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INTERNATIONAL EDITION
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2012 109TH YEAR I ©2012 THE MIAMI HERALD
Santorum’s MONUMENTAL sweep a sign of GOP unease with Romney
Fireworks explode behind Mexico City’s new Pillar of Light monument during its inauguration ceremony on Jan. 7, 16 months after the anniversary it was meant to commemorate.
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BY MICHAEL D. SHEAR
New York Times Service
proposed plan to transfer power to his vice president and allow for a transition to democracy. “We are working with our partners again to ratchet up the pressure, ratchet up the isolation on Assad and his regime,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday. “That
Rick Santorum’s sweep of Mitt Romney in Tuesday’s three Republican presidential contests sets the stage for a new and bitter round of intra-party acrimony as Romney once again faces a surging conservative challenge to his claim on the party’s nomination. Santorum’s rebuke of Romney could scramble the dynamics of the Republican race even as many in the party’s establishment were urging its most committed activists to finally fall in line behind Romney, a former Massachusetts governor. Voters in three disparate states forcefully refused to do that on Tuesday. Instead, the most conservative elements of the Republican base expressed their unease with Romney by sending a resounding message that they preferred someone else. And they collectively revived the candidacy of Santorum, who has been languishing in the background since a narrow victory in Iowa’s caucuses at the beginning of the year. Santorum’s success on Tuesday night awarded him no delegates from contests that were essentially nonbinding straw polls and drew small turnouts in all three states. And Santorum’s campaign has few of the organizational advantages of Romney’s well-financed effort. The long-term damage to Romney is difficult to assess. His campaign has so far weathered several surges from challengers — Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Herman Cain — only to re-emerge as the leading contender to face President Barack Obama in the fall. He also has the support of a well-financed super PAC, which has demonstrated a willingness to spend heavily on advertising critical of Romney’s rivals. Aides to Romney said they were preparing to quickly expand their attacks on Santorum’s record as they try to define him, aggressively and negatively, for voters who still see Santorum largely as a blank slate. The advisors said Romney would most likely take part in the attacks on Santorum much like he did in Florida against Gingrich. “He’s a limited guy, he’s been in Washington all his whole life, voted for the Bridge to Nowhere, voted against right to work,” Stuart Stevens, a top aide to Romney, said of Santorum on Tuesday night. “He’s cut tons and tons of deals, lost his own state by 18 points.” The Romney campaign is
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• TURN TO GOP, 2A
U.S. gropes for strategy to halt Syria violence BY BRADLEY KLAPPER Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The United States appears to be out of answers on what to do with Syria. The Obama administration says it is not considering invading Syria or arming its rebels to remove President Bashar al Assad from power. Diplomatic efforts at the United Nations have collapsed. A
new, much-touted option of humanitarian assistance for Syria’s beleaguered population is a longshot — and would only bandage over the violence, not stop it. For now, Washington is relying primarily on what it has been doing for the past 11 months in a so-far unsuccessful bid to force Assad’s government to end its bloody offensive on opponents:
Brazil cracks down on flow of immigrants from Haiti BY SIMON ROMERO AND ANDREA ZARATE
New York Times Service
country, and what kind of immigrants Brazil should attract. The authorities waded in, declaring that just 100 temporary work visas a month would be given to Haitians, at Brazil’s Embassy in Port-au-Prince. Any new arrivals would risk deportation. The measures adopted in January would also make about 2,400 humanitarian visas available to Haitians who had recently arrived, allowing them to remain indefinitely and work in Brazil, in addition to about 1,600 visas already granted to Haitians who made their to Brazil after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The move effectively curbed
RIO DE JANEIRO — Faced with an influx of thousands of Haitians into its Amazonian frontier, Brazil has reacted by cracking down, offering a view into its growing pains as it wields greater regional influence and emerges as an immigration magnet. Brazil restricted Haitian immigration in January after about 4,000 Haitians made their way across the Americas to remote outposts in the Amazon, including hundreds who arrived around the end of 2011. Their arrival set off a debate over Brazil’s commitments to Haiti, the hemisphere’s poorest • TURN TO BRAZIL, 2A
ARIZONA HIGH COURT BARS CANDIDATE WITH POOR ENGLISH FROM RUNNING, 5A
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sanctions targeting the Syrian regime and isolating it from the world economy. It is also borrowing somewhat from a strategy used in Libya’s civil war, assembling a group of like-minded nations, led by Arab governments, to coordinate an international strategy against Assad. The goal is to pressure the Syrian leader into accepting an Arab-
U.S.-Taliban talks troubling to Karzai Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly tried to thwart the U.S. effort to bring the Taliban to the bargaining table.
BY LAURA KING
Los Angeles Times Service
KABUL — On the face of it, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has every motive to do all he can to bring about talks with the Taliban. Instead, he is emerging as a prime impediment to urgent U.S. efforts to jump-start negotiations with the insurgents. Since the start of his second term in office, Karzai has repeatedly declared that his top priority is finding a political settlement to the bloody Afghan conflict and bringing the “disaffected brothers” back into the social and political fold. Karzai’s self-interest is at stake. NATO’s military clock is ticking down, accelerated by the United States’ recently announced push to wind down its combat role next year. Without Western backing, the
AFTER DEADLY ATTACK, PAKISTAN, U.S. HOLD BORDER TALKS, 6A
SHAH MARAI/AFPGETTY IMAGES
Afghan leader is well aware that his own survival — political, and perhaps literal — could be in doubt. Yet Karzai has repeatedly tried to thwart the most focused U.S.
HOUSE, SENATE AT IMPASSE ON MEDICARE PAYMENTS, BUSINESS FRONT
effort yet to bring the insurgents to the bargaining table, launching a series of actions that appear to • TURN TO KARZAI, 2A
ENGLAND COACH QUITS OVER JOHN TERRY SACKING, SPORTS FRONT
INDEX NEWS EXTRA .............3A THE AMERICAS............4A OPINION........................7A COMICS & PUZZLES ...6B
2/9/2012 5:45:21 AM
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