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Obama: Strong US-China Ties Help Rest of The World
Bahrain Police Arrest Demonstrators on Protest Anniversary
By Matthew Pennington
By Donna Abu-Nasr
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama assured China’s heir apparent to leadership that the United States welcomes Beijing’s rise in the world, saying Tuesday that strong cooperation between the two powers is good for the rest of the world. Obama offered a warm welcome to Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping amid sharp policy differences over Syria, Iran and economic issues, as well as longstanding U.S. concerns over Chinese human rights practices. >>continued pg. 2
Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Mainly Shiite Muslim protesters in Bahrain marked the first anniversary of their antigovernment rallies by marching toward the former Pearl Roundabout, focus of last year’s demonstrations. Riot police fired tear gas at the protesters heading to the roundabout, which has been demolished and turned into an intersection, while dense black smoke rose in the distance as demonstrators burned tires in Shiite villages. >>continued pg. 3
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Weather Report
72 °F 65 °F
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61 °F
“All the News that’s Fit to Print” President Obama hosts China Vice-President Xi Jinping
Defense: Feds “Manipulated” Facts About Militia
Parents of Slain FAMU Band Member Sue Bus Driver and Bus Company
Rapper Lil Boosie Indicted for FirstDegree Murder; Death Penalty Possible
Meeting Vice-President Xi Jinping in the Oval Office, Mr Obama also said it was “vital” that Washington maintained a strong relationship with Beijing. Mr Xi said he hoped his visit would deepen mutual understanding and friendship between the two powers. >>continued pg. 2
DETROIT - Defense lawyers at the trial of seven Midwest militia members say federal authorities greatly overreached by charging them with conspiring to overthrow the government. >>continued pg. 2
ORLANDO, Fla. - The parents of a Florida A&M band member who died after being hazed filed a wrongful death lawsuit Monday against the owner and driver of the charter bus where the ritual took place. The suit also revealed new details about what might have happened the night Robert Champion died. >>continued. pg 5
BATON ROUGE - Baton Rouge-born rapper, Torrence Hatch, known to fans as Lil Boosie, was indicted by an East Baton Rouge Parish grand jury Thursday afternoon on a first-degree murder charge for his alleged involvement in a shooting incident in October that left one man dead, >>cont. pg. 5
Israel Says Iran Is Behind Bombs JERUSALEM — Tensions between Israel and Iran rose sharply on Monday when bombers struck at Israeli Embassy personnel in the capitals of India and Georgia. By Ethan Bronner The wife of an Israeli defense envoy to New Delhi was hurt along with several other people when her car was destroyed by an explosive device placed on it by a motorcyclist at a red light. In Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, a similar device was discovered on the car of a local staff member of the Israeli Embassy, but was defused by the police. Both resembled attacks that have killed five of Iran’s nuclear scientists in recent years, most recently last month. Iran has attributed the assassinations to Israeli agents and has vowed to take revenge. The scientists’ assassinations — along with sabotage of Iran’s nuclear program through cyberwarfare and faulty parts — are aimed at delaying what the West believes is Iran’s drive to build a nuclear weapon. If actually carried out by Iran, the attacks would be another indication that the leadership in Tehran was willing to reach beyond its borders against its enemies and expand its attacks to civilians. The United States has charged that Iran was behind a plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador on American soil, and Israel has said that Iran has planned to attack its citizens in various countries, but that those plots were stopped. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu contended that Monday’s attacks fit that pattern. “In recent months, we have witnessed several attempts to attack Israeli citizens and Jews in several countries, including Azerbaijan, Thailand and others,” he said. “In each instance, we succeeded in foiling the attacks in cooperation with local authorities. Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, were behind all of these attempted attacks.” Iran’s Foreign Ministry rejected Israel’s accusations on Monday. A spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, said, “Israel has bombed its embassies in New Delhi and Tbilisi to tarnish Iran’s friendly ties with the host countries,” adding, “Israel perpetrated the terrorist actions to launch psychological warfare against Iran.” Iran has defended its nuclear program as peaceful and has defiantly pursued uranium enrichment through years of international pressure and sanctions. Israel’s increasingly urgent warnings on the need to halt Iran’s nuclear progress, before it gets much closer to being able to build a bomb, have prompted concerns that Israel might unilaterally mount a military strike — and have added to the implacable enmity between the two. Iran’s oil and banking industries are suffering from sanctions implemented by the United States and Europe to pressure the country to back off its nuclear program. Iranian leaders have vowed to fight back through shutting the vital Strait of Hormuz and through military strikes on countries that are used as launching pads for attacks on it. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, a spokesman for Iran’s Joint Armed Forces Staff, said recently that “the enemies of the Iranian nation, especially the United States, Britain and the Zionist regime, have to be held responsible for their activities.” Iranian leaders have called Israel a tumor that must be removed, and Iran arms and finances Hezbollah and Hamas, wh ich are founded on the principle that Israel has no right to exist. On Monday, Israeli officials said there was enough evidence from the scenes in Georgia and India to say that the bombs were the work of Iranian agents. “Iran’s fingerprints are all over this,” one official said after emerging from high-level meetings in Jerusalem, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Some American Jewish leaders have expressed concern that synagogues and American Jewish centers could be targets in the increased tensions. In 1994, a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires was bombed, killing 85 people. The authorities there have accused Iranian diplomats of being behind that attack. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamist group with close ties to Iran, has promised to take revenge for the killing of its top commander, Imad Mugniyah,
A forensic official, left, photographed an Israeli Embassy car after an explosion in New Delhi on Monday.
four years ago this week. Mr. Mugniyah had been sought by the United States in terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of Americans in the 1980s. Israel held him responsible for Hezbollah military operations in southern Lebanon from the mid-1990s. Israel is widely thought to have killed him with a powerful bomb in Damascus, the Syrian capital. Israeli analysts said the attacks on Monday were insignificant enough that the Israeli government would not feel driven to counterattack.
