood of tens of thousands of displaced civilians.

The International Committee of the Red Cross warned Thursday that the humanitarian crisis in Northwest Frontier Province is intensifying. It said it has received unconfirmed reports that as many as 500,000 Pakistanis have been displaced by conflict in Dir, Swat and nearby Buner districts.

And a spokesman for Sufi Muhammad, the radical Muslim cleric who helped negotiate the short-lived cease-fire, said one of Muhammad's sons was killed Thursday when a bomb or artillery shell hit his house in Dir district.

The Pakistani military says more than 80 Taliban militants and two soldiers were killed in Swat and Buner on Wednesday.

There also were reports of civilian casualties in the fighting, but no numbers were available.

It is the deadliest outbreak of fighting since local officials signed a controversial peace deal with Islamist militants in Malakand Division in February.

A provincial official - Information Minister Iftikhar Hussain - said the militants violated the deal that required them to disarm in exchange for the establishment of strict Islamic law (Sharia) in Malakand. The official also accused the militants of trying to set up a parallel government in the area.

Pakistan's army has not said whether it is planning an all-out assault on Swat. But many in Pakistan believe extremist activities by the Taliban appear to have reduced public support for its cause. An army spokesman says that will help the military in case a new offensive is launched in Swat.

voanews.com

HRE has €382 Million Loss on Writedowns

Hypo Real Estate, the government-aided German commercial real-estate lender, reported a first-quarter loss because of writedowns.

The Munich-based lender posted a net loss of €382 million in the three months to March compared with a profit of €148 million a year earlier, it said in an e-mailed statement today.

Loss: Hypo Real Estate bank (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

Hypo Real Estate avoided bankruptcy after receiving credit lines and debt guarantees of €102 billion from the German government and financial institutions. Germany’s Soffin bank-rescue fund, which offered €1.39 a share to buy Hypo Real Estate, today announced that 32.3 percent of investors accepted the offer to May 4.

“The first quarter of 2009 again posed a major challenge for the group and its employees in market conditions which continued to be difficult,” Chief Executive Officer Axel Wieandt said in the statement. “We are however, making good progress with restructuring.”

The company had a net trading loss of €162 million after markdowns on collateralized debt obligations and other securities. Loan-loss provisions rose almost sixfold to €196 million as it set aside more money for possible defaults amid the “deterioration of the global economy.”

Hypo Real Estate, which plans to cut 1,000 jobs by 2013 as it focuses on real estate and public sector financing, has said it will probably remain unprofitable for at least two more years. The lender almost collapsed after its Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc unit failed to secure short-term funding in September.

Net interest income, the company’s biggest source of revenue, rose 24 percent to €371 million while net commissions showed a loss of €108 million because of costs related to the bailout. (Bloomberg)

- Aaron Kirchfeld and Oliver Suess

independent.ie

Sri Lanka Rebels Say War Takes Heavy Toll

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka -- The Tamil Tiger rebels said intense fighting in Sri Lanka's war zone was killing and wounding hundreds of civilians a day and asked Wednesday for the UN to push for urgent food shipments to avert a hunger crisis.

Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, front left, sings the Sri Lankan national anthem during the Independence Day celebration in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2009. (AP / Eranga Jayawardena)

Sri Lankan forces have cornered the once-powerful Tamil Tigers into a tiny sliver of land on the northeastern coast along with tens of thousands of ethnic-Tamil noncombatants. Many diplomats have expressed concern over the fate of the trapped civilians.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appealed to President Mahinda Rajapaksa in a phone call Tuesday to suspend the offensive to allow aid into the war zone. Rajapaksa has brushed off calls for even a brief cease-fire, saying it would give the rebels a chance to regroup.

In a letter addressed to Ban, rebel political leader Balasingham Nadesan appealed to the international community to pressure the government to allow aid into the region and to ensure a shipment planned by Tamil expatriates makes it across the front lines.

"We draw attention to the nine deaths by starvation in the last few days and the real fear that the death toll could rise exponentially in the coming days," he wrote. A copy of the letter was e-mailed to The Associated Press by the rebels. The letter accuses the government of deliberately withholding food and medicine from the area.

Human Rights Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe said the government had delivered enough food. He accused the rebels of grabbing the supplies for themselves.

Only one shipment of food has reached the war zone in the past month, and that was 30 metric tonnes delivered by a Red Cross ship more than a week ago, said Sarasi Wijeratne, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross. Many aid workers said that shipment was barely enough to feed the civilians for a day.

Rebel spokesman Seevaratnam Puleedevan told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday that the government also had violated its promise last week to stop firing heavy weapons into the war zone to safeguard civilians there.

Government troops continue to pound the area with artillery and mortar shells, conduct air strikes and attack with heavy guns from the sea throughout the night and for several hours during the day, he said.

"Most of them are falling in the civilian areas," he said. "People are living in makeshift shelters and bunkers. They are really afraid to go out because of the heavy shelling and bombardment."

Hundreds of people are being killed and wounded in the attacks each day, he said.

The military denies firing heavy weapons and says it is pushing ahead with its offensive using only small arms.

Reporters and independent observers are barred from the war zone, making the claims difficult to verify.

Speaking to reporters in New York, Ban said he asked Rajapaksa for "a humanitarian pause in the fighting" to allow aid into the conflict zone and urged the government to stop using heavy weapons.

"I repeat: Protecting civilians and respecting international humanitarian law must be priority one. The world is watching events closely, including for violations of international law," he said.

Ban also called on the Tamil Tigers -- branded a terror group by the U.S. and European Union -- to let the estimated 50,000 civilians trapped by the fighting out of the war zone and to stop forcibly recruiting fighters from their ranks.

