Fitch Ratings reaffirmed its confidence in the US on Monday, but said the outlook was negative after the Supercommittee’s failure to come up with a credible plan to cut spending.
We retained our AAA rating, despite Standard and Poor downgrading of the US in August.
The negative outlook means that Fitch thinks there is more than a 50 percent chance we could be downgraded in the future. With federal debt projected to reach 90 percent of GDP and 20 percent of tax revenue taken up by debt interest by the end of the decade, the outlook right now isn’t great.
“Failure to reach agreement in 2013 on a credible deficit reduction plan and a worsening of the economic and fiscal outlook would likely result in a downgrade of the U.S. sovereign rating,” David Riley, a managing director at Fitch, said in the report.
The failure of the so-called Supercommittee to agree any sort of debt reduction plan has shaken confidence internally and throughout the world. Despite our national debt reaching $15 trillion, our political leaders cannot seem to come to a consensus on how to tackle it.
While we wait for them to make their minds up, the economy can go nowhere. While nobody can understate the challenges the committee faces, it’s difficult to believe that a group of supposedly intelligent people cannot come to some kind of agreement for the good of the country.
Fitch warned that deficit reduction efforts “will not be credible” if they rely on cutting discretionary spending on its own. Economists have said Congress needs to quickly move to slash entitlement spending on expensive programs that offer little to the economy as a whole.
The failure of the Supercommittee to reach a compromise “underlines the challenge of securing broad-based consensus on how to reduce the outsized federal budget deficit,” Riley said.
We are still the economic powerhouse of the world, but confidence in our political leadership and our economy is still low. While our people and our manufacturing capacity sit idle, tax revenues will remain lower than they should be. Combined with the lack of any real momentum means the economy will recover, albeit at a much slower pace.
Fitch imply the outlook is down to Congress to handle quickly and efficiently. Cuts are going to have to be made, and deep ones. We need to reduce spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security but in a way that doesn’t leave our people too hard up.
Failure to tackle these fundamental issues will likely result in a downgrading of our credit rating according to the report.
“In Fitch's opinion, such a level of government indebtedness would no longer be consistent with the U.S. retaining its 'AAA' status despite its underlying strengths,” Riley said.
That means higher interest payments on money we owe, and a lengthening of the time it will take to pay back the staggering amount of money our government owes.
Email Archiving - It's More Than Just Saving Your Emails
When hearing the words "email archiving" many often think of saving their reviewed emails to specific folders or making sure that they keep their inbox clean by deleting files after they have been read. While both of these are certainly a part of email archiving, there is so much more to true email management than just moving emails around or deleting them.
In a business environment it is often critical not just to archive your emails, but to back them up as well. With three basic methods available for email archiving, the method that you select will certainly have different levels of cost associated with them as well as having different levels of maintenance requirements and risks from fire and water damage or cyber attacks. Three distinct methods for archiving emails are:
On-site management
Software-as-a-Service contracting
Using a free hosting service
On-site management
Many major corporations with deep enough pockets to support their own specialized IT department and the associated hardware, software, and servers elect to control their email archiving internally. With the highest level of control, this method also requires the company to take on all of the associated risks that come along with managing their own email archiving system.
Some of the concerns that one needs to address when making the decision to bring their email system in-house, in addition to having to purchase the hardware and software themselves, are issues like backing up the system regularly, protecting the hardware with the installed software from fire and water damage, and managing firewalls and using anti-spyware programs to protect against cyber threats. With today's mobile applications placing additional demands on tradition computer systems setup to network office computers, there are far more ways for hackers to look for ways to sneak into your system today with WiFi and mobile apps.
In the middle of the three options is the ability to contract with an outside firm to manage your email archiving for you. For a fee that is significantly less than the cost of developing your own internal hardware/software email system, there are companies that specialize in helping you to have a much more secure system than one can expect from a free hosting service. Using file encryption methodologies, secure firewalls, and maintaining anti-spyware resources far superior to free hosting sites, they provide a level of protection to your email archiving that is simply not available from free hosting sites.
Free hosting sites
Many of the major search engines offer some type of associated email system along with their service to attract others into using their search engines. One only needs to read the fine print in their disclaimers to know that one assumes all of the risks from cyber attacks when they use a free hosting service. Although efforts are made to keep these systems free from cyber attacks they are also a prime target for many hackers as well. The number of people that have their email archives and logins hacked surprises most people when they hear the numbers. It only takes getting bitten once to know that there are better ways to manage email archives than going the free route, but they are however free.
The numbers of lanyards available for kids are enormously high. They range from favorite sports teams, colors and mascots to the characters of comic book, animation and television cartoon fame. Every possible combination of color and size you can think of is available, the hardest part is which one or ones to purchase for your children or grandchildren. Some kids have a favorite team and sport while others have a love for a certain place such as Disneyland, Knott's Berry Farm or other theme park attraction.
Theme parks are a good place to use lanyards for keys and other items that you need to keep track of. Kids will find Disney lanyards of many of the familiar characters from Snow White to the favorites of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. The theme park ideas for lanyards do not stop there for there are many more kinds to pick from. Kids lanyards with cute teddy bears, unicorns and animals are popular. The choices are nearly overwhelming but they can be found for almost any color and design that you want.
Movie lanyards are another way to have something important for your child that they can keep and it does not take up a lot of room or cost a great deal of money; both important qualities in the economy of today. Many lanyards for kids are sold to raise money for school events such as field trips and supplies. This is a way to help out your child by helping the school raise the money they need.
Lanyards are also great for small children if they are sized to fit the child so there is no danger of him or her becoming choked. Babies who use pacifiers often have them attached to a small bit of ribbon or lanyard that is clipped to the clothes being worn. The length is too small to cause a problem and it is good way to keep that pacifier clean.
Kids who have cameras will find wrist lanyards handy to keep from accidentally dropping the camera or other electronic device they are using. More and more employees and members of households are using lanyards to hold the flash drives that information is stored on for their computers. Teens will also like some of the cartoon characters that younger kids will enjoy. The toymakers of LEGO are another popular item for lanyards, especially if the figurine will fit on the end of the lanyard.
Kids for an activity can make lanyards and this is the fun part of the craft. It also serves to keep kids busy and occupied for a while, which is always a good idea for summer break. Lanyards are used with certain musical instruments such as the saxophones as a means of providing support while it is being played. The lanyards also offer a great place to hold collector pins from different areas or places that have been visited.
Most people, to say nothing of businesses, put a lot of thought and a lot of work into their web design, at least if they have any ambitions of reaching a large audience or customer base. An enormous amount of time and money is spent on building websites every year, including writing, editing and fine tuning HTML and CSS code, development or customization of interactive site elements using PHP, Perl, Python and other scripting languages, on graphic design, the list goes on and on.
However, you could spend a fortune on web design and put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into the effort and still find that the response to your site is a little less than you would have liked. In fact, you could have the best looking website in the world, complete with user friendly features, custom designed server side applications and every bell and whistle you care to name and still have it fall flat in terms of attracting readers and/or customers. No matter how wonderful your site may be, it really doesn't matter if no one actually knows it's there chicago web design.
This brings us to the point: how to get visitors to your site and build or expand your audience or if your website is for your business, to drive sales and build brand awareness among consumers. While every element of web design is important, there is one thing which many newly minted website owners, including businesses and online entrepreneurs fail to take into account when designing and building their website: SEO.
In case you're not familiar with the term, SEO is an acronym which stands for search engine optimization, which is a term which covers a wide variety of different practices aimed at driving traffic to websites by making them easier to find via search engines. There are a lot of different things you can do to optimize your site and make it more attractive to Google and other major search engines and if possible, the best time to start implementing SEO techniques is as early as possible. If you already have a website, don't panic; you can still optimize your site. However, if you're building a new site, it's a good idea to include search engine optimization in your web design game plan. Think of it as the last, but by no means least, step in the process of building a website. Read on for a few things you can do to help your site raise its profile and start bringing in more visitors:
Create a Sitemap:
A sitemap is exactly what it sounds like: a sort of map of the pages on your website, including internal and external links. A sitemap helps search engines understand the structure of your site as well as helping the search engine robots to determine you're your site is about. Submitting your sitemap to the major search engines (and minor ones too, if you have the time to do so) will help your site to be indexed more quickly so it can be found by your potential readers or customers. Most web hosting companies offer tools which can automatically generate a sitemap in the XML format used by Google and other search engines.
