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4Dec/10Off

Military takes over air traffic control in Spain

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.
—
Jorge Sainz contributed from Madrid.

Military takes over air traffic control in Spain

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30Nov/10Off

US cuts access to files after leak embarrassment

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.
—
Associated Press writers Kimberly Dozier and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.

US cuts access to files after leak embarrassment

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27Nov/10Off

Feds: Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Ore.

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.
—
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.

Feds: Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Ore.

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19Nov/10Off

US-Russian ‘reset’ in trouble as nuke pact stalls

MOSCOW -Is the reset on the rocks?
Rumblings in Washington by the resurgent Republican Party against Senate ratification of the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty raise doubts about a fragile U.S.-Russian rapprochement — the "reset" that has been a centerpiece of President Obama's diplomacy.
An unraveling of ties, which hit post-Cold War lows during the administration of George W. Bush, would erode global stability at a time of burgeoning security threats and harm international efforts to stem the spread of weapons of mass destruction.
New START bolstered mutual trust, helping Washington win crucial Kremlin backing for a new set of sanctions against Iran and stronger support for the war in Afghanistan.
"The failure to ratify the treaty will deal a very painful blow to Obama's administration and the policy of `reset,'" said Sergei Rogov, head of the Moscow-based U.S.A. and Canada Institute, a top think-tank advising the government on foreign policy.
If "the administration can't deliver what it promised, it would seriously undermine Obama's position in the international arena."
The Russian Foreign Ministry sought to play down a statement from Sen. Jon Kyl, a leading Republican, who spoke against holding a ratification vote this year. But it warned that the process should go forward in both countries at the same time.
Obama on Thursday urged the Senate to ratify the treaty, appearing at the White House with former secretaries of state and defense of both parties who all support it.
"This is not about politics," he said. "It's about national security."
Some Kremlin-connected legislators and political pundits said Senate failure to ratify the agreement would likely push Moscow to rethink its relationship with the United States.
Mikhail Margelov, head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of parliament, said Moscow may reconsider its stance on Iran and Afghanistan if the treaty fails.
"We should agree with Vice President Joe Biden who fears that due to procrastinations with the ratification, the United States may lose Moscow's vital support in tackling the problem of Iran and in the war in Afghanistan," Margelov was quoted in Russian news reports as saying. "The continuation of `reset' that envisages the development of partnership on security issues hinges on the treaty's ratification."
Moscow backed the latest set of U.N. sanctions against Iran in June and later shelved a 2007 contract to supply Iran with sophisticated S-300 air defense missile systems that drew strong U.S. and Israeli concerns. The moves angered Tehran, which accused Moscow of kowtowing to the West.
The Kremlin also has offered stronger support for NATO operations in Afghanistan, allowing the alliance to carry supplies across the Russian territory. A Russia-NATO summit in Lisbon this weekend is expected to see the signing of a new deal on the so-called "reverse" transit that would allow NATO to ship cargo back from Afghanistan.
Rogov said Russia would be unlikely to backtrack on its moves regarding Iran and Afghanistan, even if the Senate fails to seal the arms deal, but that it would close the door to any further friendly action.
"It's not that we will turn back, but any further moves toward cooperation will be unlikely," he told The Associated Press.
Dmitry Trenin, head of the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office, said Russia will continue to cooperate with Obama, but show more caution. "The relations will be stable and businesslike, but limited in depth and scope," he said.
The nuclear arms deal signed in April by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev would reduce strategic warheads to 1,550 for each country from the current ceiling of 2,200 and restore onsite inspections and other verification measures that ceased when the previous START treaty expired nearly a year ago.
Trenin said that the unraveling of arms control would erode stability.
"It's always dangerous to have nuclear arsenals of two major powers develop without proper information exchange," he said. "That would reduce the level of predictability."
Rogov warned that the termination of inspections would prompt each country to overestimate the other's potential, as happened during the Cold War. "If on-the-ground inspections aren't restored, both the U.S. and Russia will have to proceed from the worst-case scenario as they did before the first arms control agreements were reached in the early 1970s," he said.
Rogov and other observers also warned that failure to put New START into force would ruin hopes for global nuclear disarmament and encourage the spread of atomic weapons.
"The world is no longer bipolar, and the collapse of the U.S.-Russian arms control mechanism will turn the multipolar world into multipolar chaos, as no one else would be able to persuade other nuclear powers to accept at least some rules of the game," Rogov said. "The consequences of the New START collapse could be extremely grave."
Sergei Karaganov, chairman of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policies that includes some of Russia's top political and military analysts, said that if the treaty fails in the Senate, Obama and Medvedev might agree to implement its provisions by executive orders. He added, however, that many in Russian officialdom would likely oppose that, arguing it would make no sense to fulfill the deal at a time when the U.S. policy may change soon.
Some said the arms treaty's collapse would play into the hands of hawks in the Russian government and weaken Medvedev, who has pushed for better ties with the U.S.
"It will raise doubts about the `reset' and undermine positions of Medvedev who placed his bets on that," said Sergei Markov, a leading lawmaker with the ruling United Russia party led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