Las Vegas Embraces Bad Guys of Its Past
Randy Moss and ‘That Thing Called Quit
The Dilemma of Cheap Electronics
By Isaac Brekken
By Kevin Seifert
By David Pogue
LAS VEGAS — Lefty, Lucky, the Ant, Bugsy, the Snake, the Chin, Scarface, the Brain. The monikers of mobsters are like the nicknames of odd superheroes. They are two syllables of rat-tat firing, evoking creepy animals, physical protrusions or uncanny powers. And now, here in a city where such figures were once as comfortably in their element as Zeus and his family on Olympus, they are finally getting something close to the museum they deserve: the Mob Museum, a $42 million survey of the American gangster, unfolding in 17,000 square feet of exhibition space, on three floors of a 41,000-squarefoot landmark building on Stewart Avenue. >>continued. pg 8
As far as I’m concerned, Cris Carter has always been a knowledgeable and honest source of analysis on Randy Moss, his one-time teammate and protégé when both played for the Minnesota Vikings. And once again, I think Carter nailed his take on Moss’ plans to return to the NFL in 2012. Appearing Tuesday morning on ESPN Radio’s “Mike & Mike in the Morning,” Carter predicted that Moss would be “in fabulous shape” after a full offseason of training and reiterated his suggestion that Moss could still run the 40-yard dash in less than 4.4 seconds. But Carter accurately identified an important issue NFL teams will need to address before seriously considering his acquisition. >>continued pg. 7
Last week, an important Times article set off shockwaves in the consumer tech industry by focusing on tragedies and working conditions at Foxconn, the Chinese electronics factory that makes Apple iPhones. It describes excessive overtime, crowding in worker dorms, improper disposal of hazardous waste and unsafe working conditions. These revelations have shocked a lot of Apple fans — and fired up a lot of Apple foes. There are petitions and flooded comment boards. This morning, protesters delivered petitions at six major Apple stores, including the new one in Grand Central Terminal. The article and the response are healthy. >>continued pg. 9
Syria Resumes Shelling, Rejecting U.N. Rebuke By Neil MacFarquhar and Rick Gladston BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Syrian government on Tuesday brushed aside a stern castigation from the top United Nations human rights official about its deadly attacks on civilians, calling her assessment propaganda as Syria’s military resumed what one activist described as the “brutal shelling” of the city of Homs. A day after the official, Navi Pillay, the United Nations’s high commissioner for human rights, offered a grim appraisal of the Syrian conflict, activists said the shelling resumed in earnest at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, with rockets and tank shells whistling into parts of the city as often as every two minutes. >>continued pg. 2
State of Emergency as Toll Rises A string of violent storms demolished small towns in Indiana and cut off rural communities in Kentucky as an early season tornado outbreak killed more than three dozen people. The death toll continued to rise Saturday as searchers picked through debris for survivors.Weather that put millions of people at risk killed at least 38 people in five states — Alabama, Indiana, K e n t u c k y, Georgia and Ohio —more than 300 people were reported injured in Kentucky alone. “We knew this was coming. We were watching the weather like everyone else,” said Clark County, Ind., Sheriff Danny Rodden. “This was the worst case scenario. There’s no way you can prepare for something like this.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich proclaimed a state of emergency Saturday, as had the governors in Indiana and Kentucky. President Barack Obama offered Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance as state troopers, the National Guard and rescue teams made their way through counties cut off by debris-littered roads and knocked down cellphone towers in a search for survivors. >>continued pg. 2
Rush Limbaugh Loses Another Sponsor over ‘slut’ Remark By Kim Geiger Reporting from Washington— Rush Limbaugh has lost another advertiser on his radio talk show as the fallout continued from his use of the terms “slut” and “prostitute” to ridicule a woman who has advocated for expanded access to birth control. Quicken Loans, Inc. has suspended its advertising on the Limbaugh show, the company said in a statement posted to its website. It was a reversal for the Detroit-based online mortgage lender, which had initially issued a statement in support of Limbaugh’s right to express himself. “While we do not condone or agree with Mr. Limbaugh’s statements regarding Sandra Fluke, we respect his right to express his views,” Quicken Loans spokesman Paul Silver told the Detroit Free Press in a prepared statement. “In no instance does Quicken Loans ever have any control of the content or comments of the shows.” That didn’t satisfy Quicken customers, whose “valuable feedback” eventually led the company to suspend advertising on the show. Dan Gilbert, the company’s founder and the owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, announced the decision on Twitter. >>continued pg. 2
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