Robots.txt:
Another element your site needs in order to be properly optimized for the search engines is a robots.txt file. This is a small text file in the root directory of your website which does something very important: it tells the search engines where to look and where not to look when indexing your content. For instance, you don't really need (and usually don't want) the search engines indexing folders of images, JavaScript files or other content which isn't relevant to people searching for your site.
You can also use this file to deter certain search engines from indexing your site - and yes, there are reasons why you might want to do this, though that's a topic for another day. The instructions in your robots.txt file are sometimes ignored by search engine robots, but you'll definitely do better in the search engines if you take the time to create this important file.
Meta tags:
The header section of the HTML code for every page of your website should contain the appropriate meta tags; these are invisible to people visiting your site, but not to search engines. Your meta tags tell search engines what the topic of each page is, so the content of your tags needs to be relevant to the content on the page. These tags include the title tag, which is the most important; if at all possible, the most important search term you want people to find your site with should be included in this tag. The other tag to pay close attention to is the meta description tag, which should be a brief summary of the page.
This discussion barely scratches the surface of all there is to know about optimizing your site for the search engines, but these are good areas to begin delving deeper. No web design is complete without taking care of your site's SEO - more so than almost anything else, good search engine optimization techniques will help your site to become a success.
Royal Wood Golf and Country Club is a golf and living community located south of Naples, Florida, composed mainly of single-family homes and condominiums. It’s location offers easy access to the city of Naples, and is just a short drive from the stunning Gulf of Mexico.
The Royal Wood Golf and Country Club is an 18 hole, par 70 course, measuring more than 6,000 yards. It was designed by noted golf course architect Dr. Michael Hurdzan, and offers all levels of players an interesting challenge. All residents at Royal Wood are club members, and can enjoy a number of amenities at the club including fine and casual dining, and a state-of-the-art fitness center. Lovers of tennis will also enjoy the tennis courts available.
Royal Wood Golf and Country Club is just outside of Naples, Florida. The city offers many attractions, including shopping, bars, clubs, restaurants and entertainment. It is perhaps best known for its sun-drenched gulf coast beaches. High-culture lovers will enjoy a night out at the Naples Philharmonic or the many art galleries throughout the city.
Just a short drive to the west, the Picayune Strand State Forest provides a number of outdoor recreational opportunities for residents of the area. There is much to see and do in the Naples and Fort Myers area. It’s one of the reasons why it’s so popular.
Homes here are priced for all levels of buyers and tend to go quickly. The prices range from $89,900 to $399,900.
For those of you who have been using Windows 7, you quickly would have realized the versatility of this operating system. In fact, I feel it is the friendliest multi-monitor operating system to date. Did I just mention multi-monitors? Yes, in fact, even Microsoft describes this setup as one of the better ways to improve productivity.
Talking about the technicalities, a single Windows 7 based multi-monitor system can support up to 16 video displays. Furthermore, interface enhancement software that uses high-resolution multi-monitor systems make it even friendlier and powerful. Besides, as the processing power of desktop graphics continues to improve, allowing a single system to render millions of pixels simultaneously.
Now where do you use multi-monitor systems? If you are a game enthusiast, nothing would appeal to you more than a multi-monitor system. Imagine having multiple views on different monitors of the same game. Design and graphic professionals can use multiple monitors for working on design aspect on one monitor and dealing with the programming part on the other. You really need not hide one window and work on the other. Programming professionals can deal with coding on one of the monitors and simultaneously look at the documentation on the other monitor.
But professionals who truly need multi-monitor setups are stock market traders. At any point during the trading hours, an expert and efficient trader needs to view multiple graphs and charts simultaneously. Before multi-monitor systems became popular, it was done crudely by using different machines. But that definitely is passé. Based on what I have seen and experienced, at least two monitors are needed for efficient trading. However, if you are using it for your clients, you will need at least three monitors – two for you and one for your client.
Because high-resolution multi-monitor systems use a single Windows desktop, they are extremely user-friendly. Besides, the multi-monitor platform also provides a great deal of flexibility. This approach to creating a video wall makes use of single windows desktop to run the whole show makes it easy to master and use.
The rising levels of pollution and the steady depletion of fossil fuels have both provided unique challenges to mankind. It is giving rise to resource problems and health issues for both the current and the future generations. The best way to move forward in such circumstances is to adopt more environmentally responsible approach to our energy needs, such as harnessing the power of the sun and wind.
A solar backup generator uses a solar panel as its power source. Solar panels contain solar cells that need to be exposed to direct sunlight. These solar cells absorb sunlight and use its energy to produce electricity. This can then be used to power your home or office directly, or stored in a battery for later use.
A solar backup generator is far superior to gas generators because of the following features:
• Produces electricity free of charge
• Doesn’t produce harmful emissions
• Operates noise-free
• No need for gas, so saves costs
• Little maintenance needed
• No problems in starting under cold weather conditions
The cost savings that comes from producing solar electricity means the generator will save you enough money to pay for itself in just a few years. Using a solar generator means you will forever be free from paying electricity and gas bills for your backup needs, and will never have to worry about another power outage again. The only costs you will need to bear are the costs of purchasing the unit and its initial set-up.
Since there is no motor or moving machinery in a solar backup generator, there are no time-consuming startup procedures. In the case of a power outage, the generator provides instant backup power. Your main appliances will remain on. It is possible to buy a system where the generator will switch to the backup power seamlessly so sensitive appliances won’t be damaged. A stable voltage means there is no need to fear power surges or drops.
In most cases, the equipment for a solar backup generator is very lightweight and can be easily dismantled. There is no expertise required to operate the generator. Anyone can set it up and start using it. Having a DC mode is a real plus as it enables you to charge and operate appliances simultaneously. The relative light weight of the equipment gives it increased portability over gas or diesel powered machines. You can quickly disassemble and transport the generator to another location if you need to.
The only drawback of a solar backup generator is that they don’t always produce enough power to run high voltage appliances for very long. However the amount of power it can produce depends entirely on the size of your solar panels, so if your power needs are significant, it’s possible to scale the panels to suit.
A solar backup generator comes in many different sizes base on your load requirements. They can be sized from a few inches to a few feet. The larger your power requirements, the larger the generator.
If you are tired of overspending then it’s about time you consider imposing spending limits on yourself. This is a harsh but effective way to start your savings plan, as overspending is the major reason for money problems. Setting a spending limit takes willpower, but it will enable you to overcome money problems in an organized manner.
Where to Start?
You can start the process by documenting each of your regular monthly expenses. This includes everything from the money you spent on entertainment to the gas you paid for to get there. This might look like overkill, but it’s important in accounting for each expense, whether large or small.
You can make a rough calculation of the total spending and then compare it to your total monthly income. A better way of accounting for your expenses is to divide expenses into broader categories. You can do that by adding all expenses related to food and groceries into one and the spending on gas and utility bills into another. These broader categories will enable you to have a better overview of all expenses.
Setting Spending Limits
Once you have assessed the expenses, it will be time to set the spending limits. It is important that you set spending limits for each category. You can set a monthly food budget, and allocate money for entertainment and other activities. You should ideally budget something for enjoyment otherwise you’ll likely get fed up of this style of money management quite quickly.
These limits will serve as the benchmark for each category and you should then be able to manage your finances with relative ease.
The real test comes when you have to keep to these limits each month. This is where you can falter on following the benchmarks and fall by the wayside. Sticking to the plan is down to you and how much you want to improve your situation. Your goal should be to remain under the spending limit at all costs.