US-Russian 'reset' in trouble as nuke pact stalls

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3Nov/10Off

Jubilant GOP wins the House, falls short of Senate

WASHINGTON -Resurgent Republicans won control of the House and cut deeply into the Democrats' majority in the Senate in momentous midterm elections shadowed by recession, ushering in a new era of divided government certain to complicate the final two years of President Barack Obama's term.
House Speaker-in-waiting John Boehner, voice breaking with emotion, declared shortly before midnight Tuesday that the results were "a repudiation of Washington, a repudiation of big government and a repudiation of politicians who refuse to listen to the people."
Obama monitored returns at the White House, then telephoned Boehner with congratulations in a call that underscored the power shift.
Incomplete returns showed the GOP picked up at least 59 House seats — the biggest party turnover in more than 70 years — and led for six more, far in excess of what was needed for a majority. Among the losers was Rep. Tom Perriello, a first-termer from Virginia for whom Obama campaigned just before the election.
On a night of triumph, Republicans gained at least six Senate seats, and tea party favorites Rand Paul in Kentucky, Mike Lee in Utah and Marco Rubio in Florida were among their winners. But Christine O'Donnell lost badly in Delaware, for a seat that Republican strategists once calculated would be theirs with ease. And they lost the nation's most closely watched race, in Nevada, where Majority Leader Harry Reid won an especially costly and brutal campaign in a year filled with them.
The GOP also wrested 10 governorships from the Democrats, Ohio and Pennsylvania among them, and gave two back, California and Hawaii.
In New York, Andrew Cuomo won the office his father, Mario, held for three terms. And in California, Edmund G. Brown Jr., was successful in his bid for a comeback to the governor's office he occupied for two terms more than a quarter-century ago.
Three Senate races were too close to call, including an Alaska campaign in which Sen. Lisa Murkowski ran as a write-in candidate after losing the Republican primary in September. The vote count also continued in seven governors' races.
The biggest win by far was the House, a victory made all the more remarkable given the drubbing Republicans absorbed at the hands of Democrats in the past two elections. Their comeback was aided by independents, who backed GOP candidates for the first time since 2004, by a margin of 55 percent to 39 percent. Women backed Democrats 49-48, after favoring them by a dozen points in recent elections.
The takeaways came in bunches — five Democratic-held seats each in Pennsylvania and Ohio and three in Florida and Virginia. Incumbents sent to defeat included two committee chairmen, Ike Skelton in Missouri and John Spratt in South Carolina, as well as Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania, in Congress more than a quarter-century.
Democrats conceded nothing while they still had a chance. "Let's go out there and continue to fight," Speaker Nancy Pelosi exhorted supporters in remarks before television cameras while the polls were still open in much of the country.
But not long after she spoke, Democratic incumbents in both houses began falling, and her own four-year tenure as the first female speaker in history was doomed. She gave no indication of her own plans.
The White House said Obama had called Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and top Democrats as well as Boehner, and pledged to try and find common ground on the issues facing the country. Efforts to revitalize the economy top the list, and Republicans also campaigned calling for spending cuts to reduce deficits, extension of expiring tax cuts for all and repeal of Obama's cherished health care bill — all areas ripe for confrontation in the months ahead.
For her part, Pelosi issued a statement saying, "We must all strive to find common ground to support the middle class, create jobs, reduce the deficit and move our nation forward."
With unemployment at 9.6 percent nationally, interviews with voters revealed an extraordinarily sour electorate, stressed financially and poorly disposed toward the president, the political parties and the federal government.
Sen.-elect Paul, appearing Tuesday night before supporters in Bowling Green, Ky., declared, "We've come to take our government back."
About four in 10 voters said they were worse off financially than two years ago, according to exit polls and pre-election surveys. More than one in three said their votes were an expression of opposition to Obama. More than half expressed negative views about both political parties. Roughly 40 percent of voters considered themselves supporters of the conservative tea party movement. Less than half said they wanted the government to do more to solve problems.
Republicans were certain of at least six Senate pickups, including the seat in Illinois that Obama resigned to become president. Rep. Mark Kirk won there, defeating Alexi Giannoulias.
Democratic Sens. Russell Feingold in Wisconsin and Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas were turned out of office. In addition, Republicans scored big in races for Democratic seats without incumbents on the ballot. Former Rep. Pat Toomey won a close race in Pennsylvania, North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven won easily there, and former Sen. Dan Coats breezed in a comeback attempt for the Indiana seat he voluntarily gave up a dozen years ago.
Democrats averted deeper losses when Gov. Joe Manchin won in West Virginia — after pointedly distancing himself from Obama — for the unexpired portion of the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd's term, and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was victorious in Connecticut, dispatching Linda McMahon, former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. Sen. Barbara Boxer was elected to a fourth term in California, overcoming a challenge from Carly Fiorina.
The GOP gubernatorial gains came after a campaign in which their party organization spent more than $100 million, nearly double what Democrats had.
Among the incumbents who fell were Ted Strickland in Ohio, defeated by former Rep. John Kasich, and Chet Culver in Iowa, loser to former Gov. Terry Branstad.
In California, former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. was elected to the office he held for two terms more than a quarter-century ago.
In a footnote to the brutal politics of the campaign, Republican-turned- independent Lincoln Chafee was elected governor of Rhode Island. Obama campaigned in the state in the campaign's final week. But he declined to endorse the Democratic candidate, Frank Caprio, out of what the White House said was respect for Chafee, who had endorsed the president in his own presidential race two years ago.
A Republican takeover of the House would usher in a new era of divided government after two years in which Obama and fellow Democrats pushed through an economic stimulus bill, a landmark health care measure and legislation to rein in Wall Street after the near collapse of the economy in 2008.
Paul's triumph in Kentucky completed an improbable rise for an eye surgeon making his first race. He drew opposition from the Republican Party establishment when he first launched his bid, then struggled to adjust to a statewide race with Attorney General Jack Conway.
Rubio, also running with tea party support, won with 49 percent of the vote in a three-way race in Florida, months after he forced Gov. Charlie Crist to leave the Republican Party and run as an independent. Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek ran third.
But a third tea party-backed candidate, O'Donnell, who went from a virtual unknown to primary winner to fodder for late-night comedians in the span of a few months, lost overwhelmingly to Democrat Chris Coons in Delaware. Republicans had counted on taking the seat from the Democrats early this year, but that was before O'Donnell defeated veteran Rep. Mike Castle in a September primary. Democrat John Carney easily won the seat that was Castle's for nearly two decades.
Not all the Republican newcomers were party crashers.
In New Hampshire, Republican Kelly Ayotte won a Senate seat, defeating Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes. Former Bush administration official Rob Portman won a seat in Ohio, and Rep. Jerry Moran won in Kansas and Rep. Roy Blunt in Missouri.
Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont was re-elected to his seventh term and Barbara Mikulski her fifth. New York Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand also won, as did Sen. Ron Wyden in Oregon and Boxer in California In Hawaii, Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye was elected for a ninth time to the seat he has held since 1962.
Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who won a second term in South Carolina, has been working to establish a nationwide standing among conservatives. He was instrumental in supporting tea party challengers in several primaries this spring and summer at a time the GOP establishment was backing other candidates.
In Alabama, Sen. Richard Shelby was re-elected easily, as were Republican Sens. Tom Coburn in Oklahoma, Richard Burr in North Carolina, John Thune in South Dakota, Johnny Isakson in Georgia, David Vitter in Louisiana, John McCain in Arizona, Chuck Grassley in Iowa and Mike Crapo in Idaho.
—
AP writers Thomas J. Sheeran in Cleveland, Rasha Madkour in Miami, Wayne Parry in Bayville, N.J., Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, N.J., Mike Glover in Des Moines, Iowa, Thomas J. Sheeran in Parma Heights, Ohio, Jeff Baenen in Minneapolis, Deepti Hajela in New York and Mark S. Smith in Washington contributed to this report.