"Above all, there is an urgent need for the two sides to bring the conflict to a peaceful and orderly end," he said.

A delegation of five British lawmakers on Wednesday urged the Sri Lankan government to "use maximum restraint" in their military offensives. Des Browne, who led the delegation on a two-day visit, asked the government to uphold it's commitment "to refrain from the use of heavy weapons."

The intense fighting since the end of January has killed about 6,500 civilians, according to UN figures compiled last month.

During the phone conversation, Rajapaksa invited Ban to visit the country and personally assess the situation, according to the president's office. UN spokesman Gordon Weiss said no decision had been made on such a visit.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation in the war zone had grown desperate, Puleedevan said.

Many people were surviving on one meal of porridge a day, which was being provided by the rebels or a local aid group, he said.

"All this food is drying up. Starvation and death are imminent," he said.

The rebels have been fighting since 1983 for a separate state for minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of marginalization at the hands of governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority.

ctv.ca

Pope Visit Boosts Jordanian Site of Jesus Baptism

As Jordan's Christians, who account for five per cent of the population, prepare to welcome Pope Benedict XVI to their country at the start of his first papal pilgrimage to the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood have renewed their criticism of the pontiff's visit.


Pope Benedict XVI and Jordan's King Abdullah II first met in September 2005 [EPA]

In 2006, the pope quoted a medieval text that characterised some of the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed as "evil and inhuman," especially "his command to spread by the sword the faith."

Since then, Jordan's Brotherhood have been demanding the pope apologise for his remarks, which many Muslims interpreted as insulting to their faith.

The pontiff has said he was "deeply sorry" over the reaction to his speech, explaining that the passage he quoted did not reflect his own opinion.

However, Jamil Abu Bakr, a Brotherhood spokesman, says this is "insufficient" and falls short of a "clear public apology".

Abu Bakr told Al Jazeera that Muslims "love Jesus Christ more than Christians do" and said if the Vatican went "against the Christian faith when it acquitted Jews of spilling Christ's blood", then an apology to the world's Muslims is not too much to ask of the Holy See.

Visiting mosques

The pope is hoping to earn some plaudits when he visits the Al Hussein Bin Talal Mosque, the second such visit to a Muslim place of worship during his papacy. There, he will also discuss with Muslim leaders inter-faith dialogue and co-existence.

The pope's visit to the mosque and the meeting with Muslim leaders is interpreted by some Jordanians as an indirect apology that would not undermine his papal credibility.

The Muslim Brotherhood, however, have been excluded from the dialogue in what they suspect is a move by the Jordanian authorities - and not the Vatican - to avoid any controversy or confrontation between the pontiff and the country's largest opposition group.

Curbing the Muslim Brotherhood has typically been a strategy the Jordanian authorities have used in their of relations with the group.

Many in the Orthodox Christian community also believe the Vatican should apologise to Muslims in an effort to safeguard the peaceful inter-faith co-existence that has prevailed in Jordan.

Odeh Kawwas, an elected member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches and a former Christian MP, says apologies have been made by the Vatican to Jews over the Holocaust and, therefore, an apology extended to Muslims is necessary, particularly while the pope is on Jordanian soil.

Pilgrim of peace

The pope will not be visiting the Church of Madaba, a "treasured site" in Jordan

The Pope will first visit the Regina Pacis centre for the handicapped and will then make a courtesy visit to the Jordanian royal family at the Al Husseini palace.

He will visit Mount Nebo where tradition holds that Moses saw the Promised Land from a distance. The pope will also bless the cornerstone of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem's Madaba University.

He will also celebrate a mass at the international stadium in Amman, where 30,000 people are expected to attend. He will visit Bethany Beyond the Jordan, site of Jesus' baptism and will bless the foundation stones of the Latin and Greek-Melkite churches.

But some Arab Christians in Jordan also have reservations about Pope Benedict's visit believing it to be a political move. Kawwas says not including the Church of Madaba, "one of Jordan's most treasured Christian and tourists sites, on the itinerary is unacceptable"; he believes it was left out because it is an Orthodox house of worship.

Like many who question the Papal pilgrimage across the Middle East, Kawwas also criticised the pope's eagerness to visit Israel on May 11 but not the Gaza Strip. The pontiff will, however, visit the occupied West Bank on May 12.

The pope says he is visiting the Holy Land as a pilgrim of peace in a region plagued by violence, injustice, mistrust and fear.

The Vatican described the papal pilgrimage as the "most awaited and perhaps most challenging trip so far" of Benedict's papacy because of the uncertain political situation in the area and the fragile prospects for peaceful conflict resolution.

"Most challenging trip"

Odeh Kawwas says many Christians in Jordan also want the Pope to apologise [EPA]

Pope Benedict's pilgrimage will be the third papal visit to the region after Pope Paul VI's in 1964 and Pope John Paul II's in 2000.

An estimated 10,000 delegates are expected to come to Jordan, the first leg of the pope's pilgrimage to the Middle East; the visitors will range from ordinary Christian worshippers to senior clergymen.

Jordanian tourism authorities are trying to ensure a smooth stay for the thousands of visitors expected to flock from Arab and foreign countries, explaining that they believe the papal visit will boost tourism in the country this year.

Jordan makes an annual $3 bn from tourism and the sector comprises 14.4 per cent of the country's GDP.

But because of the global economic downturn, the country has lost its main markets in the US and Europe as tourists opt to stay at home.

Tourism authorities are counting on media coverage - more than 1,270 journalists are covering the pontiff's visit - to promote Jordan's religious sites and help attract more tourists.

The Jordanian government says it is taking the visit very seriously to reach its economic objectives this year and to present itself as a model for inter-faith co-existence and peace in the region.

aljazeera.net