Using Online Tools
You might not be able to remain under your spending limit or remain oblivious of any breaches if you are doing it on paper. Without being able to see the bigger picture, it’s often difficult to maintain perspective on things.
This is where online financial management tools come into play. They offer a streamlined and secure way of managing your money, from anywhere at any time. A budget calculator is a perfect tool to start with.
An online tool can help you in tracking each aspect of your daily and monthly expenses. You can add details of your expenses on that basis into the online tool and it will compute them against the corresponding limit.
You can see the results in the form of tabular or graphical presentation. Some online tools also send emails if you overshoot your limit or show the graphs in red. These are useful for both maintaining control and as a mental prompt if you begin to relax a little too much.
You can use spending limits to drastically reduce your spending and adopt a streamlined approach to budgeting. It takes organization and willpower, but will see your finances improve within a few weeks.
You know there is something funny with Life Insurance – It ensures the death of the insurer. Yes as the product pays at the death of the insured person. So, according to me, it should actually be called ‘Death Insurance’. And the thing which is insured is the financial loss that will happen due to death of the insured person.
Insurance is around for hundreds of years. It’s very important for every person to learn the know-how about life insurance. Insurance companies have a statistical table of life span of individuals over a span of 100 years, to my surprise they do predict really well. Insurance companies calculate the value of insurance based on these tables.
Cost of Insurance: traditionally it is expressed in terms of annual cost per thousand of coverage. For example, to buy coverage of $5,000 at the cost of $10 per thousand, the cost of insurance is $50.
The development in medicine and treatment has increased the average life of people and eventually the cost of insurance is seeing a decline. There are numerous types of insurances available in the market but in my knowledge, there is only one type of insurance, the insurance for a certain period or term. All other insurances are only specialization of this.
Term insurance: this is a type of insurance where cost of insurance increases every year with the age of insured person, as the chances of casualty increase. Over the time companies developed another process known as level premium policy where the cost of insurance does not vary. The insurers add up all the premiums from age 0 to 100 and then divide by 100. This leaves you with a higher premium in the initial years. Insurance companies get delighted because most of the policy holders don’t continue for many years with a company and companies are left with more money. Since this process is against the interest of policy-holder, they developed a concept of cash value.
Cash Value: in this scheme, whatever extra premium you pay is kept with the company only. When your policy expires, you get back the deposited money. Otherwise, other choices available to you are:
1. Buy more insurance using the cash value
2. Pay existing premiums using the cash value
3. Borrow the money at interest 4. If you die, the insurance company only pays the face amount of the insurance policy and keeps the cash value.
Do you think that cash value insurance makes a sense to you? I guess ‘No’.
There are a lot of other terms used for cash value insurance: - Universal Life
- Whole Life - Variable Life
- Participating Life (pays dividend) - Interest Sensitive Life - Non-Participating Life (no dividends)
Many life insurance companies call their products as investment but cash value insurance is never an investment. Insurance and investment don’t come hand in hand. These companies take your investment, invest it themselves and keep the profit as well.
When you compare the life insurance sale tactics and techniques to other types of insurance, you will feel that former are ridiculous. Will you ever think of buying a car insurance or home insurance or business insurance policy in which you pay extra premium or borrow your own money. No! But these agents are able to sell their life insurance, ever wondered why? What’s the reason behind? Commissions!
So don’t get into the sweet and attractive words of life insurance agent, get to learn the know-how about life insurance and think from your own mind.
Raggle-taggle of 'household names' offered big sums in direction of WikiLeaks founder's failed bail plea
The already curious case of Julian Assange took one more bizarre twist yesterday when the court discovered that a raggle-taggle of "household names" have been prepared to stake their status in his situation, offering sureties for the courtroom using a complete worth of £180,000.
Despite claiming not to know Assange, the film-maker Ken Loach along with the socialite and charity fundraiser Jemima Khan stood before Westminster magistrates and presented huge sums in direction of Assange's bail, though bail was later refused.
Providing £20,000, Loach explained he didn't know Assange apart from by reputation, but additional: "I think the perform he has completed has been a public service. I believe we're entitled to know the dealings of these that govern us."
Khan supplied an extra £20,000, "or much more if will need be".
Inside a statement later, she stated: "I make no judgment of Julian Assange as an individual as I've in no way met him. I'm supplying my help to him as I believe from the universal correct to freedom of knowledge and our proper to become instructed the truth."
On her Twitter feed final month, Khan requested if Assange was "the new Jason Bourne", a reference towards the fictional motion hero developed by the thriller author Robert Ludlum. The post has because been deleted.
The journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, who also presented £20,000, explained he knew Assange as being a journalist and individual pal and had a "very high regard for him".
The largest donation of £80,000 was offered by an unknown American relation who didn't desire to be named simply because of anxiety for his safety.
Patricia David, a professor, along with the top lawyer Geoffrey Sheen each and every provided up £20,000 surety on grounds that that they had invested their lives fighting for human rights.
Outdoors court Pilger said: "This organization in Sweden can be a travesty; an harmless man has a correct to become free.
"Having his freedom taken absent is outrageous. Sweden really should be ashamed. This is not justice - it is outrageous."
He extra: "Behind this he has manufactured plenty of enemies, the principal one being the warmonger, the united states."
Howard Riddle, the decide at the courtroom in Horseferry Street, London, commended 4 of the sureties for their willingness to help "out of concern for human rights" and without having private information of Assange.
The freeze on foreclosures is over in 23 states, and the Bank of America has again resumed processing them. So far in its self-review, the bank says it has found no errors in its foreclosure process. The process was halted in all 50 states, but is only resuming in 23 for now.
The bank said on Monday that it plans to resume foreclosures next week in 23 states that require a judge's approval to restart the process. The bank says it will continue delaying about 30,000 foreclosures in the other 27 states for now.
"We voluntarily paused our process in the 23 judicial states, not because there was evidence of problems, there was not, but because we wanted to ensure our customers they are being treated fairly," said Dan Frahm, a bank spokesman.
This comes as a result of the news that an unknown number of foreclosures were approved without the bank even looking at the paperwork. It caused a storm when the news first hit the headlines, and caused many banks, including Bank of America to pause foreclosure actions.
In the past weeks, lenders such as JPMorgan Chase, the GMAC Mortgage unit, and Bank of America have admitted that paperwork in an unknown number of foreclosures may contain errors ranging from incorrect dates to forged or inconsistent signatures. It also came to light that so-called “robo-signers” were being used to approve hundreds of foreclosures without even reading them through, or verifying the information in them.
Guy Cecala of Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry publication, reports that "this draws a line in the sand that the banks expect this problem will be over in relatively short order and it will be back to business as usual. If Bank of America can do it, certainly the smaller ones will follow suit."
Despite the resumption of foreclosure actions, the U.S. regulators said they are continuing their investigations into the practices of the lenders, and whether the shoddy processes caused unnecessary evictions. However, critics of the banks say it’s inevitable that the government and congress would come to the rescue and “forgive” the mistakes with a new law.
It’s widely believed that congress will table new legislation forgiving and polishing over the mistakes in order to get things back in order. The real estate market needs all the help it can get, but there is unlikely to be widespread support for more “forgiveness.”
Voters are already angry with the president, the government and the situation, so adding to that is unlikely to get any support. The widespread feeling is that the banks got off way too lightly, and continue to do what they want even while being kept in business by public money.
Whatever the outcome of this mess, it’s certain that foreclosures will resume across all lenders as soon as possible. That means more misery for homeowners, and more foreclosed properties flooding an already saturated market. The only winners in all this are those guys who make the signs to put up outside houses. They must be making a fortune.
GENEVA -Iran and six world powers are heading into negotiations about the country's nuclear program Monday with low expectations, at odds on what to talk about and with tensions high over the assassination of one of Tehran's most prominent scientists.