Jubilant GOP wins the House, falls short of Senate

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24Oct/10Off

Obama preps for reshaped postelection presidency

WASHINGTON -Preparing for political life after a bruising election, President Barack Obama will put greater emphasis on fiscal discipline, a nod to a nation sick of spending and to a Congress poised to become more Republican, conservative and determined to stop him.
He is already giving clues about how he will govern in the last two years of his term.
Obama will try to make gains on deficit reduction, education and energy. He will enforce his health care and financial overhauls and try to protect them from repeal should Republicans win control of Capitol Hill. He will use executive authority when blocked by Congress, and steel for scrutiny and investigations if the GOP is in charge.
While trying to save money, Obama will have to decide whether to bend to Republican and growing Democratic pressure to extend Bush-era tax cuts, even for the wealthy, that expire at year's end. Obama wants to extend them for people making less than $200,000 and married couples making less than $250,000, but a broader extension is gaining favor with an increasing number of Democrats.
Moving to the fore will be a more serious focus on how to balance the federal budget and pay for the programs that keep sinking the country into debt.
In other times, that discussion might seem like dry, Washington talk. Not now. People are fed up with federal spending, particularly as many remain jobless.
The White House refuses to talk about how the president will have to adjust his style or goals if power in Congress tilts right, for fear of undermining what Obama is still campaigning hard to do: keeping Democrats in power. There is no conceding as Obama recruits voters and rallies supporters all the way to Nov. 2.
Yet if polls and analysts are on target, Republicans are poised to win big, possibly taking control of the House and gaining seats in the Senate, where Obama's party already lacks the votes to overcome bill-killing delay tactics. Obama probably will operate in an environment with even fewer moderate Republicans.
The president has signaled that at the start of the new year, he will speak more directly to the country about the financial choices ahead. "If we're going to get serious about the deficit, then we're going to have to look at everything: entitlements, defense spending, revenues. ... And that's going to be a tough conversation," he said.
It's one that will be framed by a bipartisan debt commission, whose ideas this December will give Obama political cover on where to suggest unpopular cuts.
Obama says the most frustrating part of his presidency is that he had to keep spending money and adding to the deficit in his first six months in office "to save the economy." He has from the start called deficit reduction a goal, but one that had to get bumped in favor of sparking the economy.
Almost 60 percent of likely voters now say cutting the yearly budget shortfall is the priority, even if that means the government can't spend on new education programs, develop alternative energy sources or enact his health care overhaul or alternative energy policies, an Associated Press-GfK poll found.
Obama defends the huge economic stimulus plan and the bailout of U.S. automakers, and doesn't blame people for getting tired of all the spending. But he does accuse Republicans of showing a lack of genuineness about fixing the systemic problems that have driven up the debt long before he won the White House.
And there rests the true trouble.
Even though Obama and the Republicans ostensibly share the goals of reducing debt and creating jobs, they disagree fundamentally on their approaches. That problem appears to be worsened by the lack of a serious working relationship among the leaders. If divided government simply leads to more division over the budget and economy, newly empowered Republicans and a Democratic president seeking re-election may both pay the price.
"It's going to be very hard to find common ground," said James Thurber, a professor of government at American University. "To a certain extent, (Obama's) strategy depends on the strategy of majority of the House, and what can be found in the Senate, where's he's basically going to be deadlocked."
House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio said if Obama and his team are going to work with the new Congress, then they must accept the end of government stimulus efforts as a means for creating jobs. Boehner and fellow Republicans have outlined a plan for governing that includes deep spending cuts and a repeal of Obama's health care law, among other changes. Boehner is likely to ascend to House speaker if his party wins a majority.
"They're going to have to signal some kind of willingness to work with Republicans to cut spending," Boehner told The Associated Press. "Cutting government spending is what the American people want, and it's an approach neither party has tried yet."
The yearly budget deficit stands at $1.3 billion.
Obama may succeed in getting Republican support for trade pacts on a new education law that insists on school reforms. He will go for an immigration overhaul and energy legislation, but have to accept smaller, piece-by-piece results. Capping of greenhouse gas emissions, for one, seems to be going nowhere.
"It's a very different reality for the president for the next two years, which is not to say that nothing gets done," said Norman Ornstein, a political scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Even in a rancorous and nasty environment, it seems to me there may some areas of opportunity."
Either real compromise or political pressures may pull Obama and enough Republicans together to get some priorities done. President Bill Clinton managed to rebound and work with Republicans after they swept into office in 1994, teaming up on welfare and balanced-budget legislation.
Never to be ignored are the core Democrats who helped get Obama elected and who, in some cases, are disgruntled about the pace of progress. "He's got to be careful to manage his base," said Ann Crigler, a professor of political science at the University of Southern California. "His election is going to start Nov. 3."

Obama preps for reshaped postelection presidency

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22Oct/10Off

Fearing rout, Obama, Dems reach to female voters

SEATTLE -In a last-ditch effort to prevent electoral disaster, President Barack Obama and Democratic allies are vigorously wooing women voters, whose usually reliable support appears to have softened.
From blunt TV ads to friendlier backyard chats, they're straining to persuade women that it's the Democrats who are on their side and it's in women's vital interest to turn out and vote in the Nov. 2 elections that could give Republicans control of one or both houses of Congress.
In Seattle on Thursday, Obama told local women and others that "how well women do will help determine how well our families are doing as a whole." Accompanied by women who own businesses, he spoke in a family's backyard about the economy's effects on women and outlined ways he said his policies have helped them.
Later, trying to rekindle the enthusiasm of his presidential race, he all but ordered thousands of cheering supporters at a packed University of Washington arena to get out and vote, even though he's not on the ballot. Hoarsely shouting over the applause, he said, "If everybody that voted in 2008 shows up in 2010, we will win this election. We will win this election. But you've got to come out and vote."
Campaigning for one of the Democrats' female senators, Patty Murray, who is in a tight re-election fight, Obama attracted a bigger crowd than the 10,000 who could fit into the arena. The others moved to an overflow area set up in the university's football stadium, and the president ran through the stadium tunnel onto the field to greet them.
With the elections less than two weeks away and Democrats fearing big losses, candidates, party allies and others are joining Obama in seeking women's votes by hitting Republican opponents — in ads, mailings and speeches — on issues such as abortion rights. In every corner of the country, they are arguing that the GOP would erase progress American women have made under Democratic control of the White House and Congress.
The latest Associated Press-GfK poll underscores the Democrats' concern: Women long have leaned toward Democrats but, at a time of great economic unrest, those who are likely to vote now split fairly evenly between the two parties, 49 percent favoring Democrats, 45 percent Republicans. That's a significant drop from 2006 when Democrats had a double-digit edge. The current margin mirrors 1994, the year of a Republican wave that swept Congress.
Men usually break for Republicans, and they broadly favor the GOP this year, too.
Women could hold the key for Obama and his party as Democrats look to minimize expected widespread losses at all levels of government in a year when, particularly on the Republican side, female candidates top ballots in statewide races in Connecticut, South Carolina, California, New Hampshire, New Mexico and elsewhere.
Hope for the Democrats: A lot of women are undecided, and more than a third who are likely to vote say they could still change their minds before the election.
With that in mind, the White House, Democratic candidates and outside groups are reaching out to female voters.
Making it personal, Obama told the backyard group on Thursday he's determined to make sure that girls get as good an education as boys, particularly in math and science.
"As a father of two daughters, this is something that I spend a lot of time thinking about," he said.
He presented two women — Christina Lomasney, a physicist and president of a local metals company, and Jody Hall, who has five cupcake shops in the Seattle area — who praised the government for business help.
Besides the president, first lady Michelle Obama has campaigned on Democrats' behalf with a particular focus on women. She recently pleaded for their votes during a New York fundraiser that partly benefited the Women's Leadership Forum. She was flanked by Vice President Joe Biden's wife, Jill, and actress Sarah Jessica Parker of "Sex and the City."
Mrs. Obama reminded the crowd that her husband had named two women to the Supreme Court and that the first piece of legislation he signed as president was the Lilly Ledbetter Act to help women achieve equal pay.
Across the country, Democratic candidates and their allies are reaching out to women, mostly by casting their Republican opponents — some of them women as well — as out-of-step with their concerns.
The head of EMILY's List, Stephanie Schriock, recently warned voters in a speech that a Republican takeover of Congress — and Republican John Boehner as House speaker — would mean "a dangerous world." The organization, dedicated to electing women who favor abortion rights, had hundreds of female volunteers calling women in California urging them to vote for Sen. Barbara Boxer.
In Nevada, a new ad by the Service Employees International Union assails Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid's GOP challenger, saying Sharron Angle would force a rape victim who was impregnated to have the baby, and her ideas would hurt women's ability to get college loans, find jobs and have Social Security.
Elsewhere, Democrats have hammered Republican Ken Buck in Colorado's Senate race over claims of a woman who says Buck once refused to prosecute a case in which she said she had been raped. In Kentucky's Senate race, Democrat Jack Conway, trailing his GOP opponent in the polls, has an ad running that asks: "Why did Rand Paul once tie a woman up?" — a reference to an allegation of a college prank. And Washington Sen. Murray is assailing Republican Dino Rossi with an ad that accuses him of wanting to "turn back the clock" on abortion rights.
On Election Day a week from Tuesday, women could make the difference in a couple of dozen extraordinarily close congressional races scattered across the nation, and in a half dozen neck-and-neck Senate contests that could determine whether Republicans rise to power, among them Washington state, Nevada, Colorado, Illinois, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
Women also could affect governors' races from coast to coast, including the biggest prizes of the year in Ohio, California and Florida.
Top Democrats publicly shrug off the notion that women are fleeing the party, but the intense focus by the White House and candidates on this generally reliable constituency shows a concern.
"One of the issues that separates us from the Republican Party is our advocacy on these issues," said White House senior adviser David Axelrod. "There is a very strong case to be made for the advocacy that we've shown and for our belief that getting fair treatment for women, whether it's in the workplace, in the health care system, in obtaining capital in order to start or expand businesses."
To promote that position, Obama's National Economic Council released a report on "Jobs and Economic Security for America's Women" — detailing small-business loans, child care tax credits and other programs aimed at women — and top aide Valerie Jarrett made the rounds on morning talk shows to promote his policies.
"Strengthening opportunities for women in our economy is a key focus of the presidents economic agenda," Jarrett wrote the White House blog.
For Democrats, the challenge over the next days is great.
Women are less tuned into the election than men, with just 54 percent of women who are likely to vote saying they have a great deal of interest compared with 67 percent of men, according to the AP-GfK poll.
Still, nearly half of women say they want to see Democrats retain control of Congress, compared with 41 percent who would prefer the GOP. Men are the reverse.
Women likely to vote also are more apt than men to say they trust Democrats more than Republicans — or they trust the two parties the same — on most issues tested, including creating jobs.
And 54 percent of women likely to vote say they'd like to see their own House member re-elected. It's a good sign for Democrats in a Congress where they outnumber Republicans.
—
AP National Political Writer Liz Sidoti reported from Washington. AP Deputy Polling Director Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