The talks in Geneva — the first in over a year — are meant to ease concerns over Iran's nuclear agenda. Tehran says it does not want atomic arms, but as it builds on its capacity to make such weapons, neither Israel nor the U.S. have ruled out military action if Tehran fails to heed U.N. Security Council demands to freeze key nuclear programs.
Iran's bold stance was highlighted Sunday, when it announced it had delivered its first domestically mined raw uranium to a processing facility, claiming it is now self-sufficient over the entire nuclear fuel cycle.
A senior diplomat in Vienna who is familiar with the issue said the move was expected and mainly symbolic. Still, the timing of the announcement was significant in signaling just a day ahead of the Geneva talks that Tehran was unlikely to meet international demands that it curb its nuclear activities.
Over two planned days, Saeed Jalili, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, will meet with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, with Ashton's office saying she will act "on behalf" of the U.S., China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany. In fact, senior officials for those six powers will attend and do much of the talking with Tehran.
Chances of meaningful progress were low even before the assassination late last month of a prominent nuclear scientist and the wounding of another further clouded hopes of success at the talks.
Jalili called the killing a "disgrace" for the Security Council on Saturday, claiming the attacks were linked to efforts to implement international sanctions. He did not elaborate.
Still, the expected presence of Ali Bagheri reflects the importance Iran attaches to the meeting. Officials familiar with the composition of the Iranian delegation say Bagheri has a direct line to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Western officials urged Tehran to meet international concerns about its nuclear activities.
Invoking possible military confrontation over Iran's nuclear defiance, British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said Saturday that the Geneva talks need to make a serious start toward resolving the issue.
"We want a negotiated solution, not a military one — but Iran needs to work with us to achieve that outcome," he said. "We will not look away or back down."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was up to Iran to restore trust about its nuclear intentions, urging it to come to Geneva prepared to "firmly, conclusively reject the pursuit of nuclear weapons."
But for Iran the main issues are peace, prosperity — and nuclear topics only in the context of global disarmament.
"Iran has not and will not allow anybody in the talks to withdraw one iota of the rights of the Iranian nation," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said before the scheduled talks, warning the other nations at the table to "put aside the devil's temper" and negotiate in good faith.
Expectations are suitably low, even allowing for the fact that both sides are likely talking tough going into the talks with the purpose of maximizing their starting negotiating positions.
Glyn Davies, the chief U.S. delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the talks were meant to shape conditions for "a new start," even while insisting that Iran's nuclear program "has to be first and foremost on the agenda."
Other officials from the four Western nations coming to the table acknowledge that the six powers are coming without a firm agenda. One of them used freestyle wrestling as an analogy of what to expect.
"Think of this as a sort of catch-as-catch can," said the official, a senior diplomat who asked for anonymity because he was briefing The Associated Press on privileged information. "I don't think we are going to get into any kind of substantive discussions — the best we can hope for is a second round of meetings."
Such caution is understandable.
The last Geneva meeting of the seven nations in October 2009 appeared to put Iran nuclear talks back on track after a four-year hiatus, but Tehran and the six powers began to quibble about what was agreed on only days after they ended.
Iran initially seemed to accept a plan to export 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium to be made into special fuel for a Tehran reactor making medical materials — a move that would have stripped it of much of the material it then had stockpiled that could have been turned into a bomb.
But it then started putting conditions on the deal, which unraveled, deepening mistrust between the two sides.
A fourth set of U.N. Security Council sanctions because of Tehran's continued expansion of uranium enrichment has further burdened relations.
Nations have a right to enrich domestically and Iran insists it is doing so only to make fuel for an envisaged network of reactors and not to make fissile warhead material. But international concerns are strong because Tehran developed its enrichment program clandestinely and because it refuses to cooperate with an IAEA probe meant to follow up on suspicions that it experimented with components of a nuclear weapons program — something Iran denies.
MADRID -Spain's military took control of the nation's airspace Friday night after air traffic controllers staged a massive sickout that stranded hundreds of thousands of travelers on the eve of a long holiday weekend, forcing the government to shut down Madrid's big international hub and seven other airports.
About six hours after the sickout started, causing total travel chaos, Deputy Prime Minister Perez Rubalcaba announced that the Defense Ministry had "taken control of air traffic in all the national territory." He said the Army's chief of staff would make all decisions relating to the organization, planning, supervision and control of air traffic.
It was not immediately clear when airports would start operating again or whether military controllers would actually guide planes in and out of airports or oversee those controllers who did not take part in the sickout. Spanish flagship carrier Iberia SA said all of its flights in and out of Madrid were suspended until at least 11 a.m. Saturday.
The controllers abandoned their posts amid a lengthy dispute over working conditions and just hours after the administration of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero approved a package of austerity measures including a move to partially privatize airports and hand over management of Madrid and Barcelona airports to the private sector.
Spanish prosecutors said they were researching whether they could charge the controllers with crimes, and air traffic controllers meeting to plot strategy at a hotel near Madrid's airport were heckled and filmed by stranded passengers as they entered and left the building.
"To the unemployment line with you all!" one man yelled at the controllers.
Handfuls of passengers made it out of Madrid to destinations like Barcelona and Lisbon, Portugal, on buses provided by airlines. But the vast majority were forced to go home or to hotels with no information on when they might make their canceled flights.
"It's a disgrace, how can a group of people be so selfish as to wreck the plans of so many people?" said dentist Marcela Vega, 35, unable to travel to Chile with her husband, 5-year-old son and baby boy.
Spain's airport authority, known as Aena, said authorities were in contact with Europe's air traffic agency, Eurocontrol, and the United State's FAA about how best to deal with arriving international flights.
Aena chief Juan Ignacio Lema called the situation created by the sickout "intolerable" and warned controllers to return to work, or face disciplinary actions or criminal charges.
"We're asking the controllers to stop blackmailing the Spanish people," Lema said.
Spain's air traffic controllers have been involved for over a year in bitter negotiations with state-owned Aena over wages, working conditions and privileges.
The dispute intensified in February when the government restricted overtime and thus cut average pay of controllers from euro350,000 ($463,610) a year to around euro200,000 ($264,920).
The sickout also closed four airports in the Canary islands, a favorite winter destination in Europe, and airports in prime tourism locations of Ibiza, Palma de Mallorca and Menorca.
Spanish Development Minister Jose Blanco convened an emergency meeting and his ministry issued a terse statement, saying "controllers have begun to communicate their incapacity to continue offering their services, abandoning their places of work."
Blanco later told reporters that authorities were forced to close airspace around Madrid for safety reasons, but he gave no details on when the shuttered airports would reopen so flights can resume.
"We won't permit this blackmail that they are using to turn citizens into hostages," Blanco said
The controllers' union has been complaining for weeks that many members have already worked their maximum hours for all of 2010, and that all 2,000 are overworked and understaffed. Friday's sickout was not expected, but the union has warned it could mount a sickout over the Christmas holiday. Spanish air traffic controllers are prohibited by law from going on strike.
Aena said 90 percent of its controllers had left their workstations or never showed up, and that only 10 controllers remained on duty at in Madrid to handle emergencies.
Some controllers began to return to work late Friday, including about half of the normal staff in Barcelona, where three flights were able to take off during a 3-hour period before dawn Saturday.
But Madrid's sprawling Barajas airport was still shut down. It had 1,300 flights scheduled for Friday, but it wasn't clear how many had taken off and landed before the sickout.
More than 5,000 flights were scheduled for the nation Friday, and about 3,000 departed or landed before the sickout began in the late afternoon.
Monday in a national holiday marking the Day of the Spanish Constitution, and Wednesday is a religious holiday; many Spaniards take advantage of the holidays for a five-day weekend or a week of vacation. About 4 million people had flights booked for the period in the nation of 46 million.
Many weekend Spanish sporting events were likely to be affected by air travel problems, with players for football league leader Barcelona set to travel by road and rail, while Valencia players headed by train.
WASHINGTON -Veteran Rep. Charles Rangel, the raspy-voiced, backslapping former chairman of one of Congress' most powerful committees, was censured by his House colleagues for financial misconduct Thursday in a solemn moment of humiliation in the sunset of his career.
"I brought it onto myself," Rangel told the House. But he also said politics was at work.
After the 333-79 vote, the 80-year-old Democrat from New York's Harlem stood silently at the front of the House and faced Speaker Nancy Pelosi as she read him the formal resolution of censure.
Then, in response, he admitted he had made mistakes, including his failure to pay all his taxes, filing misleading financial statements and improperly seeking money from corporate interests for a college center bearing his name.
But he also declared, "In my heart I truly feel good." He said, "A lot of it has to do with the fact that I know in my heart that I am not going to be judged by this Congress, but I am going to be judged by my life."
It was only the 23rd time in the nation's history that a House member received the most severe punishment short of expulsion. Aside from the embarrassment, censure carries no practical effect and ends the more than two-year ordeal for the congressman who was re-elected to a 21st term last month with more than 80 percent of the vote.
Relief and defiance took over the moment Rangel finished speaking. Somber, Pelosi quietly slipped out of the chamber, but some Democrats gave him a standing ovation. Rangel made it only a third of the way up the aisle when a phalanx of well-wishers stopped and hugged him; he responded by saying something that made them laugh. He was smiling for the rest of the 10 minutes or so that it took to get through his colleagues to exit the chamber, his humiliation past.
Despite the censure, he contended in his response on the House floor that it had been proven that "at no time has it ever entered my mind to enrich myself or to do violence to the honesty that's expected of all of us in this House."
"I am fully aware that this vote reflects perhaps the thinking not just of the members but the political side and the constituency of this body," he told his colleagues. Outside, he told reporters the censure vote was "very, very, very political."
Still, the matter is likely to stain Rangel's half-century in public service. The House ethics committee last month found him guilty of 11 of 13 charges of financial misdeeds, including submitting misleading financial statements and failing to pay all his taxes.
The chairman of the ethics committee, Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, said the censure her committee recommended was consistent with a Democratic pledge to run "the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history."
She said Rangel "violated the public trust" while serving in influential positions including chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
Rangel's predicament pained his many friends in the House. His staunchest allies — members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the New York delegation — tried to reduce the punishment to a simple reprimand Thursday, but that effort failed by a vote of 267-146.
Before the final vote, the dapper congressman, wearing a blue suit and blue tie with a blue handkerchief, was humble before his colleagues.
"I have made serious mistakes," he said, apologizing for the "awkward" position his troubles had placed them in. He was at times contrite, saying that members of Congress "have a higher responsibility than most people" for ethical conduct and that senior lawmakers like himself "should act as a model" for newer lawmakers.
A half-dozen members spoke in his defense, arguing a reprimand was appropriate and that censure had been used for members found guilty of sexual misconduct. Lofgren, though, suggested that today, expulsion would be appropriate for those types of misdeeds.
It's a difficult sunset for Rangel's long career. A jovial politician with a distinctive voice, Rangel was re-elected in November with more than 80 percent of the vote despite being under an ethics cloud for more than two years. He has argued that censure is reserved for corrupt politicians — and he's not one of them.
He also has been making a more personal plea, asking colleagues to remember that he won a Purple Heart after he was wounded in combat in Korea, to focus on his efforts for the underprivileged and to understand that he has great respect for the institution he has served for so long. He's tied for fourth in House seniority.
The House ethics committee painted Rangel as a congressman who ignored rules of conduct and became a tax scofflaw despite his knowledge of tax law from his long service on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
Rangel chaired that panel until last March, when he stepped down after the committee — in a separate case — found that he improperly allowed corporations to finance two trips to Caribbean conferences.
Rangel shortchanged the IRS for 17 years by failing to pay taxes on income from his rental unit in a Dominican Republic resort. He filed misleading financial disclosure reports for a decade, leaving out hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets he owned.
He used congressional letterheads and staff to solicit donations for a monument to himself: a center named after him at City College of New York. The donors included businesses and their charitable foundations that had issues before Congress and, specifically, before the Ways and Means Committee.
Rangel also set up a campaign office in the Harlem building where he lives, despite a lease specifying the unit was for residential use only.
He has paid the Treasury $10,422 and New York state $4,501 to fulfill an ethics committee recommendation. The amounts were to cover taxes he would have owed on his villa income had the statute of limitations not run out on his tax bills.
The last previous House censure was in 1983, when two members, Reps. Gerry E. Studds, D-Mass., and Daniel Crane, R-Ill., were disciplined for having sex with teenage pages. Nine House members have been reprimanded, the latest last year when Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. was punished for yelling "You lie" at President Barack Obama.
WASHINGTON -The State Department severed its computer files from the government's classified network, officials said Tuesday, as U.S. and world leaders tried to clean up from the embarrassing leak that spilled America's sensitive documents onto screens around the globe.
By temporarily pulling the plug, the U.S. significantly reduced the number of government employees who can read important diplomatic messages. It was an extraordinary hunkering down, prompted by the disclosure of hundreds of thousands of those messages this week by WikiLeaks, the self-styled whistleblower organization.
The documents revealed that the U.S. is still confounded about North Korea's nuclear military ambitions, that Iran is believed to have received advanced missiles capable of targeting Western Europe and — perhaps most damaging to the U.S. — that the State Department asked its diplomats to collect DNA samples and other personal information about foreign leaders.
While the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, taunted the U.S. from afar on Tuesday, lawyers from across the government were investigating whether it could prosecute him for espionage, a senior defense official said. The official, not authorized to comment publicly, spoke only on condition of anonymity.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley sought to reassure the world that U.S. diplomats were not spies, even as he sidestepped questions about why they were asked to provide DNA samples, iris scans, credit card numbers, fingerprints and other deeply personal information about leaders at the United Nations and in foreign capitals.
Diplomats in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion, for instance, were asked in a secret March 2008 cable to provide "biometric data, to include fingerprints, facial images, iris scans, and DNA" for numerous prominent politicians. They were also asked to send "identities information" on terrorist suspects, including "fingerprints, arrest photos, DNA and iris scans."
In Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo the requests included information about political, military and intelligence leaders.
"Data should include e-mail addresses, telephone and fax numbers, fingerprints, facial images, DNA, and iris scans," the cable said.
Every year, the intelligence community asks the State Department for help collecting routine information such as biographical data and other "open source" data. DNA, fingerprint and other information was included in the request because, in some countries, foreigners must provide that information to the U.S. before entering an embassy or military base, a U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
The possibility that American diplomats pressed for more than "open source" information has drawn criticism at the U.N. and in other diplomatic circles over whether U.S. information-gathering blurred the line between diplomacy and espionage.
"What worries me is the mixing of diplomatic tasks with downright espionage. You cross a border ... if diplomats are encouraged to gather personal information about some people," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.
Crowley said a few diplomatic cables don't change the role of U.S. diplomats.
"Our diplomats are diplomats. Our diplomats are not intelligence assets," he repeatedly told reporters. "They can collect information. If they collect information that is useful, we share it across the government."
World leaders, meanwhile, were fielding questions about candid U.S. assessments of their countries.
In Kenya, the government was outraged by a leaked cable, published by the German magazine Der Spiegel, in which Kenya is described as a "swamp of flourishing corruption." Kenya's government spokesman called the cable "totally malicious" and said the State Department called to apologize.
In Brazil, officials declined to answer questions about U.S. cables that characterized the South American country as privately cooperative in the war against terrorism, even as it publicly denies terrorist threats domestically.
WikiLeaks has not said how it obtained the documents, but the government's prime suspect is an Army Pfc., Bradley Manning, who is being held in a maximum-security military brig on charges of leaking other classified documents to WikiLeaks. Authorities believe Manning defeated Pentagon security systems simply by bringing a homemade music CD to work, erasing the music, and downloading troves of government secrets onto it.
While world leaders nearly universally condemned the leak, the U.S. and Assange traded barbs from afar. In an online interview with Time magazine from an undisclosed location, Assange called on Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to resign because of the cables asking diplomats to gather intelligence. "She should resign, if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up," he said.