Fearing rout, Obama, Dems reach to female voters

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8Oct/10Off

Chinese dissident Liu wins Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO, Norway -Imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for using non-violence to demand fundamental human rights in his homeland. The award ignited a furious response from China, which accused the Norwegian Nobel Committee of violating its own principles by honoring "a criminal."
Chinese state media immediately blacked out the news and Chinese government censors blocked Nobel prize reports from Internet websites.
The Nobel committee praised Liu's pacifist approach, ignoring not-so-subtle threats by Chinese diplomats even before the announcement that such a decision would result in strained ties with Norway.
Unlike some in China's highly fractured and persecuted dissident community, the 54-year-old Liu has been an ardent advocate for peaceful, gradual political change, rather than confrontation with the government.
The committee cited Liu's participation in the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing in 1989 and the Charter 08 document he recently co-authored, which called for greater freedom in China and an end to the Communist Party's political dominance.
Liu was sentenced last year to 11 years in prison for subversion.
In Beijing, China's Foreign Ministry lashed out at the decision, saying the award should been used instead to promote international friendship and disarmament.
"Liu Xiaobo is a criminal who has been sentenced by Chinese judicial departments for violating Chinese law," the statement said. Awarding the peace prize to Liu "runs completely counter to the principle of the prize and is also a blasphemy to the peace prize."
It said the decision would damage bilateral relations between China and Norway.
In China, broadcasts of the announcement by CNN were blacked out. Popular Internet sites removed coverage of the Nobel prizes, placed prominently in recent days for the science awards. Messages about "Xiaobo" to Sina Microblog, a Twitter-like service run by Internet portal Sina.com, were quickly deleted. Attempts to send mobile text messages with the Chinese characters for Liu Xiaobo failed.
The Nobel committee said China, as a growing economic and political power, needed to take more responsibility to protect the rights of its citizens.
"China has become a big power in economic terms as well as political terms, and it is normal that big powers should be under criticism," prize committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said, calling Liu Xiaobo (LEE-o SHAo-boh) a symbol for the fight for human rights in China.
More than a dozen friends and supporters of Liu gathered near the entrance to Ditan Park in central Beijing, holding up placards congratulating Liu. They shouted "Long Live Freedom of Speech, Long Live Democracy" and wore yellow ribbons on their clothes to signify, they said, their wish that he be freed.
The small demonstration, initially undisturbed by police, pointed out the troubling status of China's dissident community. Liu is almost unknown in China except among political activists. Passersby on foot and bike did not stop, ignoring the demonstration.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told national broadcaster NRK he saw no grounds for China to punish Norway as a country for the award.
"I think that would be negative for China's reputation in the world, if they chose to do that," Stoltenberg said.
It was the first Nobel for the Chinese dissident community since it resurfaced after the country's communist leadership launched economic, but not political reforms three decades ago. The win could jolt a current debate among the leadership and the elite over whether China should begin democratic reforms and if so how quickly.
Only one other Nobel peace laureate is imprisoned: Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the 1991 prize and has been detained 15 of the past 21 years.
She is due to be released from house arrest Nov. 13, a week after Myanmar's first elections in two decades. Suu Kyi's political party won the last elections in 1990 but the ruling junta never allowed it to take power.
The Nobel citation said China's new world status must entail increased responsibility.
"China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights," it said, citing an article in China's constitution about freedom of speech and assembly. "In practice, these freedoms have proved to be distinctly curtailed for China's citizens."
The Charter 08 document called was an intentional echo of Charter 77, the famous call for human rights in then-Czechoslovakia that led to the 1989 Velvet Revolution that swept away communist rule.
"The democratization of Chinese politics can be put off no longer," Charter 08 says.
Thousands of Chinese signed Charter 08, and the Communist Party took the document as a direct challenge.
Police arrested Liu hours before Charter 08 was due to be released in December 2008. Given a brief trial last Christmas Day, Liu was convicted of subversion for writing Charter 08 and other political tracts and sentenced to 11 years in prison.
"Through the severe punishment meted out to him, Liu has become the foremost symbol of this wide-ranging struggle for human rights in China," the award citation said.
Jagland told The Associated Press that the committee had not tried to reach the imprisoned laureate or his wife, but they would try to make contact with the Chinese Embassy in Oslo.
In a year with a record 237 nominations for the peace prize, Liu had been considered a favorite, with open support from winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and others.
When the Tibet-born Dalai Lama won the peace prize in 1989, both the Chinese government and some of the public were angry — the exiled Buddhist leader was endlessly vilified in official propaganda as a traitor for his calls for more autonomy for Tibet.
The Dalai Lama on Friday issued his public congratulations to Liu.
"I would like to take this opportunity to renew my call to the government of China to release Liu Xiaobo and other prisoners of conscience who have been imprisoned for exercising their freedom of expression" the Dalai Lama said.
The son of a soldier, Liu joined China's first wave of university students in the mid-1970s after the chaotic decade of the Cultural Revolution.
Liu's writing first took a political turn in 1988, when he became a visiting scholar in Oslo — his first time outside China.
Liu cut short a visiting scholar stint at Columbia University months later to join the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing in 1989. He and three other older activists famously persuaded students to peacefully leave the square hours before the deadly June 4 crackdown.
Liu went to prison after the crackdown and was released in early 1991 because he had repented and "performed major meritorious services," state media said at the time, without elaborating.
Still, five years later Liu was sent to a re-education camp for three years for co-writing an open letter that demanded the impeachment of then-President Jiang Zemin.
President Barack Obama won the Nobel peace prize last year.
—
Associated Press writers Bjoern H. Amland in Oslo and Cara Anna in Beijing contributed to this report.