Crowley, at the State Department, showed disdain for Assange.
"I believe he has been described as an anarchist," he said. "His actions seem to substantiate that."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates played down the fallout from the leaks, calling them embarrassing and awkward but saying they would not significantly complicate U.S. foreign policy.
"The fact is governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us and not because they think we can keep secrets," Gates said Monday.
Crowley would not say how long the State Department would keep its files off the classified network.
"We have made some adjustments, and that has narrowed, for the time being, those who have access to State Department cables across the government," he said.
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Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.
The torrent of condemnation heaped on WikiLeaks from around the globe did suggest a widespread sense — among the great and the good, but also among the sometimes more jaded observer and analyst class — that in releasing U.S. diplomatic documents the group crossed a dangerous line.
The prime minister of Israel, a man hardly accustomed to representing global consensus, on Monday found himself in lockstep with most of his peers as he warned that statecraft itself was imperiled by a reality in which no secret is safe if it is written.
"It will be more difficult for talented American diplomats to put into cables and reports things they once would have," Benjamin Netanyahu said. Governments would more likely hoard information, he warned, restricting the circle of people in the know to minimize the chances of a leak.
It is a delicate message for elected leaders to make, of course, because it depends on the proposition that there is a limit to what the people should know, or at least when they should know it.
Netanyahu argued that the ability to communicate under a cloak of secrecy was critical to Israel's ability to reach a peace deal with Egypt in 1979. Had the Israeli public known that Prime Minister Menachem Begin was preparing to cede the entire Sinai desert, captured in 1967, the foment might have scuttled the emerging agreement, Netanyahu suggested.
"Transparency is fundamental to our society, and it's usually essential — but there are a few areas, including diplomacy, where it isn't essential," he said.
But that time-honored government effort to control transparency took a massive hit this weekend, when WikiLeaks began publishing more than 250,000 leaked United States embassy cables — a cache it described as the largest set of confidential documents ever released into the public domain.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asserted Monday that WikiLeaks acted illegally in posting the material. She said the administration was taking "aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information."
As world reaction poured in, the condemnation was nearly universal.
Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said "the perpetrators of these leaks may threaten our national security." In Switzerland, the Basler Zeitung newspaper called it a "diplomatic disaster." The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry called it illegal and harmful.
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle was a tad more diplomatic, proposing that was hardly "an altruistic act."
Indeed, it was remarkable how absent was the halo that tends to accompany WikiLeaks — that sense among pockets in the public that the exposure, while perhaps illegal and indiscreet, while damaging to certain interests to be sure, served the greater purpose of casting light on an important truth.
Instead there was a sense that a time-honored way of doing things was being challenged for the sake of the challenge itself. And that the art of diplomacy — often seen as a force for good in the world, for avoiding war and resolving conflict — was under attack.
The Italian newspaper La Repubblica lamented that "the history of diplomacy ... must start over on a new basis, knowing that there can always be a pair of electronic eyes looking over the shoulders of the person who is writing." Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini called it a "watershed" and reportedly urged world leaders to stand united "without backtracking on the way of diplomacy."
The United States has certainly used the cloak of secrecy for diplomatic ends: President Nixon's historic opening to China in 1972 was preceded by secret talks in which Pakistan was an intermediary. At one point, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, while on a trip to Islamabad, feigned illness and made a secret trip to Beijing.
But more common, of course, are the reports that diplomats send home — on political issues, key players, economic matters, even gossip.
Michael McKinley, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, said the vulnerability of diplomatic correspondence does "immense damage ... to U.S. diplomats' ability to engage in frank, confidential dialogue not just with government officials but with all manner of politicians and non-governmental actors."
For the system to work, diplomats need their contacts to trust in their discretion.
"Valuable contacts who provide useful understanding and context may now be reluctant to speak candidly in confidence to U.S. officials for fear their comments could reach the media, and political rivals or partners," agreed Ali Engin Oba, a Turkish strategic analyst and his country's former ambassador to Congo and Sudan. It's "a dreadful development for diplomacy."
Echoing a popular view, he said that "the leaks have to usher in a revolution in the way diplomatic cables are sent and archived. There has to be a new technological breakthrough."
It was a recurrent theme in Monday's discussions: Over the years, the diplomatic pouch has been largely replaced by e-mails and phone conversations — sometimes over encrypted lines and sometimes not.
What to do?
Stelian Tanase, a Romanian political analyst, said diplomats will learn to speak in code, "using double-language and metaphors."
Aaron David Miller, former State Department Mideast negotiator, predicted the encryption process is likely to become more elaborate.
Sergio Romano, an Italian analyst and former ambassador to Moscow, told state-run Italian radio that "the first reaction of all governments will be to make the confidentiality rules more strict." "Without confidentiality, diplomacy doesn't work," he said.
Elliot Abrams, a former National Security Council official under President George W. Bush, predicted diplomats would increasingly use secure e-mail, which can be sent to a select audience, instead of traditional diplomatic cables, which routinely reach dozens, even hundreds, of people.
He warned, however, that this could have a price: "Some of the people who need to know are going to end up not knowing," he said.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden agreed people will "put a lot less in cables now" and stick to phone calls — which could deprive not just policymakers of information but historians of an understanding of what happened as cables are eventually declassified.
For many, it is ironic that the breach of security affected the United States — a country seen as often questioning the security systems of others.
"In the past, it was always the case that the Americans worried about the security of their allies, now it's America's allies who worry about the security of the United States" said Anthony Glees, Director of the Center for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham in Britain. "This is very big ... (It) shifts the relationship with America's allies."
Among the most damaging revelations involved a major ally: the king of Saudi Arabia supposedly urged the United States to attack Iran to wipe out its nuclear weapons program — comments supported in other cables by Jordan and Bahrain.
The remarks are important because they suggest that Arab states had privately supported such a strike, despite what might have been said in public about the program.
Beyond that were some revelations of undiplomatic behavior by diplomats: That some were being asked to gather biometric data on U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other diplomats shocked the United Nations — as it goes beyond what is considered the normal run of information-gathering expected in diplomatic circles. A cable urging diplomats to collect passwords and details of computer system also prompted unease.
"What worries me is the mixing of diplomatic tasks with downright espionage. You cross a border ... if diplomats are encouraged to gather personal information about some people," Ban said.
Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli deputy foreign minister, was among the few who kept an even keel through Monday's tumult: "People will be careful for two to three months and then they will return to their old behavior," said Beilin, whose diplomatic success, the 1993 Israel-PLO Oslo Accords, was the fruit of months of secret talks.
WASHINGTON -Hundreds of thousands of State Department documents leaked Sunday revealed a hidden world of backstage international diplomacy, divulging candid comments from world leaders and detailing occasional U.S. pressure tactics aimed at hot spots in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea.
The classified diplomatic cables released by online whistle-blower WikiLeaks and reported on by news organizations in the United States and Europe provided often unflattering assessments of foreign leaders, ranging from U.S. allies such as Germany and Italy to other nations like Libya, Iran and Afghanistan.
The cables also contained new revelations about long-simmering nuclear trouble spots, detailing U.S., Israeli and Arab world fears of Iran's growing nuclear program, American concerns about Pakistan's atomic arsenal and U.S. discussions about a united Korean peninsula as a long-term solution to North Korean aggression.
There are also American memos encouraging U.S. diplomats at the United Nations to collect detailed data about the U.N. secretary general, his team and foreign diplomats — going beyond what is considered the normal run of information-gathering expected in diplomatic circles.
None of the revelations is particularly explosive, but their publication could prove problematic for the officials concerned. And the massive release of material intended for diplomatic eyes only is sure to ruffle feathers in foreign capitals, a certainty that prompted U.S. diplomats to scramble in recent days to shore up relations with key allies in advance of the disclosures.