Chinese dissident Liu wins Nobel Peace Prize

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14Sep/10Off

Aging gas pipe at risk of explosion nationwide

SAN BRUNO, Calif. -An ominous theme has emerged from the wreckage of a deadly pipeline explosion in California: There are thousands of pipes just like it nationwide.
Utilities have been under pressure for years to better inspect and replace aging gas pipes — many of them laid years before the suburbs expanded over them and now at risk of leaking or erupting.
But the effort has fallen short. Critics say the regulatory system is ripe for problems because the government largely leaves it up to the companies to do inspections, and utilities are reluctant to spend the money necessary to properly fix and replace decrepit pipelines.
"If this was the FAA and air travel we were talking about, I wouldn't get on a plane," said Rick Kessler, a former congressional staffer specializing in pipeline safety issues who now works for the Pipeline Safety Trust, an advocacy group based in Bellingham, Wash.
Investigators are still trying to figure out how the pipeline in San Bruno ruptured and ignited a gigantic fireball that torched one home after another in the neighborhood, killing at least four people. Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the pipeline's owner, said Monday it has set aside up to $100 million to help residents recover.
Experts say the California disaster epitomizes the risks that communities face with old gas lines. The pipe was more than 50 years old — right around the life expectancy for steel pipes. It was part of a transmission line that in one section had an "unacceptably high" risk of failure. And it was in a densely populated area.
The blast was the latest warning sign in a series of deadly infrastructure failures in recent years, including a bridge collapse in Minneapolis and a steam pipe explosion that tore open a Manhattan street in 2007. The steam pipe that ruptured was more than 80 years old.
The section of pipeline that ruptured was built in 1956, back when the neighborhood contained only a handful of homes. It is a scenario that National Transportation Safety Board vice chairman Christopher Hart has seen play out throughout the nation, as suburbs have expanded.
"That's an issue we're going to have to look on a bigger scale — situations in which pipes of some age were put in before the dense population arrived and now the dense population is right over the pipe," he said.
Thousands of pipelines nationwide fit the same bill, and they frequently experience mishaps. Federal officials have recorded 2,840 significant gas pipeline accidents since 1990, more than a third causing deaths and significant injuries.
"In reality, there is a major pipeline incident every other day in this country," said Carl Weimer, Pipeline Safety Trust's executive director. "Luckily, most of them don't happen in populated areas, but you still see too many failures to think something like this wasn't going to happen sooner or later."
Congress passed a law in 2002 that required utilities for the first time to inspect pipelines that run through heavily populated areas. In the first five years, more than 3,000 problems were identified — a figure Weimer said underscores the precarious pipeline system.
Even when inspections are done and problems found, Kessler said, there is no requirement for companies to say if or what kind of repairs were made. And Weimer added industry lobbyists have since pushed to relax that provision of the law so inspections could occur once a decade or once every 15 years.
Other critics complain that the pipeline plans are drafted in secret with little opportunity for the public to speak out about the process.
The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is the federal regulatory arm that enforces rules for the safe operation of the nation's pipeline system, and has direct authority over interstate pipelines. Most state public utility agencies have adopted the federal rules and carry out inspections and enforcement of pipelines running inside state boundaries.
Asked if it plans to step up oversight in response to the San Bruno accident, the PHMSA issued a statement saying it has investigators at the scene providing technical assistance to the California Public Utilities Commission and to the NTSB as they investigate the pipeline failure.
"We will evaluate what further action is necessary once we have complete information," the agency said.
The system often relies on the pipeline operators like PG&E to survey their own gas lines and decide which are high risk.
The American Gas Association disputes the notion that it cuts any corners and says the industry is subjected to stringent state and federal regulations.
"Safety is unequivocally the No. 1 priority for the natural gas transmission and distribution industry and always will be," spokesman Chris Hogan said. "The industry spends billions each year to ensure the safety and reliability of the natural gas infrastructure."
The challenge of ensuring pipeline safety is compounded by the sheer enormity of the nation's natural gas network. The federal pipeline agency says the U.S. has more than 2 million miles of pipelines — enough to circle the earth about 100 times.
The agency has only about 100 federal inspectors nationwide to ensure compliance, meaning there is no guarantee violators will be caught. "When you look at two-and-a-half million miles of pipeline with 100 inspectors, it's not reassuring," Weimer said. "To a grand degree the industry inspects and polices themselves."
Potential safety threats have grown as the pipeline network has expanded and age takes its toll on existing infrastructure. More than 60 percent of the nation's gas transmission lines are 40 years old or older.
Most of them are made of steel, with older varieties prone to corrosion. The more problematic pipes are made of cast-iron. A few places in Pennsylvania still had wooden gas pipes as of last year, according to officials there.
Pipelines in heavily populated locations like San Bruno fall into a category the industry refers to as "high consequence areas."
Those areas contain about 7 percent of the 300,000 miles of gas transmission lines in the country, or roughly 21,000 miles of pipeline. The category has nothing to do with the safety of pipelines, and was created to put the greatest emphasis on the most populous regions.
Industry watchdogs have criticized utilities for not being willing to spend the money necessary to avoid explosions like the one in California. The cost to replace lengthy stretches of pipelines can exceed $30 million.
"They (PG&E) will prioritize and put off work to maintain their level of earnings," said Bill Marcus, a California attorney whose firm consults nationally with consumer protection agencies and nonprofits on gas rate cases. "To some extent that's not bad, but it is concerning when those decisions endanger public health or the environment."
PG&E said it has spent more than $100 million to improve its gas system in recent years, and routinely surveys its 5,724 miles of transmission and 42,142 miles of distribution lines for leaks. The utility speeded up surveys of its distribution lines in 2008 and expects to have completed checks in December, it said.
PG&E President Chris Johns said the pipe that ruptured was inspected twice in the past year — once for corrosion and once for leaks — and the checks turned up no problems.
A section of pipe connected to the line that exploded was built in 1948, and flagged as a problem by PG&E in a memo. PG&E submitted paperwork to regulators that said the section was within "the top 100 highest risk line sections" in the utility's service territory, the document shows.
The fact that it's in an urbanized area that didn't exist when the pipe was built is emblematic of a bigger problem nationwide, experts say.
"People have been waiting for a while for this type of disaster to happen because of expanded construction near pipeline right of ways without adequate prevention," said Paul Blackburn, a public interest lawyer in Vermillion, S.D.
—
Associated Press writers Matthew Brown in Billings, Mont., and Joan Lowy in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