The documents published by The New York Times, France's Le Monde, Britain's Guardian newspaper, German magazine Der Spiegel and others laid out the behind-the-scenes conduct of Washington's international relations, shrouded in public by platitudes, smiles and handshakes at photo sessions among senior officials.
The White House immediately condemned the release of the WikiLeaks documents, saying "such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government."
It also noted that "by its very nature, field reporting to Washington is candid and often incomplete information. It is not an expression of policy, nor does it always shape final policy decisions."
"Nevertheless, these cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders, and when the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only U.S. foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends around the world," the White House said.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley played down the spying allegations. "Our diplomats are just that, diplomats," he said. "They collect information that shapes our policies and actions. This is what diplomats, from our country and other countries, have done for hundreds of years."
On its website, The New York Times said "the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match."
In a statement released Sunday, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said, "The cables show the U.S. spying on its allies and the U.N.; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in 'client states'; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries and lobbying for U.S. corporations."
Their release — the first in a series of planned releases over the next few months — "reveals the contradictions between the U.S.'s public persona and what it says behind closed doors," Assange said.
The documents were again available on the WikiLeaks website Sunday afternoon. The site was inaccessible much of the day, and the group claimed it was under a cyberattack.
But extracts of the more than 250,000 cables posted online by news outlets that had been given advance copies of the documents showed deep U.S. concerns about Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs along with fears about regime collapse in Pyongyang.
The Guardian said some cables showed King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly urging the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program. The newspaper also said officials in Jordan and Bahrain have openly called for Iran's nuclear program to be stopped by any means and that leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt referred to Iran "as 'evil,' an 'existential threat' and a power that 'is going to take us to war,'" The Guardian said.
Those documents may prove the most problematic because even though the concerns of the Gulf Arab states are known, their leaders rarely offer such stark appraisals in public.
The Times highlighted documents that indicated the U.S. and South Korea were "gaming out an eventual collapse of North Korea" and discussing the prospects for a unified country if the isolated, communist North's economic troubles and political transition lead it to implode.
The Times also cited diplomatic cables describing unsuccessful U.S. efforts to prod Pakistani officials to remove highly enriched uranium from a reactor out of fears that the material could be used to make an illicit atomic device. And the newspaper cited cables that showed Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, telling U.S. Gen. David Petraeus that his country would pretend that American missile strikes against a local al-Qaida group were from Yemen's forces.
The paper also reported on documents showing the U.S. used hardline tactics to win approval from countries to accept freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay. It said Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if its president wanted to meet with President Barack Obama and said the Pacific island of Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to take in a group of detainees.
It also cited a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing that included allegations from a Chinese contact that China's Politburo directed a cyber intrusion into Google's computer systems as part of a "coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws."
Le Monde said another memo asked U.S. diplomats to collect basic contact information about U.N. officials that included Internet passwords, credit card numbers and frequent flyer numbers. They were asked to obtain fingerprints, ID photos, DNA and iris scans of people of interest to the United States, Le Monde said.
The Times said another batch of documents raised questions about Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his relationship with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. One cable said Berlusconi "appears increasingly to be the mouthpiece of Putin" in Europe, the Times reported.
Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini on Sunday called the release the "Sept. 11 of world diplomacy," in that everything that had once been accepted as normal has now changed.
Der Spiegel reported that the cables portrayed German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle in unflattering terms. It said American diplomats saw Merkel as risk-averse and Westerwelle as largely powerless.
Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, meanwhile, was described as erratic and in the near constant company of a Ukrainian nurse who was described in one cable as "a voluptuous blonde," according to the Times.
The Obama administration has been bracing for the release for the past week. Top officials have notified allies that the contents of the diplomatic cables could prove embarrassing because they contain candid assessments of foreign leaders and their governments, as well as details of American policy.
The State Department's top lawyer warned Assange late Saturday that lives and military operations would be put at risk if the cables were released. Legal adviser Harold Koh said WikiLeaks would be breaking the law if it went ahead. He also rejected a request from Assange to cooperate in removing sensitive details from the documents.
In Australia, where Assange is from, the attorney general said law enforcement officials were looking into whether the WikiLeaks release broke any laws.
Robert McClelland told reporters on Monday there are "potentially a number of criminal laws" that could have been breached.
In a session Sunday with a group of Arab journalists, Assange said, "The State Department understands that we are a responsible organization, so it is trying to make it as hard as it can for us to publish responsibly."
He called the Obama administration "a regime that doesn't believe in the freedom of the press and doesn't act like it believes it."
The New York Times said the documents involved 250,000 cables — the daily message traffic between the State Department and more than 270 U.S. diplomatic outposts around the world. The newspaper said that in its reporting, it attempted to exclude information that would endanger confidential informants or compromise national security.
The Times said that after its own redactions, it sent Obama administration officials the cables it planned to post and invited them to challenge publication of any information they deemed would harm the national interest. After reviewing the cables, the officials suggested additional redactions, the Times said. The newspaper said it agreed to some, but not all.
Also Sunday, the Pentagon released a summary of precautions taken since WikiLeaks published stolen war logs from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since August, the Pentagon has changed the way portable computer storage devices such as flash drives can be used with classified systems, and made it harder for one person acting alone to download material from a classified network and place it on an unclassified one.
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Associated Press staffers Anne Gearan in Washington, Juergen Baetz in Berlin, Don Melvin in London, Angela Doland in Paris, Robert H. Reid in Cairo, Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Mark Lavie in Jerusalem and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
PORTLAND, Ore. -Federal agents in a sting operation arrested a Somali-born teenager just as he tried blowing up a van he believed was loaded with explosives at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, authorities said.
The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was arrested at 5:40 p.m. Friday just after he dialed a cell phone that he thought would set off the blast but instead brought federal agents and police swooping down on him.
Yelling "Allahu Akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great!" — Mohamud tried to kick agents and police after he was taken into custody, according to prosecutors.
"The threat was very real," said Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon. "Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale."
White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Saturday that President Barack Obama was aware of the FBI operation before Friday's arrest. Shapiro said Obama was assured that the FBI was in full control of the operation and that the public was not in danger.
"The events of the past 24 hours underscore the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism here and abroad," Shapiro said. "The president thanks the FBI, the Department of Justice and the rest of our law enforcement, intelligence and Homeland Security professionals who have once again served with extraordinary skill and resolve and with the commitment that their enormous responsibilities demand."
A law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that federal agents began investigating the suspect after receiving a tip from someone who was concerned about the teenager. The official declined to provide more detail about the relationship between Mohamud and that source.
The FBI affidavit that outlined the investigation alleges that Mohamud planned the attack for months, at one point mailing bomb components to FBI operatives, whom he believed were assembling the device.
According to the official, Mohamud hatched the plan on his own and without any instruction from a foreign terrorist organization, and he planned the details, including where to park the van for the maximum number of casualties.
The affidavit said Mohamud was warned several times about the seriousness of his plan, that women and children could be killed, and that he could back out, but he told agents: "Since I was 15 I thought about all this;" and "It's gonna be a fireworks show ... a spectacular show."
Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Corvallis, was charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. A court appearance was set for Monday.
Authorities allowed the plot to proceed in order to build up enough evidence to charge the suspect with attempt.
The alleged plot in Portland follows a string of terrorist attack planning by U.S. citizens or residents, including a Times Square plot in which Faisal Shahzad pleaded guilty to trying to set off a car bomb at a bustling street corner. U.S. authorities had no intelligence about Shahzad's plot until the smoking car turned up in Manhattan.
Late last month, Farooque Ahmed, 34, of Virginia was arrested and accused of casing Washington-area subway stations in what he thought was an al-Qaida plot to bomb and kill commuters. Similar to the Portland sting, the bombing plot was a ruse conducted over the past six months by federal officials.
U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton released federal court documents to The Associated Press and the Oregonian newspaper that show the sting operation began in June after an undercover agent learned that Mohamud had been in regular e-mail contact with an "unindicted associate" in Pakistan's northwest, a frontier region where al-Qaida and Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents are strong. The person Mohamud had been in e-mail contact with was a friend living in Pakistan who had been a student in Oregon in 2007-2008, the official told the AP.