Aging gas pipe at risk of explosion nationwide

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2Aug/10Off

Obama: US commitment in Iraq is shifting

WASHINGTON -President Barack Obama will set a course Monday for the nation's changing mission in Iraq as the military prepares to end its combat operations there.
In a speech at the national convention of the Disabled American Veterans in Atlanta, Obama was to address the progress being made to meet his deadline of drawing down all combat troops by the end of the month. A transitional force of 50,000 troops will remain to train Iraqi security forces, conduct counterterrorism operations and provide security for ongoing U.S. civilian efforts.
"Make no mistake: Our commitment in Iraq is changing, from a military effort led by our troops to a civilian effort led by our diplomats," Obama said in excerpts released ahead of the speech.
Obama has said all U.S. troops will be gone from Iraq by the end of next year.
At the same time Obama has drawn down forces in Iraq, he has increased the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan, ordering a surge of 30,000 additional troops. But with casualties on the rise, there are fresh concerns about the 9-year mission in Afghanistan, as well Obama's plan to begin withdrawing troops in July 2011, a timetable that critics say will embolden the Taliban and other extremist groups in the region.
Facing a potential loss of public and congressional support for the Afghanistan war, the White House is painting the U.S. mission there as humble and achievable: keeping the region from being a haven for terrorists.
"What we're looking to do is difficult, very difficult, but it's a fairly modest goal," Obama told the CBS "Sunday Morning" show.
During his remarks Monday, Obama is also expected to speak about the government's efforts to support troops serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as veterans of other wars.
"While our country has sometimes been divided, they have fought together as one," Obama said in the excerpts. "While other individuals and institutions have shirked responsibility, they have welcomed it."
After the speech, Obama was scheduled to attend a fundraising lunch for the Democratic National Committee, his latest stop in a summer fundraising sprint that also includes events in Chicago later this week.
But Georgia's most prominent Democrat, former Gov. Roy Barnes, won't be joining Obama at either of his stops Monday. Barnes, who is running to get his old job back, had previously scheduled events in southern Georgia, his campaign said.
Distancing himself from the president could be politically smart for Barnes. Georgia is a Republican stronghold that John McCain carried in 2008. A poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. in July had Obama with a 37 percent approval rating in the state. Fifty percent of those surveyed disapproved of Obama's performance.
—
Associated Press writer Shannon McCaffrey in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Obama: US commitment in Iraq is shifting

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28Jul/10Off

Judge blocks parts of Arizona immigration law

PHOENIX -A federal judge stepped into the fight over Arizona's immigration law at the last minute Wednesday, blocking the heart of the measure and defusing a confrontation between police and thousands of activists that had been building for months.
Coming just hours before the law was to take effect, the ruling isn't the end.
It sets up a lengthy legal battle that could end up before the Supreme Court — ensuring that a law that reignited the immigration debate, inspired similar measures nationwide, created fodder for political campaigns and raised tensions with Mexico will stay in the spotlight.
Protesters who gathered at the state Capitol and outside the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City cheered when they heard the news. The governor, the law's authors and anti-illegal immigration groups vowed to fight on.
"It's a temporary bump in the road," Gov. Jan Brewer said.
The key issue before U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton in the case is as old as the nation itself: Does federal law trump state law? She indicated in her ruling that the federal government's case has a good chance at succeeding.
The Clinton appointee said the controversial sections should be put on hold until the courts resolve the issues, including parts that required officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws.
In her preliminary injunction, Bolton delayed provisions that required immigrants to carry their papers and banned illegal immigrants from soliciting employment in public places — a move aimed at day laborers.
The judge also blocked officers from making warrantless arrests of suspected illegal immigrants for crimes that can lead to deportation.
"Requiring Arizona law enforcement officials and agencies to determine the immigration status of every person who is arrested burdens lawfully present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked," Bolton wrote.
The ruling came just as police were making last-minute preparations to begin enforcement of the law and protesters, many of whom said they would not bring identification, were planning large demonstrations against the measure.
At least one group had planned to block access to federal offices, daring officers to ask them about their immigration status.
"I knew the judge would say that part of the law was just not right," said Gisela Diaz, 50, from Mexico City, who came to Arizona on a since-expired tourist visa in 1989 and who waited with her family early Wednesday at the Mexican Consulate to get advice about the law.
"It's the part we were worried about. This is a big relief for us," she said.
At a Home Depot in west Phoenix, where day-laborers gather to look for work, Carlos Gutierrez said he was elated when a stranger drove by and yelled the news: "They threw out the law! You guys can work!"
"I felt good inside" said the 32-year-old illegal immigrant, who came here six years ago from Sonora, Mexico, and supports his wife and three children. "Now there's a way to stay here with less problems."
Opponents argued the law will lead to racial profiling, conflict with federal immigration law and distract local police from fighting more serious crimes. The U.S. Justice Department, civil rights groups and a Phoenix police officer asked for Wednesday's injunction.
Lawyers for the state contend the law was a constitutionally sound attempt by Arizona to assist federal immigration agents and lessen border woes, such as the heavy costs for educating, jailing and providing health care for illegal immigrants.
They said Arizona shouldn't have to suffer from a broken immigration system when it has 15,000 officers who can arrest illegal immigrants.
In her ruling, Bolton said the interests of Arizona, the busiest U.S. gateway for illegal immigrants, match those of the federal government. But, she wrote, that the federal government must take the lead on deciding how to enforce immigration laws.
The core of the government's case is that federal immigration law trumps state law — an issue known as "pre-emption" in legal circles. In her ruling, Bolton pointed out five portions of the law where she believed the federal government would likely succeed on its claims.
Justice Department spokeswoman Hannah August said the agency understands the frustration of Arizona residents with the immigration system, but added that a patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement.
Federal authorities have argued that letting the Arizona law stand would create a patchwork of immigration laws nationwide that would needlessly complicate foreign relations. They said the law is disrupting U.S. relations with Mexico and other countries.
About 100 protesters in Mexico City who had gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy broke into cheers when they learned of Bolton's ruling. They had been monitoring the news on a laptop computer.
"Migrants, hang on, the people are rising up!" they chanted.
Mexico's Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinoza called the ruling "a first step in the right direction" and said staff at the five Mexican consulates in Arizona will work extra hours in coming weeks to educate migrants about the law.
"None of this is very surprising," said Kevin R. Johnson, an immigration expert and the law school dean at University of California at Davis. "This is all very much within the constitutional mainstream."
The federal government has exclusive powers over immigration to ensure a uniform national policy that aids in commerce and relations with other countries, Johnson said.
A century ago, differing policies among states led to problems that prompted the federal government to adopt a comprehensive immigration policy for the country, Johnson said.
Supporters took solace that the judge kept portions of the law intact, including a section that bars local governments from limiting enforcement of federal immigration laws. Those jurisdictions are commonly known as "sanctuary cities."
"Striking down these sanctuary city policies has always been the No. 1 priority," said Republican Sen. Russell Pearce, the law's chief author.
The remaining provisions, many of them revisions to an Arizona immigration statute, will take effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.
Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman said the state will appeal Bolton's ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday, asking the appellate court to lift the injunction and allow the blocked provisions to take effect. The appeal will ask the 9th Circuit to act quickly, Senseman said.
Whatever way that court rules, Bolton will eventually hold a trial and issue a final ruling.
Wednesday's decision was seen as a defeat for Brewer, who is running for another term in November and has seen her political fortunes rise because of the law's popularity among conservatives.
Her opponent, state Attorney General Terry Goddard, pounced.
"Jan Brewer played politics with immigration, and she lost," the Democrat said. "It is time to look beyond election-year grandstanding and begin to repair the damage to Arizona's image and economy."
Some residents in Phoenix agreed.
"A lot of people don't understand the connection between, 'Yes, we have a problem with illegal immigration' and 'We need immigration reform,' which is not just asking people for their papers," said Kimber Lanning, a 43-year-old Phoenix music store owner.
"It was never a solution to begin with."
—
Associated Press writers Bob Christie, Paul Davenport and Michelle Price in Phoenix, Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Ariz., and Olga R. Rodriguez in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Judge blocks parts of Arizona immigration law

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15Jul/10Off

Obama hails passage of Wall Street reform measure

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama says the passage of a giant crackdown on the financial sector will provide long-deserved economic security to families and businesses.

Obama says the new legislation ensures there that will be no more taxpayer bailouts and that Americans won't have to foot the bill for Wall Street's excesses.

Congress on Thursday passed the stiffest restrictions on banks and Wall Street since the Great Depression.

The legislation comes almost two years after a tanking financial sector helped trigger a massive downturn in the economy.

The law will give the government new powers to break up companies that threaten the economy and create a new agency to guard consumers in their financial transactions, among many other changes.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Obama hails passage of Wall Street reform measure

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1Jul/10Off

AP IMPACT: Millions of vaccine doses to be burned

ATLANTA -About a quarter of the swine flu vaccine produced for the U.S. public has expired — meaning that a whopping 40 million doses worth about $260 million is being written off as trash.
"It's a lot, by historical standards," said Jerry Weir, who oversees vaccine research and review for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The outdated vaccine, some of which expired Wednesday, will be incinerated. The amount, more than twice the usual leftovers, likely sets a record. And that's not even all of it.
About 30 million more doses will expire later and may go unused, according to one government estimate. If all that vaccine expires, more than 43 percent of the supply for the U.S. public will have gone to waste.
Federal officials defended the huge purchase as a necessary risk in the face of a never-before-seen virus. Many health experts had feared the new flu could be the deadly global epidemic they had long warned about, but it ended up killing fewer people than seasonal flu.
"Although there were many doses of vaccine that went unused, it was much more appropriate to have been prepared for the worst case scenario than to have had too few doses," said Bill Hall, spokesman for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Most leading health experts generally agree with that.
Millions of doses of flu vaccine generally go unused every year and are marked for burning, but in recent years the leftovers amounted to closer to 10 percent of the supply, rather than the 25 percent expiring now. Government flu experts couldn't recall throwing away anything close to 40 million doses before.
The new H1N1 swine flu emerged in April last year, hitting children and young adults particularly hard. It was difficult to predict how deadly it might be or how easily it might spread. Federal health officials pushed five vaccine manufacturers to produce a vaccine as quickly as possible. What's more, they wanted a lot of it — many experts thought most people would need two doses for it to work.
The government placed three orders last year for a combined total of nearly 200 million doses — an unprecedented amount and almost double the amount of vaccine produced in recent years for seasonal flu.
About 162 million doses were meant for the general public. Another 36 million included doses for the military and other countries.
But demand never took off, for several reasons:
_Tests of the vaccine soon showed only one dose was enough to protect most people.
_Much of the vaccine was not ready until late 2009, after the largest wave of swine flu illnesses passed.
_Swine flu turned out not to be as deadly as was first feared. About 12,000 deaths have been attributed to it — or roughly a third of the estimated annual deaths from seasonal flu.
So while people were waiting hours for swine flu vaccinations in some cities in October and November, by January local health departments were trying gimmicks to get anyone at all to come in for a shot.
Government officials have known for months that they were looking at a huge surplus. According to an Associated Press calculation based on federal purchasing information, the dollar value of the 40 million expired doses is about $261 million. The government didn't release an official figure, but Hall said the AP estimate was approximately correct.
In Europe, where nations also found themselves with millions of unused doses, some commentators have attacked the World Health Organization, which declared swine flu a global epidemic, or pandemic. The critics have questioned the motivation of some WHO advisers who had links to the pharmaceutical industry.
Some critics have simply lamented that a lot of anxiety was raised and money wasted, not just during the swine flu scare but also in government responses to bird flu and SARS, a respiratory virus that swept parts of Asia in 2003.
"Each time the so-called experts told us that millions of people would be killed worldwide by the respective viruses. We have learned that the experts were utterly wrong," said Dr. Ulrich Keil, a professor at Germany's prestigious University of Muenster and a WHO adviser.
"This behavior is irresponsible because the angst campaigns ... confuse the priority setting in public health," he said. The death toll from influenza epidemics is much smaller than the number killed annually by chronic illnesses like heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes, he added, in an e-mail.
Unused flu vaccine is a common problem. The June 30 expiration date is set by the FDA and has less to do with the vaccine's shelf life than the desire to tweak the recipe each year to protect against the three flu strains expected to cause the most illness.
"It's not necessarily because it's degraded or not potent," said Dr. Mark Mulligan, an Emory University vaccine researcher.
In the past year, about 114 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine were distributed. The government thinks most of that was used — demand was unusually high because of fears about swine flu.
In the flu vaccination campaign for this coming fall, swine flu vaccine is being combined with two seasonal strains in single doses. Manufacturers have told the government they expect to make about 170 million doses.
An influential government advisory panel this year recommended that virtually all Americans get flu shots each year. Still, that doesn't mean it will all get used.
"No doubt there will be unused doses. This happens every time," said Dr. John Treanor, an immunology specialist at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

AP IMPACT: Millions of vaccine doses to be burned

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29Jun/10Off

Kagan insists she didn’t block military at Harvard

WASHINGTON -Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan clashed Tuesday with a Republican senator over the limits she ordered on military recruiters while dean of Harvard Law School, repeatedly denying she blocked them as she sought to deflect foes' efforts to slow her apparently smooth road to confirmation.
Despite a testy exchange with the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, President Barack Obama's nominee soldiered through her second day of public testimony on Capitol Hill apparently in good shape to win Senate approval — barring a major gaffe — in time to take her seat before the court opens a new term in October. If confirmed, Kagan, 50, would succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens
Republican foes weren't giving up quietly. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama said he emerged from the long day of questioning more "troubled" about Kagan's nomination than he had been previously. During his sometimes heated back-and-forth with Kagan, Sessions said her decision to bar recruiters from the law school's career services office over the Pentagon's prohibition on openly gay soldiers was "punishing" the military at Harvard, treating them in a "second-class way" and creating a hostile environment for the military on campus.
Kagan said she was trying to balance Harvard's nondiscrimination policy, which she believed "don't ask, don't tell" violated, with a federal law that required schools to give military recruiters equal access as a condition of eligibility for federal funds. She said she welcomed the military, and believed her policy of requiring recruiters to work through a student veterans group — first set by a predecessor — was a valid compromise.
"We were trying to make sure that military recruiters had full and complete access to our students, but we were also trying to protect our own antidiscrimination policy and to protect the students whom it is ... supposed to protect, which in this case were our gay and lesbian students," Kagan said.
Sessions rejected her version of events and accused Kagan of defying federal law because of her strong opposition to the military's treatment of homosexuals.
"I know what happened at Harvard. I know you were an outspoken leader against the military policy," Sessions said "I know you acted without legal authority to reverse Harvard's policy and deny those military equal access to campus until you were threatened by the United States government of loss of federal funds."
Kagan was less willing to mix it up with Republicans who closely questioned her on controversial legal topics.
The nominee, who once wrote a strongly worded article denouncing Supreme Court nominees for dodging questions at confirmation hearings, herself refused repeatedly to be pinned down on specific legal issues, her political views or even the passions that animate her to seek a place on the court.
She did call recent Supreme Court rulings upholding gun rights "binding precedent," and she said the court's rulings mandate that in any law regulating abortion "the woman's life and the woman's health have to be protected." She said a 5-4 decision this year that said corporations and unions were free to spend their own funds on political activity was "settled law."
But she was less forthcoming when asked whether she thought that campaign finance case, which she argued for the Obama administration and lost, had been wrongly decided.
"I did believe we had a strong case to make. I tried to make it to the best of my ability," she told Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who questioned her in detail about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
She also said none of her work arguing the government's cases before the Supreme Court — she was Obama's solicitor general until last month — should be interpreted as reflecting her own positions.
"I want to make a clear distinction between my views as an advocate and any views I might have as a judge," Kagan said.
Across hours of testimony before the committee, Kagan declined to weigh in on virtually any substantive question posed to her, eluding GOP efforts to label her ideology as well as one Democrat's seemingly friendly bid to get her to open up about why she wants to be a justice.
"What motivates me is the opportunity to safeguard the rule of law," Kagan said under questioning by a visibly frustrated Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, who asked her about her passions. "I think I will take this one case at a time if I'm a judge. It would not be right for a judge to come in and say, 'I have a passion for this or that. ...' This isn't a job, I think, where somebody should come in with a substantive agenda."
Later, asked to talk about the justices she most admires, Kagan again dodged, saying it would be a "bad idea" to talk about those currently on the bench. "My oh my oh my," Kohl said, deprived again of an answer as the hearing room erupted in laughter.
Kagan did, however, express admiration for the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, the court's first African-American, whom Republicans have held up as a prime example of a judicial activist.
"I love Justice Marshall. He did an enormous amount for me," Kagan said of the man for whom she once clerked. "But if you confirm me to this position, you will get Justice Kagan. You won't get Justice Marshall, and that's an important thing."
Kohl also failed to persuade Kagan to say whether she agreed with Justice Antonin Scalia's view that the Constitution should be interpreted solely based on its text or with former Justice David Souter's contention that it should be viewed in terms of its words' "meaning for living people."
"I don't really think that this is an either-or choice," Kagan responded.
Asked by Sessions whether she considered herself "a progressive in the mold of" Obama or a "legal progressive," as one of his top aides has called her, Kagan said she'd rather choose her own labels, but declined to give herself one.
"I'm not quite sure how I would characterize my politics, but one thing I know is that my politics would be, must be, have to be separate from my judging," Kagan said. "I've served in two Democratic administrations. You can tell something about me and my political views from that."
Kagan stayed mostly calm throughout hours at a witness table, showing glimmers of humor but hardly ever veering off-script as she fielded questions on sometimes uncomfortable topics.
"You're doing well," Hatch assured her after her intense debate with Sessions on military recruitment. "Relax as much as you can."
Asked by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., for a "heart-to-heart talk," Kagan gamely replied, "Just you and me," to laughter from a hearing room filled with spectators, reporters and news cameras.
Kagan, the former law school dean, sometimes seemed to be teaching an introductory course in constitutional law.
She called the Constitution an "enduring document."
It has some "very specific provisions — it just says what you're supposed to do and how things are supposed to work," she said. But she added that other provisions "were meant to be interpreted over time to be applied to new situations and new contexts."