The two used coded language in which the FBI believes Mohamud discussed traveling to Pakistan to prepare for "violent jihad," the documents said.
In June an FBI agent contacted Mohamud "under the guise of being affiliated with" the suspected terrorist.
An undercover agent met with him a month later in Portland, where they "discussed violent jihad," according to the court documents.
As a trial run, Mohamud and agents detonated a bomb in Oregon's backcounry earlier this month.
"This defendant's chilling determination is a stark reminder that there are people — even here in Oregon — who are determined to kill Americans," Holton said.
Friday, an agent and Mohamud drove to downtown Portland in a white van that carried six 55-gallon drums with detonation cords and plastic caps, but all of them were inert, the complaint states.
They left the van near the downtown ceremony site and went to a train station where Mohamud was given a cell phone that he thought would blow up the vehicle, according to the complaint. There was no detonation when he dialed, and when he tried again federal agents and police made their move.
Omar Jamal, first secretary to the Somali mission to the United Nations, condemned the plot and urged Somalis to cooperate with police and the FBI.
"Talk to them and tell them what you know so we can all be safe," Jamal said.
Somalia Foreign Minister Mohamed Abullahi Omaar said his government is "ready and willing" to offer the U.S. any assistance it may need to prevent similar attempts. He said the attempt in Portland was a tragedy for Mohamud's family and the "people he tried to harm."
"Mohamud's attempt is neither representative nor an example of Somalis. Somalis are peace loving people," said Omaar, whose government is holed up in a few blocks of the capital, Mogadishu, while much of the country's southern and central regions are ruled by Islamist insurgents.
Tens of thousands of Somalis have resettled in the United States since their country plunged into lawlessness in 1991, and the U.S. has boosted aid to the country.
In August, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment naming 14 people accused of being a deadly pipeline routing money and fighters from the U.S. to al-Shabab, an al-Qaida affiliated group in Mohamud's native Somalia,
At the time, Attorney General Eric Holder said the indictments reflect a disturbing trend of recruitment efforts targeting U.S. residents to become terrorists.
Officials have been working with Muslim community leaders across the United States, particularly in Somali diasporas in Minnesota, trying to combat the radicalization.
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Pickler reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Malkhadir M. Muhumed in Nairobi, Kenya, and Lolita C. Baldor and Darlene Superville in Washington also contributed to this report.
YEONPYEONG ISLAND, South Korea -North Korea warned Friday that U.S.-South Korean plans for military maneuvers put the peninsula on the brink of war, and appeared to launch its own artillery drills within sight of an island it showered with a deadly barrage this week.
The fresh artillery blasts were especially defiant because they came as the U.S. commander in South Korea, Gen. Walter Sharp, toured the South Korean island to survey damage from Tuesday's hail of North Korean artillery fire that killed four people.
None of the latest rounds hit the South's territory, and U.S. military officials said Sharp did not even hear the concussions, though residents on other parts of the island panicked and ran back to the air raid shelters where they huddled earlier in the week as white smoke rose from North Korean territory.
Tensions have soared between the Koreas since the North's strike Tuesday destroyed large parts of this island, killing two civilians as well as two marines in a major escalation of their sporadic skirmishes along the sea border.
The attack — eight months after a torpedo sank a South Korean warship further west, killing 46 sailors — has also laid bare weaknesses in South Korea's defense 60 years after the Korean War. The skirmish forced South Korea's beleaguered defense minister to resign Thursday, and President Lee Myung-bak on Friday named a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the post.
The heightened animosity between the Koreas is taking place as the North undergoes a delicate transition of power from leader Kim Jong Il to his young, inexperienced son Kim Jong Un, who is in his late 20s and is expected to eventually succeed his ailing father.
Washington and Seoul have pressed China to use its influence on Pyongyang to ease tensions amid worries of all-out war, and a dispatch from Chinese state media on Friday — saying Beijing's foreign minister had met with the North Korean ambassador — appeared to be an effort to trumpet China's role as a responsible actor and placate the U.S. and the South.
The U.S., meanwhile, is preparing to send a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to South Korean waters for joint military drills in the Yellow Sea starting Sunday.
The North, which sees the drills as a major military provocation, unleashed its anger over the planned exercises in a dispatch earlier Friday.
"The situation on the Korean peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war," the report in the North's official Korean Central News Agency said.
A North Korean official boasted that Pyongyang's military "precisely aimed and hit the enemy artillery base" as punishment for South Korean military drills — a reference to Tuesday's attack — and warned of another "shower of dreadful fire," KCNA reported in a separate dispatch.
China also expressed concern over any war games in waters within its exclusive economic zone, though the statement on the Foreign Ministry website didn't mention the drills starting Sunday. That zone includes areas south of Yeonpyeong cited for possible maneuvers, though the exact location of the drills is not known.
China strongly protested an earlier round of drills in the region but has been largely mute over the upcoming exercises. Beijing could be withholding direct criticism to avoid roiling ties with South Korea and the U.S. and to register its displeasure with ally North Korea.
The North Korean government does not recognize the maritime border drawn by the U.N. in 1953, and considers the waters around Yeonpyeong Island its territory.
Yeonpyeong Island, home to South Korean military bases as well as a civilian population of about 1,300 people, lies only 7 miles (11 kilometers) from North Korean shores and is not far from the spot where the South Korean warship sank in an explosion in March.
Gen. Sharp said during his visit to the island that Tuesday's attack was a clear violation of an armistice signed in 1953 at the end of the three-year Korean War.
"We at United Nations Command will investigate this completely and call on North Korea to stop any future attacks," he said Friday.
Washington keeps more than 28,000 troops in South Korea to protect its ally from aggression — a legacy of the Korean War that is a sore point for North Korea, which cites the U.S. presence as the main reason behind its need for nuclear weapons.
Dressed in a heavy camouflage jacket, army fatigues and a black beret, Sharp walked down a heavily damaged street strewn with debris from buildings. Around him were charred bicycles and shattered bottles of soju, Korean rice liquor.
AP photographers at an observation point on the northwest side of Yeonpyeong heard explosions and saw at least one flash of light on the North Korean mainland.
There were no immediate reports of damage. Only a few dozen residents remain on Yeonpyeong, with most of the population of 1,300 fleeing in the hours and days after the attack as authorities urged them to evacuate.
Many houses were blackened, half-collapsed or flattened, the streets littered with shattered windows, bent metal and other charred wreckage. Several stray dogs barked as they sat near destroyed houses. A group of South Korean marines carrying M-16 rifles patrolled along a seawall as the sun rose from the ocean.
On Thursday, the South's president ordered reinforcements for the 4,000 troops on Yeonpyeong and four other Yellow Sea islands, as well as top-level weaponry and upgraded rules of engagement.
He also sacked Defense Minister Kim Tae-young amid intense criticism that Yeonpyeong was unprepared for the attack and that the return fire came too slowly. Lee named former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Kim Kwan-jin to the post, the president's office announced Friday.
Despite the criticisms, South Korea assured a meeting of the European Olympic Committees on Friday that it would be able to ensure security at the 2018 Winter Games if it's picked. The chair of the Pyeongchang 2018 bid committee presented their case Friday in Belgrade.
Lee, dressed in a black suit, visited a military hospital in Seongnam near Seoul Friday to pay his respects to the two marines killed in the North Korean attack.
Lee laid a white chrysanthemum, a traditional symbol of grief, on an altar, burned incense and bowed before framed photos of the two young men. Consoling sobbing family members, he vowed to build a stronger defense.
"I will make sure that this precious sacrifice will lay the foundation for the strong security of the Republic of Korea," he wrote in a condolence book, according to his office.
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Foster Klug reported from Seoul. AP photographer David Guttenfelder on Yeonpyeong, and writers Kwang-tae Kim, Kelly Olsen and Jean H. Lee in Seoul and Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed to this report.
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