Kagan insists she didn't block military at Harvard

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21Jun/10Off

NYC car bomb suspect pleads guilty, calls it `war’

NEW YORK -Calling himself a Muslim soldier, a defiant Pakistan-born U.S. citizen pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the failed Times Square car bombing and left a sinister warning that unless the U.S. leaves Muslim lands alone, "we will be attacking U.S."
Faisal Shahzad entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan just days after a federal grand jury indicted him on 10 terrorism and weapons counts, some of which carry mandatory life sentences. He pleaded guilty to them all.
Widely circulated snapshots of Shahzad — a U.S.-trained financial analyst and married father of two — show him with a neatly trimmed beard, all smiles and looking carefree behind sunglasses or with his American wife. When led into court Monday, he had on a white skull cap and prisoner's uniform, his beard shaggy and his demeanor serious.
U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum challenged Shahzad repeatedly with questions such as whether he looked at the people in Times Square, especially the children, to see who they were or whether he really built the bomb by himself. He repeatedly insisted he acted without help from others in the U.S. and built the bomb "all by myself."
"One has to understand where I'm coming from," Shahzad said calmly. "I consider myself ... a Muslim soldier."
The 30-year-old described his effort to set off a bomb in an SUV he parked in Times Square on May 1, saying he chose the warm Saturday night because it would be crowded with people he could injure or kill. He said he conspired with the Pakistan Taliban, which provided more than $15,000 to fund his operation and five days of explosives training late last year and early this year, just months after he became a U.S. citizen.
He explained that he packed his vehicle with three separate bomb components, hoping to set off a fertilizer-fueled bomb packed in a gun cabinet, a set of propane tanks and gas canisters rigged with fireworks to explode into a fireball. He also revealed he was carrying a folding assault rifle for "self-defense."
Shahzad said he lit a fuse and waited 2 1/2 to five minutes for the bomb to erupt.
"I was waiting to hear a sound but I didn't hear a sound. ... So I walked to Grand Central and went home," he said.
The judge repeatedly interrupted Shahzad, including when he said his plot was to retaliate against the U.S. and the forces of up to 50 other countries that had "attacked the Muslim lands."
Cedarbaum said: "But not the people who were walking in Times Square that night. Did you look around to see who they were?"
"Well, the people select the government," Shahzad said. "We consider them all the same. The drones, when they hit ... "
Cedarbaum interrupted again: "Including the children?"
Shahzad answered: "Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don't see children, they don't see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It's a war, and in war, they kill people. They're killing all Muslims."
Later, he added: "I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people. And, on behalf of that, I'm avenging the attack. Living in the United States, Americans only care about their own people, but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die."
Cedarbaum asked him if he understood some charges carried mandatory life sentences and that he might spend the rest of his life in prison. He said he did.
At one point, she asked him if he was sure he wanted to plead guilty.
He said he wanted "to plead guilty and 100 times more" to let the U.S. know that if it did not get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, halt drone attacks and stop meddling in Muslim lands, "we will be attacking U.S."
Sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 5.
The Bridgeport, Conn., resident was arrested trying to leave the country May 3, two days after the bomb failed to ignite near a Broadway theater.
Authorities said Shahzad immediately cooperated, delaying his initial court appearance for two weeks as he spilled details of a plot meant to sow terror in the world-famous Times Square when it was packed with thousands of potential victims.
The bomb apparently sputtered, emitting smoke that attracted the attention of an alert street vendor, who notified police, setting in motion a rapid evacuation of blocks of a city still healing from the shock of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
According to the indictment issued last week, Shahzad received a total of $12,000 prior to the attack from the Pakistani Taliban through cash drop-offs in Massachusetts and Long Island.
Attorney General Eric Holder said after the plea: "Faisal Shahzad plotted and launched an attack that could have led to serious loss of life, and today the American criminal justice system ensured that he will pay the price for his actions."
FBI New York Acting Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos called the plea "right on the mark" and praised the work of "ordinary citizens who alerted law enforcement of suspicious activity."
Shahzad was accused in the indictment of receiving explosives training in Waziristan, Pakistan, during a five-week trip to that country. He returned to the United States in February.
The indictment said he received $5,000 in cash on Feb. 25 from a co-conspirator in Pakistan and $7,000 more on April 10, allegedly sent at the co-conspirator's direction. Shahzad confirmed the payments in court Monday and said the Pakistan Taliban also gave him more than $4,000 when he left training camp, where he spent 40 days.
Shahzad, born in Pakistan, moved to the United States when he was 18.
Pakistan has arrested at least 11 people since the attempted attack. An intelligence official has alleged two of them played a role in the plot. No one has been charged.
Three men in Massachusetts and Maine suspected of supplying money to Shahzad have been detained on immigration charges; one was recently transferred to New York.
Federal authorities have said they believe money was channeled through an underground money transfer network known as "hawala," but they have said they doubt anyone in the U.S. who provided money knew what it was for.

NYC car bomb suspect pleads guilty, calls it `war'

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